by Neil Munro
CHAPTER XXI.--SEVEN BROKEN MEN.
At last there was but one horseman in chase of the six men who werefleeing without a look behind them--a frenzied blackavised trooper ona short-legged garron he rode most clumsily, with arms that swung likewings from the shoulders, his boots keeping time to the canter withgrotesque knockings against the gaunt and sweating flanks of hisstarven animal. He rode with a shout, and he rode with a fool's want ofcalculation, for he had left all support behind him and might readilyenough have been cut off by any judicious enemy in the rear. Before wecould hurry down to join the fugitives they observed for themselves thatthe pursuit had declined to this solitary person, so up they drew (allbut one of them), with dirks or sgians out to give him his welcome. Andyet the dragoon put no check on his horse. The beast, in a terror at thedin of the battle, was indifferent to the rein of its master, whom itbore with thudding hooves to a front that must certainly have appalledhim. He was a person of some pluck, or perhaps the drunkenness of terrorlent him the illusion of valour; at least, when he found a bloody endinevitable he made the best of the occasion. Into the heaving sides ofthe brute he drove desperate spurs, anew he shouted a scurrilous nameat Clan Campbell, then fired his pistol as he fell upon the enemy.The _dag_ failed of its purpose, but the breast of the horse struck anelderly man on the brow and threw him on his back, so that one of thehind-hooves of the animal crushed in his skull like a hazel-nut.
Who of that fierce company brought the trooper to his end we never knew,but when M'Iver and I got down to the level he was dead as knives couldmake him, and his horse, more mad than ever, was disappearing over amossy moor with a sky-blue lochan in the midst of it.
Of the five Campbells three were gentlemen--Forbes the baron-bailieof Ardkinglas, Neil Campbell in Sonachan, Lochowside, and the third noother than Master Gordon the minister, who was the most woebegone andcrestfallen of them all. The other two were small tacksmen from theneighbourhood of Inneraora--one Callum Mac-Iain vie Ruarie vie Allan(who had a little want, as we say of a character, or natural, and wasever moist with tears), and a Rob Campbell in Auchnatra, whose real namewas Stewart, but who had been in some trouble at one time in a matterof a neighbour's sheep on the braes of Appin, had discreetly fled thatcountry, and brought up a family under a borrowed name in a country thatkept him in order.
We were, without doubt, in a most desperate extremity, If we had escapedthe immediate peril of the pursuing troopers of MacDonald, we had alonger, wearier hazard before us. Any one who knows the countryside I amwriting of, or takes a glance at my relative Neill Bane's diagram or mapof the same, will see that we were now in the very heart of a territoryhotching (as the rough phrase goes) with clans inimical to the houseof Argile. Between us and the comparative safety of Bredalbane layStewarts, MacDonalds, Macgregors, and other families less known inhistory, who hated the name of MacCailein more than they feared thewrath of God. The sight of our tartan in any one of their glens wouldrouse hell in every heart about us.
Also our numbers and the vexed state of the times were against us. Wecould hardly pass for peaceable drovers at such a season of the year;we were going the wrong airt for another thing, and the fact that notwe alone but many more of Argile's forces in retreat were fleeing homewould be widely advertised around the valleys in a very few hours afterthe battle had been fought For the news of war--good or ill--passesamong the glens with a magic speed. It runs faster than the fiery crossitself--so fast and inexplicable on any natural law, that more thanonce I have been ready to believe it a witches' premonition more than amessage carried on young men's feet.
"But all that," said Sonachan, a pawky, sturdy little gentleman witha round ruddy face and a great store of genealogy that he must beever displaying--"But all that makes it more incumbent on us to hangtogether. It may easily be a week before we get into Glenurchy; we musttravel by night and hide by day, and besides the heartening influence ofcompany there are sentinels to consider and the provision of our food."
Ardkinglas, on the other hand, was a fushionless, stupid kind of man:he was for an immediate dispersion of us all, holding that only inindividuals or in pairs was it possible for us to penetrate in safety toreal Argile.
"I'm altogether with Sonachan," said M'Iver, "and I could mention halfa hundred soldierly reasons for the policy; but it's enough for me thathere are seven of us, no more and no less, and with seven there shouldbe all the luck that's going."
He caught the minister's eyes on him at this, and met them with a lookof annoyance.
"Oh yes, I know, Master Gordon, you gentlemen of the lawn bands haveno friendliness to our old Highland notions. Seven or six, it's all thesame to you, I suppose, except in a question of merks to the stipend."
"You're a clever man enough, M'Iver----"
"Barbreck," corrected my friend, punctiliously.
"Barbreck let it be then. But you are generally so sensitive to otherfolk's thoughts of you that your skin tingles to an insult no one dreamtof paying. I make no doubt a great many of your Gaelic beliefs are sheerpaganism or Popery or relics of the same, but the charm of seven has aScriptural warrant that as minister of the Gospel I have some respectfor, even when twisted into a portent for a band of broken men in theextremity of danger."
We had to leave the dead body of our friend, killed by the horse, on thehillside. He was a Knapdale man, a poor creature, who was as well done,perhaps, with a world that had no great happiness left for him, for hishome had been put to the torch and his wife outraged and murdered. At asmuch speed as we could command, we threaded to the south, not along thevalleys but in the braes, suffering anew the rigour of the frost and thesnow. By midday we reached the shore of Loch Leven, and it seemed asif now our flight was hopelessly barred, for the ferry that could becompelled to take the army of Mac-Cailein over the brackish water atLettermore was scarce likely to undertake the conveying back of sevenfugitives of the clan that had come so high-handedly through theirneighbourhood four days ago. On this side there was not a boat in sight;indeed there was not a vestige on any side of human tenancy. Glencoe hadtaken with him every man who could carry a pike, not to our disadvantageperhaps, for it left the less danger of any strong attack.
On the side of the loch, when we emerged from the hills, there was acluster of whin-bushes spread out upon a machar of land that in a lessrigorous season of the year, by the feel of the shoe-sole, must bevelvet-piled with salty grass. It lay in the clear, grey forenoon likea garden of fairydom to the view--the whin-bushes at a distant glancefloating on billows of snow, touched at their lee by a cheering green,hung to the windward with the silver of the snow, and some of them evenprinked off with the gold flower that gives rise to the proverb aboutkissing being out of fashion when the whin wants bloom. To come on thissilent, peaceful, magic territory, fresh out of the turmoil of a battle,was to be in a region haunted, in the borderland of morning dreams,where care is a vague and far-off memory, and the elements study ourdesires. The lake spread out before us without a ripple, its selvedge atthe shore repeating the picture on the brae. I looked on it with a mindpeculiarly calm, rejoicing in its aspect Oh, love and the coming years,thought I, let them be here or somewhere like it--not among the savageof the hills, fighting, plotting, contriving; not among snow-sweptmounts and crying and wailing brooks, but by the sedate and tranquilsea in calm weather. As we walked, my friends with furtive looks to thisside and yon, down to the shore, I kept my face to the hills of realArgile, and my heart was full of love. I got that glimpse that comes tomost of us (had we the wit to comprehend it) of the future of my life.I beheld in a wave of the emotion the picture of my coming years,going down from day to day very unadventurous and calm, spent in somepeaceful valley by a lake, sitting at no rich-laden board but at bienand happy viands with some neighbour heart A little bird of hope flutedwithin me, so that I knew that if every clan in this countryside wasarraigned against me, I had the breastplate of fate on my breast "Ishall not die in this unfriendly country," I promised myself. "Theremay be terror, and there
may be gloom, but I shall watch my children'schildren play upon the braes of Shira Glen."
"You are very joco," said John to me as I broke into a little laughof content with myself.
"It's the first time you ever charged me with jocosity, John," I said"I'm just kind of happy thinking."
"Yon spectacle behind us is not humorous to my notion," said he,"whatever it may be to yours. And perhaps the laugh may be on the otherside of your face before the night comes. We are here in a spider'sweb."
"I cry pardon for my lightness, John," I answered; "I'll have timeenough to sorrow over the clan of Argile. But if you had the Sight ofyour future, and it lay in other and happier scenes than these, wouldyou not feel something of a gaiety?"
He looked at me with an envy in every feature, from me to hiscompanions, from them to the country round about us, and then to himselfas to a stranger whose career was revealed in every rag of his clothing.
"So," said he; "you are the lucky man to be of the breed of the electof heaven, to get what you want for the mere desire of it, and perhapswithout deserve. Here am I at my prime and over it, and no glisk of thefuture before me. I must be ever stumbling on, a carouser of life in amirk and sodden lane."
"You cannot know my meaning," I cried.
"I know it fine," said he. "You get what you want because you are thebairn of content. And I'm but the child of hurry (it's the true word),and I must be seeking and I must be trying to the bitter end."
He kicked, as he walked, at the knolls of snow in his way, and lashed atthe bushes with a hazel wand he had lifted from a tree.
"Not all I want, perhaps," said I; "for do you know that fleeing thusfrom the disgrace of my countrymen, I could surrender every sorrow andevery desire to one notion about--about--about----"
"A girl of the middle height," said he, "and her name is----"
"Do not give it an utterance," I cried. "I would be sorry to breatheher name in such a degradation. Degradation indeed, and yet if I had thecertainty that I was a not altogether hopeless suitor yonder, I wouldfeel a conqueror greater than Hector or Gilian-of-the-Axe."
"Ay, ay," said John. "I would not wonder. And I'll swear that a manof your fate may have her if he wants her. I'll give ye my notion ofwooing; it's that with the woman free and the man with some style andboldness, he may have whoever he will."
"I would be sorry to think it," said I; "for that might apply to suitorsat home in Inneraora as well as me."
M'Iver laughed at the sally, and "Well, well," said he, "we are notgoing to be debating the chance of love on Leven-side, with days andnights of slinking in the heather and the fern between us and our home."
Though this conversation of ours may seem singularly calm and out of allharmony with our circumstances, it is so only on paper, for in fact ittook but a minute or two of our time as we walked down among those whinsthat inspired me with the peaceful premonition of the coming years. Wewere walking, the seven of us, not in a compact group, but scattered,and at the whins when we rested we sat in ones and twos behind thebushes, with eyes cast anxiously along the shore for sign of any craftthat might take us over.
What might seem odd to any one who does not know the shrinking mood ofmen broken with a touch of disgrace in their breaking, was that for longwe studiously said nothing of the horrors we had left behind us. Fivemen fleeing from a disastrous field and two new out of the clutches ofa conquering foe, we were dumb or discoursed of affairs very far removedfrom the reflection that we were a clan at extremities.
But we could keep up this silence of shame no longer than our running:when we sat among the whins on Leven-side, and took a breath andscrutinised along the coast, for sign of food or ferry, we must betalking of what we had left behind.
Gordon told the story with a pained, constrained, and halting utterance:of the surprise of Auchinbrcac when he heard the point of war from NevisGlen, and could not believe that Montrose was so near at hand; of thewaver ing Lowland wings, the slaughter of the Campbell gentlemen.
"We were in a trap," said he, drawing with a stick on the smooth snow adiagram of the situation. "We were between brae and water. I am no manof war, and my heart swelled at the spectacle of the barons cut downlike nettles. And by the most foolish of tactics, surely, a good many ofour forces were on the other side of the loch."
"That was not Auchinbreac's doing, I'll warrant," said M'Iver; "hewould never have counselled a division so fatal."
"Perhaps not," said the cleric, drily; "but what if a general has only asort of savage army at his call? The gentry of your clan----"
"What about MacCailein?" I asked, wondering that there was no word ofthe chief.
"Go on with your story," said M'Iver, sharply, to the cleric.
"The gentry of your clan," said Gordon, paying no heed to my query,"were easy enough to guide; but yon undisciplined kerns from the hillshad no more regard for martial law than for the holy commandments. Godhelp them! They went their own gait, away from the main body, plunderingand robbing."
"I would not just altogether call it plundering, nor yet robbing," saidJohn, a show of annoyance on his face.
"And I don't think myself," said Sonachan, removing, as he spoke, fromour side, and going to join the three others, who sat apart from us afew yards, "that it's a gentleman's way of speaking of the doings ofother gentlemen of the same name and tartan as ourselves."
"Ay, ay," said the minister, looking from one to the other of us, hisshaven jowl with lines of a most annoying pity on it--"Ay, ay," saidhe, "it would be pleasing you better, no doubt, to hint at no vice orfolly in your army; that's the Highlands for you! I'm no Highlander,thank God, or at least with the savage long out of me; for I'm of anhonest and orderly Lowland stock, and my trade's the Gospel and thetruth, and the truth you'll get from Alexander Gordon, Master of theArts, if you had your black joctilegs at his neck for it!"
He rose up, pursing his face, panting at the nostril, very crouse anddefiant in every way.
"Oh, you may just sit you down," said McIver, sharply, to him. "Youcan surely give us truth without stamping it down our throats with yourboots, that are not, I've noticed, of the smallest size."
"I know you, sir, from boot to bonnet," said Gordon.
"You're well off in your acquaintance," said M'Iver, jocularly. "I wishI kent so good a man."
"From boot to bonnet," said Gordon, in no whit abashed by the irony."Man, do you know," he went on, "there's a time comes to me now whenby the grace of God I can see to one's innermost as through a lozen. Ishudder, sometimes, at the gift. For there's the fair face, and there'sthe smug and smiling lip, and there's the flattery at the tongue,and below that masked front is Beelzebub himself, meaning wellsometimes--perhaps always--but by his fall a traitor first and last."
"God!" cried M'Iver, with a very ugly face, "that sounds awkwardly likea roundabout way of giving me a bad character."
"I said, sir," answered Gordon, "that poor Beelzebub does not sometimesken his own trade. I have no doubt that in your heart you are touched tothe finest by love of your fellows."
"And that's the truth--when they are not clerics," cried John.
"Touched to the finest, and set in a glow too, by a manly and unselfishact, and eager to go through this world on pleasant footings withyourself and all else."
"Come, come," I cried; "I know my friend well, Master Gordon. We are notall that we might be; but I'm grateful for the luck that brought me sogood a friend as John M'Iver."
"I never cried down his credit," said the minister, simply.
"Your age gives you full liberty," said John. "I would never lift ahand."
"The lifting of your hand," said the cleric with a flashing eye, "is thelast issue I would take thought of. I can hold my own. You are a fairand shining vessel (of a kind), but Beelzebub's at your heart. They tellme that people like you; this gentleman of Elrigmore claims you for hiscomrade. Well, well, so let it be! It but shows anew the charm of theglittering exterior: they like you for your weaknesses and not for your
strength. Do you know anything of what they call duty?"
"I have starved to the bone in Laaland without complaint, stood sixweeks on watch in Stralsund's Franken gate, eating my meals at my post,and John M'Iver never turned skirts on an enemy."
"Very good, sir, very good," said the minister; "but duty is most ill todo when it is to be done in love and not in hate."
"Damn all schooling!" cried John. "You're off in the depths of it again,and I cannot be after you. Duty is duty in love or hate, is it not?"
"It would take two or three sessions of St Andrews to show you that itmakes a great differ whether it is done in love or hate. You do yourduty by your enemy well enough, no doubt,--a barbarian of the blackestwill do no less,--but it takes the better man to do his duty sternly bythose he loves and by himself above all Argile----"
"Yes," cried I, "what about Argile?"
The minister paid no heed to my question.
"Argile," said he, "has been far too long flattered by you and yourlike, M'Iver."
"Barbreck," put in my comrade.
"Barbreck be it then. A man in his position thus never learns the truth.He sees around him but plausible faces and the truth at a cowardlycompromise. That's the sorrow of your Highlands; it will be the blackcurse of your chiefs in the day to come. As for me, I'm for duty firstand last--even if it demands me to put a rope at my brother's neck or myhand in the fire."
"Maybe you are, maybe you are," said John, "and it's very fine ofyou; and I'm not denying but I can fancy some admirable quality in thecharacter. But if I'm no great hand at the duty, I can swear to thelove."
"It's a word I hate to hear men using," said I.
The minister relaxed to a smile at John's amiability, and John smiled onme.
"It's a woman's word, I daresay, Colin," said he; "but there's noman, I'll swear, turning it over more often in his mind than yourself."
Where we lay, the Pap of Glencoe--Sgor-na-ciche, as they call it inthe Gaelic--loomed across Loch Leven in wisps of wind-blown grey.Long-beaked birds came to the sand and piped a sharp and anxious note,or chattered like children. The sea-banks floated on the water, risingand dipping to every wave; it might well be a dream we were in on theborderland of sleep at morning.
"What about Argile?" I asked again.
The minister said never a word. John Splendid rose to his feet, shookthe last of his annoyance from him, and cast an ardent glance to thoseremote hills of Lorn.
"God's grandeur!" said he, turning to the Gaelic it was proper touse but sparingly before a Saxon. "Behold the unfriendliness of thoseterrible mountains and ravines! I am Gaelic to the core, but give mein this mood of mine the flat south soil and the dip of the sky round abannock of country. Oh, I wish I were where Aora runs! I wish I saw thehighway of Loch Firme that leads down the slope of the sea where thetowns pack close together and fires are warm!" He went on and sang asong of the low country, its multitude of cattle, its friendly hearths,its frequented walks of lovers in the dusk and in the spring.
Sonachan and Ardkinglas and the tacksmen came over to listen, and theman with the want began to weep with a child's surrender.
"And what about Argile?" said I, when the humming ceased.
"You are very keen on that bit, lad," said the baron-bailie, smilingspitefully with thin hard lips that revealed his teeth gleaming whiteand square against the dusk of his face. "You are very keen on that bit;you might be waiting for the rest of the minister's story."
"Oh," I said, "I did not think there was any more of the minister's taleto come. I crave his pardon."
"I think, too, I have not much more of a story to tell," said theminister, stiffly.
"And I think," said M'Iver, in a sudden hurry to be off, "that we mightbe moving from here. The head of the loch is the only way for us if weare to be off this unwholesome countryside by the mouth of the night."
It is likely we would have taken him at his word, and have risen andgone on his way to the east, where the narrowing of the loch showed thatit was close on its conclusion; but the Stewart took from his knapsacksome viands that gave a frantic edge to our appetite and compelled us tostay and eat.
The day was drawing to its close, the sun, falling behind us, waspillowed on clouds of a rich crimson. For the first time, we noticed thesigns of the relaxation of the austere season in the return of bird andbeast to their familiar haunts. As the sun dipped the birds came outto the brae-side to catch his last ray, as they ever love to do. Whaupsrose off the sand, and, following the gleam upon the braes, ascendedfrom slope to slope, and the plover followed too, dipping his feetin the golden tide receding. On little fir-patches mounted numerousblackcock of sheeny feather, and the owls began to hoot in the woodbeyond.