CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE BOWER OF THE STAR.
Day by day I tended him as gently as I could, till in the cave ourprovisions were well-nigh spent. Then, one grey morning I took my pistolto go out on the hillside to see if I could shoot aught to eat. Butbecause of my nervousness, or other cause, I could at that time donothing. Indeed, not so much as a whaup came near me on that great,wide, dappled hill.
I saw a hill fox rise and run. He was a fine beast and very red, andheld his tail nobly behind him like a flag. But, hardly beset as wewere, we could with difficulty have eaten fox, even had I been able toshoot him, which I was not.
The day passed slowly, the night came, and it went sore to my heart thatI was able to do so little for the friend of one I loved. I saw that hewould have mended readily enough, if he had received the rightnutriment, which, alas! it seemed far out of my power to obtain. Yet inthe morning, when I went to the mouth of the cave, lo! there,immediately to the right of me, on a bare place, were two great whaupeggs, broad-buttocked and splashed with black. I never was gladder tosee food. It was late for the whaups to be breeding; and, indeed, theyhad mostly left the moorland by that time. But, nevertheless, it wasmanifest that Providence had bidden some bird, perhaps disappointed ofan earlier brood or late mated, to come and lay the eggs before ourdoor.
I bade Anton take the eggs by the ancient method of sucking--which hemade shift to do, and was very greatly strengthened thereby. So everymorning as long as we remained there, the wild bird laid an egg in themorning, which made the Covenanter's breakfast. This is but one of thedaily marvels from the Lord which attended our progress. For whensoeverthose that have been through the perilous time come together, theyrecount these things to one another, and each has his like tale ofpreservation and protection to tell.
But that minds me of a strange thing. Once during the little while whenI companied with the Compellers, it was my hap to meet with clatteringJohn Crichton, that rank persecutor. And what was my surprise to hearthat all his talk ran upon certain providential dreams he had had in thenight time, by which there was revealed to him the hiding place of manyof the "fanatics." Aye, and even the very place pointed out to him inthe dream where it would be most convenient to compass their capturing.And this in due time he brought about, or said he did. But, for allthat, I do not think that the company he was among set great store byhis truthfulness. For after each wondrous story of adventure andsecond-sight they would roar with laughter, and say: "Well done,Crichton! Out with another one!"
After a day or two of this lack of food, it came suddenly to me what adumbhead I was, to bide with an empty belly in a place where at leastthere must be plenty of fish near at hand. So I rose early from off mybed of heather tops, and betook me down to the river edge. It is nothingbut a burn which they call the Eglin Lane, a long, bare water, slow andpeaty, but with some trout of size in it. Also from the broads of LochMacaterick, there came another burn with clearer sparkling water andmuch sand in the pools. There were trout in both, as one might see bystealing up to the edge of the brow and looking over quickly. But owingto the drought, there was water only in the pools of Eglin, and oftenbut the smallest trickle beneath the stones.
I had a beauty out in a few moments; for so eager was I that I leapedinto the burn just as I was, without so much as waiting to take off anyof my garments. So in the pool there was a-rushing and a-chasing till Ihad him out on the grass, his speckled sides glinting bonny on theheather as he tossed himself briskly from side to side. I followed theburn down to the fork of the water that flows from Loch Macaterick, andfished all the pools in this manner. By that time I had enough for threemeals at the least; or perhaps, considering the poor state of ourappetites, for more than that. I put those we should not want that dayinto a pretty little fish-pond, which makes a kind of backwater on oneof the burns springing down from the side of the Rig of the Star. Andthis was the beginning of the fish-pond which continued to supply uswith food all the time we abode there.
While I was in the river bottom, it chanced that I looked up the greatsmooth slopes of the opposite hill, which is one of the range of Kells.
There is a little shaggy clump of trees on the bare side of it, and Icould have sworn that among the trees I saw people stirring.
I could only think that the people there were wanderers like ourselves,or else spies sent to keep an eye on this wide, wild valley between theGarryhorn hill and the Spear of the Merrick.
So I came back to the cave no little dashed in spirit, in spite of mygreat successes with the trout. I said nothing about what I had seen toAuld Anton, for he was both weak and feverish. And though certainlymending, he was not yet able to move out into the sunshine and lie amongthe bracken, a thing which would have done him much good on these stillwarm days.
But I made a fire with heather and the roots of ancient trees, which inthat strange wild desert stick out of the peat at every step. There Iroasted the trout, of which Anton Lennox ate heartily. I think they hadmore relish to a sick man's palate than whaup eggs, even though thesecame to him as it were in a miraculous manner; while I had guddled thetrout with my boots and breeks on.
When the meal was over, I bethought me that I should make an excuse, andsteal away over to the side of the Meaull, to see what it might be thatwas stirring on that lonely brae-face. For save the scraggy scrunts ofthe rowan trees and birks that surround the cave, there was not a treewithin sight, till the woods at the upper end of Loch Doon began to takethe sun.
I carefully charged my pistols and told Anton how I proposed to go outto shoot mountain hares or other victual that I could see.
He did not say a word to bid me stay, but only advised me to keep veryclose to the cave. Because, once off the bosky face of the cliff, therewas no saying what hidden eyes might spy me out. For Lag, he said, wascertainly lying in hold at Garryhorn at that time, and Claverhousehimself was on the borders of the country. Concerning this last I knewbetter than he, and was much desirous that we could get Anton wellenough to move further out of the reach of his formidable foes.
I started just when the heated haze of the afternoon was clearing withthe first early-falling chill of even. The hills were casting shadowsupon each other towards the Dungeon and Loch Enoch, where, in thewildest and most rugged country, some of the folk of the wilderness werein hiding.
As I went I heard the grey crow croak and the muckle corbie cry "Glonk,"somewhere over by the Slock of the Hooden. They had got a lamb tothemselves or a dead sheep belike. But to me it sounded like thegloating of the dragoons over some captured company of the poorwandering Presbyters. It seemed a strange thing for me, when I came tothink of it, that I, the son of the Laird of Earlstoun, my mother, thathad long time been the lady thereof, and my brother Sandy, that was nowEarlstoun himself, should all be skipping and hiding like thieves, withthe dragoons at our tail. Now this thought came not often to us, whowere born during the low estate of the Scottish kirk. But when it didcome, the thought was even more bitter to us, because we had nosustaining memories of her former high estate, nor remembered what God'skirk had been in Scotland from the year 1638 down to the weary coming ofCharles Stuart and the down-sitting of the Drunken Parliament in theBlack Year of Sixty.
But for all that I thought on these things as I went. Right carefully Ikept the cover of every heather bush, peat hag, muckle grey granitestone, and waving clump of bracken. So that in no long space, by makinga wide circuit, I came to look down upon the little clump of trees,where I had seen the figures moving, as I guddled the trout for ourdinner in the reaches of the Eglin Lane.
Now, however, there seemed to be a great quietness all about the place,and the scanty trees did not so much as wave a branch in the still airof the afternoon.
Yet I saw, as it had been the waft of a jaypiet's wing among them, whenI came over the steep rocks of the Hooden's Slock, and went to ford theGala Lane--which like the other water was, by the action of the long dryyear, sunken to no more than a chain of pools. But as I circled aboutand c
ame behind the trees, there was, as I say, a great quiet. My heartwent up and down like a man's hand at the flail in a barn. Yet for myunquiet, there was no great apparent reason. It might be, indeed, thatthe enemies had laid a snare for me, and that I was already as good assetting out for the Grassmarket, with the ladder and the rope before me,and the lad with the piebald coat at my tail. And this was a sorethought to me, for we Gordons are not of a race that take hanginglightly. We never had more religion than we could carry for comfort. Yetwe always got our paiks for what little we had, on which side soever wemight be. It is a strange thing that we should always have managed tocome out undermost whichever party was on top, and of this I cannot tellthe reason. On the other hand, the Kennedies trimmed their sails to thebreeze as it blew, and were ever on the wave's crest. But then they wereAyrshiremen. And Ayr, it is well kenned, aye beats Galloway--that is,till it comes to the deadly bellyful of fighting.
Thus I communed with myself, ever drawing nearer to the clump of treeson the side of the Meaull, and murmuring good Protestant prayers, as ifthey had been no better than Mary's beads all the time.
As I came to the little gairy above the trees, I looked down, and fromthe verge of it I saw the strangest contrivance. It was a hut beside atiny runlet of water--a kind of bower with the sides made of bog-oakstobs taken from the edges of the strands. The roof was daintily theekedwith green rushes and withes, bound about with heather. Heather also wasmingled with the thatching rushes, so that from a little distance thestructure seemed to be part of the heath. I lay and watched to see whatcurious birds had made such a bower on the Star in the dark days. Forsuch dainty carefulness was not the wont of us chiels of the Covenant,and I could not think that any of the rough-riders after us would sohave spent their time. An inn yard, a pint stoup, and a well-cockereddoxie were more to their liking, than plaiting the bonny heather into apuppet's house upon the hillside.