Chapter XXIV: The End of a Tale

All that weeping night of rain Rob travelled towards Glen Lyon glad for every foot of heather between him and the weird house upon the loch. Passing through the country of the Mackenzies he reached Killin, and there fell in with a band of gipsies sitting round their camp fire. They numbered about a score--men, women, and little brown children--and they welcomed him to share their meat in the kindliest manner, asking no questions and displaying no curiosity in his affairs. Only the chief knew Gaelic, and he was all the more ready to hear the news of the north from Rob, who gathered that his affection for the red-coats was by no means warm.

Rob accepted his kindness with a qualm of self reproach. It had suddenly occurred to him that in accepting such a wealth of hospitality he was endangering them to the vengeance of the Government. Such a prospect was not to be contemplated.

"Let me speak to you alone," he said to the chief.

In the privacy of the tent he told him all.

"I will not attempt to deny," said he, "that there are those who would give much to capture me, not for any importance I may have, but because of another...."

The gipsy followed his words with expressionless attention. Then rising he drew a paper from his pocket.

"Read," he said simply.

It was a Government notice for posting up under gibbets and suchlike, intimating that anyone who laid one, Rob Fraser, by the heels, dead or alive, would receive a reward of fifty pounds. Rob turned cold at the dreadful wording of it. It described him minutely, and went on to say that he was last seen with the notorious rebel called "Muckle John."

"You knew?" said he at last.

The other laughed softly.

"What does it matter?" he replied, "but I thank you for your confidence, and when next you see Muckle John say that Gloom the Gipsy has not forgotten him."

"Are you a friend of Muckle John?"

"I may be counted such, though he has no lack of friends--or enemies."

"But I cannot imperil your people, it is more than is reasonable."

"Rob Fraser," said Gloom very gravely, "you are as good as taken. The soldiers are watching for you on the Highland Line, and from here to Stirling is alive with spies. To-morrow we will carry you through Balquhidder, for if you fell foul of the wild caterans there it would be a short shift for you."

"Balquhidder--I have heard the name...."

He laughed outright at that.

"It's clear ye are north country bred," he said, "there are more thieves Balquhidder way than in Lochaber itself."

Thankful indeed for his good fortune Rob bade his friend good-night, and lying down before the fire was soon fast asleep.

With the dawn they were marching towards Crianlarich where they took to the heather, and crossing the hills came down upon Loch Doine at the head of Balquhidder. As they streamed into the flat country at the top of the loch they passed a square thatched house at the foot of the slope facing the amber stream.

"That is Inverlochlarig where Rob Roy died," said Gloom. "I mind him well, a great red man with a heart of gold. But his sons are corbies, and I am hoping we do not meet them."

All up the side of the stream the cottages of the Macgregors clustered, with the thin veil of peat reek hanging above them in a kind of haze.

Without halting they passed over the flat marshy land that lay between the two ranges of mountain, and approached a small compactly built house upon the other side of the burn.

"We will stop here for the night," said Gloom, "and maybe Invernenty will see us. He is no friend of the Macgregors, being son of John Maclaren who was murdered by Robin Oig."

Leaving Rob he crossed the narrow stream and knocking upon the door exchanged some words with a woman who opened it. But to all that he said she only shook her head, and he returned somewhat discomfited.

"She says that Invernenty is not at home," he said, calling him by the name of his place, "and yet I am doubting her unless he is taken."

Without delay they set their camp, and during the day several Macgregors came over and eyed them secretly, red men in a red tartan--querulous, hot-blooded fellows.

Rob, ill at ease in a strange country, kept in the background, but in the afternoon seeing a great crowd of them gathered about a place up the glen he accompanied Gloom, being wearied of sitting alone.

The Macgregors with a sprinkling of Maclarens were handling a curious smooth stone with holes for a finger and a thumb, and competing with one another in lifting it upon a small rock that stood in close proximity.

A tall dark sombre-looking man leaning upon a rude crutch and with a pale harassed face was regarding the scene from a little distance. He was dressed in riding clothes and with a greatcoat buttoned up closely as though he were ill. Rob was on the point of asking who he was when he became aware of the other's close scrutiny.

There was something dangerously interested in the manner he stared--taking him in with his dark cunning eyes, measuring his height in his mind--the set of his face, conjuring up every detail circumspectly.

"Gloom," said Rob in a whisper, "there's a man up on the brae has a notion who I am."

Very casually the gipsy turned about.

"Misfortune take it," he murmured, "but it is James More, son of Rob Roy, new come from Culloden. He was wounded, ye mind."

Presently without a word or any sign James Macgregor moved painfully away and entered Inverlochlarig.

"Come, Rob," said Gloom, "I would not trust that man a foot. He is up to mischief, and it's like enough we were better over Glenbucket than here."

Evening drew on, but there was no sign of trouble. At the rising of the moon, however, a tall gaunt woman with a plaid over her head asked for a word with the gipsy. They went apart together and conferred in low tones. And then as silently as she had come the woman vanished into the shadows.

"Rob," said Gloom, "there's danger threatening--when was there not in this wild country? Who do you think that was?"

Rob shook his head.

"Who but John Maclaren himself, new come from giving the red-coats the go-bye on the road to Carlisle. He says James is up to his pranks, and that the clan are scared to death at the very sight of you in the heart of their country. It is away we must go, Rob," and summoning his men they prepared to set out, leaving their camp fires burning in case their flight was suspected. Over the cleft in the hills they went, and crossing the top of Beinn-an-Shithein, came down on Strathyre and Castle Murdoch.

"There is a strange man lives there," said the gipsy to Rob, "it's like enough he will send us about our business should we stop."

"Who are ye?" snarled a voice at that moment from the wall of the place, "ye canna bide hereabouts."

The moon had risen and under its clear rays Rob looked up and saw a white-haired man watching them from the rampart.

"What kind of night skulking is this?" he cried.

"I am Gloom," replied the gipsy.

"And who is that with you, he is none of your people."

"He is a friend, Murdoch."

"Bring him here--this is an ill time for friends," and he disappeared.

A few minutes later they saw him crossing the courtyard, a lamp swinging in his hand, limping through a shortness of his right leg, and frowning at them as he peered through the shattered iron gates.

"Come nearer," he rasped, "you boy there with the borrowed claes."

Rob took a step towards him so that the light streamed down upon his features.

"Humph!" grunted Murdoch, cocking his eyes at the gipsy, "it is queer company ye're taken up with, my man. Do ye ken who that is with his innocent face and braw blue eyes? That's the lad of Muckle John."

"Whist!" warned Gloom, "the very rocks have ears."

At that moment a little girl came running over the courtyard.

"What did ye say of Muckle John?" she asked.

"Gang to your bed, Ethlenn," screamed the old man. "Janet, away with the bairn."

A woman ran out into the twilight. There was a noise of sudden crying and a door banged.

"Can we bide the night here?" asked the gipsy, but with poor enough heart in it.

"Bide the night," echoed Murdoch sharply, "bide the night in company with yon? Can ye--by the dogs of Lorn I think ye're crazed. What have I ever done to ye that ye should mak' me sic a daft-like proposal?"

"It is no use, Rob," said Gloom sadly.

With a kind of horror at his own notoriety Rob turned away and passed down the slope. He heard the voice of Murdoch raised in shrill anger and falling into nothingness on the wind. Behind him trooped the gipsies, uncomplaining but dispirited, streaming towards Strathyre.

And so passing through the sleeping village they reached the narrow defile at the head of Loch Lubnaig, and ascending the hillside passed a dreary night.

It was just before the dawn of the next day that Rob came to a decision, which appeared to him the only wise and honest thing to do. He wrote a brief note to Gloom thanking him for his great kindness, and stating that he would be far towards the south by the morning.

Then stepping between the gipsies' sleeping forms he came down upon the loch and set off at a trot for Kilmahog.

Many days afterwards--days full to the brim of danger and heavy travelling, Rob reached Edinburgh and wandered about the High Street. He had managed to purchase another set of clothes, and for the present he deemed himself safe, and on the morrow he would keep his tryst with Muckle John at Leith.

It was about midday that he saw a great coach lumbering over the rude cobbles jolting and groaning, and about it a party of dragoons. A sudden fear gripped him that perchance this was a prisoner, who knew--perhaps Muckle John himself.

He pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Nearer clattered the dragoons, a braver sight than when they had entered that same street in the year '45. The horses straining at the coach were level with him now, and he bent forward, his eyes glued to the window. It was but a flash, but he never forgot it.

For lolling forward, leering grotesquely either in derision or some kindred emotion, sat Simon, Lord Lovat, bound for London and Tower Hill.

His small shrewd eyes travelling over the crowd settled for an instant upon Rob, and contracted suddenly as though he half recollected him, but was not sure. Then he was gone, and that was the last of the Fraser.

The scene sobered what little foolhardiness there was left in Rob. It made him walk less abroad. The arm of the law was long, but the arm of the Government was longer.

More than once he had a curious intuition on that afternoon that he was being followed. It might be only an accident, but he had run into two slouching frowsy rascals on two separate occasions, and each time they had stared very hard and looked back at him over their shoulders.

At last overcome by fear of capture he had taken to his heels and run up one close and down another, being quite unfamiliar with the City, but only anxious to shake off any shadowing. After he had doubled and dodged for a full half-hour he took cover upon an ancient stairway beside the White Horse Inn, and there he waited to see what would happen and whether there were really any upon his trail. It was about five minutes later that the noise of a man panting up the lane set him keeking down to see who came so hastily. To his dismay it was one of the loafers of the afternoon, and hard on his heels the other. They passed at a run and their footsteps died away.

Then speeding in the opposite direction Rob found a lodging in another inn, and slept far into the following day--the day on which he was to meet Muckle John and win to freedom at last. After all the turmoil and distress of the weeks following Culloden, it was a strange enough sensation to think of the great towns ahead in Holland or France, where there was no dire necessity to keep one eye over your shoulder and the other cocked upon the end of the street, and where a Jacobite was not considered food for the nearest gallows tree.

So thinking (and yet with misgiving for all that) Rob passed cannily out of Edinburgh and along the way to Leith, and again the dread fear that he was being followed took possession of him. The sun was falling when he saw the lonesome gibbet tree stuck up against the skyline. On it the body of some luckless creature was swinging in its chains--he could just catch the dreary creaking on the wind.

He looked backward for the twentieth time. But all the desolate landscape seemed empty of living soul or beast.

And yet he could have sworn that he had seen a head dodge behind the tussock of coarse rank grass just on the top of the mound. He was so sure of it he ran back, but when he reached it there was nothing. Then bending as a true hillsman reads the ground he saw the fresh mark of a boot in the wet sand.

There was danger lurking amongst the dunes, and still no sign of Muckle John.

Out on the Firth of Forth a ship was running up her canvas to the breeze, and it set him wondering in an idle fashion whether Muckle John might not be already aboard starting for France.

And then the sunlight faded and the greyness of the gloaming crept up from the sea.

Clink, clink, went the chains upon the forlorn gibbet tree, and with a deeper rustier note as the wood groaned and shuddered in its joints.

He walked slowly up the sloping sandy path. Above him, black above the evening sky swung the dead man--some poor soul less guilty of wrong maybe than he himself.

Then sitting upon a heap of sand beside the dreary burden with its dismal refrain he waited for what might befall. That there was danger afoot he knew instinctively, but his great reliance upon Muckle John seemed to almost dissipate such perils. There was a mountain of strength in Muckle John.

The darkness was falling fast when of a sudden, like the spring of a leopard for swiftness, a man was upon his back and with the crook of his arm around his throat. Uttering one faint cry Rob tumbled backwards, and before he could struggle to his feet, his legs were gripped by another man and a third flung himself bodily upon his chest.

As far as Rob was concerned the question of France was over and done with. It was a sad enough ending to all his brave adventures to be bowled over by three vagabonds on Leith sands, and trussed like a hen.

But there was more in it than that.

For out of the twilight came a tall man walking at his leisure, and even before he spoke Rob knew him for Captain Strange.

"Well," he said quietly, "so this is the end, Rob, and what a braw place to be sure. It was almost tempting providence with that clinking cratur to warn ye."

He motioned to the men to leave them, and sitting down began to talk in an affable pleasant manner as though he were discussing the weather or the price of stocks.

"Hark ye, Rob," he said, "I ken fine who ye're waiting for. It's Muckle John no less, and what I have in my mind I must say quickly. Now we want this little business carried through expeditiously and with discretion. We do not want any pranks, mind ye, and ye ken Muckle John as a man as full of tricks as a monkey. I want ye to sit here, Rob, until he comes, and promise me no to say a word to set him thinking. If ye carry this out I will say what I can for you when the time comes."

"I will shout a warning while I have breath in my body," cried Rob.

"Very good," replied Strange, "very good; in that case I will gag you surely enough, and here goes."

With that he stuffed a pad of cloth into his mouth and fastened a bandage round his cheeks. Then springing to his feet he listened intently. Very faintly the sound of whistling drifted up from the sands. Up above the gibbet chains creaked to and fro, and in the tragic silence of the twilight the man came trudging to his doom.

Strange darted into the dunes for his men: It was like to go hard with Muckle John.

It was all over as the newcomer stooped over Rob. With a muffled shout he fell and rose again, and writhing spasmodically was stunned to silence. From the size of him Rob knew it could be none other than Muckle John.

"A light!" cried Strange, in high glee over it all.

They swung a lantern nearer and turned their prisoner over upon his back.

And there, glaring up at them with apoplectic rage lay James Fraser of Castleleathers. It was a moment full of gall for Strange.

As for Castleleathers, worthy man, being much bruised and scratched and with a bump like an egg on his head, it was a mercy that he had no breath to express his feelings on the matter. But when he did he only added to Strange's mortification. For on hearing of the plan to capture Muckle John which (being a professed Hanoverian) he could not criticize adversely, he expressed a deep regret that he had not beguiled the rebel with his conversation, having met him upon the road a mile back.

"A mile back," cried Strange, "then he will come here yet."

"No," said Castleleathers in his methodical tone, "no, I think not, for he has boarded a ship for France."

Strange uttered an exclamation of disgust.

"I told you he would throw you over, Rob, when the time came," said he with a sour look.

Certainly it appeared like it.

But Castleleathers had more to say.

"Will you give me a hearin'," he broke in peevishly. "Muckle John would have come, but I counselled him not."

"You did?" screamed Strange. "But this is open treason, Major Fraser."

"No," said Castleleathers stoutly, "oh no, I assure you there is no more loyal servant of the King than I. But I saw no service that he could render Rob, except to endanger him as an associate of a notorious Jacobite."

"Indeed," said Strange, "but Rob is none so far removed from that himsel'. He is like enough to take the place of the hanged one above ye, Major Fraser."

"Pardon me, no," replied Castleleathers blandly, "here I have a pardon for Rob signed by the Duke himsel'."

"It's a forgery," cried Strange hotly, "let me see it."

"In my hands, Captain Strange--no, stand back a wee--hold the light higher, now can ye see? Will you dispute that, my man? There is his royal signature, bless him!"

Strange eyed it gloomily.

"There is something queer about this," he said. "I will see the Duke."

Castleleathers smiled.

"All the way to London?" he asked. "The Duke will not thank ye."

Over their heads the haunted chains jingled merrily. It must have been a rare joke to send them clinking like that. Suddenly from the ends of nowhere there was a sound like a smothered laugh.

"What was that?" whispered Strange, looking furtively about.

"I heard nothing," replied Castleleathers, then starting to his feet, "but surely there is the noise of a horse."

"A horse," said Strange, "who knows it may be Muckle John himself."

"No," corrected Castleleathers composedly, "no, I think not. I think--in fact I am sure--it is my wife."

"Your wife!" cried Rob, who had worked the gag out at last, and who had been apparently overlooked in the discussion.

Castleleathers switched about.

"Bless us," he said, "I had clean forgotten ye, Rob, you were so quiet. What's amiss with you?"

"I am bound hand and foot."

"Mercy me," said Castleleathers, "but you have a queer way with you, Captain Strange. There ye are, Rob," and he set him free, "and now what's there so wonderful in my having a wife? She's your ain aunt Macpherson. It's my nephew ye are, Rob, and if I ever hear of this Jacobite business again I'll skelp ye mair than she ever did, poor woman."

It was indeed Miss Macpherson (or rather Mrs. James Fraser of Castleleathers), and at the sight of her Strange bowed very coldly, remembering the escape from Fort Augustus, and calling his men disappeared towards Edinburgh.

"Sit ye doon a moment," said Castleleathers, "though it's a dreary enough place for family reunions."

But Rob only stared out to sea where the moon was pouring a broad pathway of silver upon the quivering water.

"Did Muckle John not give ye a message for me?" he asked. "It will be long ere we see him again."

Castleleathers took a keek over his shoulder.

"To be honest, Rob," he said, "I never saw him at all. Maybe he's coming or maybe he is no sae far off as ye think."

"He was the queer yin," remarked Mrs. Fraser, "though he had a way with him, mind ye. That night in Inverness, Rob--that was a scene. There was I dancing like a young yin, and all to a scrap of a tune he was whistling something like this..." and she tried to whistle, but failed most signally.

"No," said Rob, "it was more like this," but he had not the twist of it at all.

"Ye're all out together," cried a voice in the night. "Was it no this?" and the west wind carried the rhythm of the reel into the night.

"Where is he?" whispered Castleleathers, looking about.

"It's no canny," said his wife with a shiver.

"Muckle John!" cried Rob.

The tune stopped, and suddenly as it were in the midst of them with the ghastly thing over their heads creaking and clacking, the voice of Muckle John was singing, and these were the words he sang:

_Swing--swing in the hail and snow,
Dead banes clinkin' frae dawn to nicht,
Creak--creak to the hoodie crow
From rising sun to grey moonlicht._

_A lark soars blithe frae the sands o' Leith,
"Life's but a braw claymore," sang he.
"Death is nought but an empty sheath"
Creak, creak, creak, groans the Gibbet Tree._

_The waves gang jinkin' ower the shore,
A seagull laughs as he skims the sea,
But a feckless loon will laugh nae more
While he swings to and fro on the Gibbet Tree._

_The nicht creeps back o'er the cold grey tide,
The wind sighs over the barren lea,
Oh wad that the dark could for ever hide
The feckless loon on the Gibbet Tree._

_There comes a lad at the turn o' nicht,
"It's hereabouts that he said he'd be--
There's a ship at sea with a golden licht,
But no Muckle John 'neath the Gibbet Tree."_

_Swing--swing in the hail and snow,
Dead banes clinkin' frae dawn to nicht,
Creak--creak to the hoodie crow
From rising sun to grey moonlicht._

It was above them up in the air or they were going mad.

Suddenly the song ceased and with a great rattle of chains the gibbet's burden dropped with a clatter, and at that Mrs. Fraser came dangerously near to swooning for the first and last time in her life.

IT WAS MUCKLE JOHN!

"Good evening to you," he cried, "and rare luck to the bride and bridegroom. Well, Rob, so it's fine to be a free man and a good ending to a brave cause."

"But you, Muckle John--what of you? Do you go to sea to-night?"

He shook his head.

"Not yet," he said, and held Rob by the hand for a moment saying nothing. Then taking his whistle from his pocket he broke into a jig, and in the yellow light of the lantern he started dancing under the empty gibbet tree.

It took doucer people than the Frasers to stand still when that kind of thing was afoot. Once again Rob and his aunt tripped it finely, and Castleleathers, that mountain of flesh and brawn, was not backward.

It was a strange sight that, with the forlorn place, and the crying from the sea, and the blinking weird light and the black figures skipping like ghosts beneath a starlit sky.

They danced till all the breath was clean gone out of them, and they stopped just because the music was no longer there. For unseen to any Muckle John had stolen softly away playing as he went, passing like a shadow, or a dream, or a memory, into the vast darkness.

They stood for a space catching the lingering notes of it, and then it was gathered into the night, and became part of the sea, and the wind, and the soft song of the rustling heath, and so was gone.

And that was the last of Muckle John.

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