by John Buchan
“Murray,” cried Francis; “then he is recovered?”
“Recovered! Oh, in a fashion. The body still looks dwining, but that was aye a common thing with Master John when his plans went ill. He is in a lamenting, Lord-forgie-me kind o’ mood, and no the brisk crouse lad ye’ll probably have mind of. But there’s one thing that may interest you. He spoke sagaciously to me of the folly of the hale business, and to try him I affected surprise, declared I was wholly innocent, that the Government had no grip on me, that I would welcome the sight of a redcoat, and that I was out here on the muirs for my health. He got as thrawn as Satan. ‘Ye’re muckle mistaken, Simon,’ says he. ‘The law has terrible long fingers, and can lay its hand even on you.’ It was easy seen what he meant, and ye ken now the way the wind blaws.”
“But the man may not be taken. There’s every chance that he may win to France, where he’ll be free from any temptation to hurt you. The man’s young, and as likely to escape as any.”
“So, so,” said Lovat, drily. “That is true enough if Mr. Murray o’ Broughton were willing to let Providence take His ain way with him. But what think ye o’ our gentleman going to meet the pursuit and give himself up to justice?”
“And turn a traitor?” said Francis, in amazement.
“Ay, just that,” said the old lord, “and become one o’ the fingers on the hand o’ the Law that he’s aye craikin’ about. For our gentleman’s game will be like this. Barisdale, Clanranald, and the others gang north and west. Mr. Murray gangs south under pretence of finding shelter in the Appin country. But at the first chance he is south of the Forth, in his ain house of Brochtoun, where the Government finds him, a melancholy man, lamenting his pitiful follies. What can they do wi’ such a penitent but take him into favour, and in the course of private conversation it comes out that he had a bit scrawl that incriminates a great Highland lord whom they have long been seeking. So Mr. Murray gets a free pardon, and this Highland lord, if they lay hands on him, will even get his heid chappit off;” and he laughed wildly.
Francis’ face was hot with dismay. “Forgive me, my lord,” he cried, “if I have been the cause of your peril.”
“Nay, Francis, I dinna blame ye. Indeed it is me that has to ask your pardon, for I have been an ill companion on these traivels. But now I can at least die with a clean hand and a proud heart. It shall never be said that a Fraser, though feeble and stricken in years, was feared o’ the hale black gang o’ them. In utrumque paratus,” he quoted with inimitable gusto, “seu versare dolis, seu certæ occumbere morti.”
Francis went to bed, but not to sleep. The image of the savage, heroic old man, his hypocrisy discarded, fronting death with equanimity, was burned on his mind. A fierce anger against Murray possessed him, and as he thought of what one proud woman would think of such conduct, and all the misery which awaited her, he groaned in bitterness of spirit. But his wits were clearer, now he had a plainer duty before him, something which an active man might effect without presumption. Above all, now was his task more closely connected with her who had been his task-mistress. Henceforth he wrought for her direct, palpable good.
In the grey misty morning Lovat was wakened by the young man standing at his bedside.
“I have come to make my farewells, my lord, for it is time for me to be off.”
“Are you like the rest then, Francis, and leave the sinking ship?”
“You know well enough to the contrary, my lord. I go to seek the Secretary.”
“Good lad,” said Lovat, “but how will you find him? I ken nothing of his road save that he went south by Appin.”
“Then I will go to Appin, and maybe I will get word of him there.”
“And then, when ye get him?...”
“Why, then,” said Francis, “Mr. Murray and I will have words, and a certain bit of paper will find its way to my pocket, or I will ken the reason why.”
“It’s a great plan, Francis,” cried the old man, “and God speed your hand. Shake the tod weel, once for me and once for yoursel’ and once for his leddy wife. If I never see ye again in this world, I’ll see ye in ...”
But the place was empty, and Francis was gone.
CHAPTER XIV. How Mr. Francis Came to the Lowlands Once More.
At this point the industrious narrator passes from a sober tale into the realms of wild romance. Nor can he help himself. For take a wild young lad, or rather a serious man still in his youth, whose mind has been strung high by vain enthusiasms, who is spurred by a desperate hope. Conceive such an one to have climbed with difficulty the first steps of the ladder of virtue, to have curbed his mad fervours, to have bowed before the eternal commonplaces of love and duty, to have found himself in a difficult and unmanly place, and now at last to have a faint chance of great deeds. Suppose him strong in body — for the week in Lovat’s hut had restored him — give him a plain task, a sword at his side, not a word of Gaelic, the mistiest notion of the hill-country, and burning cause for speed — and you will find that he will run into many stone walls ere he pass the Highland line.
With Lovat’s directions he came to the Linnhe coast and met no mishap. The way had been a terrible toil over a birk-clad moorland and bare scarps of slaty hill. Finding some poor fishermen on the beach, he slept the night in their hut, giving them a piece of Lovat’s money in payment for the oatcake and dried fish which they put before him. The men were honest and considered the payment ample, for they took him aboard the lugger and set down the loch to one of the long water-arms which run into the east. He repeated the name Appin, at which they nodded to the beach; and when he found himself ashore he comprehended their gestures, recalled the old lord’s directions, and realised that this was indeed Appin. That night he slept on the moor in a ditch among heather, and at daybreak was on his way in a pleasing land of green valleys, where the smell of salt hung over bent and tussock. By the afternoon he had come to the house which he had been bidden to seek, the house of John Roy Stewart, called sometimes John Howglass and sometimes John of the Hairy Legs. The man was kin to the Fraser, and — what was far above pedigree — had some little English. When Francis had eaten his fill and slept heavily for some hours, he put the question to his host.
“Murray?” cried the man, “Murray never came here, though he sent a man to beg from me while he was hiding by the Leven Loch. That was a week syne. Murray darena show his face in Appin, for ten years back he had a kind o’ bicker wi’ Ardshiel, and it’s kenned that the Drummonds canna thole him. Faith, it would be a back-cast of the Lord’s hand that sent Murray to Appin, and Sim maun be failing in mind or he would have had the sense to ken that.”
“It was Murray’s own word,” said Francis.
“And Sim believed him! Dinna tell me that! Na, na, your gentleman will be skelping lang ere this ower Balwhidder braes, and he’ll soon be casting his coat in his ain house of Brochtoun. That’s to say, if ye read him richt, but I confess I had a juster opinion of the man.”
“If he’s gone south, then south I must go,” said Francis.
His host propounded to him a choice of roads: He might go south by the Campbells’ country, take a chance of a ferry over the lochs, and come to the right shore of the Clyde above Dumbarton. Thence lay a level ride to Broughton in a quiet land among Whiggish countrymen. Or he might go straight through the wilds of Awe to the young streams of Forth and enter the Lowlands by Lennox or Lanark. Francis chose the first, and so all the next day he strode through the green country of Appin in a land channelled with bright streams and ever filled with the noise and scents of the sea. Few of the people had been out; but it was a miracle that he passed unchallenged, for the place was watched jealously by its neighbours of Lorn, seeing that of old Campbell had been at war with Stewart. At night he came to a herd’s dwelling on a lonely hill, where his path turned inland. The man gladly kept him the night on the mention of John Howglass, but again it was a monotonous feast of silence, where he sat and smiled into the eyes of a friendly tangled giant.
; The weather still kept calm and blue as he struck the next morning into the remoter deserts. Twenty miles straight by the south-east wind, John Roy had said, and he would come to the sea. But Francis had little hillcraft, and it may be that the twenty became forty ere he looked down on a dark sea-loch, sleeping between strait mountain walls. All day he had met not a soul, save that an hour before midday he had seen two figures on the skyline of a hill at the head of the glen in which he patiently stumbled. They, too, seemed to have caught sight of him, for instantly the place became void. This was the one warning he got that he was in a country of war; but he was puffed up by the ease with which he had won thus far, and forgot the thing the minute after.
Ere he came to the shore he learned the moral of the figures on the hill-top. As he slipped heavily from rock to rock down one of the shallow corries which dropped on the sea, a bullet suddenly sang by his ear and bored into a bank of sand. He had the sense to lie prone in the stream and pray that the shot might have been intended for other game than himself. But the noise of feet on the stones spoiled his hopes; he was too footsore to run; so he surrendered helplessly to three ragged men who leaped on him from above. One who had some words of English asked, “What ta devils he was crossing ta Cruart Vhan so hot-foot;” but Francis’ reply sounded deeps of language unknown to him, and all that was left was to hurry the unhappy captive along the hill-face, till his arms seemed torn from their sockets with rough handling.
How long and how far he went he soon lost the power to guess. His shoes were filled with small sharp stones which galled him severely. He struggled to prevail upon his guides to slacken pace, but their only reply was deep, convulsive laughter. At last their path was barred by a deep glen down which a salmon stream roared to the Firth. At its foot was a rude fisherman’s hut, — a few stakes and boulders with a simple roof of turf, — which seemed to be the goal of the violent journey. At the door stood a very great personage, dressed in plain Lowland garb, save for a magnificent scarlet hat which surmounted a very well-kept periwig. The three men greeted him with the most abject reverence, and pushing Francis forward left him to explain the posture of affairs.
“And who may you be, sir?” said the great man, tapping a snuff-box and looking with disfavour at the three dirty Highlanders.
“I have yet to know by whose orders I am held prisoner,” said Francis, “and who it is that has the right to ask me.”
“Hoity, toity,” said the man, “heard ye ever the like? Are ye aware, sir, that this is the Campbell country, and that I am the Duke’s own cousin? Do ye ken, sir, that the Campbells, serving as they do the lawful king, have a warrant to search these hills for any members of the disaffected clans or Lowland rebels who may be lurking there? And ye question my right!”
“I ask your pardon, my lord,” said Francis, with diplomacy. “I am glad indeed to find allies in a good work. I am at present in pursuit of a notorious Jacobite, one John Murray of Broughton, who is known to have come from Appin southward through this very country; and if you can enable me to lay hands on him I will be everlastingly your lordship’s debtor.”
The man was vastly flattered by the tone — still more by the tide.
“Then it is my part to ask your pardon for the unseemly conduct of my poor people, Mr. — —”
“Birkenshaw,” said Francis, speaking the truth at random.
“And if it turns out to be as you say, and I doubt not it will, I will aid you with all my heart. Meantime I must beg your company to sup on such poor fare as is here provided. My uncle of Inverforth will be here in three hours’ time, and he will explain matters to you more fully.”
“Three hours’ grace,” thought Francis, for before Inverforth he must stand unmasked, seeing that he had no tale to meet the ear of one who had been at Culloden and was famed as the bitterest foe of the Prince’s in the land. Before three hours’ time he must give this gaudy gentleman the slip, and with the help of Providence put the loch between himself and his pursuers. He had noticed a boat on the beach; if he could but reach it, he was safe. Once over the water and he was not far from the confines of settled country, if he minded John Roy’s words aright.
They supped daintily on fresh-caught salmon, hill mutton, and some bottles of foreign wine which the man fetched from a store in the hut. The Campbell talked volubly on a score of subjects, as if glad to find one less barbarous than the hill-men to listen to his elegant talk. Francis humoured him as far as he was able, and bandied the names of great folk to his own admiration. Three several scandals linked with the name of Lord Craigforth did he invent on the spur of the moment, and tell to the greedy ears of his companion. He had to listen in turn to many weary recitals of slights and successes, of days in Edinburgh and London where it seemed that Mr. Campbell had played a great part, and a minute account of the interminable Campbell pedigree. Meantime he feigned exceeding interest and a growing fuddledom. His cheeks flushed and he rubbed his eyes, blinking. Then he complained of the heat, and the effect of wine on one who had been so long without it, paying a compliment to the strong head of the other. He wound up with a request for a second’s walk in the open. “I am somewhat confused with my long journey and the strength of the Bordeaux. Three turns on the heather will set me right, so I beg of you to excuse me.”
Mr. Campbell, himself approaching hilarity, was graciously pleased, and in a second Francis was on the moor and out of sight of the gillies. The loch lay purple-black, for the night was moonless, but a line of pale light marked where the stream entered and the boat lay moored. A minute, and he was there, feeling for the chain and the stone to which it was fastened. To his chagrin the thing was padlocked, and passed through a stout ring of iron in the boat’s stern. He searched for a weak spot but found none, nor could he move the great stone which did duty for an anchor. Despair seized him, and he tore at the thing like a madman. The ring creaked, then as the tugging grew fiercer the stern planks shivered, till at last the wood gave and he found himself sprawling with the chain in his hand and a ragged end of timber encircling the ring. The noise was loud enough to be heard across the loch, so in a fright he scrambled into the boat and put out the oars.
He could hear men come crying from the hut as he shot into the blackness. If this were the only boat, he was safe enough; but he dare not risk the nearest point of the far shore, but drew down the water as he guessed its direction. The mountains rose wall-like in inscrutable night, towering into the blacker arch of the high heavens. He scarce could see the tips of his oars, scarcely the murky water beneath; he felt like one entering into a fantastic land without law or limit; and yet he was no more weary, but extraordinarily light and active. Then he heard in his wake the clear splash of oars; the gillies must have found another boat and be giving chase. He was hailed in strident Gaelic by some angry man, and then the world was quiet save for the monotonous sound of rowing. Francis grew perfectly cheerful. Often on the Fife coast had he played at this game — on an angry firth and not on a placid, land-locked sea. He could tell that the boat behind was not gaining, for though there seemed to be two men at the oars, it must be heavier and coble-shaped, whereas his was an elegant pleasure-boat.
But as the minutes passed and the chase continued he began to cast about for a refuge. If he turned into the shore, they would follow; and now, as his arms grew sore, he could not hope to put such a distance between them and himself as would suffer him to land unnoticed. His wits failed him, and he could think of nothing. Wild schemes of upsetting his boat and swimming ashore flitted across his mind, but a remembrance of the width of the loch as seen by daylight warned him to prudence. Even in darkness his pursuers could track him easily by the sound, so he could not hope to baffle them by any ruse of turning. Suddenly, to his delight, a chance arose for his salvation. The outline of a ship all blurred with night leaped up on his left, apparently not more than twenty yards away. Here was a case for neck or nothing. With a moment’s thought he kicked off his shoes, tossed the oars into the water, and dived ov
erboard, and a minute later was clambering up the bowsprit of the vessel.
He ran down from the bows to the deck-house, picking his way amid a multitude of ropes and bales. The door was shut, but a light came through the foot, so without parleying he opened. A man sat alone at a table, working out some figures and sweating with the toil.
“Francis Birkenshaw!” he cried in amazement, as he saw his visitor.
Francis stared; then “Andra Gordiestoun” he stammered, in open-mouthed surprise.
“So ye’ve taken to this trade,” said the captain, sourly. “I suppose ye will be for him they ca’ the Chevalier.”
“Indeed I am,” said Francis.
“I micht have jaloused it. Ye were a blagyird in the auld toun o’ Dysart, and it’s no like ye’d be convertit on the Hieland hills.”
“There’s a boatful o’ men behind me,” said Francis. “Are you minded to give me up?”
“To be sure I am,” said the man. “I am a decent supporter o’ the King — God bless him, — and I’ll hae nae rinaway Jaicobites on my vessel.”
At the moment there came a great crying from the bows, as the pursuers came up with the deserted boat and the moored ship. The men hailed the captain in their scanty English, and Francis sat down despairingly to await the issue. The conversation — heard in snatches — was of a kind to cheer and surprise him. For the captain argued, first, that no man had come aboard; secondly, that if one had, it was no business of theirs; and, thirdly, that they might be damned for a set of dirty Highland beggars, and, if they stayed longer, he would rouse his men and send them and their boat to a better place. Which last point — and the gestures and tone which accompanied its deliverance — was found so convincing that the party retired in haste.