The Men of the Moss-Hags

  CHAPTER XIV.

  THE THING THAT FELL FROM TRAITOR'S GATE.

  The Lady Lochinvar stood a moment still by the fire, listening, her handraised as if to command silence. Then she ran to the door like a younglass, with a light foot and her hand on her heart. The steps camefainter up the stair, and in another moment we heard the clang of theouter door.

  My lady turned to me.

  "Have you your pistols by you?" she whispered in a hoarse and angryvoice, clutching me by the lapels of my coat. "Go, man! Go, follow him!He rushes to his death. And he is all that I have. Go and save him!"

  She that had fleeched with her son, like a dove succouring its young,laid harshly her commands upon me.

  "I am no fighter, aunt," I said. "What protection can I be to WalterGordon, the best sworder in Edinburgh town this night from Holyrood tothe Castle?"

  My lady looked about her as one that sees a stealthy enemy approach. Herhand trembled as she laid it on my arm.

  "What avails good swordsmanship, when one comes behind and one before,as in my dream I saw them do upon my Walter, out of the house of my LordWellwood. They came upon him and left him lying on the snow.--Ah, go,dear cousin William!" she said, breaking into a sharp cry of entreatylest I should fail her. "It is you that can save him. But let him notsee you follow, or it will make him more bitter against me. For if youcannot play with the sword, you can shoot with the pistol; so I haveheard, and they tell me that no one can shoot so truly as thou. Theywould not let thee shoot at Kirkcudbright for the Siller Gun though thouart a burgess, because it were no fair game. Is it not true?"

  And so she stroked and cuitled me with flattery till I declare I purredlike our Gib cat. I had begun there and then to tell her of my prowess,but that she interrupted me.

  "He goes toward the High Street. Hasten up the South Wynd, and you willovertake him yet ere he comes out upon the open road."

  She thrust two pistols into my belt, which I laid aside again, havingmine own more carefully primed with me, to the firing of which my handwas more accustomed--and that to a marksman is more than half thebattle.

  When I reached the street the wildness of the night justified myprophecy. The snow was falling athwart the town in broad wet flakes,driving flat against the face with a splash, before a gusty westerlywind that roared among the tall lums of the steep-gabled houses--a mostuncomfortable night to run the risk of getting a dirk in one's ribs.

  I saw my cousin before me, linking on carelessly through the snow withhis cloak about his ears and his black-scabbard rapier swinging at hisheels.

  But I had to slink behind backs like a Holyrood _dyvour_--a bankruptgoing to the Sanctuary, jooking and cowering craftily in the lee-sideshadow of the houses. For though so wild a night, it was not very dark.There was a moon up there somewhere among the smother, though she couldnot get so much as her nose through the wrack of banked snow-cloud whichwas driving up from the west. Yet Wat could have seen me very black onthe narrow strip of snow, had he ever once thought of looking over hisshoulder.

  But Wat the Wullcat of Lochinvar was not the one to look behind him whenhe strode on to keep tryst. I minded his bitter reckless words to hismother, "Heaven and hell shall not make me break my tryst to-night!" NowHeaven was shut out by the storm and the tall close-built houses, andWalter Gordon had an excellent chance of standing a bout with the otherplace.

  No doubt my Lady Wellwood bided at the window and looked out for him tocome to her through the snow. And I that had for common no thought oflass or lady, cannot say that I was without my own envying that the loveof woman was not for me. Or so at least I thought at that time, even asI shielded my eyes under my bonnet and drave through the snow with thepistols loose in my belt. But Wat of Lochinvar walked defiantly throughthe black storm with a saucy swing in his carriage, light and careless,which I vouch drew my heart to him as if I had been a young girl. I hadgiven ten years of my life if just so I could have taken the eyes ofwomen.

  As clear as if I had listened to the words, I could hear him saying overwithin himself the last sentence he had used in the controversy with hismother--"Heaven and hell shall not cause me to break my tryst to-night!"

  Alack! poor lad, little understood he the resources of either. For hehad yet to pass beneath Traitor's' Gate.

  For once the narrow High Street of Edinburgh was clean andwhite--sheeted down in the clinging snow that would neither melt norfreeze, but only clung to every joint, jut, stoop, and step of thehouse-fronts, and clogged in lumps on the crockets of the roof. The windwrestled and roared in great gusts overhead in the black, uncertain,tumultuous night. Then a calm would come, sudden as a curtain-drop inthe play-house, and in the hush you could hear the snow sliddering downoff the high-pitched roofs of tile. The light of the moon also came invarying wafts and flickers, as the wind blew the clouds alternatelythicker and thinner across her face.

  Now I felt both traitor and spy as I tracked my cousin down the brae.Hardly a soul was to be seen, for none loves comfort more than anEdinburgh burgher. And none understands his own weather better. The snowhad swept ill-doer and well-doer off the street, cleaner than ever didthe city guard--who, by the way, were no doubt warming their frozen toesby the cheerful fireside in some convenient house-of-call.

  So meditating, for a moment I had almost forgotten whither we weregoing.

  Before us, ere I was aware, loomed up the battlements and turrets of theNetherbow. 'Twas with a sudden stound of the heart, that I rememberedwhat it was that ten months and more ago had been set up there. But I amsure that, sharp-set on his love matter, like a beast that huntsnose-down on a hot trail, Wat Gordon had no memory for the decorationsof the Netherbow. For he whistled as he went, and stuck his hand deeperinto the breast of his coat. The moon came out as I looked, and for amoment, dark and grisly against the upper brightness, I saw that row oftraitors' heads which the city folk regarded no more in their coming andgoing, than the stone gargoyles set in the roof-niches of St. Giles.

  But as soon as Wat went under the blackness of the arch, there came sofierce a gust that it fairly lifted me off my feet and dashed me againstthe wall. Overhead yelled all the mocking fiends of hell, ridingslack-rein to a new perdition. The snow swirled tormented, and wrappedus both in its grey smother. Hands seemed to pull at me out of thedarkness, lifted me up, and flung me down again on my face in the smoorof the snow. A great access of fear fell on me. As the gust overpassed,I rose, choked and gasping. Overhead I could hear the mighty blast goroaring and howling away among the crags and rocks of Arthur's Seat.

  Then I arose, shook the snow from my dress, glanced at the barrels andcocks of my pistols to see that they were not stopped with snow, andstepped out of the angle of the Bow to look after my cousin. To my utterastonishment, he was standing within four feet of me. He held some darkthing in his hand, and stared open-mouthed at it, as one demented.Without remembering that I had come out at my lady's bidding to followWat Gordon secretly, I stepped up to him till I could look over hisshoulder.

  "Walter!" I said, putting my hand on his arm.

  But he never minded me in the least, nor yet appeared surprised to findme there. Only a black and bitter horror sat brooding on his soul.

  He continued to gaze, fascinated, at the dark thing in his hand.

  "GOD--GOD--GOD!" he sobbed, the horror taking him short in the throat."Will, do you see THIS?"

  Such abject terror never have I heard before nor since in the utteranceof any living man.

  "Do you see This?" he said. "See what fell at my feet as I came throughthe arch of the Bow upon mine errand! The wind brought it down."

  Above the moon pushed her way upwards, fighting hard, breasting thecloud wrack like a labouring ship.

  Her beams fell on the dark Thing in Wat Gordon's hand.

  "GREAT GOD!" he shouted again, his eyes starting from their sockets, "ITIS MINE OWN FATHER'S HEAD!"

  And above us the fitful, flying winds nichered and laughed like mockingfiends.

  It was true. I t
hat write, saw it plain. I held it in this very hand. Itwas the head of Sir John of Lochinvar, against whom, in the last fray,his own son had donned the war-gear. Grizzled, black, the snow cleavingghastly about the empty eye-holes, the thin beard still stragglingsnow-clogged upon the chin--it was his own father's head that had fallenat Walter Gordon's feet, and which he now held in his hand.

  Then I remembered, with a shudder of apprehension, his own words solately spoken--"Heaven and hell shall not cause me to break my trystto-night."

  Walter Gordon stood rooted there, dazed and dumb-foundered, with theThing in his hand. His fine lace ruffles touched it as the wind blewthem.

  I plucked at him.

  "Come," I said, "haste you! Let us bury it in the Holyrood ere the moongoes down."

  Thus he who boasted himself free of heaven and hell, had his trystbroken by the Thing that fell from the ghastly gate on which thetraitors' heads are set in a row. And that Thing was the head of thefather that begat him.