Here I was not only troubled by a cloud of stinging midges, but far more by the doubts of my mind. What I ought to do, why I was going to join myself with an outlaw and a would-be murderer like Alan, whether I should not be acting more like a man of sense to tramp back to the south country direct, by my own guidance and at my own charges, and what Mr. Campbell or even Mr. Henderland would think of me if they should ever learn my folly and presumption: these were the doubts that now began to come in on me stronger than ever.
As I was so sitting and thinking, a sound of men and horses came to me through the wood; and presently after, at a turning of the road, I saw four travellers come into view. The way was in this part so rough and narrow that they came single and led their horses by the reins. The first was a great, red-headed gentleman, of an imperious and flushed face, who carried his hat in his hand and fanned himself, for he was in a breathing heat. The second, by his decent black garb and white wig, I correctly took to be a lawyer. The third was a servant, and wore some part of his clothes in tartan, which showed that his master was of a Highland family, and either an outlaw or else in singular good odour with the Government, since the wearing of tartan was against the Act. If I had been better versed in these things, I would have known the tartan to be of the Argyle (or Campbell) colours. This servant had a good-sized portmanteau strapped on his horse, and a net of lemons (to brew punch with) hanging at the saddle-bow; as was often enough the custom with luxurious travellers in that part of the country.
As for the fourth, who brought up the tail, I had seen his like before, and knew him at once to be a sheriff’s officer.
I had no sooner seen these people coming than I made up my mind (for no reason that I can tell) to go through with my adventure; and when the first came alongside of me, I rose up from the bracken and asked him the way to Aucharn.
He stopped and looked at me, as I thought, a little oddly; and then, turning to the lawyer, “Mungo,” said he, “there’s many a man would think this more of a warning than two pyats. Here am I on my road to Duror on the job ye ken; and here is a young lad starts up out of the bracken, and speers if I am on the way to Aucharn.”
“Glenure,” said the other, “this is an ill subject for jesting.”
These two had now drawn close up and were gazing at me, while the two followers had halted about a stone-cast in the rear.
“And what seek ye in Aucharn?” said Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, him they called the Red Fox; for he it was that I had stopped.
“The man that lives there,” said I.
“James of the Glens,” says Glenure, musingly; and then to the lawyer: “Is he gathering his people, think ye?”
“Anyway,” says the lawyer, “we shall do better to bide where we are, and let the soldiers rally us.”
“If you are concerned for me,” said I, “I am neither of his people nor yours, but an honest subject of King George, owing no man and fearing no man.”
“Why, very well said,” replies the Factor. “But if I may make so bold as ask, what does this honest man so far from his country? and why does he come seeking the brother of Ardshiel? I have power here, I must tell you. I am King’s Factor upon several of these estates, and have twelve files of soldiers at my back.”
“I have heard a waif word in the country,” said I, a little nettled, “that you were a hard man to drive.”
He still kept looking at me, as if in doubt.
“Well,” said he, at last, “your tongue is bold; but I am no unfriend to plainness. If ye had asked me the way to the door of James Stewart on any other day but this, I would have set ye right and bidden ye God speed. But to-day—eh, Mungo?” And he turned again to look at the lawyer.
But just as he turned there came the shot of a firelock from higher up the hill; and with the very sound of it Glenure fell upon the road.
“O, I am dead!” he cried, several times over.
The lawyer had caught him up and held him in his arms, the servant standing over and clasping his hands. And now the wounded man looked from one to another with scared eyes, and there was a change in his voice, that went to the heart.
“Take care of yourselves,” says he. “I am dead.”
He tried to open his clothes as if to look for the wound, but his fingers slipped on the buttons. With that he gave a great sigh, his head rolled on his shoulder, and he passed away.
The lawyer said never a word, but his face was as sharp as a pen and as white as the dead man’s; the servant broke out into a great noise of crying and weeping, like a child; and I, on my side, stood staring at them in a kind of horror. The sheriff’s officer had run back at the first sound of the shot, to hasten the coming of the soldiers.
At last the lawyer laid down the dead man in his blood upon the road, and got to his own feet with a kind of stagger.
I believe it was his movement that brought me to my senses; for he had no sooner done so than I began to scramble up the hill, crying out, “The murderer! the murderer!”
So little a time had elapsed, that when I got to the top of the first steepness, and could see some part of the open mountain, the murderer was still moving away at no great distance. He was a big man, in a black coat, with metal buttons, and carried a long fowling-piece.
“Here!” I cried. “I see him!”
At that the murderer gave a little, quick look over his shoulder, and began to run. The next moment he was lost in a fringe of birches; then he came out again on the upper side, where I could see him climbing like a jackanapes, for that part was again very steep; and then he dipped behind a shoulder, and I saw him no more.
All this time I had been running on my side, and had got a good way up, when a voice cried upon me to stand.
I was at the edge of the upper wood, and so now, when I halted and looked back, I saw all the open part of the hill below me.
The lawyer and the sheriff’s officer were standing just above the road, crying and waving on me to come back; and on their left, the red-coats, musket in hand, were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower wood.
“Why should I come back?” I cried. “Come you on!”
“Ten pounds if ye take that lad!” cried the lawyer. “He’s an accomplice. He was posted here to hold us in talk.”
At that word (which I could hear quite plainly, though it was to the soldiers and not to me that he was crying it) my heart came in my mouth with quite a new kind of terror. Indeed, it is one thing to stand the danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of both life and character. The thing, besides, had come so suddenly, like thunder out of a clear sky, that I was all amazed and helpless.
The soldiers began to spread, some of them to run, and others to put up their pieces and cover me; and still I stood.
“Jock17 in here among the trees,” said a voice close by.
Indeed, I scarce knew what I was doing, but I obeyed; and as I did so, I heard the firelocks bang and the balls whistle in the birches.
Just inside the shelter of the trees I found Alan Breck standing, with a fishing-rod. He gave me no salutation; indeed it was no time for civilities; only “Come!” says he, and set off running along the side of the mountain towards Balachulish; and I, like a sheep, to follow him.
Now we ran among the birches; now stooping behind low humps upon the mountain-side; now crawling on all fours among the heather. The pace was deadly: my heart seemed bursting against my ribs; and I had neither time to think nor breath to speak with. Only I remember seeing with wonder, that Alan every now and then would straighten himself to his full height and look back; and every time he did so, there came a great far-away cheering and crying of the soldiers.
Quarter of an hour later, Alan stopped, clapped down flat in the heather, and turned to me.
“Now,” said he, “it’s earnest. Do as I do, for your life.”
And at the same speed, but now with infinitely more precaution, we traced back again across the mountain-side by the same way that we had come, only perhaps
higher; till at last Alan threw himself down in the upper wood of Lettermore, where I had found him at the first, and lay, with his face in the bracken, panting like a dog.
My own sides so ached, my head so swam, my tongue so hung out of my mouth with heat and dryness, that I lay beside him like one dead.
* * *
17 Duck.
CHAPTER 18
I Talk with Alan in the Wood of Lettermore
Alan was the first to come round. He rose, went to the border of the wood, peered out a little, and then returned and sat down.
“Well,” said he, “yon was a hot burst, David.”
I said nothing, nor so much as lifted my face. I had seen murder done, and a great, ruddy, jovial gentleman struck out of life in a moment; the pity of that sight was still sore within me, and yet that was but a part of my concern. Here was murder done upon the man Alan hated; here was Alan skulking in the trees and running from the troops; and whether his was the hand that fired or only the head that ordered, signified but little. By my way of it, my only friend in that wild country was blood-guilty in the first degree; I held him in horror; I could not look upon his face; I would have rather lain alone in the rain on my cold isle, than in that warm wood beside a murderer.
“Are ye still wearied?” he asked again.
“No,” said I, still with my face in the bracken; “no, I am not wearied now, and I can speak. You and me must twine,”18 I said. “I liked you very well, Alan, but your ways are not mine, and they’re not God’s: and the short and the long of it is just that we must twine.”
“I will hardly twine from ye, David, without some kind of reason for the same,” said Alan, mighty gravely. “If ye ken anything against my reputation, it’s the least thing that ye should do, for old acquaintance’ sake, to let me hear the name of it; and if ye have only taken a distaste to my society, it will be proper for me to judge if I’m insulted.”
“Alan,” said I, “what is the sense of this? Ye ken very well yon Campbell-man lies in his blood upon the road.”
He was silent for a little; then says he, “Did ever ye hear tell of the story of the Man and the Good People?”—by which he meant the fairies.
“No,” said I, “nor do I want to hear it.”
“With your permission, Mr. Balfour, I will tell it you, whatever,” says Alan. “The man, ye should ken, was cast upon a rock in the sea, where it appears the Good People were in use to come and rest as they went through to Ireland. The name of this rock is called the Skerryvore, and it’s not far from where we suffered ship-wreck. Well, it seems the man cried so sore, if he could just see his little bairn before he died! that at last the king of the Good People took peety upon him, and sent one flying that brought back the bairn in a poke19 and laid it down beside the man where he lay sleeping. So when the man woke, there was a poke beside him and something into the inside of it that moved. Well, it seems he was one of these gentry that think aye the worst of things; and for greater security, he stuck his dirk throughout that poke before he opened it, and there was his bairn dead. I am thinking to myself, Mr. Balfour, that you and the man are very much alike.”
“Do you mean you had no hand in it?” cried I, sitting up.
“I will tell you first of all, Mr. Balfour of Shaws, as one friend to another,” said Alan, “that if I were going to kill a gentleman, it would not be in my own country, to bring trouble on my clan; and I would not go wanting sword and gun, and with a long fishing-rod upon my back.”
“Well,” said I, “that’s true!”
“And now,” continued Alan, taking out his dirk and laying his hand upon it in a certain manner, “I swear upon the Holy Iron I had neither art nor part, act nor thought in it.”
“I thank God for that!” cried I, and offered him my hand.
He did not appear to see it.
“And here is a great deal of work about a Campbell!” said he. “They are not so scarce, that I ken!”
“At least,” said I, “you cannot justly blame me, for you know very well what you told me in the brig. But the temptation and the act are different, I thank God again for that. We may all be tempted; but to take a life in cold blood, Alan!” And I could say no more for the moment. “And do you know who did it?” I added. “Do you know that man in the black coat?”
“I have nae clear mind about his coat,” said Alan cunningly, “but it sticks in my head that it was blue.”
“Blue or black, did ye know him?” said I.
“I couldnae just conscientiously swear to him,” says Alan. “He gaed very close by me, to be sure, but it’s a strange thing that I should just have been tying my brogues.”
“Can you swear that you don’t know him, Alan?” I cried, half angered, half in a mind to laugh at his evasions.
“Not yet,” says he; “but I’ve a grand memory for forgetting, David.”
“And yet there was one thing I saw clearly,” said I; “and that was, that you exposed yourself and me to draw the soldiers.”
“It’s very likely,” said Alan; “and so would any gentleman. You and me were innocent of that transaction.”
“The better reason, since we were falsely suspected, that we should get clear,” I cried. “The innocent should surely come before the guilty.”
“Why, David,” said he, “the innocent have aye a chance to get assoiled in court; but for the lad that shot the bullet, I think the best place for him will be the heather. Them that havenae dipped their hands in any little difficulty, should be very mindful of the case of them that have. And that is the good Christianity. For if it was the other way round about, and the lad whom I couldnae just clearly see had been in our shoes, and we in his (as might very well have been), I think we would be a good deal obliged to him oursel’s if he would draw the soldiers.”
When it came to this, I gave Alan up. But he looked so innocent all the time, and was in such clear good faith in what he said, and so ready to sacrifice himself for what he deemed his duty, that my mouth was closed. Mr. Henderland’s words came back to me: that we ourselves might take a lesson by these wild Highlanders. Well, here I had taken mine. Alan’s morals were all tail-first; but he was ready to give his life for them, such as they were.
“Alan,” said I, “I’ll not say it’s the good Christianity as I understand it, but it’s good enough. And here I offer ye my hand for the second time.”
Whereupon he gave me both of his, saying surely I had cast a spell upon him, for he could forgive me anything. Then he grew very grave, and said we had not much time to throw away, but must both flee that country: he, because he was a deserter, and the whole of Appin would now be searched like a chamber, and every one obliged to give a good account of himself; and I, because I was certainly involved in the murder.
“O!” says I, willing to give him a little lesson, “I have no fear of the justice of my country.”
“As if this was your country!” said he. “Or as if ye would be tried here, in a country of Stewarts!”
“It’s all Scotland,” said I.
“Man, I whiles wonder at ye,” said Alan. “This is a Campbell that’s been killed. Well, it’ll be tried in Inverara, the Campbells’ head place; with fifteen Campbells in the jury-box and the biggest Campbell of all (and that’s the Duke) sitting cocking on the bench. Justice, David? The same justice, by all the world, as Glenure found awhile ago at the roadside.”
This frightened me a little, I confess, and would have frightened me more if I had known how nearly exact were Alan’s predictions; indeed it was but in one point that he exaggerated, there being but eleven Campbells on the jury; though as the other four were equally in the Duke’s dependence, it mattered less than might appear. Still, I cried out that he was unjust to the Duke of Argyle, who (for all he was a Whig) was yet a wise and honest nobleman.
“Hoot!” said Alan, “the man’s a Whig, nae doubt; but I would never deny he was a good chieftain to his clan. And what would the clan think if there was a Campbell shot, and naebody hange
d, and their own chief the Justice General? But I have often observed,” says Alan, “that you Low-country bodies have no clear idea of what’s right and wrong.”
At this I did at last laugh out aloud, when to my surprise, Alan joined in, and laughed as merrily as myself.
“Na, na,” said he, “we’re in the Hielands, David; and when I tell ye to run, take my word and run. Nae doubt it’s a hard thing to skulk and starve in the Heather, but it’s harder yet to lie shackled in a red-coat prison.”
I asked him whither we should flee; and as he told me “to the Lowlands,” I was a little better inclined to go with him; for, indeed, I was growing impatient to get back and have the upper-hand of my uncle. Besides, Alan made so sure there would be no question of justice in the matter, that I began to be afraid he might be right. Of all deaths, I would truly like least to die by the gallows; and the picture of that uncanny instrument came into my head with extraordinary clearness (as I had once seen it engraved at the top of a pedlar’s ballad) and took away my appetite for courts of justice.
“I’ll chance it, Alan,” said I. “I’ll go with you.”
“But mind you,” said Alan, “it’s no small thing. Ye maun lie bare and hard, and brook many an empty belly. Your bed shall be the moorcock’s, and your life shall be like the hunted deer’s, and ye shall sleep with your hand upon your weapons. Ay, man, ye shall taigle many a weary foot, or we get clear! I tell ye this at the start, for it’s a life that I ken well. But if ye ask what other chance ye have, I answer: Nane. Either take to the heather with me, or else hang.”
“And that’s a choice very easily made,” said I; and we shook hands upon it.
“And now let’s take another keek at the red-coats,” says Alan, and he led me to the north-eastern fringe of the wood.
Looking out between the trees, we could see a great side of mountain, running down exceeding steep into the waters of the loch. It was a rough part, all hanging stone, and heather, and big scrogs of birchwood; and away at the far end towards Balachulish, little wee red soldiers were dipping up and down over hill and howe, and growing smaller every minute. There was no cheering now, for I think they had other uses for what breath was left them; but they still stuck to the trail, and doubtless thought that we were close in front of them.