Chapter XXIII: The Ruined Cottage

'Those who do injuries to others,' says the delightful author of _I promessè Sposi_, 'are not only accountable for the evil they inflict, but also for the perversion of sentiment which they cause in their victims.' I am happy that this trite sentence occurred to me, for by this mode of reasoning we shall find Mr. Snaggs alone guilty of Callum's unusual hardness of heart, and, in short, the author of his own untimely demise.

Chilled and almost terrified by the new and awful events of the night, I hastened away by the route we had come, descending the face of the rocks towards that part of the stream which lay below the cascade, and proceeding along its banks among the wet water-docks and green leaves which the fire, that was still raging in many parts of the muirland district. had failed to consume. Midnight was past now. The moon was waning behind the summit of the scorched and burning hills. We were weary and looked about us for a shelter; but in every direction the country seemed dotted by the fires which yet smouldered in the thickets and morasses, reddening and flashing in every puff of wind.

'Free--but homeless, houseless, penniless, and desperate!' said I.

'A chial!' responded my fosterer; 'how many brethren we have in this wide world, which is all before us now!'

A ruined cottage afforded us a resting-place, and there we threw ourselves down upon the thick soft grass that was springing up within its four bare walls of turf and boulder-stones. I was so overcome by lassitude, that even the supernatural terrors of this place failed to scare me from it, and Callum, who would rather have passed the night in any other part of the mountains, could not leave me. A mouthful of whisky from his hunting-flask revived us, and to change the current of my thoughts, which were incessantly and upbraidingly reverting to the terrible scenes we had just witnessed, he told me several wild and quaint stories of Dougald-with-the-Keys, the former occupant of the ruined cottage, and in whose service Callum had been when a boy.

Dougald was a smuggler and distiller of illicit spirits. He had his manufactory in a hollow of the adjacent morass, a high rock overlooking which was the post of his scout. Malie, his lynx-eyed wife, generally watched for the hated exciseman, who might be wandering along the road from Inverness or Tain. He was named Dougald-with-the-Keys, from a bunch of mysterious keys which he bore at his sporran-belt. These rattled when he walked, and gave him, it was averred, a mysterious power; for once, when conveying to Inverness two casks of the mountain-dew, slung across a stout pony, two excisemen gave him chase, and being well mounted, were about to make a capture of Dougald's distillation; but near the source of the Ora he shook his keys at them, and plucking a sprig of rowan, planted it by the wayside, uttering certain strange and terrible words. On approaching the sprig, the pursuers felt themselves constrained to alight from their saddles, and to dance round it furiously, hand-in-hand, while Dougald laughed and proceeded safely on his journey towards the Highland capital. The frantic and involuntary gyrations of the unfortunate excisemen were continued for more than two hours, until a passing shepherd pulled up the rowan-sprig, dissolved the spell, and permitted them to fall prostrate on the road, breathless, powerless, terrified, and resolved never more to meddle with Dougald, who continued to smuggle and distil in success and security, and had large sums to his credit, standing in the books of various discreet retailers in the vicinity of the Clachnacudden.

Once upon a time Callum had been despatched thither for payment, and was returning to the glen with a purse well filled with silver 'Georges,' and mounted on the active shelty which usually carried the casks. Pleased with the large sum he had to pay over to the gloomy, fierce, and avaricious Dougald, he switched up the nag as he entered the glen, and hastened on, for the double purpose of ridding himself of this important cash, and obtaining his supper.

The cottage and its little outhouses were buried in obscurity when he approached them; all was dark, yet the hour was not late, and, save a real or fancied sound of lamentation, all was still. According to his usual custom, Callum rode straight to the stable door, slipped from the bare-backed pony, which he had ridden in the Highland fashion, in his kilt, sans bridle and crupper. On opening the door, for the purpose of bedding and foddering the little nag, he heard a well-known rattling of keys. The sound seemed to be in the air! The pony started--snorted--perspired and trembled; its eyes shot fire; its fore-feet were firmly planted on the ground, and remained immovable. Again the keys were heard rattling, and between him and the moon, Callum saw the figure of Dougald pass like a shadow along the summit of the little garden wall. The pony then sprang into the stable with a convulsive bound. An indescribable emotion--a horror filled the heart of my fosterer; and closing his eyes, lest he might see something still more appalling, he flung down a few armfuls of hay and straw to the pony, locked the stable door, and sprang into the cottage, to find Dougald stretched on the floor, a corpse, and his wife, Malie, lamenting over him; for at the instant Callum had seen his figure passing, as it were, through the air, he had sunk down and expired of some disease unknown.

Such stories as these, and others, Callum related in low and impressive whispers, and his powerful and poetical Gaelic, which invested every trifle with pathos or with terror, were but ill calculated to soothe a mind which ever and anon in fancy saw the pale visage and glaring eyes of Snaggs; thus I was glad when the breaking day began to brighten in the east, and we left the ruined hut of Dougald the Smuggler to survey the country, which was all black, burned, and desolate. Its aspect was strange and terrible; a sea of flame seemed to have rolled over it, sweeping every trace of life and verdure from its surface. The origin of that nocturnal fire was then involved in mystery; but the game over eighteen square miles was irretrievably destroyed, and Callum laughed in scorn.

'_Let this be a hint_ for our Highlanders!' said he.

The desolation of the scene was now complete, as that which Abraham saw of old, when looking towards the cities of the Doomed, he beheld the smoke of The Land of the Plain, ascending as the smoke of a furnace. A stripe of green was lingering on the lofty places, but all was scorched below; thus

"In mountain or in glen,
Nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power,
The wearied eye may ken;
But all its rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone."

All this occurred only three years ago, but subsequent events have rendered the concealment of poor Callum's name unnecessary now.

Three days elapsed before the fire exhausted itself, or was extinguished, on the thickets being cut down in some places by the axe, and the heather torn up in others, to bar their progress.

Meanwhile the sufferings of the poor evicted people, who were bivouacked in the burial-ground of St. Colme, had been terrible. In their hunger and despair, some of them had made a species of meal or flour from the leaves and seed of the wild mustard, and bruising them together, had kneaded a kind of cake, which, when eaten with mountain herbs, brought on deadly inflammations and fluxes, of which they died so fast, that the frightful condition of the survivors reached the ears of the humane in the Lowlands. But why dwell on a subject that is of daily occurrence in the Scottish Highlands, and with the hourly horrors of which the columns of the northern press are constantly filled?

A subscription was prepared for them, in common with the miserable Rosses, who were then being driven out of Sutherland, and the starved Mac Donnels, who were then hunted down like wild beasts in Glenelg; but this relief was soon abandoned, through the malevolence of the usual enemy of the Celtic population--a scurrilous Edinburgh print, of which Mac Fee, in common with other small wits of the Scottish Parliament House, was of course a supporter. Charity thus arrested and withheld, the result proved most fatal to the poor people of Glen Ora, who died daily--the strong man and the tender child together.

At last, as I have stated, the authorities, who had been packing our peasantry in ships like negroes from Africa, and despatching them in naked hordes from Isle Ornsay and elsewhere to America and Australia, proposed to the miserable remnant of the Mac Innons that they too should sail for that far-off land of the West, where the sun of the Celtic tribes is setting, and with something of despair they consented, for the most cruel and terrible ultimatum--death by starvation and exposure menaced them all.

I will pass over the touching scenes that ensued when the last of our people were torn from their native district, every feature and memory of which were entwined around their hearts--torn from their ruined homes--their father's lonely graves--from all they had loved since childhood, and when they were thrust, without regard to sex or age, on board of a small steamer in Loch Ora, for conveyance to Glasgow, where the great emigrant--or Celtic slave-ship, the _Duchess_, awaited them.

Many of these poor people, after the usual custom of the evicted Highlanders, made up little packages of earth--their native soil---to bear it with them to the wilds of America, as a relic or memento of their country; and in the hope that, in this little handful might be the seeds of the heather-bell and other native plants and flowers. Strong, deep, and undying is this pure and noble--this holy love of home, in the Highland heart. The unavailing sorrow, the unheeded agony, the mental and bodily misery of our evicted emigrants is a theme so constantly before the public, that we now regard the depopulation of a valley as quite a usual occurrence, like the fall of the leaf or the coming of summer; hence I will pass over this part of iny narrative as briefly as possible.

The people sailed for Glasgow, and Callum and I, who were to follow and join them in a day or two, stood on the shore of the loch, and saw the steamer ploughing through its still blue waters, as it bore away the sad and wailing freight.

Near us, on the beach, knelt a man in prayer; his white hairs were glistening in the setting sun; his eyes were bent upon the lessening steamer, and his hands were stretched towards her. This was old Father Raouil, who was sending his last blessing after those on whose faces he would never look again.

Near him knelt Callum Dhu, with his bare knees in the sand, and his rough sunburned face covered by his bonnet--for the strong man had now given way, and was weeping like a child.

We are literally _the last of the clan_.

We watched the steamer till she diminished to a speck, and vanished round a promontory; then we turned away, and, mechanically and in silence, ascended the desolate mountains, a community of thought--a unity of sentiment--leading us instinctively towards the deserted glen, although neither home nor tie remained unto us there.