Chapter I: We Meet in the Pass (2)

My difficulty with the Black Colonel was still more complicated, for it was as if a hair-rope of many strands, such as the Highlanders made, enwound us. We were public enemies, sworn to causes which could have no dealings with each other. Yet we had met secretly; and though that mattered little to him it might easily ruin me, or, at all events, my military career.

But, may be, I could remove that danger by a simple report to my superiors saying what had happened. Could I? No; I could not, for a woman's reputation was, all unknown to her, engaged in the affair, and that takes us directly to Marget Forbes and the Black Colonel's designs upon her name and estates.

I knew he would not stop at the sending to me of his letter, and getting no immediate answer, which was the course I had taken, if only because his last throw with affairs was involved. Therefore I looked for some further act, and, having regard to the difficulty of personal meetings, and his amiable weakness for writing, as something in which he excelled, I was not surprised when it came in the form of another dispatch, also borne secretly by the vagrant Red Murdo.

We actually had an old clanish knowledge of each other, this fellow and I, because, although he was a Farquharson, the croft on which his people dwelt was near the Gordon estate of Balmoral. We had played with each other as boys, for the feudal system of the clans was communal and democratic. It was, to take one illustration, customary for the sons of chiefs to have foster-brothers adopted from the commonalty, companions in peace time, comrades and defenders in war time.

When then, Red Murdo, who had been lurking in a peat-moss near Corgarff Castle, surprised me, out-of-doors, one day, it was with the friendly salutation, "Good-morning, Captain Ian."

"Hullo," I said, "isn't it dangerous for you to be here again?"

"Not when it's to see you, but I wis gettin' weary waitin' in this damp hole, an' the Cornel, he'll be wonderin' why I'm no' back."

"Well, my friend," said I coldly; "I won't keep you from him."

"But, I've a word to say to ye for him, and something to gie ye. I'm to say that he expects to hear from ye in satisfaction of his letter. But if you need remindin', will ye study, as conveyin' his feelin's and intents, a plain copy, made by him, which I've carried in my sporran, of my Earl Mar's known epistle to the first Jock Forbes of Inverernan, near by Corgarff."

With this mysterious message haltingly said, as if the Black Colonel had drilled it into his man, which was, no doubt, the truth. Red Murdo held me out a crumpled sheet of paper.

"Tak' it, sir," he added, "an', as advice from a humble man who wishes ye no ill, obleege the Black Cornel if you can, or he'll be tryin' other means. You an' I ken him, Captain, ken him weel, I'm thinkin', an' it disna' dae to neglect him, as I've found mysel' at various times."

It was a famous and familiar document with which I had been served, or, rather, with a fair copy of it, in the Black Colonel's best round-hand; but its use by him to convey his sentiments and intentions to me was quaintly original. Here was he, framing himself in the words of urgency and high consequence, which the Earl of Mar, when that nobleman was raising the "Standard on the Braes o' Mar," flung, like a fiery cross, at Jock Forbes of Inverernan. You will perceive the lordly egotism of the Black Colonel when I give you the missive, as I read it myself, with its new, intimate and individual bearing, immediately Red Murdo had disappeared.

"Jock," it opened, "ye was right not to come with the hundred men ye sent up tonight, when I expected four times that number. It is a pretty thing, when all the Highlands of Scotland are now rising upon the King and the country's account, as I have accounts from them since they were with me, and the gentlemen of the neighbouring homelands expecting us down to join them, that my men should only be refractory.

"Is not this the thing we are about which they have been wishing these twenty-six years? And now, when it is come, and the King and the country's cause is at stake, will they for ever sit still and see all perish? I have used gentle means too long and shall be forced to put other means into execution.

"I have sent you, enclosed, an order for the Lordship of Kildrummy, which you are immediately to intimate to all my vassals; if they give ready obedience it will make some amends, and, if not, you may tell them from me that it will not be in my power to save them--were I willing?--from being treated as enemies by those who are ready soon to join me; and they may depend on it that I will be the first to propose and order their being so.

"Particularly let my own tenants in Kildrummy know that if they come not forth with their best arms, that I will send a party immediately to burn what they shall miss taking from them. And they may believe this only a threat, but by all that's sacred, I'll put it into execution, that it may be an example to others.

"You are to tell the gentlemen that I'll expect them in their best accoutrements, on horseback, and no excuse to be accepted of. Go about this with diligence, and come yourself and let me know your having done so. All this is not only as ye will be answerable to me, but to your King and country."

Straight writing enough! And that was why the Black Colonel had sent me the historic epistle, laughing in his sleeve, I had no doubt, at the slim originality of his method. He was for gentle means, if he could so win his ends and Marget, but if they answered not, then, like my Lord Mar with Jock Forbes of Inverernan, he would be "forced to put other means into execution." While I was the immediate target for his threat, I quite saw that the Black Colonel was aiming at a larger prize behind me.

But what could he, a "broken man," a fugitive from justice, the justice of the Hanoverian though it was, do to compel anybody to his schemes and ambitions? That was to forget his place of notoriety, which gave its own power, among the people of the Aberdeenshire Highlands. Whenever, in going about the hills and the valleys, I met a simple man of the soil he would touch his bonnet in salute to me, never to my uniform, and, after a little, remark in his soft Gaelic, "So the Black Colonel is still defying you all--a tremendous lad, isn't he?" This would be said with a gleam in the eye, to give it delicacy, a bearing of personal courtesy which I did not miss because I was liked for myself, and we all like to be liked for ourselves.

You will apprehend by now, perhaps, that I knew my Highland men, whether I found them digging peats in the moss, or gathering in their skimp harvest of unopened corn, so that it should escape the hungry grouse and the coming winter. They were wholly kindly, as follows from simple living, generous in their narrow outlook, and yet strongly individual. They had, as a people, character, which is the noblest gift of the gods, for everything else depends on it, and hardly anything can be achieved without it.

They took a pride in the Black Colonel, as one of themselves, and in his deeds as a fighter who, on many occasions, had reversed the saying about being willing to wound but afraid to strike. He had, they admitted, wrong ways at times, and if these could not openly be defended, still they were almost forgiven a man with his back to the wall where a shot, or a stab, might find him any day or any night.

Withal, too, he bore about him a touch of romance, a gallant atmosphere, and your Highlander, loving to sit on a stile and look at the sun, will pardon much for that. Thus there was a general sympathy with the Black Colonel, which he could draw upon either as a veil to conceal his doings, or for active help, and it was this knowledge which caused me to be apprehensive.

For, though thirty years had passed since his lordship of Mar peremptorily wrote to the chief of Inverernan, our Highland life had not changed vitally. The same rude passion ran through it, as like mists hung over the Slock of Morvan and the gaping chasm in the side of Lochnagar. Civilization remained primitive, love and hatred could run high on the ebbing Jacobite tide, and the common round was still very much what a strong hand could do and a weak one could not do. Affections and hatreds bloom even more strongly in times of ordeal than in times of tranquillity, perhaps because the moral reins governing them have grown worn, and so become slacker.

It should be said, however, of the Scottish Highlands, that the chiefs, at least, those of the northern ridge of the Grampians, were humane in their doings, even kindly, and certainly they were never fond of taking a clansman's life on the gallows-tree. Their whole code was against that ignoble death, unless when an enemy had played them unfair, or a vassal had proved himself traitor, and then they swiftly slipped a life to the other world, holding this world to have no use for it.

Possibly, too, they found the sight of a corpse dangling from a tree uncanny, a vision armed with threats which made them hold their hangman's hand, for, while crafty enough, they were superstitious to a degree. They let the gallows-tree stand grim and expectant on the hill-side, a terror to foes and a clan discipline, and, when necessary, found a way to their desires by the short dirk or the long sword.

Moreover, at the time of my writing, we were between the immediate butchery of Culloden, a red and rueful business, and the insecurity of tenure in life and home, which was to follow. It was a rough marking of time, when national elements were in the mill, as well as those which go to the chronicle of the Black Colonel, Marget Forbes, and myself.

Here was I, on the edge of such happenings as assail one when he finds subtle intrigue on the one side and innocent misunderstanding on the other. It is always hard enough to manage such elements, but let them get out of hand and a miracle is needed for salvation. Also you have to find the miracle, and I composed myself to search for it in the little things, the natural things of the situation. They have a knack of conducting you to the heart of a problem, if you will only have simple faith and follow them, and be not otherwise, which is presumption.

Faith and miracles go hand in hand, in story as in fact, and when one's mind, working rapidly, if unconsciously, has got an issue down to a point where it can be expressed in a word, a decision has been taken. If it be a human decision, the hills, which grow strangely mothering and kind to their people, seem to know it, for they talk to each other of everything but their own secrets; and they knew that I had decided upon my course of action.

_VII.--A Parley and a Surprise_

You must ride with fortune if you expect to win many of her favours. Like a woman, she sighs to be courted, even if she fears to be captured. She likes adventures for themselves, and may be good to you if you give her some. But the man who lets her ride by alone, or with somebody who has already bridled her, and then goes out in pursuit, has a long chase before him.

My affair with the Black Colonel was both private and public, and thus, in a two-fold sense, the right policy was to take the offensive. Yes, I would tell him bluntly that there could be nothing between us on the matters he had raised, and that it was war to the dirk, with such an eventual issue as God might will.

This was my decision, and it seemed to me that, as an officer and a gentleman, I must intimate it to him at first-hand by invading his retreat, the Colonel's Bed, over there in Strathdee, near his Inverey. Singly, and alone, I would seek the Black Colonel in his den, honourably shake myself clear of his dark overtures, and tell him to cease his designs.

If I were to read this chronicle as remote from its occurrences as you may do, I should, probably, toss my head and call that a quixotic decision, but I have enough pride in being a Gordon, to wish that I may stand fairly with the future, in small as in great matters. Therefore, I beg you that you put yourself in my place, bearing in mind the difficult conditions of the time in the Scottish Highlands.

A man needs a stout heart, a clear head, and a sure hand, to hold his own in a welter of interests and antagonisms such as beset me. The eternal instinct in a full man is to get through, to achieve, to live, aye, and to love, thus making life a great, clamorous thing not a mere existence. So concluding, I took the first occasion by the hand, with what personal risk there might be, and made across the rugged bridge of mountain which both binds and divides the Don and the Dee, to interview the Black Colonel.

My mood was less heroic by the time I had done the miles of scarped hill, clinging moor, and lifting wood, with bridle-paths for roads, which took me to the locality of the Colonel's Bed. Where it was exactly I did not know, but he had friends around who kept him informed, and I counted on meeting one of them. Then I could send a message to him, saying I desired to speak with him privately, and he would guess the rest.

Things fell out like that, and I was bidden to rest in a Highland shieling, squat of form, thatched with rushes, floored with earth, and eat a bannock and drink a bowl of goat's milk, while my message went forward and an answer returned. Perhaps two hours passed, and I slept a little, for I was tired, before that answer did arrive by the eternal Red Murdo.

To be sure, I would be made welcome by his master, but I must not feel offended if I was blindfolded during the walk to the Colonel's Bed. This request, courteously put by Red Murdo, showed me the situation I had invited for myself, but, having gone so far, I was not to turn back, and I said, "Very well." He tied a coarse tartan scarf of home-spun wool, which he wore himself, tightly round my eyes, so tightly that at first it hurt a little, and we started for our destination.

We had a rough, difficult track, all up and down again, to follow, as my feet discovered, with no sight to guide them. But Red Murdo, a study in loyalty to his chief and in consideration for me, supported me sturdily, and I broke no shin on the many rocks strewing our road.

I was wondering if we should ever arrive, when I heard the rush of a stream almost beneath us. Instinctively I stopped, as one does when an unseen danger is near, but Red Murdo said, "It's a' right; we're near there." Next I felt as if I were walking in a cave, for there was a peculiar hollow echo to our tread. Then the tartan scarf was removed from my eyes, and, opening them, I saw the Black Colonel holding out his hand.

"Glad, Sir Visitor, to see you," he said, "and such hospitality as this poor place can offer is yours."

I took his hand, without holding it, bowed stiffly, and sat myself on a chair made of birch branches, to which he pointed. It was, apart from an equally rude litter-bed and a rough table, the only furniture in the refuge. This I saw by the light of a fire of broken wood and peat which burned slowly in a corner, where, apparently, the smoke found some channel of escape, because it drifted slowly upward in spirals.

My feeling had been right, for this was a cave, or, rather, a tunnel, worn in the course of centuries by the stream which had now deserted it, to flow lower down. Above us, as I judged, rose the side of a small hill, and immediately without there would be a sheer drop to the departed waters, whose noise soughed like a strong wind among pine trees.

It was a retreat made by Nature in her chance moods, and used by the Black Colonel at that straitened time of his life. Probably only he, Red Murdo, and a few others actually knew he was there, though he had boasted that many did, and I should know no more than that I had been a visitor to the Colonel's Bed. And yet I should probably know a good deal more, for otherwise why was I there?

Anyhow, after the previous hour or two of tensity, it was a relief to be face to face with my man, I able to read his, if I could, he able to read mine. It was only in the grey half-light of his hole in the rocks, but, at least, we should look each other in the eyes, as men wish to do when they are acting honestly towards each other, even if later they must fight.

You are quick, at a drawn moment, to seize the picture of a man, to sound his being, and the Black Colonel, as he stood there courteously attentive, intelligently alert, made a picture which vouchsafed a clear personality. He would have been something ripely over thirty, but ten years of adventure and philandering sat lightly on him, and he looked even younger than he was. A dark man keeps the freshness of youth well, until it begins to go in the greying of his hair, when it goes quickly; while a fair man grows middle-aged soon, but fends off old age well, or, at all events, the look of it.

The Black Colonel was dark entirely; dark of skin, or rather olive, as you find men and women among a Celtic people; dark of eye to the point of a scowl, behind which, however, there was a well of mirth; dark of hair and dark of beard. His hair he wore long, not being always within reach of scissors, and his beard had that silky texture which comes of never having known a razor.

Once, as the story went, he asked Red Murdo, so-called for sundry reasons besides his tousled red hair, to shave him with the sharp edge of a dirk. The experiment began so ill that it never actually began at all, and the Black Colonel had a virgin beard in which he took a due conceit--why not? He thought it manly, where, perhaps he was right, and he had learned in France that women thought it manly, so he was doubly right.

The Celts, wherever found, are not generally tall, and the Black Colonel was a pure Celt in body as well as in nature. He was upstanding, bore himself easily, was clean in line and tough of frame. True, he was long of the leg, among a people who, having to climb and descend hills constantly, are, in the providence of fitness, short-legged, but he was all of a part. The kilt tests a man's figure, bringing out any flaw in it, and the Black Colonel's stood the test admirably.

Moreover, he had that physical quality peculiar to the Celt which you might call elasticity, for it is comparable to a mountain ash which bends but does not break. There was, too, a fineness, a delicacy about him, such as proclaims a race which has dreamt dreams and lived with the wild glories of Nature. You cannot make common men of her gentlemen, and her women are music to the French chanson, "It's love that makes the world go round."

None knew this better than the Black Colonel, a Highlander with that venturing air which goes to a woman's heart, because she fondly wants a man who will give her the gamble of danger, and yet be strong enough to save her from herself? You might say that he was born for quest and conquest, what with his suavity of tongue, his grace of manner, his roguery of eye, and his fame as a great lover.

But I was keeping him waiting and I had no desire to do that, so I said, "You may suppose that I am not here very willingly, that it is only duty which brings me."

"Not official duty, I hope," he answered, with an acid emphasis on the words.

"No; I simply want, as between Highland gentlemen, to tell you two things: first, that I return you, point blank, your overtures touching our kinswoman, Marget Forbes, and her estate; and, second, this being done, that I, as an officer of his Majesty's forces, will unrelentingly discharge my commission, as best I can, next time we meet, be it soon or not so soon."

I fired out the words as if I had been loaded with them, which, truly, was the case, but I felt, somehow, as if the shot had not gone home. It had no outward effect on the Black Colonel, who turned the peat ashes of the fire with his brogued foot, and looked at the little spits of smoke and flame which flew up. Evidently he was not so unprepared for my ultimatum as I had expected, but I had delivered it, and the rest was for him.

"Captain Gordon," he said, putting his hands behind his back and looking hard at me, "I appreciate the sense of personal honour which has brought you here. You felt you must clean the private slate between us, before you were free to write what is to be on the public slate. You wanted to give due declaration of war, and you have done it at close quarters, which is the action of a Highland gentleman. But, Captain Gordon, haven't you begun at the end of the story, instead of at the beginning?"

"I am only concerned with the end of the story, although I have probably been foolish in thinking that I must myself bring you news of it."

"No honourable action is ever lost," he rejoined; "and, however events go, I'll always put this to your credit in the account between us."

"Thank you," said I, laconically, and he moved as if my tone had stung him, which I did not intend, because even in a war parley one may be correct--courteous.

"What I wished to say," he went on, "is this: isn't there a way out of our affairs which shall be creditable to you, nay, to us both, and, at the same time, be in the public interest? Can't this private relationship into which we have drifted, thanks to circumstances, be so managed that it shall be fair to you as a soldier of King George, as well as relieve me from my difficulties?"

"Surely, Jock Farquharson," I protested with warmth, "you forget your place when you, an outlaw by decree, the doer, by admission, of many wrongs, presume to make terms with a King's officer, even in his private capacity."

"Strong words, my young friend," and he laughed in an airy tone that stung me; "strong words don't belong to youth, but to the years when the blood grows sour. You say outlaw! Why, yes and no; I am a loyal subject of the King--the King over the water! You say I'm a cateran! Well, I do no more than tax my enemies for what I need, and I need little, holding as I do by the simple life, especially as no other is open to me."

"This," I said stiffly, "is neither the rendezvous nor the time for high-flown sentiments, especially if they have no sincerity."

"That," he added, "would be a windy business, and here the die is far too serious to be played with, anyhow for me. Let us get down to the humanities, which are the final element in solving a problem or leaving it unsolved. There need be no personal bitterness between us; merely we are in antagonism in politics and war, for the two count together just now."

"You are unusually modest to eliminate yourself like that," I cut in, thinking of the Black Colonel's record, but only striking his Highland pride.

"If it so please me," he said almost angrily, "I can afford to be modest, for I have done things. I come of good blood; I bear a name which is old among the hills; I have carved my way to a colonelcy under the Stuart flag, where promotion, like kissing, has often gone by favour, yet sometimes by merit. The Prince himself, when he gave me my rank, called me the Black Colonel in compliment to my beard, which nobody has ever singed. The Black Colonel I remained when the Stuart army melted in the bloody furrows of Culloden, and in truth I have, and need not deny it, left my name in many quarters. I took it with me when I sought the safe retreat of my own corner of the Highlands, among friends, and I submit it with pride to you, Captain Ian Gordon."

He was aflame between wrath and egotism, and I was afraid the contagion might catch me, which was the least desirable thing, because there lies the road to a losing cause. But, next moment, he laughed and said, "No, no; temper beseems neither high nor low, being kitchen work. You are sensible enough, Captain Gordon, to let a full man have his talk, and I have not finished yet." He thought for a moment, as if he expected me to say something, but I only got up from my somewhat hard seat, as if preparing to go.

"Not yet," he said; "stay a little, because, since you are here, it would be a pity if anything remained unclear between us. I gather that you see no course for it but open war, that you refuse the road of solution which my proposal about the Forbes estate opens out. Might I ask why you are so unsympathetic to that idea, which would serve every interest?"

"I am," I declared hotly, "neither a matchmaker, especially for adventurers, nor a scheming politician, and on both grounds I decline to have anything to do with you. Your insistence compels me to speak with a plainness which I would rather have avoided, but you must blame yourself. It's a far cry to Loch Awe, and a farther cry to the pardon of the Black Colonel, but he thinks it might be contrived if he had Marget Forbes and her property for a trump card. A pretty scheme, but not one which my commission for King George instructs me to countenance."

Now I, in turn, had gone aflame, despite all my resolve to the contrary, but if I had spoken the name of Marget Forbes it was, I tried to reflect, as if it had no intimate meaning for me. That would have been to blunder doubly, because it would show me personally, nay, intimately, interested.

The Black Colonel had been silent, and, when I ceased talking, I noticed a strained, even a queer, look in his eye. Was he counting up some element of the game which, thus far, was unknown to me? For when the minds of men rub fiercely against each other, as ours had been doing, they speak quicker than words. A kind of communication springs up, vague of detail, but unfailing in its general import.

I was not surprised, therefore, when the Black Colonel put his hand within his coat and drew a paper from a pocket there. But I was surprised when he said, "I have something here which I owe to the favour of my friends in the south, and you will find that it bears upon our conversation." He unfolded the paper slowly, I seeing, as he did so, that it was an official paper, and then he handed it to me.

It was not easy to read, in the dim light of the Colonel's Bed, thanks to its crabbed orthography and its long formal phrasing, but gradually I made out its wording to be this:

"Greetings:

"Whereas, trusty and well-beloved councillors advise it in the interest of our cause in the Scottish Highlands, that influential gentlemen who have been Jacobite in sympathy, and even act, be won over to Our Settled Sovereignship;

"Therefore it is ordered that they shall, wherever possible, be installed in the headship of houses and estates kindred to them, which have been forfeit and estreated, all on strict condition of loyalty to Ourselves and our Crown for ever;

"And this wisely considered and, in our graciousness of heart, clement policy, shall, we instruct, apply to John Farquharson of Inverery, commonly called the Black Colonel, if, and when, he is able to implement its essence in reference to the Forbes estate of Corgarff in the far uplands of Aberdeenshire, where we wish to be loyally regarded by our subjects.

"In token of all which foregoing greetings and intimations on our part, herewith witness our royal signature.

"GEORGE REX."

"You understand?" said the Black Colonel, as I lifted my eyes from the document and handed it back to him.

I nodded, mechanically, for I was thinking--thinking chiefly of Marget and myself.

_VIII.--The Conquering Hero_

It is unbelievable how the sweet face of a lass, or her soft figure, with its air of passion song, will come between two men and make any great affairs of state dividing them, seem as nothing by comparison. The Black Colonel and I would hardly, as individuals, have quarrelled about Stuart and Guelph, knowing well the value which Stuart and Guelph would have put on us. But with Marget Forbes as prize it was another affair altogether, for, in her, a whole bouquet of calling qualities united.

Her heart, so far, was all in the open joy of living, though in the troublous times which surrounded her and her family, she found burden enough of sorrow. She was a flower of the heather, opening late, like it, but perhaps with the same red, rich bloom, for it was not hard to divine that elements of high possibility were enclosed in her young womanhood. It gave you, for all its simplicity, a sense of latent treasure, when it should fully open, even, it might be of surprise to herself.

Seventeen! they say, when girlhood is trembling, quivering on the portal of womanhood, a world of mysteries. But it is not half so dramatic as twenty-five, when a woman, if she be rightly healthy in mind and body, comes into woman's estate, feeling, desiring, some earlier, some later, but roughly then. Peril is there, as well as beauty, for then all the Margets in the wide world are pulling at the silky bonds of sex, thinking these will stretch and stretch, only to find, perhaps, that there is a strain at which they must break or surrender.

If the insurgency of newly-found womanhood can be fitly employed all is well, but remember that most women are, in thought, rebels for romance. Nature, too, runs fullest in the veins of those who live with her naturally, aloof from the veneer of society. Nature is lusty in Nature's lap, and she mothered our Corgarff without let or hindrance, in sun and in snow, Marget Forbes included.

You are to suppose a region far removed even from such a niggard commerce of life as there was then in the Scottish Highlands. It is sixty miles from the warming salt-wash of the sea, and has winds nearly as cold as those that blow from the Arctic. This is because it stands high, and is so bare of trees that they blow unbroken over its area. They catch you with their ice tang in them, untouched by long, sheltering woods, or soft, rolling dales, and they make your face tingle into red and white, the blushes of Mother Nature.

That is the winter, when the land is often covered with snow, and the little burns of the hills are frozen into snake-like icicles. If the picture is hard, it is nevertheless beautiful, looked out upon from the comfort of good clothes and a full stomach. It invites you to explore it, to follow that far track ending on the snow-line of Morven, or yon other, which dips and is lost in the riven sides of Lochnagar. The air sings through your lungs with the force of strong drink and makes you hearty. You feel monarch of all you survey, even if it be not worth having, which is the most stirring feeling a landscape can yield.

Nor would there be much to divide your monarchy; only a chimney, reeking blue into the grey sky, from a fire of peat, a few sheep, or some hardly [Transcriber's note: hardy?] cattle turned out in the height of the day to gather what scraps of food they might, a pair of wandering red deer at the same hard game of finding a living, or a hare, grown bluish-white for the winter-time, to resemble the friendly snow, scampering off before the snap of your foot on the heather. When the rigour of winter lies upon the land, men and women can do little but keep their beasts alive, and themselves sit round the fire, passing the slow time of day with what gossip may be made.

We froze within the old walls of Corgarff Castle, for they were time and weather worn. Gales had beaten them, snowstorms had driven at them, and rains had lashed them, until they were corrugated with furrows and hollows, like the face of an ancient man. It is curious how age, whether in a face or in a building, takes on the same milestones of hollow and hillock, to record the march of time and the dents in a soul.

But come the summer in Corgarff, and the far-flung ranges of hill lose their white severity and assume the kindlier mantle of sprouting heather and green grass; the ptarmigan flies back to its heights above the snow-line, content with the thin picking and the splendid peace which summer there provides; the red deer no more falls hungrily upon the lower pastures, with the roaring fight gone out of the stags and the hinds left bleating to their own company, like so many widowed women of the wild.

Instead, the thin sheep of the clansmen, each with its owner's brand to identify it, wander forth to the common grazings, glad that the bloom of living is on Nature again. That brings a panorama of scenery which lights the eye and braces the heart and mind, hills which run into mountains, mountains which run into the skies, all proclaiming the splendour of God.

Now, I have tried to tell you this, not very well, perhaps, because our surroundings in life have much to do with our actions, and the two sets of circumstance must be comprehended together, especially in a sparsely peopled countryside. You unconsciously take your dispositions from the atmosphere, and you cannot be certain always where you may either begin or end. Thus a simple Highland ball which we soldiers organized at Corgarff Castle, to while away a night, and be a token of friendliness towards our neighbours, developed a deep import in my true story.

It was natural for me to smooth and sweeten, as far as I could, the relations between those in formal authority whom I represented, and the local clan-folk. To that end I organized this dance in the ancient Castle, and made it known that anybody and everybody would be welcome. Any misgiving I had about the response, was balanced by my knowledge of the Highland fondness for dancing. It has been in the Celtic blood from the beginning of time; and gillie-callum, over the swords, the throbbing, squeezing, square reel, the sultry Highland Schottische, and the rest of the figures, will last until the last trump sounds the last morning.

You dance for the joy of life, if you are born in a land of the sun, and in a land of cold you dance for the joy which springs from warmth. It is a primal expression of feeling, and the Scottish Highlanders have always had beautiful dances, and danced them well; dances with the music of sex in them, though they might not admit it, or did not know it. Religion and dancing have often been the only things in their lives, apart from the common round of fighting and working, when they cared for work. Thus, my ball, though it might be an affair of the enemy, had a subtle call to the Highland blood, especially in the women.

My first invitation was to Marget Forbes and her mother, because, if I could only persuade them to be present everything would be well. Let the ladies of the ancient great house come, and there was no reason why the commonalty should stay away. The times had been sorrowful for mother and daughter, as the black they wore betokened, but, I wrote gently, "We must let the dead bury their dead, and try and build some bridge on which the living may meet."

So it was arranged that Marget, the young chieftainess of the Corgarff Forbeses, with her mother, should open the ball. This news was out a week before the event, and we soon learned that, as I had thought, we should have a good muster of guests. I took my soldier men entirely into my confidence, and they grew keen to make the dance a success, being kindly fellows and open to softer adventures, as well as the other kind.

They were collectively to be hosts, and whoever crossed the doorstep on the night was to be received without prejudice and with all honour. Everybody should have what we could give to eat and drink, and when they set home again it would be from a warm welcome and a sincere good-bye. Ah! if I could only have foreseen one acceptance of that general invitation to the countryside; but I didn't, and how could I? Men are not gods in wisdom, and how dull life would be it they were; how dull especially for their women-folk who, thanks be, are not always angels, except of light, and even they know how to darken the radiance.

The famous night came, and in good time came also Marget and her mother, with their small group of servants from the Dower House. Our largest room, where the dance was to be, a sort of hall of the Castle, was filling with robust Highlanders in tartans, and with their women-folk in their best gowns. Personally I felt easy and happy when I shook Marget's hand, saying, "It is kind of you to help me, and perhaps between us we are doing good." Then I conducted her and her mother to seats on a low platform at the further end of the room and quietly ordered the dance to begin.

A brace of fiddlers, seated in a corner, were scraping their catgut into tune for the music, while, outside, a piper was playing a Highland gathering. The Scots bagpipes yield their real melody in the open air, and only then, and to me, from a little distance, they sounded loud and rarely that cold star-lit night. The piper's business was this overture, and presently, when it was completed, he would march in, as grand as you like, and pipe us the first reel, in which Marget, I had fondly thought, was to be my partner. Oh, everything was very well arranged, and nothing happened as had been arranged, which is, perhaps, the peculiarity of life, when we reflect on it as a perpetual drama.

Presently I heard a slight commotion, as if something had happened unexpectedly, and then the hoof of a horse stamping the ground. The sea of heads in the room, pulled by curiosity, bent towards the door, and I realized that some surprise was approaching.

At that moment the piper, a Forbes man, to whom the honour of playing had been given, struck up his reel and strode in upon us. He was big, broad, imposing, with his kilted figure, and he seemed to halt, in order that we might admire him, for a good piper and a peacock are vain; but this was merely my fancy. What I saw, immediately following him, was no fancy but staggering truth; it was the Black Colonel!

Yes, the Black Colonel in full Highland regalia, bowing and nodding to the people about him, who courtesied back with an easy homage, for they knew him instantly; the Black Colonel as large as life, eminently pleased with himself, taking possession of the place and the occasion, as if he were a conquering hero coming into his own; the Black Colonel, Jock Farquharson of Inverey, a chief among the men of whom it has been written that:

"Brak loose and to the hills go they."

If I was stunned, the piper was not, for he walked up the room with a deliberation which the quick step of his tune did not warrant. Behind him paced the Black Colonel, and as he came nearer to myself and the ladies, I saw them turn as if to ask me whether this was in the programme. So far, the Black Colonel had not let his eyes catch ours. He gave himself to the crowd, as a well-graced actor gives himself to the house when it applauds him. He had the music on his side, too, for, at the platform, the piper stepped aside into a corner, still blowing hard, and this brought the Black Colonel full to the front, immediately beside us. Thereupon he slowly bent in salutation to Marget and her mother, while everybody watched and waited, wondering what was to happen now.

"Ladies," he said softly, but distinctly, "I hope that if to-night I have come unbidden by our friend, Captain Gordon, I am not unwelcome to you, aye, and even to him. We are all kins-folk, and I wished to manifest a kindly feeling by joining in this meeting. I also desired to make fuller acquaintance, than has hitherto been possible, with two kins-women who have suffered hardly in times which, let us hope from the promise of this gathering, are about to be forgotten. It would show my boldness forgiven if I might open the ball with Mistress Marget, for Captain Gordon, as host, will wish to conduct her mother."

Again the Black Colonel bowed, as if he were master of the situation, which, in fact, he fully appeared to be. Confident and gracious, he offered Marget his arm, and she took it mechanically, such being the force of suggestion, exercised by a strong man's mind, especially with many eyes looking on. Mechanically, also, I held out my arm to Marget's mother and, while our small world still wondered, I found myself in a foursome reel with the Black Colonel. But he was Marget's partner!

He talked merrily to her when the drowning music would let him, even though she scarcely replied, being still in the custody of his surprise. He was out to please, and he undoubtedly was handsome, or, at all events, striking in his tartans, and he danced perfectly. Why deny it, even if it had not been patent to every onlooking, wondering eye? He made a mightily fine picture, and he knew it, though he did not spoil the picture by showing he knew it.

Marget was in a simple black gown with a ruffle of white French lace at her neck and a flush in her cheeks. Her black hair was twined naturally about her head, which she carried high, so I told myself, as if in defiance of the Black Colonel, while she had to be his partner and prisoner. She glanced at me once or twice with an amused twinkle in her eye, thinking, I suppose, of her bold capture from the host of the evening, my unlucky self. Some women are a blessing, others keep you guessing, somebody will say, and Marget, I judged, even in the whirl of that reel, could be both, if she cared to try.

Quicker time the music made it, many a foot keeping stroke, and quicker time we had to make it. You know the romp of a Highland reel at the double, how it causes the blood to sing in the veins and the feet to jig. Marget's mother had been a fine dancer, but, as she whispered to me, she was no longer young. Marget herself had inherited all her mother's ease and grace of carriage, and she had her own spirit and go. The music and the motion caught her into forgetfulness of everything else, and she danced with a grace and a swing which were bewitching.

She had, again I was bound to admit, a complete dancing partner in the Black Colonel, a fellow of natural and acquired accomplishments. He had his clean ankles and elegant uprightness from his Highland forbears, and he had got his polish of deportment when he was among the English Jacobites in France. The result was that he danced all of a piece, with as near the poetry of movement as a man might attain, and then there was the intimate, intriguing ripple of his tartans.

Myself, I was quite a good dancer, but, if I may be my own apologist, not so showy a dancer as the Black Colonel. While I could hold my own with most men in the Highland dances, probably surpass many, I could not fill a dancing floor as he did, with his natural air of drama. A woman who herself dances well, sighs for a fit partner, but give her in that partner a personality drawing a general homage to them both, and she is twice blessed. After all, she is a woman, with the woman's prayer for attention, for being, once in a way, the centre of a picture, as she is on her wedding day, the Day of Promise, whatever follows.

An early episode in the life of the Black Colonel had associated him with the rollicking "Reel O'Tulloch," a dance originated in Strathdee. His people had gone to church, so went the tale, but, the weather being wintry, no parson arrived. Seeking warmth, they began to blow on their hands, then to shuffle with their feet on the floor, and presently, when somebody fetched a fiddler, this broke into a reel. A bottle with inspiration in it was brought from the change-house near by, and faster went the music and faster grew the fun.

When young Jock Farquharson, hearing of this, came on the scene, the "Reel O'Tulloch" was being danced "ower the kirk and ower the kirk," and voices cried:

"John, come kiss me now,
John, come kiss me now,
John, come kiss me by and by
And mak' nae mair adow."

One of the guests at our later, different dance, in Corgarff Castle, must have remembered this, for suddenly there was a sort of "soughing" of the song, then a singing of it, and it was positively roared out by the assembly when the music stopped and the dance ended. I understood the application and the invitation which were intended, and I caught a look in Marget's flushed face, as if she also understood. Her mother glanced at the roystering singers, then at the Black Colonel and, with an apology for leaving me, went and stood beside her daughter, the mothering instinct of protection called into action.

"Thank you, Mistress Marget," I heard Jock Farquharson say, in his most melodious tone, "you have been kind to me, and I will hope to thank you again. And thank you, Madame," he said, bowing low to her mother, "for letting me lift my head to-night, as it has not been lifted for long. I shall not forget to be grateful and, I hope, to deserve your good-will."

Then he made me, the official host, a last, low bow with a mockery, subtle but noticeable, in it, walked down the room, saluting and being saluted on every side, and was gone. Our friendly ball, from which I had expected so much, died away to the clink of Mack's galloping hoofs, an unsettling rhythm.

_IX.--'Twixt Night and Morn_

They declare that if you are drowning, or otherwise at the crack o' doom, your whole life's record leaps through your mind in an instant. It may be so, Providence giving a man, however his balance-sheet stands, a last chance to square it fair and well.

Everybody being gone home, and I being alone, after our dizzy ball, I felt that I had to count up the position. It needed no effort to understand that the Black Colonel's purpose in invading me had been to meet Marget and her mother, to impress himself upon them, all in the interest of his designs. He had relied for safety upon the temporary state of neutrality which the ball carried with it, and he had come, he had seen, he had--what? So far my thoughts convoyed me. But my little room in the castle with its cell-like windows, its low ceiling, even, I would add, its sense of plain refinement, worried me, and I went out into the night and the spaciousness of earth and heaven. Oh, for freedom to breathe and think, and oh for it at that witching time when night and day hold their bridal of mating among the Highland hills.

It was the hour, in our altitudes, at which night sleeps her heaviest, as if to snatch the last wink from the breaking morn. Nature was superbly at rest, sloughing the worn trappings of yesterday, preparing the shining armour of the morrow. It was the hour of creation, the wonder-coming of a child into the world, magnified beyond imagining, a tender life, very, very beautiful. It cried to my soul, seeking the humblest companionship for its own great soul, playing upon mine with a touch of incomparable delicacy.

And yet, yet, the chief feeling was almost that of a paganism, of an earth-smell and an earth-worship, of a giant awakening from torpor, ravenous with hunger. It was all the grand savagery, the terrible strength of Mother Earth, the Great Protector, from whose loins I had sprung, but who is unspeakably awesome until you see her face in the rising sun. Then the nightmare of the darkness which empalls her with a cold sense of death, turns into a radiance as of gold and kindness.

Ah! it was worth while to be abroad among the heather and the fir-trees at dawn, for the virgin world, the pagan, freed from cerements and found in the twilight to be a god, was all my own, mine to enjoy. I think I know why primitive man, when he lived in lands where Nature was wild and the nights were long, was a resolute pagan. No light, no warmth of its torch, had he to set the fire of reverence in him burning, and reverence is the footstool of belief in God. I think I also know why the other primitive man of the south, dwelling in a land of the sun, would be a sun-worshipper: because it gave him reverence and drew it from him.

We fear endless things when it is dark, the stoutest-hearted of us, but, in the geniality of a shining sun, we have courage. The picture, in ancient Greek legend, of husband and wife, one of them about to die, taking a long farewell as the dipping sun-rays gilt Olympus at its highest peaks, has often seemed to me a fine linking of the night of paganism and the morn of sunlit faith.

Odd thoughts to run in a man's head as he walked the dew-damp heather, careless which track he took, conscious only that he sought a new morning. But you do think strange thoughts if you have in you any of the dreamy Celt and have been born and nurtured in the cradle of the hills. They infect you, I will not say with second sight, though there have been proved instances, but with their own moods, like a soft-falling foot, which, in our spiritual pilgrimage, is the Foot of Fate.