CHAPTER XXIII
Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway
--Winter's Tale.
The hint of the hospitable farmer was not lost on Brown. But while hepaid his reckoning he could not avoid repeatedly fixing his eyes on MegMerrilies. She was in all respects the same witch-like figure as whenwe first introduced her at Ellangowan Place. Time had grizzled herraven locks and added wrinkles to her wild features, but her heightremained erect, and her activity was unimpaired. It was remarked ofthis woman, as of others of the same description, that a life ofaction, though not of labour, gave her the perfect command of her limbsand figure, so that the attitudes into which she most naturally threwherself were free, unconstrained, and picturesque. At present she stoodby the window of the cottage, her person drawn up so as to show to fulladvantage her masculine stature, and her head somewhat thrown back,that the large bonnet with which her face was shrouded might notinterrupt her steady gaze at Brown. At every gesture he made and everytone he uttered she seemed to give an almost imperceptible start. Onhis part, he was surprised to find that he could not look upon thissingular figure without some emotion. 'Have I dreamed of such afigure?' he said to himself, 'or does this wild and singular-lookingwoman recall to my recollection some of the strange figures I have seenin our Indian pagodas?'
While he embarrassed himself with these discussions, and the hostesswas engaged in rummaging out silver in change of half-a-guinea, thegipsy suddenly made two strides and seized Brown's hand. He expected,of course, a display of her skill in palmistry, but she seemed agitatedby other feelings.
'Tell me,' she said, 'tell me, in the name of God, young man, what isyour name, and whence you came?'
'My name is Brown, mother, and I come from the East Indies.'
'From the East Indies!' dropping his hand with a sigh; 'it cannot bethen. I am such an auld fool, that everything I look on seems the thingI want maist to see. But the East Indies! that cannot be. Weel, be whatye will, ye hae a face and a tongue that puts me in mind of auld times.Good day; make haste on your road, and if ye see ony of our folk,meddle not and make not, and they'll do you nae harm.'
Brown, who had by this time received his change, put a shilling intoher hand, bade his hostess farewell, and, taking the route which thefarmer had gone before, walked briskly on, with the advantage of beingguided by the fresh hoof-prints of his horse. Meg Merrilies lookedafter him for some time, and then muttered to herself, 'I maun see thatlad again; and I maun gang back to Ellangowan too. The Laird's dead!aweel, death pays a' scores; he was a kind man ance. The Sheriff'sflitted, and I can keep canny in the bush; so there's no muckle hazardo' scouring the cramp-ring. I would like to see bonny Ellangowan againor I die.'
Brown meanwhile proceeded northward at a round pace along the moorishtract called the Waste of Cumberland. He passed a solitary house,towards which the horseman who preceded him had apparently turned up,for his horse's tread was evident in that direction. A little farther,he seemed to have returned again into the road. Mr. Dinmont hadprobably made a visit there either of business or pleasure. 'I wish,'thought Brown, 'the good farmer had staid till I came up; I should nothave been sorry to ask him a few questions about the road, which seemsto grow wilder and wilder.'
In truth, nature, as if she had designed this tract of country to bethe barrier between two hostile nations, has stamped upon it acharacter of wildness and desolation. The hills are neither high norrocky, but the land is all heath and morass; the huts poor and mean,and at a great distance from each other. Immediately around them thereis generally some little attempt at cultivation; but a half-bred foalor two, straggling about with shackles on their hind legs, to save thetrouble of inclosures, intimate the farmer's chief resource to be thebreeding of horses. The people, too, are of a ruder and moreinhospitable class than are elsewhere to be found in Cumberland,arising partly from their own habits, partly from their intermixturewith vagrants and criminals, who make this wild country a refuge fromjustice. So much were the men of these districts in early times theobjects of suspicion and dislike to their more polished neighbours,that there was, and perhaps still exists, a by-law of the corporationof Newcastle prohibiting any freeman of that city to take forapprentice a native of certain of these dales. It is pithily said,'Give a dog an ill name and hang him'; and it may be added, if you givea man, or race of men, an ill name they are very likely to do somethingthat deserves hanging. Of this Brown had heard something, and suspectedmore, from the discourse between the landlady, Dinmont, and the gipsy;but he was naturally of a fearless disposition, had nothing about himthat could tempt the spoiler, and trusted to get through the Waste withdaylight. In this last particular, however, he was likely to bedisappointed. The way proved longer than he had anticipated, and thehorizon began to grow gloomy just as he entered upon an extensivemorass.
Choosing his steps with care and deliberation, the young officerproceeded along a path that sometimes sunk between two broken blackbanks of moss earth, sometimes crossed narrow but deep ravines filledwith a consistence between mud and water, and sometimes along heaps ofgravel and stones, which had been swept together when some torrent orwaterspout from the neighbouring hills overflowed the marshy groundbelow. He began to ponder how a horseman could make his way throughsuch broken ground; the traces of hoofs, however, were still visible;he even thought he heard their sound at some distance, and, convincedthat Mr. Dinmont's progress through the morass must be still slowerthan his own, he resolved to push on, in hopes to overtake him and havethe benefit of his knowledge of the country. At this moment his littleterrier sprung forward, barking most furiously.
Brown quickened his pace, and, attaining the summit of a small risingground, saw the subject of the dog's alarm. In a hollow about a gunshotbelow him a man whom he easily recognised to be Dinmont was engagedwith two others in a desperate struggle. He was dismounted, anddefending himself as he best could with the butt of his heavy whip. Ourtraveller hastened on to his assistance; but ere he could get up astroke had levelled the farmer with the earth, and one of the robbers,improving his victory, struck him some merciless blows on the head. Theother villain, hastening to meet Brown, called to his companion to comealong, 'for that one's CONTENT,' meaning, probably, past resistance orcomplaint. One ruffian was armed with a cutlass, the other with abludgeon; but as the road was pretty narrow, 'bar fire-arms,' thoughtBrown, 'and I may manage them well enough.' They met accordingly, withthe most murderous threats on the part of the ruffians. They soonfound, however, that their new opponent was equally stout and resolute;and, after exchanging two or three blows, one of them told him to'follow his nose over the heath, in the devil's name, for they hadnothing to say to him.'
Brown rejected this composition as leaving to their mercy theunfortunate man whom they were about to pillage, if not to murderoutright; and the skirmish had just recommenced when Dinmontunexpectedly recovered his senses, his feet, and his weapon, andhastened to the scene of action. As he had been no easy antagonist,even when surprised and alone, the villains did not choose to wait hisjoining forces with a man who had singly proved a match for them both,but fled across the bog as fast as their feet could carry them, pursuedby Wasp, who had acted gloriously during the skirmish, annoying theheels of the enemy, and repeatedly effecting a moment's diversion inhis master's favour.
'Deil, but your dog's weel entered wi' the vermin now, sir!' were thefirst words uttered by the jolly farmer as he came up, his headstreaming with blood, and recognised his deliverer and his littleattendant.
'I hope, sir, you are not hurt dangerously?'
'O, deil a bit, my head can stand a gay clour; nae thanks to them,though, and mony to you. But now, hinney, ye maun help me to catch thebeast, and ye maun get on behind me, for we maun off like whittretsbefore the whole clanjamfray be doun upon us; the rest o' them will nobe far off.' The galloway was, by good fortune, easily caught, andBrown made some apology for overloading the animal.
'Deil a fear, man,' answered the proprietor; '
Dumple could carry sixfolk, if his back was lang eneugh; but God's sake, haste ye, get on,for I see some folk coming through the slack yonder that it may be justas weel no to wait for.'
Brown was of opinion that this apparition of five or six men, with whomthe other villains seemed to join company, coming across the mosstowards them, should abridge ceremony; he therefore mounted Dumple encroupe, and the little spirited nag cantered away with two men of greatsize and strength as if they had been children of six years old. Therider, to whom the paths of these wilds seemed intimately known, pushedon at a rapid pace, managing with much dexterity to choose the safestroute, in which he was aided by the sagacity of the galloway, who neverfailed to take the difficult passes exactly at the particular spot, andin the special manner, by which they could be most safely crossed. Yet,even with these advantages, the road was so broken, and they were sooften thrown out of the direct course by various impediments, that theydid not gain much on their pursuers. 'Never mind,' said the undauntedScotchman to his companion, 'if we were ance by Withershins' Latch, theroad's no near sae soft, and we'll show them fair play for't.'
They soon came to the place he named, a narrow channel, through whichsoaked, rather than flowed, a small stagnant stream, mantled over withbright green mosses. Dinmont directed his steed towards a pass wherethe water appeared to flow with more freedom over a harder bottom; butDumple backed from the proposed crossing-place, put his head down as ifto reconnoitre the swamp more nearly, stretching forward his fore-feet,and stood as fast as if he had been cut out of stone.
'Had we not better,' said Brown, 'dismount, and leave him to his fate;or can you not urge him through the swamp?'
'Na, na,' said his pilot, 'we maun cross Dumple at no rate, he has mairsense than mony a Christian.' So saying, he relaxed the reins, andshook them loosely. 'Come now, lad, take your ain way o't, let's seewhere ye'll take us through.'
Dumple, left to the freedom of his own will, trotted briskly to anotherpart of the latch, less promising, as Brown thought, in appearance, butwhich the animal's sagacity or experience recommended as the safer ofthe two, and where, plunging in, he attained the other side with littledifficulty.
'I'm glad we're out o' that moss,' said Dinmont, 'where there's mairstables for horses than change-houses for men; we have the Maiden-wayto help us now, at ony rate.' Accordingly, they speedily gained a sortof rugged causeway so called, being the remains of an old Roman roadwhich traverses these wild regions in a due northerly direction. Herethey got on at the rate of nine or ten miles an hour, Dumple seeking noother respite than what arose from changing his pace from canter totrot. 'I could gar him show mair action,' said his master, 'but we aretwa lang-legged chields after a', and it would be a pity to stressDumple; there wasna the like o' him at Staneshiebank Fair the day.'
Brown readily assented to the propriety of sparing the horse, and addedthat, as they were now far out of the reach of the rogues, he thoughtMr. Dinmont had better tie a handkerchief round his head, for fear ofthe cold frosty air aggravating the wound.
'What would I do that for?' answered the hardy farmer; 'the best way'sto let the blood barken upon the cut; that saves plasters, hinney.'
Brown, who in his military profession had seen a great many hard blowspass, could not help remarking, 'he had never known such severe strokesreceived with so much apparent indifference.'
'Hout tout, man! I would never be making a humdudgeon about a scart onthe pow; but we'll be in Scotland in five minutes now, and ye maun gangup to Charlie's Hope wi' me, that's a clear case.'
Brown readily accepted the offered hospitality. Night was now fallingwhen they came in sight of a pretty river winding its way through apastoral country. The hills were greener and more abrupt than thosewhich Brown had lately passed, sinking their grassy sides at once uponthe river. They had no pretensions to magnificence of height, or toromantic shapes, nor did their smooth swelling slopes exhibit eitherrocks or woods. Yet the view was wild, solitary, and pleasingly rural.No inclosures, no roads, almost no tillage; it seemed a land which apatriarch would have chosen to feed his flocks and herds. The remainsof here and there a dismantled and ruined tower showed that it had onceharboured beings of a very different description from its presentinhabitants; those freebooters, namely, to whose exploits the warsbetween England and Scotland bear witness.
Descending by a path towards a well-known ford, Dumple crossed thesmall river, and then, quickening his pace, trotted about a milebriskly up its banks, and approached two or three low thatched houses,placed with their angles to each other, with a great contempt ofregularity. This was the farm-steading of Charlie's Hope, or, in thelanguage of the country, 'the town.' A most furious barking was set upat their approach by the whole three generations of Mustard and Pepper,and a number of allies, names unknown. The farmer [Footnote: See Note3.] made his well-known voice lustily heard to restore order; the dooropened, and a half-dressed ewe-milker, who had done that good office,shut it in their faces, in order that she might run 'ben the house' tocry 'Mistress, mistress, it's the master, and another man wi' him.'Dumple, turned loose, walked to his own stable-door, and there pawedand whinnied for admission, in strains which were answered by hisacquaintances from the interior. Amid this bustle Brown was fain tosecure Wasp from the other dogs, who, with ardour corresponding more totheir own names than to the hospitable temper of their owner, were muchdisposed to use the intruder roughly.
In about a minute a stout labourer was patting Dumple, and introducinghim into the stable, while Mrs. Dinmont, a well-favoured buxom dame,welcomed her husband with unfeigned rapture. 'Eh, sirs! gudeman, ye haebeen a weary while away!'