Chapter I: We Meet in the Pass (3)

My step lightly touched the heather, but, even so, my way was marked by a disturbance of the birds and animals of the wild. A grouse ran with a flutter and took wing with a cry, half in protest at being wakened from its sleep, half in alarm at my presence. A rabbit rushed from a sheltering hole in such a hurry that, as I could tell by its clatter among the bracken, it nearly fell over itself, as rabbits clumsily do, making fluffy, woolly balls of themselves.

When there is danger about, Nature gives all her children of the open a chance to escape by instantly warning them, and, in this, alarming their instinct. My particular rabbit had scarcely run out of hearing when half a dozen others were scurrying hither and thither in the same expectant confusion. Poor little things! What a fluster they made, and their scare communicated itself to a crow in a solitary fir-tree, against which I nearly collided. He croaked, flapped his wings and sailed off heavily, blackly, also anxious for safety.

Now, by the sheer exercise of walking, I had spent my restlessness, and the hill air had driven the blood from my head. Moreover, I grew tired, for the road tells when you have to pick your steps in the dark, over rough ground. So, coming upon a fir-tree root, I made a seat of it, and waited for night to fully turn into day, a transformation which came swiftly.

We have all seen the first flicker of a piece of tinder, fired by a beaten flint. It is like something come, only to go again, but presently it passes into a stronger flame, and then into light. This is the awakening of a Highland day, when the conditions resemble those of that morning.

The heavy pall of clouds, lying low over the hills, seemed to take motion, for trifling rents appeared in them. The rents grew bigger, and then the stars, which had been shining all the time in the welkin above, began to look through those peep-holes. It was the sun setting to work upon the earth once more, our side of the globe returning to his rays and warmth.

Slowly I looked about me, like one roused from a half-dream, seeing the near things first, and, as the dawn grew, ranging for the far things. Beneath me lay a glen pavilioned in the splendour of the rising sun, and gilded with the praise of the hills. Browns and reds and greens swam before my eyes into a radiant landscape, along which flowed the water of Don, a ribbon of silver, whose surface the fat trout would presently be breaking. Beside it wandered the road, on which, presently, to my astonishment, I made out two figures. Who could they be, there, at that time?

When I left Corgarff Castle I had, out of habit, slung my spyglass over my shoulder, and I set it towards the men. One was in the tartan of my own regiment, the other in a tartan of darkish green with a red stripe in it, like the Farquharson tartan. I made out, by their actions, that they were quarrelling, so I started for them, and who do you think I found? My own sergeant and the Black Colonel's Red Murdo.

"What are you men doing and how are you here?" I asked abruptly, for I was breathless, as well as surprised and angry.

The sergeant's answer was a salute, for he had not time to speak before Red Murdo was launched on a torrent of indignant words. He had, he said, come over to the ball in attendance on the Black Colonel, as I might know. He intended to depart with him, but had taken more of my hospitality--stout fellow!--than he could carry, which delayed his departure. Some of my men had old scores against him, old crows to pick with him, particularly this sergeant, who, therefore, had followed him, determined to have the quarrel out: "While I," quoth Red Murdo, "only want to go quietly home."

"What's the quarrel?" I demanded of the sergeant.

"Well," he replied quaintly, "it does na' matter what it is, tho' he kens, as lang's we settle who's the better man. He's up to every dodge, but there's no room for that wi' only the twa o's here."

"And what were you doing when I arrived? What was about to happen?" I asked.

"We were jist arguin' which was the better man," declared the sergeant, "and I was na' goin' to leave it at that. A deceesion for me; he beggit to be let awa'!"

"Beggit!" broke in Red Murdo; "beggit anything from you, my man! Na, na; I was beggin' you to return to Corgarff Castle in case something happen't to you. You wid'na', as I tell ye, be the first red-coat on whose hide I had left a mark. But I was forbearin', because I did na' want trouble to follow Captain Ian's kindness in askin' us to the ball last evening."

Red Murdo glanced at me, as if he expected me to side with him, but my thoughts were not yet for words. You can best hold a judicial air when you say little, give no reasons, and here I had to be judge and jury. For the quarrel, if it was carried to a violent end, might have unfortunate results on the general peace of the country. It would not do to have my sergeant killing Red Murdo in single combat, or Red Murdo killing my sergeant, certainly not with me looking on.

If you happen to know some legal jingle of words you can almost certainly pacify the raw man of strife, by gravely reciting it at him. Sheriffs, procurators-fiscal, bailies and others accustomed to take oaths, and sometimes to say them, will confirm this curious influence of formality. Partly it impresses, and it will surely confuse, and then the subject can be led to a better frame of mind.

So I thought of the oath banning the Highland dress, which, in the unwisdom of our over-lords, exercised by right of force, a Jacobite rebel had to take, before he could get a pardon. It had an official place among the papers of my office, and there I had let it rest, but I loathed it so much that its language had bitten itself into my mind.

How this foully conceived oath had fired the spirit of a people proud to wear their tartans, because of the Highland sentiment which they clothed! But to use it to compass a private quarrel, to twist its possible tragedy into healing honour, that was appealing! My sergeant I must support outwardly, and my stratagem would secure this, without putting Red Murdo in peril. He, probably, had a secret inkling that I was searching for a way out, because he kept looking, looking at me, even while he talked and talked.

"You know the law?" I slowly addressed him.

"Only like my master," he said, "by breakin' it."

"You know that any man who has been in rebellion against his Majesty King George may be apprehended on sight, tried, punished and executed."

"If you say that it'll be so, but it does na' interest me; I tak' my orders frae the Chief of Inverey, nae frae King George or his officers, least o' all a mere sergeant."

"Still," I went on, "you will perceive that he was doing his duty, or what he thinks his duty." Red Murdo's look suggested that he thought I was rambling, but I went on sharply; "and in the exercise of his duty he is entitled to all the support of his superior officer."

The sergeant's face beamed with approval, as if he had been discovered in an act of great public advantage and was to be rewarded [Transcriber's note: a line appears to be missing from the book here.] that of Red Murdo simply asked, "What are you driving at?"

"Now," I said, lifting my right hand in the manner of judges, "I am going to administer an oath to you, and when you have taken it all will be well and you shall go your way."

"What sort o' oath," he asked; "what has it to do wi' me, who's only concern't wi' the Black Cornel's oaths? Tell it to me, first."

"Very well, listen," and with as much solemnity as I could muster I repeated the words of the oath:

"I do swear, as I shall answer to God at the Great Day of Judgment, I have not, nor shall have, in my possession, any gun, sword or arm whatsoever, and never use tartan, plaid, or any part of the Highland garb; and if I do so, may I be cursed in my undertakings, family and property; may I never see my wife and children, father, mother or relations; may I be killed in battle as a coward, and lie without Christian burial, in a strange land, far from the graves of my forefathers and kindred: may all this come across me if I break my oath."

Red Murdo kept looking at me, mute, perhaps impressed; anyhow, he presently asked, "What if I refuse?"

"The penalties laid down by law," I told him, still solemnly, "are six months in prison for a first offence and transportation beyond the seas for a second."

"A device o' the devil and King George," grunted Red Murdo, and I should have been glad to agree with him, only I had to play the game out.

"Will you take the legal oath?"

"Never. It's what I suppose the sergeant was goin' to cram doon my throat an' he could, the same infernal thing. Never, frae you, or him, or the pair o' ye."

This was a turn I had not expected, and I was wondering what to do next when Red Murdo said, "I'll tell ye what I'll dae. I'll wrestle the sergeant which o's will eat a copy of that ugly oath, and that'll also satisfy him who's the better man."

The sergeant did not show an instant keenness for this challenge, but it got me round a corner, and must be accepted. I declared to that effect, and desired both men to get ready, saying I would be umpire. I added that there should be only one bout because, secretly, I had no wish to see them hurt one another.

Red Murdo and the sergeant put their plaids, their jackets, their bonnets, their sporans, and their brogues, in little heaps, with each man's weapons above each man's things. Neither spoke, for action, which naturally has the effect of sealing the tongue, had now arrived, and I chose a level piece of sward where they might fall with comparative softness.

When I saw how nearly they were matched in physique, the spirit of primitive combat in me began to be interested, to calculate who would win. True to the fighting tactics he knew Red Murdo rushed to grips, but the sergeant drove him off, and they manoeuvred round each other for the next effort. It was pretty to see them, that bright morning, with the whole picturesque valley for arena and I for the only spectator of their prowess. Moreover, they were warming to the fight, which was one between the disciplined strength and skill of the soldier and the wild agility of Red Murdo.

Those different qualities met so evenly that feint, and catch and heave as each combatant would, the other remained unthrown. Once Red Murdo got his antagonist by the waist, lifted him clean off the ground and whirled him round like a totum, only to have him alight on his feet. Once, also, the sergeant, by a supple twist of arm and leg, working together, got Red Murdo half down and no more. Really it was a toss-up who should win, or whether there would be a winner at all.

My only ground of interference would be foul play, and although they went at each other almost savagely there was no absolute act of that kind. But the strain was telling on both men, for they took no rest, and hardly waited to get fresh breath. The sinews of their legs stood out like whip-cord, their chest heaved like bellows in distress, their necks were scarlet with the tumult of the blood there. Only the unexpected would make a victor or a loser, and the unexpected did not happen, as it does sometimes.

Red Murdo tried a last torrential rush, but the sergeant withstood it, and they merely locked themselves together. Nay, they were now so exhausted that they could only hang on to each other for support, a spectacle which brought me to their side. Their bulging eyes stared at me with the pleading look which a horse has after being driven too far and too fast. When I divided them by a touch of my hand they both fell to the ground like logs and so lay.

Honour was satisfied, the hated oath of the kilt had not to be eaten by anybody, and I was glad.

_X.--The Way of a Woman_

Between you and me, I fancy that the average, natural woman likes to think any man who is after her a bit of the devil. It makes her pulse beat, if not her heart; it gives a fine spice to the pursuit, and she is confident there will be no capture, unless she wills it. Anyhow, I was not going to help the Black Colonel in his schemes by holding him up as a hero of that order, and he would have made the comment that he needed not the service from me.

Marget Forbes and I had fallen into the pleasant custom of lending each other such books as came the way of our remote land, and I called at the Dower House to leave her one, a newly imprinted volume entitled "Robinson Crusoe." I did not seem to wish to make meetings with her, though I was glad of them, so I chose a time, the mid-afternoon, at which she and her mother usually walked out. However, Marget was at home, and she called to me from the parlour, would I not enter and rest a minute? Necessarily I must step inside to say I would not wait, and necessarily I found myself sitting down near her.

"Mother," she said, "is on her weekly round among the sick and old, to whom a kind word from her is like gold, of which we now have none to give. Usually I go with her, but to-day she would have it that I looked tired, and she bade me stay indoors and rest. I'm glad you called and brought me a book, especially this wonderful 'Robinson Crusoe,' of which I have heard vaguely, and which they say is founded on the adventure of a Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk. You are always thoughtful, or shall I say sometimes?" and Marget looked as if she expected me to understand the qualification.

Was it a reproach that I did not come into her company often enough; was it a playful invitation to do so oftener; or was it the woman's primal instinct, old as Eve in the Garden of Eden, just to tease the man? I scarcely asked myself those questions. They ran through my mind with the kind of physical impulse which you feel in the presence of the possible woman. You are aware, then, of feelings and shadows of feeling which cannot be expressed. There is something in you which goes on speaking to the something in her, and you let it speak, glad, wondering, expectant, never sure, never sorry. Odd, isn't it, this language of sex which says most when it says nothing by speech, which needs not speech, because it is spiritual, though springing, maybe, from the call of the blood.

Marget had been reading, and when she invited me in, and I went, she put the open book face downward on a little table, beside a half-made sampler. She saw my eye wandering to the volume, a mere mechanical curiosity on my part, and she picked it up with a laugh, saying, "There is no need to hide those pages, unless it be that they are dull."

"What is the book all about?" I asked idly.

"It is a French romance," she said, "in which a lovely heroine treads her way through an endless maze of difficult paths and a brigade of villains to what, I have no doubt, when I get there with her, if ever I do, will be endless wedded bliss. It is an over-sentimental story, for the French young girl, but, then, one must try to keep up what French one has, because it is a delightful language."

Marget had learned it as a girl in France, for she had lived there a while, seen something of the Stuart Court over the water, of the Court of King Louis also, and even heard the passing rustle of the skirts of "the Pompadour" and Madame du Barry. Already the breath of a freer day to come was blowing across that fair land, and her stay in it definitely influenced Marget's character, ripened it quickly on broadly beautiful lines, without hurting its pure scent of Scottish heather.

Hospitality was a duty as well as a pleasure in every Highland home, and, after our trifles of a few minutes, she rose and went to give some order. When she returned she said she had a small treat in store for me, and it came into the room almost with herself. What do you think it was? Why, tea!

It was a beverage then almost unknown in the Scottish Highlands, but Marget's family, as she said, had at intervals received packets of it from their friends in the south. Those gifts were hoarded as if they contained treasure, and only dipped into for very special reasons.

"It flatters me," I remarked airily, "to think I am a special reason, because that must come near being a special friend."

"Oh," quoth Marget, "but you are an official enemy, so how could you be a special friend? And still such things are possible, you know, but I shall not tell you how they are possible. You would not understand a bit"; and, as she spoke, her eyes and hands were arranging the tea-table.

"I should, I assure you, try very hard," said I, "and it would be odd if I did not succeed, with a dish of tea for stimulant. I don't remember when I tasted tea last," I added laconically, as Marget poured it out of a quaint old pot into dwarfy cups of French mould. Most of the dainty things, the bric-à-brac of households in the Jacobite Highlands were from France, just as we had come to say "ashets" and "gigots" of mutton, and generally to graft French cookery into our Scottish meals, for the "Auld Alliance" had various harvests.

As we talked over the tea-cups, Marget and I, I thought how quickly in that Nature's cradle of Corgarff she had ripened to woman's estate. She had, at times, been in touch with the artificialities of social life, but they had not dulled her free, strong character. She had drawn her instincts, as she had drawn her blood, from the long hills, and she had no self-consciousness to dim her lights. But when I rose to leave she said merrily, "We have spoken much foolish nonsense, have we not, Captain Gordon?"

"Wise nonsense, Mistress Forbes," I answered.

"Thank you, but wise nonsense is most becoming when it is expressed as a parable."

"Then let us have the parable."

"Oh! parables are not in fashion with so many hard realities about, and there should not be three people in one. Three's never company, they say, good company, even in a parable."

"Then, dear lady, why put in three?"

"This parable, dear Captain, would need three; first, a high-minded young man who wears arms and dreams dreams, who is beloved by everybody for his good nature and qualities, who is on the other side of where he would be most welcome, and who will probably never summon courage to get there; secondly, an older man of more picturesque, more risky qualities, an adventurer in love and war, never afraid to strike, even if the stroke might wound, a personality able, on occasion, to commandeer what could not be secured by affection, thanks to an understanding of woman's nature and the imperfections of man's government; and, thirdly, between those personal forces a woman who might, to her undoing, be captured by the force of family and state circumstances, instead of by the man of her tell-tale heart's desire."

"A very subtle parable!" I remarked, for no reason whatever, but the tone of it held more than this banality, although she showed no heed of that, but remarked:

"No; a very common parable; it's what every woman knows by instinct or experience, if few would care to reveal it, even in a parable."

We said good-bye without more ado, and I set off for the castle, troubled for my unreadiness in woman nature, the most puzzling, calling, captivating skein in all the universe, because it holds, behind the silken veil of its treasure-house, the eternal mystery of creation, that something divine which is nearest to God Himself.

When in trouble, my trouble, anyhow, one sighs for a song, and my heart-quaking carried me to a ballad, very familiar in our countryside, which tells of an unbridled lover laying siege to a woman he covets. Her men were absent, and she and her domestics were the only garrison of the castle when he knocked roysterously at its gates:

"The lady ran up to her towe-head,
As fast as she could drie,
To see if by her fair speeches
She could with him agree.

"As soon he saw the lady fair,
And her yates all locked fast,
He fell into a rage of wrath,
And his heart was aghast.

"Cum doon to me, ye lady fair;
Cum doon to me; let's see;
This nigh ye's ly by my ain side
The morn my bride sall be!"

It was pagan wooing, but it has often won the day, only why should I let it disturb me, whose cause stood by itself? What I must realize was that powers above me were at work, for "state reasons," on affairs in which I was concerned, privately. I must try to meet this influence without letting as much be known outwardly, because I was an officer bound by my commission to serve his Majesty's desires and commands.

Now I am no good schemer, and I merely drifted to those conclusions as a swimmer goes with a tide in which he happens to find himself. He feels that he is in its custody, but, on the instinct for life, he makes a stroke now and then and their cumulative effect probably bears him somewhere safe to land. Might it be so with me!

Unfortunately I was a swimmer in the dark, for I did not know, however I might guess, what Marget and her mother were thinking. Perhaps my heart really assured my mind as to Marget, or so I was fain to conclude. Her mother, however, might take a mother's view, the far-carrying view which thinks of daughters settled in such a manner as will continue the old line.

Every man has, deep down in him, the desire to own a little bit of land, even though most of us only get six feet for a grave. It is man's form of ancestor-worship, and in woman it finds expression in the home, and continuous olive branches to fill that home. The man likes to have his foot securely on a rood of Mother Earth, a patch to call his very own. The woman supplements that by peopling a house; and is not this service of the maternal instinct the greater, the finer of the two?

One placed in circumstances which need strong action, should not think too much, because by doing that he raises a wall of difficulties around him. Mental ghosts are no use to anybody, although, to be sure, they weren't unknown to me. So I welcomed a letter that reached me next morning from Marget's mother, but I opened it with a dread. It addressed me as "Dear Captain Gordon," and it read:

"I am troubling you for advice, because there is nobody else whom I can ask, and because the matter may interest you, both as a relative, far removed I admit, and as a soldier of the reigning king. You will guess what it is, and that makes it easier for me to explain.

"It has been made known to us in a round-about, but authoritative way, that it would give King George and his ministers satisfaction to see our house and people established again, and that Jock Farquharson, the laird of Inverey, would be confirmed in the chiefship, if as much were agreeable to my daughter and myself.

"They don't ask me will I give my daughter in ransom for the house and possessions of our ancestors, but that is what is meant, and you can judge how the idea has concerned me. You may also, however, concern and interest a mother at the same time, and I have hesitated to return a 'No,' especially as Marget said, about the letter, when I showed it to her, 'Well, the sons of the house have sacrificed enough for it. It may now be the turn of the daughter to sacrifice something . . .!"

"That was dutifully said, but what she expects, I'm certain, is that I shall say the 'No' of my own accord, and I want your advice as to the manner in which it can best be done. I want it at once, because news comes to me, through the early channel of our domestics, that the Black Colonel means to ride over upon us one of these evenings, a friendly call, I suppose. Marget does not know of this intention on his part, and I am not going to tell her, for a mother's instinct naturally wishes to shield a daughter from disturbance.

"If you would advise me how to say 'No' without bringing further displeasure from high places upon our ruined house, you would be doing us a service. If, besides that, you were to find a means of keeping the Black Colonel away, why, you would be doing a further service."

As I read that last sentence an idea struck me, and I at once sent a note to the dear lady, saying I would solve her difficulty. Then I dispatched a pair of trusty scouts in quest of certain information I needed, and in eight hours they were back with it. After that, I felt more myself than I had done for some time, just because I was now committed to definite, perhaps even dangerous, action.

_XI--The Crack of Thunder_

It is fine how the spur of danger, especially danger to somebody else, dear if not near, helps a man's spirits upward. The blood flows more quickly in him, his hand is surer, his brain works better. He feels that the die has been cast, that nothing more matters, except the reckoning, and, so feeling, he sheds all timorous self-consciousness and is himself.

That, at all events, was how I felt as I took the road southward, across the hills towards Deeside, with a cracking wind to walk against. I would intercept the Black Colonel's raid on Marget and her mother, and break the whole scheme behind it--if I could!

So we scheme, we glorious little fellows of this world, bent on love or hatred, and the Great Beneficence smiles at us, at our cleverness, or it may be the Great Furies, however you will have it. Anyway, Nature has merely to move and our grandest plans may crinkle up like a feather held to a "cruisie," the rude lamp, fed with dried splinters of fir-wood, or mutton tallow and a wick, which our Highlanders used for lighting.

But that was not in my thoughts when I came to the top of the last hill dividing our strath from the Black Colonel's. My estimate was that if I got there by break of day and waited I should, being in a high eyrie with a wide view, see him come from the opposite direction. My information from my scouts was that he would travel alone, a fit thing, having regard to his mission at the Dower House, Corgarff.

Tired and hungry, I looked about for a rock which would shield me from the wind, and got out my fodder. It consisted only of "whisky bukky," oatmeal rolled with whisky, not delicate stuff to eat, but easily carried and sustaining. Haggis is better food for the march, because it is tastier and still harder to digest, so even more lasting, as the Highlanders, for whose war sustenance it was, perhaps, invented, knew, but on leaving Corgarff Castle I had just taken what I could lay my hand upon.

While I ate I half-marvelled at the splendour of the scene about me, half-rehearsed my catechism with the Black Colonel, when he should appear. I would put it to him as a gentleman that he must not intrude upon the Forbes ladies, and, indeed, must frankly abandon his designs there. If reason failed, then we might be driven to solve the knot by a single combat, as the custom of the Highlands permitted, and, indeed, sometimes ordered, very much like the duel in the land of France. Why not such a combat, because the test was an honest if barbaric tribute to plain manliness? Give me that rather than the snivel, the chicane, the shake-you-by-the-hand and stab-you-in-the-gloaming, which passes by the name of diplomacy, high diplomacy, I believe.

The tradition of single combat went back into the very mists of time in the Highlands; and merely the form varied. There was Cam-Ruadh, the early red-haired man of tradition, who, fallen prisoner among a batch of hostile "kern," or outlaws, was offered his liberty if he could make so many good arrow-shots. He drew and drew, with much seeming innocence, on the arrows of his captors, and wove a circle of stabs in the ground about the target, but never did he hit it; oh, no!

They jeered at him when he came to the last arrow possessed by the company, saying he had better reserve it for himself and save them the trouble of making an end to him. Instead, he sent it, as he could have sent the others, straight into the middle of the target, and flew there almost with it. Before the outlaws could realize the logic of events he had gathered all the arrows under his arm, put one to the string of the bow and cried, "I am Cam-Ruadh, who never misses, never before until now, and you who are without arrows had better take leg-bail," which they quickly did.

Nearer in time was the duel of valiant Donald Oig with the chief of a band of "broken men" who had a grudge against him. Donald was a famous swordsman, and the chief had no active relish to try skill with him. But, again, it was the custom of the country, and the invitation could not be refused if the chiefship of the "broken men" was to be held, because here was a test of both courage and honour.

He was a slim fellow, however, this head raider, one with the false doctrine, as ancient as human nature, that if you succeed it matters little how. When, then, he and Donald Oig stood up to fight he exclaimed, "Shake hands on it, first!" But he gripped the extended right hand hard, intending, with it thus prisoned, to strike a foul blow and close, in his own favour, a duel which had not begun. Swift of instinct and eye, Donald saw this, caught out his dagger with his left hand, and stabbed the foul fighter. The rest of the "broken men," being witnesses of it all, had nothing to complain about, and Donald went his way.

While my thoughts wandered like that, and I ate and, from my pocket flask, washed my dry eating down, the weather changed with a swiftness familiar enough among the Scottish mountains. The heavens passed behind a veil of drifting clouds, through which the sun flared in red, angry bursts. The elements had declared hostilities, and when I looked down into the valley, two thousand feet beneath me, I saw a great thunderstorm on the march, the very panoply of havoc.

It moved as if it were an army going to war, with scout-like horns thrust out in front and on either side. These were constantly shot by fangs from the mass of lightning in the clouds, themselves a hell of angry colours, There was the inky black of the outer sheath, next a seam of half-black, half-orange, then a depth of iridescence which constantly changed its hues, and, finally, a molten pot boiling and rolling in august wrath.

Ah! it was a spectacle to watch, those thunder-clouds come through the glack, or rift, dividing the falling hill on which I stood, from the rising one beyond. Down in the valley ran a stream and a track used by cattle-drovers, and, as my eye went there, I thought I saw a tall figure. Certainly, for he looked up and, during a moment, we were both silhouetted in the radiance of light which the thunder-clouds, now massed into one huge bank, drove before it. If I saw that solitary figure it was likely he would see me, as we were the only living things in the landscape, and like turns to like, even making mutual communication, although witchcraft was the word for that then, and the mention of it dangerous.

Presently the terrific cloud ate up the spot where I had seen the man, for its base was in the valley and its top above my altitude. Never had I beheld such a thunder-cloud, but it was awe, a worship of the forces of Nature, which filled me, not fear. Why should I, a young, healthy man, with good nerves, be afraid, since the excessive tumult was below me, and I was a privileged spectator. Quickly, however, the cloud must burst, and then the sluices of heaven would indeed be open. How would it fare with myself and the figure lost in the valley?

That thunderstorm and the consequent flood became events in our local history, and to me a quick personal adventure. The rain came down, first in a thick shower, then in torrents, finally in sheets. The fall was so solid that it seemed to half-scotch the lightning and half-dull the roar of the thunder. Actually, for I record truly, the drops leapt up again in splashes as they struck the ground beside me, and in an instant I was soaked, though that was no unusual experience in our adventurous climate.

The thunder-cloud had now taken command of the whole firmament, so swiftly had its violence of contagion spread. Here, verily, was a rainfall on a great scale, and as it settled to business a sort of darkness spread over the land. I must seek shelter, and I would find it on the levels rather than on the exposed heights.

Therefore, I started for the valley, picking my way as best I could in the black deluge. You will scarce believe me if I again tell you that the rain-water ran down the hill-side with me, inches deep. It took gravel and stones with it, and scoured away the bedding of large rocks which, thus released, joined in the downward plunge. Some folk thought it was the Flood of the Bible come again as prophesied, and, at all events, the comparison gives a notion of it. The stream, which I had seen an insignificant stripe below, met me, a roaring river. Its waters had already overflowed the whole valley. Now you only saw the tops of hillocks or trees, for all else was a gurgling waste of waters.

Over those waters came a cry which caught me, even in my sorry plight, because it was human. Wild birds, beaten to the ground by the storm and then engulfed in the waters, were screeching as they drowned. Hares and rabbits, and a fox, wherever he came from, all went past me on a floating tree, and they were squealing for mercy, not from each other, but from the elements. The other sound I had heard, however, was quite different, and I listened for it again.

Ah! there it was! And as I bent to the level of the flowing waters and looked towards its source, I saw a man marooned on one of the hillocks which the flood had left unsubmerged. Evidently he had seen me first, for he was waving his hands and making signs with them. He was in keen alarm about his predicament, but method governed his alarm, and it was for me to discover it.

Clearly he was a prisoner on the island, in so far that he could not wade or swim through the roaring dam which divided us. Clearly, also, the water was rising by miraculous draughts upon the rain, and soon his refuge would be drowned, and he swept from it. What was to be done by me to save him, for action must be rapid?

He was beckoning up-stream with a meaning. Searching with my eye the meeting-place of land and water, I saw what looked like a boat. Where could it have come from? There had been an old broad-bottomed craft, used for fording in spate times, on a pool a mile or so up the glen, and the flood had brought it down and thrown it ashore. Could I get it afloat, navigate it to the perishing man, and rescue him?

No sooner said than done! Not at all; things don't happen so, at least, when anything worth doing has to be done. It took me a toilsome journey to the boat, and I found it half-full of flood-water. This I emptied by hauling the boat, as the river rose, on to a shelving rock. Then I waited for it to float free, having meanwhile got hold of a long, fir sapling, which, pruned of its branches, I thought to use as a guiding pole, helm or oar, as the rushing of many waters might demand.

Thus equipped, out I sailed on that uncharted ocean with never a thought in my head whether I should again see dry land or riot. The darkness had deepened, but I could still distinguish the hillock and the man thereon, now up to his waist in the waters, and for those fading signs I steered. Quickly I was in the flood race, but I kept my head, otherwise I should not have heard the voice come to me again in what seemed to be the words, "Hurry! For God's sake, hurry!"

Down-stream I rushed, here shoving from disaster against a tree trunk, there avoiding a smash with something else. How it was all done I have not the remotest notion--perhaps it was mere luck--but when I came level with the hillock I was only three feet clear of it on the near side.

"Jump," I roared, and the man with outstretched arms jumped strongly, and I felt a pull which almost upset me, for I had been standing in the boat. Two hands had caught the gunwale, and the pull of dead weight swung the heavy, clumsy craft round on a new course without, however, upsetting it. This took us into shallower waters, and presently the suction of the main surge got fainter and we were aground on the moorland edge.

I had not, in the dark, seen the face of my companion at all, and, trailing beside the boat, he had no opportunity for making himself known. I stepped out, knee-deep, to find him also a-foot, and seeking the land.

"Come on," I said, "whoever you may be."

"Yes," he answered; "whoever you may be, you are a friend in need."

I recognized his voice, and exclaimed, nay, shouted in my surprise, "Jock Farquharson!"

"Yes, Ian Gordon," he said in turn. "Would you rather not have saved me?"

"God's will be done," said I.

"Amen!" said he.

Dramas of life do end laconically, like that, as death often comes by casual side-steps.

_XII--Raiders of the Dark_

A man does something in a natural way and it takes the world's ear and is called heroism. Another man does a like thing, to all purpose, but the world does not listen to it, or, anyhow, sings him no praises, all of which we try to explain by saying "Luck."

It is natural for a man to show courage in extremes, for a woman to be loving, self-sacrificing. Every now and then the Great Bookkeeper records an example for the common good; and the rest are a lost legion. We do not know why, and if we did what good would it do us, though the curiosity for knowledge is inbred, like inability, sometimes, to use it?

News of my rescue of the Black Colonel from the flood got about, and I was acclaimed as a hero of sorts. He, I fancy, for his own ends, fathered a glowing account of what happened, and as it passed from mouth to mouth it grew in glory. He meant to be grateful, and his gratitude took that form. It was his airy way, for egotism, even when it is not dislikeable, must ever carry its possessor into the picture.

Perhaps he also thought to please me, and thus to win a point towards his larger ends, for I knew they would, in no wise, be modified by what had happened. By them, as he saw his case, he had to stand or fall, and thus, in this reasoning, he had no choice at all. His bonds, in that sense, were entwined with coming events, which do not necessarily cast their shadows before, anyhow when they are events of the heart.

Now, my secret hope for the Black Colonel, the inner prayer which I hardly whispered to myself, was that he should escape his troubles as a rebel, by going away to the foreign wars, and there make a new name. I thought I might help him out of the country, even if it had to be at the risk of my commission. He would be welcome wherever he found a British camp across the sea, and no questions would be asked. Truly, there would be need to ask none, because his repute as a fighting man among the Jacobites had gone far and wide. By-and-by he could return, when the feuds of Stuart and Guelph had died down to the dross they were, though they had made a bloody toll, and sit in the home of his fathers, not merely unmolested, but honoured by both sides.

I am not going to pretend that my own inclinations were not behind this plan, for they were. Why should I seek to hide them, even from the Black Colonel himself; a hopeless thing to try, anyhow. He had one scheme for getting back to the world, and it struck bitterly across my path. I offered him another, which would attain his end, and if that were so, why should he not take it and thank me? I was not ill-disposed to him personally; certainly well enough disposed to help him--to help me. When were we to make the reckoning?

He was seeking to live up to his new pretensions as a head of a clan, and he had to find the wherewithal on which to do it. The consequence was that he used Red Murdo for taxing the country in the matter of his necessaries. If somebody, early some morning while it was still dark, awoke to ask the question: "Are you come to harry and spulzie my ha'?" it would most likely be Red Murdo who gave an insolent answer. The fellow, in fact, got swollen upon the little plunderings which his master ordered, until he was hard to keep in hand. But this, again, suited the Black Colonel, because, to push his claims, he found money handy, there being always smaller fry of the other side of friendship, who have hungry purses, or none at all.

So Red Murdo, flown as he was with a lowly man's pride, which tends to an unbalancing, must launch upon an expedition of no common sort. It embellishes a ballad of which only two lines come to me as I write:

"There's four-and-twenty milk-white nowt, twal o' them kye
In the woods of Glen-Tanner, it's there that they lie."

Beyond what the lines tell of a bold piece of rieving and spulzy by Jock Farquharson's henchman, and done for him, I need not trouble to instruct you, because the event only leads into our chronicle as by a tributary wind. When there is a mystery, and you cannot fathom it by direct evidence, you are driven back on motives. They are, in fact, the nut and kernel of what lawyers call circumstantial evidence, a fitting together of suspicions which have made the coffin of many an honest Highland rebel.

I sought to keep my soldiers as unseen as a not over-great distance from Marget and her mother at the Dower House would permit. Naturally the Hanoverian uniform was a sore sight for their eyes, and even a personal grief, in that it recalled dear ones who had perished on the losing side. My desire to spare them was known to my men, who, in the same spirit, would often walk a mile round not to show themselves to the desolated inmates of the Dower House.

But it was essential, if anything unusual were to happen there, that we should know, since it was part of our charge to protect Marget and her mother from perils incidental to an unsettled country. Therefore, I had a private understanding with an old retainer of the family that he was to hasten to me, should protection at the Dower House ever be necessary.

This he was to do quietly, before giving any general alarm, as that might not prove necessary, and also because I remembered an old Highland wisdom, "Never cry fire, unless you want the heather to catch." Its bearing, as you will grasp is on strifes and feuds set alive, not on the actual burning of heather, which is done to let grass, for the sheep beasts, grow without being choked.

Well, on a night which I recall for its dense blackness, there came a tap, tap, tap, three of them, slowly and distinctly, at the small window of my room in the Castle. I knew by the method of the disturbance that it was not an accident, but I was on my feet and peering hard into the outer darkness before I realized that here was the prearranged signal of danger at the Dower House.

A hand moved close to the window, signalling me, and I motioned back, though, on either side, all this was divined, as divination takes place in the dark, rather than seen at all. I picked up my sword, which always stood in a certain corner of my room, pulled the door gently towards me and stepped softly out on to the grass, which grew close up to the Castle walls.

"Come ye, fast, Captain Gordon," quietly said a figure gliding beside me, and without another word we made for the Dower House. When I felt myself beyond ear-shot of the sentry, I asked:

"What's happened--what's wrong?"

"I'm no' exac'ly sure," was the old retainer's answer, "but men hae been surroundin' the place, as if to attack it. They wakened me, bein' a light sleeper, because they made sounds different fae' the ordinary. It was like men crawlin' amon' the grass on a plan, and I slippit doon for you."

"What had we better do?" I asked formally, and not because I expected any answer, for I had decided to get into the Dower House without alarming anybody, if that could be done.

We managed to open a window and step through it, but then the dogs sleeping inside set up an alarm. This quickly awoke everybody, and the confusion set affairs moving outside, where I heard a voice that seemed familiarly like Red Murdo's cry hoarsely:

"Lie close, lie close!"

Presently Marget and her mother, who had both dressed hastily, came to the stair-head, holding a glimmering light over the darkness beneath. Behind them crowded their few scared domestics, and odd the whole scene looked, although, indeed, between keeping off the barking dogs and wondering what was to happen outside, I had no desire or time to study it.

"Who's there?" called Marget, in a not uncomposed but expectant voice, and I answered, telling in a few words what I knew. Quick in thought and action she thanked me for coming, and said she would just get her cloak. She took her mother with her, but in a moment was back again asking, "How can I be of service?"

She carried a stout walking-stick, and I looked at it as she came down the stairs to where I stood in the lobby, her mother following. "Yes," she said, "my hand lighted on it somewhere, perhaps because it has been through troubles and wars and is in the presence of more. Shall we say that the fighting instinct, even in a stick, leaps to the call?" She laughed quietly, but with a concerned note in the laugh, and I knew she was thinking of her mother's safety and health, both threatened by this strange incursion of ill-disposed men.

Wishful as one would be at such a moment to magnify a trifle, in order, if possible, to occupy an anxious woman's mind, I remarked, "Oh, a stick can be a very sound weapon in a good hand."

"It's about all that the orders of search and suppression have left us Jacobites," remarked Marget; "openly confessed, anyhow, for I suppose there may be a small, concealed arsenal or two, even among our Corgarff hills."

Nothing, apparently, had happened outside in those tense minutes, and it was the strain of waiting which made us resolutely talk of nothing--but a stick. There had been no further cry since the "Lie close" already mentioned, and it, no doubt, had been a mischance on the part of Red Murdo. All was silence and black without, and within all quiet alarm, such as you get when a household suppresses itself in obedience to some demand.

It was an oppressive silence, this waiting, and I was glad to hear Marget tap the floor with her sinewy hazel and say merrily, thinking to lighten her mother's concern, "My grandfather insisted that a stick with a nob was no stick for a Highland gentleman. It escaped, he would say, when it was most needed, and that might, at times, leave the best of Highland gentlemen by the wayside." Joking, under difficulties!

She paused, for there arose a crack-cracking as of men coming closer among the scrub of heather and fern which surrounded the Dower House, only it was quite momentary. The stick which she had half-lifted, an unconscious act of readiness for defence, tapped back on to the floor, and my sword-point made a sharper rattle, though I was unaware that my hand had even moved it. The tyranny of doing nothing began to be intolerable and to insist on an issue, be it what it might.

Think of the situation for me, and although I am, I hope, neither more selfish nor more cowardly than other men, I could not help doing that. Here was I, the chief and head of his Majesty's garrison at Corgarff Castle, standing defence on the door-step of a Jacobite household. Why was I there at all? What was I there to accomplish? How was I to do this unknown something and return with composure to my quarters, secure in my loyalty to King George and his ministers?

Moreover, what had I come out for to see? A mere expedition of burglary by a band of hungry caterans who took the chattels of friend or foe indifferently? Possibly that was all. Then I could have fetched half-a-dozen soldiers and apprehended those same footpads, or, at all events, driven them to the hills again. But at the head of what defensive force did I find myself? Why, a few domestics without resource enough even to escape from the danger, a dear old lady who anxiously wanted to mother the trouble about her, and a young woman of nerve and resolve, my only stand-by.

There, for it was a new discovery in our relationship, I realized that to have Marget by me was a very welcome comradeship, and, somehow, so natural, that it made the other things of no burden. I was curiously happy, and could have left matters at that, but what to do, what to do?