The Men of the Moss-Hags

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  THE WELL-HOUSE OF EARLSTOUN.

  So as soon as the soldier was snugly housed with the servant lass, thetwo women came to me, where I sat at the back of the door of thewell-house. Chiefly I wanted to hear what had brought Maisie of theDuchrae so far from home as the house of Earlstoun. It seemed to betokensome ill befallen my good friends by the Grenoch water-side. But mymother stooped down and put her arms about me. She declared that shewould have me taken up to the west garret under the rigging, where, shesaid, none of the soldiers had ever been. But there I would in no wisego, for well I knew that so soon as she had me there, and a dozensoldiers between me and a dash for liberty, she would forthwith neverrest until she had me out again.

  Then the next idea was that I should go to the wattled platform on theoak, to which Sandy resorted; but I had fallen into a violent horror ofshaking and hot flushes alternating with deadly cold, so that to bidenight and day in the sole covert of a tree looked like my death.

  At last Maisie Lennox, who had a fine discernment for places ofconcealment in the old days when we two used to play at"Bogle-about-the-Stacks" at the Duchrae, cast an eye up at the roof ofthe well-house.

  "I declare, I think there is a chamber up there," she said, and stood amoment considering.

  "Give me an ease up!" she said quietly to my mother. She did everythingquietly.

  "How can there be such a place and I not know it?" said my mother. "HaveI not been about the tower these thirty years?"

  But Maisie thought otherwise of the matter, and without more ado she sether little feet in the nicks of the stones, which were rough-set likethe inside of a chimney.

  Then putting her palm flat above her, she pushed an iron-ringedtrap-door open, lifted herself level with it, and so disappeared fromour view. We could hear her groping above us, and sometimes littlestones and lime pellets fell tinkling into the well. So we remainedbeneath waiting for her report, and I hoped that it might not be long,for I felt that soon I must lay me down and die, so terrible was thetightness about my head.

  "There is a chamber here," she cried at last. "It is low in the riggingand part of the roof is broken towards the trees, but the ivy hides itand the hole cannot be seen from the house."

  "The very place! Well done, young lass!" said my mother--much pleased,even though she had not found it herself. For she was a remarkablewoman.

  Maisie looked over the edge.

  "Give me your hand?" she said.

  Now there is this curious thing about this lass ever since she was inshort coats, that she not only knew her own mind in every emergency, butalso compelled the minds of every one else. At that moment it seemed asnatural that I should obey her, and also for my mother to assist her, asif she had been a queen commanding obedience. Yet she hardly ever spokeabove her breath, and always rather as though she were venturing asuggestion. This is not what any one can ever learn. It is a naturalgift. Now there is my brother Sandy. He has a commanding way with himcertainly. He gets himself obeyed. But at what an expenditure of breath.You can hear him at the Mains of Barskeoch telling the lass to put onthe porridge pot. And he cannot get his feet wet and be needing a changeof stockings, without the Ardoch folk over the hill hearing all aboutit.

  But I am telling of the well-house.

  "Give me your hand," said the lass Maisie down from the trap-door. It isa strange thing that I never dreamed of disobeying. So I put out myhand, and in a trice I was up beside her.

  My mother followed us and we looked about. It was a little room and hadlong been given over to the birds. I marvelled much that in ouradventurous youth, Sandy and I had never lighted upon it. But I knew thereason to be that we had a wholesome dread of the well, having been tolda story about a little boy who tumbled into it in the act ofdisobedience and so was drowned. We heard also what had become of himafterwards, which discouraged us from the forbidden task of exploration.

  I think no one had been in the place since the joiners left it, for theshavings yet lay in the corner, among all that the birds and the wildbees had brought to it since.

  My mother stayed beside me while Maisie went to bring me a hot drink,for the shuddering grew upon me, and I began to have fierce pains in myback and legs. My mother told me how that the main guard of the soldiershad been a week away over in the direction of Minnyhive, all but asergeant's file that were left to keep the castle. To-day all these men,except the sentry, were down drinking at the change-house in theclachan, and not till about midnight would they come roaring home.

  She also told me (which I much yearned to know), that the Duchrae had atlast been turned out, and that old Anton had betaken himself to thehills. Maisie, his daughter, had come to the neighbourhood with MargaretWilson of Glen Vernock, the bright little lass from the Shireside whom Ihad first seen during my sojourn in Balmaghie. Margaret Wilson hadfriends over at the farm of Bogue on the Garpelside. Very kind to thehill-folk they were, though in good enough repute with the Government uptill this present time. From there Maisie Lennox had come up toEarlstoun, to tell my mother all that she knew of myself and my cousinWat. Then, because the two women loved to talk the one to the other, atEarlstoun she abode ever since, and there I found her.

  So in the well-house I remained day by day in safety all through mysickness.

  The chamber over the well was a fine place for prayer and meditation. Atfirst I thought that each turn of the sentry would surely bring him upthe trap-door with sword and musket pointed at me, and I had littlecomfort in my lodging. But gradually, by my falling to the praying andby the action of time and use, I minded the comings and goings of thesoldiers no more than those of the doves that came in to see me at thebroken part of the roof, and went out again with a wild flutter of theirwings, leaving a little woolly feather or two floating behind them.

  And often as I lay I minded me how I had heard Mr. Peden say at theConventicle that "the prayers of the saints are like to a fire which atfirst gives off only smoke and heat, but or all be done breaketh outinto a clear light and comfortable flame."

  These were times of great peace for us, when the soldiers and the younglairds that rode with them for the horsemanship part of it, went off ontheir excursions, and came not back till late at eventide, with many ofthe Glenkens wives' chuckies swinging head down at their saddle bows.