Chapter VI: Part 6

Many have been the snowy years since that in which MacGeorge threw away life for duty's sake. Besides winters, such as that hard "Crimean" one of 1854-5, there have been, for example, the terrible season of 1860-1, the bitter winter of 1878-9, when snow lay, practically unbroken, from November till March, and the frost was unrelenting in severity; and there have been others, too numerous to specify. Many a man has perished on the hill, before and since, but no tragedy ever seized the popular imagination so firmly as did that on the Moffat road in 1831. It is a district lonely enough even in summer time, that joint watershed of Tweed, Annan, and Clyde, but when winter gales sweep over those lofty moorlands, and snow drives down before the bitter blast, let no man unused to the hill attempt that road. It was but the other year that a lonely shepherd's wife near Tweedshaws, one stormy evening when snow drove wildly across the moor, thought that she heard the cry of a human voice come down the gale. Again and again, as she sat by her cosy fire of glowing peat she imagined that some one called for help. Again and again she rose, and opening the door, listened, but never, when she stood by the open door waiting for the call to come again, was anything to be heard but the noise of the storm and the rush of the wind, anything to be seen but the driving snow. Long she listened, but the cry came no more, and naturally she concluded that imagination had fooled her. In the morning, not very many yards away from the door, half-covered by its snowy winding-sheet, lay the stiff-frozen body of a young man. There had been the breakdown of some vehicle down the road the previous evening, and he had thought to make his way to Moffat on foot. Of what do men think when they are lost in the snow? Of nothing, probably, one may conclude; very likely, before it has dawned upon them that there is danger, the mind, like the body, has become numbed with the cold, and they probably only think of rest and sleep. To some spot sheltered from the blast they may perhaps have stumbled, and they pause to take breath. After the turmoil through which they have been struggling, this sheltered spot seems a quiet little back-water, out of the raging torrent, peaceful, even warm, by comparison. A little rest--even, it may be, a few minutes' sleep--will revive them, and afterwards they will push on, refreshed. All will be well; it is not far to safety. And the snow falls quietly, ceaselessly, softly lapping them in its gentle folds, and the roar of the wind comes now from very far away--their last lullaby, heard vaguely through "death's twilight dim." The desire to sleep, men say, is irresistible, and once yielded to, sleep's twin brother, death, is very near at hand. There was found many years ago in the Border hills the body of a man, who had taken off his plaid, folded it carefully to make a pillow, on it had rested his head, and so had passed to his long rest, contented enough, if one might judge from the smile on his face.

But men do not always thus loose consciousness when buried in the snow. There was the case of Mr. Alexander Laidlaw of Bowerhope, on St. Mary's Loch, in the year 1842. One wild day of storm and deep-lying snow he started out to see after the safety of his sheep. Hours had passed, darkness had fallen, and he did not come home. Then a shepherd remembered having seen him crossing a certain hill where snow lay extra deep. To this hill in the morning the searchers betook themselves, to find that a great avalanche had taken place, leaving the hill bare but for the night's coating of snow. At the hill-foot the old snow was piled in giant masses. Here a dog sniffed, and whimpered, and began to scrape. They found Laidlaw buried there in tons of snow, uninjured save in one arm, and after fourteen hours burial in his snowy sepulchre he was still partly conscious. When the tumbling snow mass overwhelmed him he had had presence of mind and strength to clear from before his face breathing space sufficient to preserve life. Laidlaw lived for many years after, in no permanent respect a sufferer from his burial and resurrection.

His was an experience of no common order, yet it was a case less strange than that of a sportsman, many years ago, who, unused to the hills, was lost amongst the snow one evening of sudden storm. Far and long he wandered, till, utterly exhausted, dropping from fatigue and cold, he chanced on a roof-less cottage, the crumbling walls of which promised some shelter from the wind and the terrible drifting snow. By the empty chimney-place he sat down, thankful that at least the bitter gale no longer buffeted him. But the snow fell thick and fast, eddying into every corner, gently covering his feet and stealing up over his body. A drowsy languor crept over his senses, an irresistible feeling of warmth and comfort came to him; his head fell forward. Again and again, knowing the deadly peril, he roused himself with ever-increasing effort; again and again his head sank. Then suddenly it seemed that all was well. How _could_ he have fancied that he was out amongst the snow? The sound of the gale still thundered in his ears, but dully, muffled by thick walls, and he stood in a bedroom wherein burned a cheerful fire. On the bed lay a man, who presently, with a start, sat up, looked at him, and lay down again. Three times this happened, but the fourth time the man in bed got up and hurriedly began to dress. He was a man unknown to the dreamer--if dreaming he was--but his features were strongly marked, and bore a scar on the cheek, unmistakable to anyone who had once seen it. Then, suddenly, except for himself, the room was empty, and, as the dreamer in his dream strove to reach the fire, to thrust cold hands close to the pleasant glow, room and fire faded, and he knew no more till a bright light shone in his dazed eyes, and by his side, a hand on his shoulder, vigorously shaking him, knelt the man whom he had seen in his dreams. "I knew you were coming," drowsily murmured the awakened sleeper, glancing feebly at his rescuer, and immediately dropping off to sleep again.

When next he came to full consciousness, it was in a warm bed in a comfortable room, where every evidence of luxury met his eyes. In an armchair by the fire, with outstretched feet, sat his rescuer, his face turned towards the bed. And presently:

"Why did you say last night that you knew I was coming?" he asked.

And when the dreamer had told his dream:

"It is strange," said the other, "that last night I should have been forced, as it were, to get up and go to the old cottage by the wood. Over and over again I woke, plagued by an unaccountable impulse to visit those ruined walls. Struggle as I might against it, argue with myself as I would on its folly, it always returned; and at last, about midnight, it conquered me, and I arose and went."

THE MURDER OF COLONEL STEWART OF HARTRIGGE

Since a time long prior to the Raid of the Redeswire--when on Caterfell the rallying cry, "Jethart's here," fell like sweetest music on the ears of a sore-pressed little band of armed Scots, fighting for their lives, and giving back sullenly before superior English strength--the worst enemies of Jedburgh have never been able to taunt her with apathy, or with want of strenuousness. In the fighting of days long gone by, in questions social or political of more modern times, lack of zeal has not been one of her characteristics; nor, perhaps, in past times have her inhabitants, or those resident in the district, been conspicuous for tolerance of the religious or political convictions of neighbours who might chance not to see eye to eye with them in such matters.

The first half of the eighteenth century was a time more fully charged than most with questions which, on the Border as elsewhere, goaded men to fury. There was, for example, the Union; there had been, prior to that, the unhappy Darien Scheme, which ruined half Scotland and raised hatred of England to white heat; there was, later, the advent of George the First and his "Hanoverian Rats," to the final ousting of the rightful King over the water; there was the Rising of 1715, and, finally, there was the gallant attempt by Bonnie Prince Charlie to regain his father's crown in 1745. Thus they had, indeed, a superfluity of subjects over which men might legitimately quarrel. And when it is remembered that gentlemen in those days universally carried swords, and as a rule possessed some knowledge of how to use them, and that the man who did not habitually drink too much at dinner was a veritable _rara avis_--a poor creature, unworthy to be deemed wholly a man--the wonder will be, not that so many, but rather that so few, fatal quarrels took place.

Whatever in other respects might be their failings--and these were, indeed, many and grave--Scottish inns in those days were noted for the goodness of their claret. As a consequence of our ancient alliance and direct trade with France, that wine was not only good, but was plentiful and cheap--cheap enough, indeed, to become almost the national drink--and vast quantities were daily consumed; though there were not wanting those who, protesting that claret was "shilpit" and "cauld on the stomach," called loudly for brandy, and with copious draughts of that spirit corrected the acidity of the less potent wine.

Possibly the very depth of the drinking in those days guarded many a life from sacrifice; the hand is not steady, nor the foot sure, when the brain is muddled by fumes of wine, and it was perhaps more often chance than design that guided the sword's point in some of these combats. Still, even so, Death too often claimed his toll from such chance strokes.

A duel between opponents equally armed was fair enough, provided that the skill and sobriety were not unequally divided, and that one of the fighters did not chance to be unduly handicapped by age. If a man wore a sword, he knew that he might be called upon to use it--even the most peace-loving of men might not then, without loss of honour, always succeed in avoiding a brawl; the blame was his own if he had neglected to make himself proficient in the use of his weapon. At that period the tongue of the libeller was not tied by fear of the law; for the man insulted or libelled there existed no means of redress other than that of shedding, or trying to shed, his insulter's blood. It was a rough and ready mode of obtaining justice; and if it had its manifest disadvantages, it was at least not wholly unsuited to the rough and ready times.

But cases, unhappily, were not unknown in which one or other of the tipsy combatants--in his sober moments possibly an honourable and kindly-natured man--thrust suddenly and without warning, giving his opponent small time to draw, or even, perhaps, to rise from his chair, a course of action which, even under the easy moral code of those days, was accounted as murder.

Such a case occurred at Jedburgh in the year 1726. Sir Gilbert Eliott of Stobs and Colonel Stewart of Stewartfield (now called Hartrigge) were the principals in the affair.

Sir Gilbert (father of the General Eliott afterwards so famed for his defence of Gibraltar in the great siege of 1779-83) was a man who had spent some part of his youth in London, a place then, as ever, little calculated to repress leanings towards conviviality in young men possessing the command of money. Probably the habits there contracted were emphasized later, when ebbing fortune consigned him for good to what no doubt then seemed to him the deadly dull life of a dull country-side. More than likely, too, he was a little scornful of his neighbours who knew not the delights of London, a trifle contemptuous of their country manners, and possibly he may have been of quarrelsome disposition, when in his cups quick to take offence and to see slights where none existed. In any event, if one may judge from the evidence given later at an inquiry held in Jedburgh, throughout the affair with Colonel Stewart, Sir Gilbert Eliott was the aggressor. Possibly, after the fashion of the day, both were more or less tipsy; certainly, without any doubt, Sir Gilbert was greatly the worse of liquor, and did not carry that liquor as a gentleman was expected to carry it. He persistently forced a quarrel on the Colonel.

It was in the old Black Bull Inn at Jedburgh that the meeting took place. There had been a Head Court that forenoon to determine the list of voters for the year, and a large and already somewhat convivial company assembled afterwards in the dining-room of the Black Bull. Wine flowed, and as the evening waned, guest after guest prudently took himself off, till of the original party there were left but five--Sir Gilbert, Colonel Stewart, two officers of the Royal Regiment of North British Dragoons (the Scots Greys), and the proprietor of Timpendean--the latter described in the evidence as being "very noysie."

It is easy to imagine the scene. The long, low-ceilinged room, lit by candles, reeking of dinner and of wine. Eliott, still brooding over his defeat in the recent parliamentary election, bent on picking a quarrel; Stewart, amiable and for a time conciliatory, till goaded beyond endurance; the two officers, very red in the face, laughing and treating the whole affair as a huge joke; and Timpendean, the while, in a monotonous loud bawl, chanting, very much out of tune, a song, most of the verses of which he forgot before he had sung two lines, ever starting afresh _ad nauseam_, after the manner of drunken men. It was not a seemly spectacle, but it was the fashion of the day, and but for Eliott all might have ended with no worse effect than a bad headache next morning. But for Eliott--unfortunately. Nothing, apparently, would satisfy that gentleman. Colonel Stewart had let fall words which were twisted into an affront. The Colonel assured him that no such words had passed his lips; but that if he had by chance uttered anything which could be construed as an insult, or if anything said by him had hurt Sir Gilbert's feelings, he was sorry for it, and he willingly apologised.

Then Sir Gilbert must needs drag in politics. There was the burning question of the late election. Why had Colonel Stewart voted against him? He would have expected the Colonel's vote sooner than anybody's, and he took it ill that it had not been given to him. Colonel Stewart explained that as he lay under very great obligations to Sir Patrick Scott and his family, he considered that he had no choice but to vote as he had done; but this did not satisfy Sir Gilbert; the vote _should_ have been his by rights, and all the efforts of Captain Ross as peacemaker could not keep him from harping on this one string--the supposed slight put upon him in the matter of the vote. Colonel Stewart was more than willing to drop the subject, and at last Captain Ross, thinking the matter settled, momentarily turned away, in an endeavour to stop the monotony of Timpendean's tuneless, dreary song.

And then the mischief began. Sir Gilbert used words which, owing to Timpendean's noise, Ross did not catch, but he heard Colonel Stewart's reply: "Pray, Sir Gilbert, you have said a great deal already to provoke me; don't provoke me further." Then more hot words from Eliott, and Colonel Stewart threw a glass of wine in the baronet's face. With that, Eliott started to his feet, drew his sword, and plunged it into Stewart's stomach before the latter could rise from his chair or defend himself in any way.

Thereupon arose a babel of sound--a shout, the scuffle and tramp of unsteady feet, noise of chairs pushed aside and overturned on the bare boards, servants running to and fro. And Colonel Stewart, with clammy brow and failing limbs, sat silent in his chair, a dying man.

Captain Ross and his brother officer secured the swords of both men--shutting the stable door, indeed, after the steed was stolen; in hot haste doctors were sent for; and 'mid the bustle and "strow" Eliott stumbled from the room and down the stair, "wanting his wig," as the landlady, whom he passed on the way, deponed. Sir Gilbert's old and faithful servant hurried his master out of the inn, and behind a great tombstone in the Abbey churchyard hid him till the cool night air gave him sense to attempt escape.

In a thick wood near the head of Rulewater Sir Gilbert Eliott lay concealed, till his friends succeeded in smuggling him aboard a small craft off the coast of Berwickshire, and an outlaw, with a warrant out against him, he lived an uneasy life in Holland for some years, until influential friends with difficulty got him pardon, and enabled him again to return to the Border.

That is the story as it is usually known. But it is fair to add that the tale is differently told in Chambers' _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, where it is stated that Colonel Stewart was "a huffing, hectoring person," and that he had given "great provocation, and gentlemen afterwards admitted that Stobbs was called upon by the laws of honour to take notice of the offence." Evidence given at the inquiry, however, hardly seems to favour this view. Possibly neither side was quite free from blame; wine has other effects than to make glad the heart of man.

AULD RINGAN OLIVER

Amongst the flying, broken rabble that represented all that was left of the Covenanting army after the disastrous business of Bothwell Bridge, a dismounted Borderer, with one or two other stout hearts by no means disposed even now to give up the day, continued still to strike fiercely at Claverhouse's pursuing troopers. But their efforts to stem the tide of disaster were utterly without avail, and the Borderer, zealously protesting and struggling, was at length swept off the field by a wild panic rush of the fugitives. Missing his footing on the broken ground as the flying mob pressed on to him, the Borderer fell, and, hampered by the bodies of a couple of wounded and exhausted countrymen, ere he could again struggle to his feet, the horse of more than one spurring rider had trampled over him, and he lay disabled and helpless, at the mercy of any dragoon who might chance to ride that way.

"'The Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger,'" groaned the Covenanter. "'He hath made my strength to fall; the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.'"

"Aye!" whimpered a wounded man who lay partly across the Borderer's legs. "'The Lord was as an enemy; He hath swallowed up Israel.' And I'm thinkin', 'gin He send nae help, and that sune, we're no muckle better than deid men. Eh! weary fa' the day I left my ain pleugh stilts, an' my ain fireside."

"Na, na, freend. He that setteth his hand to the plough, let him not look back," answered the Borderer. "'Gin I win oot o' this, I trow I'll 'hew Agag in pieces before the Lord,' or a's dune. We will yet smite the Philistines, destroy utterly the Amalakites! Aye! smite them hip and thigh, even from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof!"

This fiery Borderer, Ringan Oliver by name, a man of gigantic strength and great courage, a strong pillar of the Covenant, was a native of Jedwater, where he and his fathers before him had for generations occupied the small holding of Smailcleuchfoot. From the turmoil of the disastrous flight after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and from the close search of the pursuing soldiers, Ringan Oliver did eventually escape, sore battered, and not without much difficulty and danger, and for many a month thereafter he lay in hiding; caves, holes in the moors, and dripping peat hags, were his shelter, heather and ferns his bed, many a time when the hunt waxed hot. And in 1680, hearing of the return from Holland of the outlawed Hall of Haughhead, he speedily joined that noted Covenanter, hiding with him, "lurking as privily as they could about Borrowstounness and other places on both sides of the Firth of Forth"; and he was with Hall and "worthy Mr. Cargill" when "these two bloody hounds, the curates of Borrowstounness and Carriden, smelled out Mr. Cargill and his companion," and sent to the Governor of Borrowstounness that information which led to the death of one of the three Covenanters. Mr. Cargill and Ringan Oliver got clear away from the house at Queensferry where Colonel Middleton, single-handed, tried to arrest them, but Hall, severely wounded in the head, was taken, and died before he could be carried even so far as Edinburgh.

For some years after this we have no record of Ringan's doings; possibly part of the time he spent on his farm at Smailcleuchfoot. In 1689, however, he was with General Mackay at Killiecrankie. And again, as at Bothwell Bridge, sorely against his inclination he experienced the horrors of headlong flight in company of a broken rabble. Reaching Dunkeld in an exhausted condition early in the following morning, he and a few comrades found shelter in the house of a friend. But as they sat, about to fall to on a much needed meal, down the little street came the "rat-tat-tat" of a drum, and past the window swaggered an unkempt Highland drummer, halting at intervals to hurl defiance at all Whigs, and a challenge to them to fight the famous Highland champion, Rory Dhu Mhor. And this is something after the fashion of what Ringan and his weary comrades heard drawled out with fine nasal whine:

"This will pe to pe kiving notice to aal it may pe concerning, tat Rory Dhu Mhor of ta Clan Donachy will pe keeping ta crown of ta causeway in ta toun of Tunkel for wan hour and mhore. And he iss civilly tesiring it to pe known tat if there will pe any canting, poo-hooing, psalm-singing whig repellioner in ta toun, and he will pe so pould as to pe coming forth his hiding holes, and looking ta said Rory Dhu Mhor in ta face, ta said Rory Dhu Mhor herepy kifs promise to pe so ferry condescending as to pe cutting ta same filthy Whig loon shorter by ta legs, for ta honour of King Tchames. Ochilow! Cot save King Tchames!"

A few paces behind this tattered herald strutted the champion, Rory Dhu Mhor, swinging his kilt, and like the wild stag of his native mountains, haughtily sniffing the breeze.

At this sight, all the fierce old Border blood began to surge through Ringan Oliver's veins. The contemptuous challenge goaded him to fury; for the Christianity of our Covenanting ancestors was seldom of that cast which prompts the turning of the other cheek to the smiter, and Ringan was one of the most militant of a militant sect.

"God do so to me, and more also," shouted he, springing to his feet, "'gin I humble not this blethering boaster, and stop his craw, or he maun stop mine."

"Na, na, Ringan," cried his friends, "haud sae, man, haud sae. Ye'll be clean dung-ower; ye're ower sair spent to fecht thenow."

But this only goaded Ringan the more.

"As the Lord liveth, he shall lick the dust. Hinder me not, friends, withstand me not; I maun do battle with this Philistine."

And with that, he rushed into the street, broadsword in hand.

"Diaoul! Fwhat will this creatur pe tat will pe approaching in such ways and manners pefore a Hieland shentleman?" cried the Highlander with a snort, giving an extra cock to his bonnet.

"I am an unworthy follower of Christ, our spiritual Redeemer, and a soldier of King William, our temporal deliverer; and I stand here to bid you make good your profane boasting."

"Fhery goot inteet! Fhery goot inteet! you haf peen suppering at Killiecrankie, and now you would pe after breakfasting at Tunkeld? By Cot, you shall haf it!"

And Rory drew his claymore. They were not ill-matched. Both were big men, both of gigantic strength, both skilled swordsmen. But the Highlander had by far the greater experience of duelling; it was, in fact, the pride of his life to pick a quarrel and to slay his antagonist. Moreover, he had his target, which was of immense assistance in warding off blows; and Ringan had no guard other than his sword, which fact, in itself, made the combat unequal. And, to crown all, the Highlander was infinitely the fresher. But the dour, fiery, old Border blood had brought Ringan to this pass, when he was in no way fit to fight, and, whatever the cost, he must now go through with it.

So to it they fell. Long they fought, and fiercely, till the breath came hard-drawn and short, and the red blood ran fast from both combatants. Only, the Highlander was less distressed than Ringan, his wounds fewer and less serious. Still, they kept on without pause, till to the fierce joy of the Highland onlookers, and the dull misery of others, it became quite plain that Ringan's time had come. Human nature could do no more; he was beaten, and was being driven slowly back and back, his defence each minute getting less vigorous and confident, his attack less to be dreaded. Loud rang the exulting Gaelic yells to Rory to finish him, to "give his flesh to the eagles."

And now Ringan, blood flowing from a dozen gashes, was down on one knee, but still almost mechanically guarding head and body from the whirlwind final attack of the Highlander. Sick at heart, the Lowland onlookers turned their looks aside; they hated to see such an end of a brave comrade, and they were too few to avenge him. Suddenly, and with bent heads, they turned away from looking at the figure of the wearied Borderer, beaten down on to his knee, away from sight of the flashing claymore that was now so near to tasting their friend's life-blood. And then to their ears came a roar, as of the routing of some mighty bull of Bashan. Glancing back quickly, their astonished eyes saw Rory Dhu Mhor standing rigidly erect and stiff, an expression of blank wonder on his hairy face, and the point of Ringan's broadsword appearing out between the Highlander's shoulders. Then, with another mighty roar, as the sword was withdrawn, he sprang convulsively off the ground, and with a clatter fell heavily on his target, dead. It was a spent man that he was dealing with, he had rashly thought. Too well he knew the game; he had played it successfully so often before. It needed but to go in now and slay. In his over confidence the Highlander neglected for one moment to be cunning of fence, and during that moment he exposed his body. It was enough for a swordsman so skilled as Ringan Oliver. Exhausted as he was, like a flash his weapon leapt forward, and the great Highland champion had fought his last fight.

It was near to being a dearly bought victory. Murder was in the hearts of the Highlanders, as for the moment they stood in savage silence, hungering for the life of their champion's overthrower. And Ringan was fainting from loss of blood, unable to raise himself from the trampled, muddy ground on which he had fallen. Things indeed looked ill for him and for his friends. And ill, no doubt, it would have fared with them, if just then it had not chanced that the certain news reached the Highlanders in Dunkeld of the death of him they called "Ian Dhu nan Cath" (Black John of the Battles), John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, slain the previous day in Killiecrankie fight. Thus it happened that, instead of falling sword in hand on the little party of Lowlanders, the dismayed clansmen began to slip away, and Ringan's friends succeeded in getting their sorely wounded comrade into safety.

It was some time after this, when life had become less stormy, that Ringan again took up his residence at Smailcleuchfoot. Here he continued to live till he was quite an old man. It was here, too, that the incident befell which gave rise to the ballad written by Mr. James Telfer early in last century.

Ringan had ever been known as well for his rigid ideas of faith and honour as for his great strength and undaunted courage, and these qualities had brought him greatly into the esteem and friendship of his landlord, one of the earliest of the Marquesses of Lothian. It is said that when the Marquess, towards the end of his life, found it necessary to take what was then the tedious and toilsome journey to London, he sent for Ringan, and giving him the key of a room in Ferniehurst in which were kept important and valuable deeds and family papers, charged him on no account to allow anyone to enter the room or to interfere with the papers until he (the Marquess) should return. It happened, however, shortly after Lord Lothian's departure that his heir had occasion to wish to enter this locked room, and he sent to demand the key from Ringan. The old man, naturally and rightly, refused to depart from the instructions he had received when the key was delivered to him, and the reply he sent to the young lord may probably have been somewhat blunt and uncompromising. In any case, hot words passed between him and the indignant heir, who considered, perhaps not unnaturally, that prohibition to enter the locked room, to whomsoever else it might apply, certainly could not under any circumstances apply to him. Perhaps had he gone in the first instance himself to Ringan and explained matters the affair might without much difficulty have been arranged. But he had taken the other course, and had demanded the key as a matter of right. Hence came hot words between the two, and the upshot was that the younger man left boiling with resentment at the "old Cameronian devil, Ringan Oliver," and threatening to pay him out.

No very long time after this the old Marquess died, and Ringan's enemy reigned in his stead. Nor was it long ere he began to show that no portion of the wrath conceived by him against the old man had been allowed to die for want of nursing. One September day, when Ringan's crop was all but ready to cut, there came across the water from Ferniehurst the new Marquess accompanied by several mounted men, servants, and others, with dogs. Soon the party began riding over the farm, ostensibly looking for hares; finally, they all went into the standing crop, trampling it down wantonly, hallooing their dogs here, there, and everywhere, and galloping furiously about wherever the corn stood thickest. Ringan had been rapidly becoming more and more angry as he found that the damage done was so manifestly wilful damage; and at last, finding remonstrance to be so much waste of breath, he snatched up an old musket, which possibly had not seen the light since Killiecrankie, and shot one of the dogs.

That was enough for the Marquess; he had got the old man in the wrong now. Off he went at once and lodged with the Sheriff of Roxburghshire a complaint against Ringan, and a summons was issued. Ringan refused to appear in court.

"Na!" he said. "I've done nae wrong. I daur them to lay a hand on me."

But the Law was not to be thus flouted. If he wouldn't come freely, then he must be made to come, said the sheriff. Here a difficulty arose. Ringan's reputation for gigantic strength and utter fearlessness still survived, and no one dared even attempt to apprehend the old man. In such circumstances the sheriff pressed into his service the Marquess and his men, and this party set off for Smailcleuchfoot. Friends warned Ringan of their coming and counselled him to fly. But the dour old Cameronian's spirit refused to let him do aught that might even remotely suggest a doubt as to his being absolutely in the right. He only retired into his house, and resolutely set about barring doors and windows; and when that was done--

"Let them touch me that daur," he cried, taking up and carefully loading the same old musket with which he had shot the dog.

Soon came the sheriff's summons, to which Ringan paid no heed, beyond letting the party know that he was at home, and had no intention of surrendering. There was in the house with him at this time a young girl (whether an adopted daughter or merely a maid who cooked and looked after the old man's house, one does not know), but she had refused to leave when he began to barricade the place, and Ringan's sole anxiety was now apparently for her. Of his own safety or that of his house, he seemed to think not at all; the grim old dourness and determination that had distinguished him at Bothwell Bridge and elsewhere were again smouldering, ready to burst into flame.

"Keep oot o' the licht, lass, and rin nae risk; gang in ahint yon press door," he said to the girl, when the men outside began firing at the windows.

Then he, too, began to fire back at his enemies, and for a time he was too much absorbed in his practice to pay attention to what the girl might be doing. Thus, he had just fired a shot which clipped away one of the curls from the Sheriff's wig, when a gasp, and the sound of a heavy fall on the floor behind him, caused the old man hastily to look round. Curiosity had overcome her caution; the girl had ventured from her shelter, and, standing behind Ringan, had been trying to see, past the edge of the window, how things were going outside. Perhaps she had a lover in the attacking party, and feared for his safety. Anyhow, as she lent forward, forgetting her own danger, a bullet meant for the old man found its billet in her throat. For a moment Ringan stood aghast, then knelt by the dying girl, striving in vain to staunch the blood that gushed from her wound. And as he realised that such a hurt was far beyond his simple skill, the lust to kill was born again in the old man's breast. He forgot that he was old, forgot how the treacherous years had stolen from him the vigour and spring that had been his, forgot everything but the half-crazy desire for vengeance.

With the roar of a wounded tiger he tore down the barricades fixed by himself not an hour before, snatched from its place over the fire the trusty old broad-sword that had served him so well in former days, flung wide the door, and charged blindly out on his enemies. Alas for Ringan Oliver! Even as he crossed the threshold, a rope, or some part of his discarded barricade, caught his foot, and like the Philistines' mighty god Dagon lang syne before the Ark of the Lord, he fell prone on his face, and the enemy was on him in an instant.

Even then, disarmed and smothered by numbers as he was, the struggle for a time was by no means unequal, and more than once, with gigantic effort, he had all but flung off his captors. Perhaps, in the end, the task might even have been too much for the sheriff's party had it not been that a treacherous tinker, named Allan, with a hammer struck the old man a heavy blow on the face, fracturing the jaw and partially stunning him. Then, bound hand and foot, Auld Ringan was carried to Edinburgh. There, in the Tolbooth, he lay for eight long years, suffering tortures, first from his broken jaw, and later from old wounds that now broke out afresh. He that had lived so long a life in the pure fresh air of the Border, who had loved more to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep, now languished in a foul, insanitary prison, and it was but the ghost of his former self that at the end of his long confinement crept away to pass the brief remainder of his days in a house in the Crosscauseway, Edinburgh.

Auld Ringan Oliver died in 1736. He sleeps among the martyrs in Greyfriars Churchyard.

A LEGEND OF NORHAM

In the days, now happily remote, when folks, provided as for a picnic, laboriously travelled great distances in order to be present at the execution of some unhappy wretch; in the days when harmless old women, whose chief fault may probably have been that they were poor and friendless, and perhaps by age and privation rendered little better than half-witted, were baited, and dragged by an ignorant and credulous populace to a fiery or to a watery death, there survived in Scotland yet another barbarous custom not unworthy to take rank with witch-burning. It was a custom so pitiless and revolting that the mind shrinks from its contemplation, for if its victims were not necessarily frail old women, they were yet human beings guilty of no crime, innocent perhaps of all but misfortune.

The study of medicine in those days was in its infancy, and many were the strange virtues attributed to certain herbs, vast the powers claimed for certain things in nature. Aconitum (or wolf's-bane) for example, was reputed to "prevail mightily against the bitings of Scorpions, and is of such force that if the Scorpion pass by where it groweth, and touch the same, presently he becometh dull, heavy, and senseless, and if the same Scorpion by chance touch the White Hellebore, he is presently delivered from his drowiness." A certain root, too, was of sovereign efficacy in the prevention of rabies in human beings who had been bitten by a mad dog. In Gerard's _Herbal_, a medical work published in 1596--"Gathered by John Gerarde of London, Master in Chirurgerie"--it is laid down that "the root of the Briar-bush is a singular remedy found out by oracle against the biting of a mad dog." Then, as now, rabies was regarded with a sickening dread, but in that remote day there had arisen no Pasteur, and dread too frequently degenerated into panic, and panic, as it ever does, revealed itself in brutality.

In olden days the remedies generally administered to patients suffering from the bite of a dog were many and curious, and probably by the average patient they were regarded in reality rather as something in the nature of a charm than as medicines. Doubtless they gave confidence to the person who had been bitten, and, so far, were good. But in very many cases they got the credit of being infallible remedies solely because in most instances the dog which had given the bite was no more afflicted with rabies than was the person whom it bit; probably it was some poor, hunted, frightened beast which had lost its master, and against which some panic-stricken individual had raised the senseless cry of "mad dog."

One remedy prescribed by a famous physician who lived so late as mid-eighteenth century, was "ash-coloured ground liver-wort a half-ounce, black pepper a quarter-ounce," to be taken, fasting, in four doses, the patient having been bled prior to beginning the cure. Thereafter for a month, each morning he must plunge into a cold spring or river, in which he must be dipped all over, but must stay no longer than half a minute. Finally, to complete the cure, he must for a fortnight longer enter the river or spring three times a week. It is all eminently simple, and tends at least to show that our ancestors after all were not wholly ignorant of the virtues of cold water. Amongst other remedies, also, was a medicine composed of cinnabar and musk, an East Indian specific, and one of powdered Virginian snake-root, gum asafoetida, and gum camphire, mixed and taken as a bolus. So far, at least, if the various treatments did little good, they did no great harm. Brutality began where a person had been bitten by a dog that really was mad, and when undoubted symptoms of hydrophobia had shown themselves. Then it was no uncommon practice to deliberately bleed the unhappy patient to death, or, worse still, to smother him between mattresses or feather beds. Necessarily, a custom so monstrous opened wide the door to crimes of violence, and doubtless many a person whose presence was found to be inconvenient to relatives, or whose permanent absence would further certain desires or plans of those relatives, was opportunely found to be suffering from an attack of hydrophobia, and came to his end miserably in some such fashion as has been indicated. The popular mind was credulous to an extent inconceivable at the present day, and the mere accusation of madness was seized on and swallowed with an avidity that discouraged investigation of individual cases.

In the Border, if all tales are true, at least one crime of this nature was perpetrated.

Not far from Norham Castle, it is said that there stood till well on in the eighteenth century a large mansion, of which no trace now remains. As the story goes, the place once belonged to an old Border family, but the folly and extravagance of more than one generation had brought in their train what these failings ever must bring, and evil times fell on that house. Piece by piece, one after the other, the ancient possessions passed away from their former owners, sacrificed to gratify some passing whim or to pay some foolishly contracted debt, till, finally, the house itself and what land remained had also been flung into the melting-pot, and the last male heir of the old line, with his only child, a daughter, sat homeless in their old home, awaiting the hour which should bring with it the new owner, and to them the sorrow of for ever quitting scenes dear to them from infancy.

By the dying embers of a wood fire they two lingered one December night, wrapped in no pleasant thoughts, and idly listening to the shrill piping of a wind that dismally foretold the coming of snow. The father was a man well advanced in life, on whose good-looking, weak face dissipation had set its seal; the daughter, a woman of six or seven and twenty, who preserved more than all her father's good looks, but--as is so often the case in the females of a decadent family--who, in her expression, showed no trace of weakness. Indeed, if a fault could be found in face or figure, it was that the former for a woman told of too much firmness and resolution, qualities which circumstances might very readily develop into obstinacy, and even into cruelty. Her mother had died when Helen was but an infant, and thus it chanced that, as a child, her upbringing had been left pretty well to nature, aided (or perhaps hampered) only by the foolish indulgence of an ignorant and not very high-principled nurse, in whom fidelity was perhaps the only virtue, and who now, in her old age, almost alone of a once large staff of servants, still clung to "her bairn," and to the fallen fortunes of her master. Of education the child received but what little she chose to receive, and of discipline she knew nothing, for to the hopelessly weak father her will had too soon become law.

Naturally, Helen grew up headstrong and self-indulgent, recognising no rule but that of her own inclinations, and before her eighteenth birthday she had, without the knowledge of her father, engaged herself to a penniless youth of good family, the younger son of a neighbour. An entire lack of funds, however, seemed--at least to the lad--sufficient cause for delaying the marriage, and "to mak' the croon a pound," he went, not "to sea," but (as was then not uncommon with young Scotsmen) to the wars in High Germanie.

Since that date, no direct word had come from the young man, only the rumour grew that in the storming of some town he had fallen. Years had passed since then; years that came and went and brought neither confirmation nor denial of the rumour. In Helen's heart hope at last was killed, and with the death of hope seemed to die all that had ever been womanly or soft in her character. The one tender spot left was a kind of pitying affection for her weak old father.

Now, as they two sat here together this bitter winter evening, the old man grumbling, as ever, half to himself, half to his daughter, of the ill-luck that had steadily dogged him all his days, there came suddenly to them the sound of horses' feet on the stones of the courtyard outside, and presently one of the few remaining servants entered the room to say that a stranger was outside begging shelter for himself and for his groom. Nor did the stranger wait to be invited, for, brushing past the servant, and carelessly, as he entered, dusting from his riding-coat the light snow with which it was grimed, taking stock the while with pinched-up little grey eyes of the room and its occupants, he pulled in a chair towards the fire and coolly seated himself. He was a man considerably over fifty--probably nearer sixty than fifty--with a frame burly and coarse, and a face seared by tropical suns and disfigured by the ravages of small-pox; obviously a man of low origin whose mind probably lacked refinement or consideration for others as much as his body lacked grace.

Father and daughter for a minute gazed mutely at their uninvited guest, the girl at least in no very amiable mood. But whatever her father's faults might be, want of hospitality was not one of them, and what the house could supply of meat and drink was speedily set before the stranger. He was, as he made haste to inform them, the new owner of the property, come down to take possession. "And egad! sir," said he brusquely, "it strikes me it's not before it was time. There's a bit o' money wanted here, anybody can see with half an eye." And with choice criticisms of a similar nature he lightened the time in the intervals of shovelling food into his heavy-lipped mouth.

"Yes, I've bought it--and paid for it, too--lock, stock, and barrel," he resumed; "and we'll put things to rights in a brace of shakes. For what's the use o' having money, says I, if a man don't spend it on his whim! Ay! whether it's a fine lass, or what not, plank it down, and enjoy yourself while ye can. That's what _I_ say. What's the sense o' waiting till a man's too old? And I'm not so young as I was, thinks Missie, eh? But let me tell you, there's many a fine lass, yet, that would snap me up if she had the chance, if it was only for the sake of the ducats. Now, when I was in the Spanish Main--hey! _that_ was the place!--I mind...."

But what he "minded" Helen had no wish to hear, and she retired, leaving her father and the stranger, both rapidly becoming somewhat over-loose of speech under the influence of brandy.

"A likely wench!" cried the stranger as the door closed. "A likely wench, sir. He'll be a lucky dog that get's her. Now ... ah!... hum!... here's you, an old man, leaving this place--and not likely to get another, says you; and here's me, a bachelor, or anyways a widower, with plenty of cash and wanting a wife. Come I what's against our making a bargain? You give me your daughter, and I'll see that you don't want a home. Eh? What do you say to that, now?"

It was not very delicately put, but neither were the times very delicate, and the upshot was that Helen's father, weak and selfish, agreed to use his influence towards bringing the marriage about. The stranger did not tell--and perhaps it would have made little difference if he had told--his full history; how as a boy in London, the son of a petty tradesman, he had been kidnapped and sold to the Plantations (a common enough fate in those days); how in the West Indies, after a varied and not over reputable career, in which buccaneering played no small part, he had at length persuaded the wealthy old widow of a planter to marry him; and how, when she had suddenly ended her days, in a way which gave rise to more than a little talk in the island, he had sold the estate and the slaves without haggling much over the price, and had abruptly left for England, where--the talk ran--he meant to settle down and found a family.

Helen's scornful rejection of the proposal at first was scathing, and little less her scorn of a parent who could urge it. "It's to save me from want, and from worse than want," he whimpered. Finally, ere many days had passed, wearied by her father's importunity, she gave her consent.

A pair more ill-matched could not have been found; the man by nature coarse, brutal, and cowardly; the woman, insolent, fearless, and of ungoverned temper. From the first things went badly, and when, within a week of the wedding, Helen's father was drowned in attempting to ford the Tweed on horseback, she chose to consider that her part of the bargain was ended. Henceforward she was a wife only in name. Bluster and storm as he might, she was more than the master of her husband, and after one wild outburst he cringed before her. And as, before her marriage, the wife had insisted on reinstating the greater number of the old servants, who to fidelity to the old line added hostility to a master whom they looked on as an interloper, the husband soon found it to his advantage to conciliate the household by giving way to the whims of his wife. Thereafter, the two met, if at all, only at meals.

For something over a year things continued on this unpleasant footing. Then there came a day in spring, when Tweedside was tender with the bursting of buds and the lush green of young grass, when birds sang gaily from every thicket, and the hurrying brown water was dimpled into countless rings by the rising trout. To Helen, listless and indifferent even to Tweed's charm in springtime, came one of the younger servants saying that a gentleman, desiring to speak to her, waited below. A gentleman to see _her_? Nay, there must certainly be some mistake, thought Helen. It must assuredly be one of the useless hangers-on of her husband come to ask her to plead for him in regard to some trumpery loan. Well! anything for a novelty, and to take her thoughts away from herself. In this frame of mind she entered the lower room, where the visitor stood with his back to the door, gazing from the window, beside him a large deerhound.

"Well, sir," she exclaimed sharply, "what is there that I ... My God! You!... Back from the dead! Back from the dead!" she wailed.

"Nay. Back from sickness and wounds; back from captivity. Many a message have I sent you, Helen, during the long years; little did I think to find you thus."

Apathy and listlessness no longer held her in bondage; the full horror of the irrevocable gripped her. Tied for ever to a brute whom she despised and hated, sacrificed to no purpose; whilst here, alive and well, stood the man to whom in ardent youth she had plighted her undisciplined heart. The thought maddened her. And as she struggled to choke back this overwhelming rush of feeling, her husband's unwelcome entrance broke the tension of a scene the strain of which was past bearing.

Surely it was in an evil moment for himself that her husband entered that room. In a clumsy effort to propitiate his wife's guest, the unfortunate man laid his hand on the head of the visitor's dog, and with vicious side-snap the animal bit his hand to the bone.