The Men of the Moss-Hags

  CHAPTER XVI.

  THE GREY MOWDIEWORT.

  But by this time I was shaking like a leaf for fear, together with thethought of what I had done in the taking of life, and the sending of myfellow-creatures to their account. Also the tears came hopping down mycheek, which is ever the effect that fighting has on me. Yet in spite ofthis weakness Wat shook me again by the hand, and said only:

  "You are a man!"

  Notwithstanding, I was not cheered, but continued to greet like a bairn,only quietly, though I was grateful for his words, and took them notill.

  Then Walter Gordon went forward to the dead men, and turned them over,looking at each but saying no word. Lastly he went to the little stoutman whom I had shot in the shoulder. As he looked in his face, fromwhich the mask had fallen aside, he started so greatly that he almostleaped bodily in the air.

  "William, William," he cried, "by the King's head, we must run for it.This is not a 'horning' but a hanging job. _'Tis the Duke of Wellwoodhimself._"

  Greatly startled at the name of the great Privy Councillor and favouriteof the King, I went and looked. The man's face had fallen clear of thevelvet mask with which it had been hidden, and looked livid and greyagainst the snow in the moon's uncertain light. But it was indeed theDuke, for I had often seen him going to the Parliament in his state anddignity, but there in the snow he looked inconceivably mean, dirty andsmall.

  "It's a' by wi' the estate noo, Walter," I said. "You and me maun tak'the heather like the lave."

  So saying, I snatched up the head wrapped in the plaid, which I hadalmost forgotten, and called him to come on. For we were on theoutskirts of the waste ground called the King's hunting parks, and couldget directly away without passing a house.

  But Walter was determined to return and see his mother, lest otherwisethe horror of the news might take her unawares. Walter was ever hismother's boy, and I think his undutiful conduct that night now went hardwith him, seeing how the affair had turned out.

  I argued with him that it was the maddest ploy thus to go back. Hislodgings would certainly be searched as soon as the Duke was found, andthe two who had escaped should return to assist the watch. But I couldnot overcome his determination. He had another plan to set against mine.

  "There is a vault hereabout that I used to hide in as a boy. Silly folkssay that it is haunted. But indeed there be few that know of it. You canbide there and wait till I come."

  So we went thither, and found the place commodious enough indeed, butdamp and unkindly. It was situate by the chapel wall, but of late yearsit has been much filled up with rubbish since the pulling down of theChapel Royal by the mob in the riots of the Revolution year.

  Yet even at that time it was not a place I had any stomach for. I hadliefer have been going decently to my bed in my lodgings in the WestBow--as indeed at that moment I should, but for that daft heathercat ofa cousin of mine, with whose gallantries, for my sins, I thus foundmyself saddled.

  So he went off upon his errand, leaving me alone; and I hardly looked tosee him again, for I made sure that the guard would arrest him or everhe had gone a hundred yards. It was little that I could do in thatsorrowful place. But I unwrapped the poor head I had brought with me,and put it with reverence in the farthest corner of the dismal den. ThenI retired to an angle to wait, wrapping my plaid about me for warmth;for the night had fallen colder, as it ever does after the ceasing of astorm.

  I had time and to spare then for thinking upon my folly, and how I haddamaged the cause that I had so nearly gained by my unlucky interferencein Walter's vanities. It came to me that now of a certainty bothEarlstoun and Lochinvar must pass wholly away from the Gordons, and webecome attainted and landless like the red Gregors. And indeed Kenmuir'scase was not much better.

  So I wore the weary night away, black dismal thoughts eating like cankerworms at my heart. How I repented and prayed, no man knows. For that isthe young man's repentance--after he has eaten the sour fruit, to praythat he may not have the stomach-ache.

  Yet being Galloway-born, I had also in me the fear of the unseen, whichfolks call superstition. And it irked me more than all other fears tohave to bide all the night (and I knew not how much longer) in thathorrible vault.

  It seems little enough to some, only to abide all night in a place wherethere is nothing but quiet bones of dead men. But, I warrant you, it isthe burgher folk, who have never lain anywhere but bien and cosy intheir own beds at home that are the boldest in saying this.

  So the night sped slowly in that horrid tomb. I watched the whitemoonbeams spray over the floor and fade out, as the clouds swept clearor covered the moon's face. I listened to every sough of the wind, witha fear lest the clanking halberts of the watch should be in it. Thesound of a man walking far away made me hear in fantasy the grounding oftheir axe-shafts as they surrounded my place of concealment. It is badenough to have one's conscience against one, but when conscience isreinforced by a well-grounded fear of the hangman's rope, then the casegrows uncouth indeed.

  Yet in spite of all I think I slept a little. For once I waked and sawthe moon, red and near the setting, shining through a great round holein the end of the vault, and that so brightly that I seemed to see motesdancing in its light as in a hay-loft in the summer season.

  But that was not the worst of it. In my dream my eyes followed thedirection of the broad beam, and lo! they fell directly on the poorblackened head of him that had once been John Gordon of Lochinvar. Thesuns and rains had not dealt kindly with him, and now the face lookedlike nothing earthly, as I saw it in the moonlight of the ugsome vault.I could have screamed aloud, for there seemed to be a frown on the browand a writhed grin on the mouth that boded me irksome evils to come.

  Now half a dozen times I have resolved to leave out of my tale, thatwhich I then saw happen in my dream of the night. For what I am about torelate may not meet with belief in these times, when the power of Satanis mercifully restrained; and when he can no longer cast his glamourieover whom he will, but only over those who, like witch-wives and others,yield themselves up to him as his willing subjects.

  But I shall tell plainly what, in the moonlight, seemed to me to befalin my dream-sleep.

  It appeared then to me that I was staring at the blackened head, withsomething rising and falling in my throat like water in a sobbing well,when the ground slowly stirred in the corner where the head lay, andeven as I looked, a beast came forth--a grey beast with four legs, butblind of eye like a grey mowdiewort, which took the head between itsforepaws and rocked it to and fro as a mother rocks a fretful bairn,sorrowing over it and pitying it. It was a prodigy to see the eyeslooking forth from the bone-sockets of the head. Then the beast left itagain lying by its lone and went and digged in the corner. As themoonlight swept across, broad and slow, through the loud beating of myheart, I heard the grey mowdiewort dig the hole deeper and yet deeper.Now the thing that made me fullest of terror was not the digging of thebeast, but the manner of its throwing out the earth, which was notbehind it as a dog does, but in front, out of the pit, as a sexton thatdigs a grave.

  Then, ere the moonbeams quite left it and began to climb the wall, Iseemed to see the beast roll the black Thing to the edge and cover itup, drawing the earth over it silently. After that, in my fantasy, itseemed to look at me. I heard the quick patter of its feet, and with acry of fear I started up to flee, lest the beast should come towardsme--and with that I knew no more.