Marget was in a simple black gown with a ruffle of white French lace at her neck and a flush in her cheeks. Her black hair was twined naturally about her head, which she carried high, so I told myself, as if in defiance of the Black Colonel, while she had to be his partner and prisoner. She glanced at me once or twice with an amused twinkle in her eye, thinking, I suppose, of her bold capture from the host of the evening, my unlucky self. Some women are a blessing, others keep you guessing, somebody will say, and Marget, I judged, even in the whirl of that reel, could be both, if she cared to try.

Quicker time the music made it, many a foot keeping stroke, and quicker time we had to make it. You know the romp of a Highland reel at the double, how it causes the blood to sing in the veins and the feet to jig. Marget's mother had been a fine dancer, but, as she whispered to me, she was no longer young. Marget herself had inherited all her mother's ease and grace of carriage, and she had her own spirit and go. The music and the motion caught her into forgetfulness of everything else, and she danced with a grace and a swing which were bewitching.

She had, again I was bound to admit, a complete dancing partner in the Black Colonel, a fellow of natural and acquired accomplishments. He had his clean ankles and elegant uprightness from his Highland forbears, and he had got his polish of deportment when he was among the English Jacobites in France. The result was that he danced all of a piece, with as near the poetry of movement as a man might attain, and then there was the intimate, intriguing ripple of his tartans.

Myself, I was quite a good dancer, but, if I may be my own apologist, not so showy a dancer as the Black Colonel. While I could hold my own with most men in the Highland dances, probably surpass many, I could not fill a dancing floor as he did, with his natural air of drama. A woman who herself dances well, sighs for a fit partner, but give her in that partner a personality drawing a general homage to them both, and she is twice blessed. After all, she is a woman, with the woman's prayer for attention, for being, once in a way, the centre of a picture, as she is on her wedding day, the Day of Promise, whatever follows.

An early episode in the life of the Black Colonel had associated him with the rollicking "Reel O'Tulloch," a dance originated in Strathdee. His people had gone to church, so went the tale, but, the weather being wintry, no parson arrived. Seeking warmth, they began to blow on their hands, then to shuffle with their feet on the floor, and presently, when somebody fetched a fiddler, this broke into a reel. A bottle with inspiration in it was brought from the change-house near by, and faster went the music and faster grew the fun.

When young Jock Farquharson, hearing of this, came on the scene, the "Reel O'Tulloch" was being danced "ower the kirk and ower the kirk," and voices cried:

"John, come kiss me now, John, come kiss me now, John, come kiss me by and by And mak' nae mair adow."

One of the guests at our later, different dance, in Corgarff Castle, must have remembered this, for suddenly there was a sort of "soughing" of the song, then a singing of it, and it was positively roared out by the assembly when the music stopped and the dance ended. I understood the application and the invitation which were intended, and I caught a look in Marget's flushed face, as if she also understood. Her mother glanced at the roystering singers, then at the Black Colonel and, with an apology for leaving me, went and stood beside her daughter, the mothering instinct of protection called into action.

"Thank you, Mistress Marget," I heard Jock Farquharson say, in his most melodious tone, "you have been kind to me, and I will hope to thank you again. And thank you, Madame," he said, bowing low to her mother, "for letting me lift my head to-night, as it has not been lifted for long. I shall not forget to be grateful and, I hope, to deserve your good-will."

Then he made me, the official host, a last, low bow with a mockery, subtle but noticeable, in it, walked down the room, saluting and being saluted on every side, and was gone. Our friendly ball, from which I had expected so much, died away to the clink of Mack's galloping hoofs, an unsettling rhythm.



IX.—'Twixt Night and Morn

They declare that if you are drowning, or otherwise at the crack o' doom, your whole life's record leaps through your mind in an instant. It may be so, Providence giving a man, however his balance-sheet stands, a last chance to square it fair and well.

Everybody being gone home, and I being alone, after our dizzy ball, I felt that I had to count up the position. It needed no effort to understand that the Black Colonel's purpose in invading me had been to meet Marget and her mother, to impress himself upon them, all in the interest of his designs. He had relied for safety upon the temporary state of neutrality which the ball carried with it, and he had come, he had seen, he had—what? So far my thoughts convoyed me. But my little room in the castle with its cell-like windows, its low ceiling, even, I would add, its sense of plain refinement, worried me, and I went out into the night and the spaciousness of earth and heaven. Oh, for freedom to breathe and think, and oh for it at that witching time when night and day hold their bridal of mating among the Highland hills.

It was the hour, in our altitudes, at which night sleeps her heaviest, as if to snatch the last wink from the breaking morn. Nature was superbly at rest, sloughing the worn trappings of yesterday, preparing the shining armour of the morrow. It was the hour of creation, the wonder-coming of a child into the world, magnified beyond imagining, a tender life, very, very beautiful. It cried to my soul, seeking the humblest companionship for its own great soul, playing upon mine with a touch of incomparable delicacy.

And yet, yet, the chief feeling was almost that of a paganism, of an earth-smell and an earth-worship, of a giant awakening from torpor, ravenous with hunger. It was all the grand savagery, the terrible strength of Mother Earth, the Great Protector, from whose loins I had sprung, but who is unspeakably awesome until you see her face in the rising sun. Then the nightmare of the darkness which empalls her with a cold sense of death, turns into a radiance as of gold and kindness.

Ah! it was worth while to be abroad among the heather and the fir-trees at dawn, for the virgin world, the pagan, freed from cerements and found in the twilight to be a god, was all my own, mine to enjoy. I think I know why primitive man, when he lived in lands where Nature was wild and the nights were long, was a resolute pagan. No light, no warmth of its torch, had he to set the fire of reverence in him burning, and reverence is the footstool of belief in God. I think I also know why the other primitive man of the south, dwelling in a land of the sun, would be a sun-worshipper: because it gave him reverence and drew it from him.

We fear endless things when it is dark, the stoutest-hearted of us, but, in the geniality of a shining sun, we have courage. The picture, in ancient Greek legend, of husband and wife, one of them about to die, taking a long farewell as the dipping sun-rays gilt Olympus at its highest peaks, has often seemed to me a fine linking of the night of paganism and the morn of sunlit faith.

Odd thoughts to run in a man's head as he walked the dew-damp heather, careless which track he took, conscious only that he sought a new morning. But you do think strange thoughts if you have in you any of the dreamy Celt and have been born and nurtured in the cradle of the hills. They infect you, I will not say with second sight, though there have been proved instances, but with their own moods, like a soft-falling foot, which, in our spiritual pilgrimage, is the Foot of Fate.

My step lightly touched the heather, but, even so, my way was marked by a disturbance of the birds and animals of the wild. A grouse ran with a flutter and took wing with a cry, half in protest at being wakened from its sleep, half in alarm at my presence. A rabbit rushed from a sheltering hole in such a hurry that, as I could tell by its clatter among the bracken, it nearly fell over itself, as rabbits clumsily do, making fluffy, woolly balls of themselves.

When there is danger about, Nature gives all her children of the open a chance to escape by instantly warning them, and, in this, alarming their instinct. My particular rabbit had scarcely run out of hearing when half a dozen others were scurrying hither and thither in the same expectant confusion. Poor little things! What a fluster they made, and their scare communicated itself to a crow in a solitary fir-tree, against which I nearly collided. He croaked, flapped his wings and sailed off heavily, blackly, also anxious for safety.

Now, by the sheer exercise of walking, I had spent my restlessness, and the hill air had driven the blood from my head. Moreover, I grew tired, for the road tells when you have to pick your steps in the dark, over rough ground. So, coming upon a fir-tree root, I made a seat of it, and waited for night to fully turn into day, a transformation which came swiftly.

We have all seen the first flicker of a piece of tinder, fired by a beaten flint. It is like something come, only to go again, but presently it passes into a stronger flame, and then into light. This is the awakening of a Highland day, when the conditions resemble those of that morning.

The heavy pall of clouds, lying low over the hills, seemed to take motion, for trifling rents appeared in them. The rents grew bigger, and then the stars, which had been shining all the time in the welkin above, began to look through those peep-holes. It was the sun setting to work upon the earth once more, our side of the globe returning to his rays and warmth.

Slowly I looked about me, like one roused from a half-dream, seeing the near things first, and, as the dawn grew, ranging for the far things. Beneath me lay a glen pavilioned in the splendour of the rising sun, and gilded with the praise of the hills. Browns and reds and greens swam before my eyes into a radiant landscape, along which flowed the water of Don, a ribbon of silver, whose surface the fat trout would presently be breaking. Beside it wandered the road, on which, presently, to my astonishment, I made out two figures. Who could they be, there, at that time?

When I left Corgarff Castle I had, out of habit, slung my spyglass over my shoulder, and I set it towards the men. One was in the tartan of my own regiment, the other in a tartan of darkish green with a red stripe in it, like the Farquharson tartan. I made out, by their actions, that they were quarrelling, so I started for them, and who do you think I found? My own sergeant and the Black Colonel's Red Murdo.

"What are you men doing and how are you here?" I asked abruptly, for I was breathless, as well as surprised and angry.

The sergeant's answer was a salute, for he had not time to speak before Red Murdo was launched on a torrent of indignant words. He had, he said, come over to the ball in attendance on the Black Colonel, as I might know. He intended to depart with him, but had taken more of my hospitality—stout fellow!—than he could carry, which delayed his departure. Some of my men had old scores against him, old crows to pick with him, particularly this sergeant, who, therefore, had followed him, determined to have the quarrel out: "While I," quoth Red Murdo, "only want to go quietly home."

"What's the quarrel?" I demanded of the sergeant.

"Well," he replied quaintly, "it does na' matter what it is, tho' he kens, as lang's we settle who's the better man. He's up to every dodge, but there's no room for that wi' only the twa o's here."

"And what were you doing when I arrived? What was about to happen?" I asked.

"We were jist arguin' which was the better man," declared the sergeant, "and I was na' goin' to leave it at that. A deceesion for me; he beggit to be let awa'!"

"Beggit!" broke in Red Murdo; "beggit anything from you, my man! Na, na; I was beggin' you to return to Corgarff Castle in case something happen't to you. You wid'na', as I tell ye, be the first red-coat on whose hide I had left a mark. But I was forbearin', because I did na' want trouble to follow Captain Ian's kindness in askin' us to the ball last evening."

Red Murdo glanced at me, as if he expected me to side with him, but my thoughts were not yet for words. You can best hold a judicial air when you say little, give no reasons, and here I had to be judge and jury. For the quarrel, if it was carried to a violent end, might have unfortunate results on the general peace of the country. It would not do to have my sergeant killing Red Murdo in single combat, or Red Murdo killing my sergeant, certainly not with me looking on.

If you happen to know some legal jingle of words you can almost certainly pacify the raw man of strife, by gravely reciting it at him. Sheriffs, procurators-fiscal, bailies and others accustomed to take oaths, and sometimes to say them, will confirm this curious influence of formality. Partly it impresses, and it will surely confuse, and then the subject can be led to a better frame of mind.

So I thought of the oath banning the Highland dress, which, in the unwisdom of our over-lords, exercised by right of force, a Jacobite rebel had to take, before he could get a pardon. It had an official place among the papers of my office, and there I had let it rest, but I loathed it so much that its language had bitten itself into my mind.

How this foully conceived oath had fired the spirit of a people proud to wear their tartans, because of the Highland sentiment which they clothed! But to use it to compass a private quarrel, to twist its possible tragedy into healing honour, that was appealing! My sergeant I must support outwardly, and my stratagem would secure this, without putting Red Murdo in peril. He, probably, had a secret inkling that I was searching for a way out, because he kept looking, looking at me, even while he talked and talked.

"You know the law?" I slowly addressed him.

"Only like my master," he said, "by breakin' it."

"You know that any man who has been in rebellion against his Majesty King George may be apprehended on sight, tried, punished and executed."

"If you say that it'll be so, but it does na' interest me; I tak' my orders frae the Chief of Inverey, nae frae King George or his officers, least o' all a mere sergeant."

"Still," I went on, "you will perceive that he was doing his duty, or what he thinks his duty." Red Murdo's look suggested that he thought I was rambling, but I went on sharply; "and in the exercise of his duty he is entitled to all the support of his superior officer."

The sergeant's face beamed with approval, as if he had been discovered in an act of great public advantage and was to be rewarded [Transcriber's note: a line appears to be missing from the book here.] that of Red Murdo simply asked, "What are you driving at?"

"Now," I said, lifting my right hand in the manner of judges, "I am going to administer an oath to you, and when you have taken it all will be well and you shall go your way."

"What sort o' oath," he asked; "what has it to do wi' me, who's only concern't wi' the Black Cornel's oaths? Tell it to me, first."

"Very well, listen," and with as much solemnity as I could muster I repeated the words of the oath:

"I do swear, as I shall answer to God at the Great Day of Judgment, I have not, nor shall have, in my possession, any gun, sword or arm whatsoever, and never use tartan, plaid, or any part of the Highland garb; and if I do so, may I be cursed in my undertakings, family and property; may I never see my wife and children, father, mother or relations; may I be killed in battle as a coward, and lie without Christian burial, in a strange land, far from the graves of my forefathers and kindred: may all this come across me if I break my oath."

Red Murdo kept looking at me, mute, perhaps impressed; anyhow, he presently asked, "What if I refuse?"

"The penalties laid down by law," I told him, still solemnly, "are six months in prison for a first offence and transportation beyond the seas for a second."

"A device o' the devil and King George," grunted Red Murdo, and I should have been glad to agree with him, only I had to play the game out.

"Will you take the legal oath?"

"Never. It's what I suppose the sergeant was goin' to cram doon my throat an' he could, the same infernal thing. Never, frae you, or him, or the pair o' ye."

This was a turn I had not expected, and I was wondering what to do next when Red Murdo said, "I'll tell ye what I'll dae. I'll wrestle the sergeant which o's will eat a copy of that ugly oath, and that'll also satisfy him who's the better man."

The sergeant did not show an instant keenness for this challenge, but it got me round a corner, and must be accepted. I declared to that effect, and desired both men to get ready, saying I would be umpire. I added that there should be only one bout because, secretly, I had no wish to see them hurt one another.

Red Murdo and the sergeant put their plaids, their jackets, their bonnets, their sporans, and their brogues, in little heaps, with each man's weapons above each man's things. Neither spoke, for action, which naturally has the effect of sealing the tongue, had now arrived, and I chose a level piece of sward where they might fall with comparative softness.

When I saw how nearly they were matched in physique, the spirit of primitive combat in me began to be interested, to calculate who would win. True to the fighting tactics he knew Red Murdo rushed to grips, but the sergeant drove him off, and they manoeuvred round each other for the next effort. It was pretty to see them, that bright morning, with the whole picturesque valley for arena and I for the only spectator of their prowess. Moreover, they were warming to the fight, which was one between the disciplined strength and skill of the soldier and the wild agility of Red Murdo.

Those different qualities met so evenly that feint, and catch and heave as each combatant would, the other remained unthrown. Once Red Murdo got his antagonist by the waist, lifted him clean off the ground and whirled him round like a totum, only to have him alight on his feet. Once, also, the sergeant, by a supple twist of arm and leg, working together, got Red Murdo half down and no more. Really it was a toss-up who should win, or whether there would be a winner at all.

My only ground of interference would be foul play, and although they went at each other almost savagely there was no absolute act of that kind. But the strain was telling on both men, for they took no rest, and hardly waited to get fresh breath. The sinews of their legs stood out like whip-cord, their chest heaved like bellows in distress, their necks were scarlet with the tumult of the blood there. Only the unexpected would make a victor or a loser, and the unexpected did not happen, as it does sometimes.

Red Murdo tried a last torrential rush, but the sergeant withstood it, and they merely locked themselves together. Nay, they were now so exhausted that they could only hang on to each other for support, a spectacle which brought me to their side. Their bulging eyes stared at me with the pleading look which a horse has after being driven too far and too fast. When I divided them by a touch of my hand they both fell to the ground like logs and so lay.

Honour was satisfied, the hated oath of the kilt had not to be eaten by anybody, and I was glad.



X.—The Way of a Woman

Between you and me, I fancy that the average, natural woman likes to think any man who is after her a bit of the devil. It makes her pulse beat, if not her heart; it gives a fine spice to the pursuit, and she is confident there will be no capture, unless she wills it. Anyhow, I was not going to help the Black Colonel in his schemes by holding him up as a hero of that order, and he would have made the comment that he needed not the service from me.

Marget Forbes and I had fallen into the pleasant custom of lending each other such books as came the way of our remote land, and I called at the Dower House to leave her one, a newly imprinted volume entitled "Robinson Crusoe." I did not seem to wish to make meetings with her, though I was glad of them, so I chose a time, the mid-afternoon, at which she and her mother usually walked out. However, Marget was at home, and she called to me from the parlour, would I not enter and rest a minute? Necessarily I must step inside to say I would not wait, and necessarily I found myself sitting down near her.

"Mother," she said, "is on her weekly round among the sick and old, to whom a kind word from her is like gold, of which we now have none to give. Usually I go with her, but to-day she would have it that I looked tired, and she bade me stay indoors and rest. I'm glad you called and brought me a book, especially this wonderful 'Robinson Crusoe,' of which I have heard vaguely, and which they say is founded on the adventure of a Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk. You are always thoughtful, or shall I say sometimes?" and Marget looked as if she expected me to understand the qualification.

Was it a reproach that I did not come into her company often enough; was it a playful invitation to do so oftener; or was it the woman's primal instinct, old as Eve in the Garden of Eden, just to tease the man? I scarcely asked myself those questions. They ran through my mind with the kind of physical impulse which you feel in the presence of the possible woman. You are aware, then, of feelings and shadows of feeling which cannot be expressed. There is something in you which goes on speaking to the something in her, and you let it speak, glad, wondering, expectant, never sure, never sorry. Odd, isn't it, this language of sex which says most when it says nothing by speech, which needs not speech, because it is spiritual, though springing, maybe, from the call of the blood.

Marget had been reading, and when she invited me in, and I went, she put the open book face downward on a little table, beside a half-made sampler. She saw my eye wandering to the volume, a mere mechanical curiosity on my part, and she picked it up with a laugh, saying, "There is no need to hide those pages, unless it be that they are dull."

"What is the book all about?" I asked idly.

"It is a French romance," she said, "in which a lovely heroine treads her way through an endless maze of difficult paths and a brigade of villains to what, I have no doubt, when I get there with her, if ever I do, will be endless wedded bliss. It is an over-sentimental story, for the French young girl, but, then, one must try to keep up what French one has, because it is a delightful language."

Marget had learned it as a girl in France, for she had lived there a while, seen something of the Stuart Court over the water, of the Court of King Louis also, and even heard the passing rustle of the skirts of "the Pompadour" and Madame du Barry. Already the breath of a freer day to come was blowing across that fair land, and her stay in it definitely influenced Marget's character, ripened it quickly on broadly beautiful lines, without hurting its pure scent of Scottish heather.

Hospitality was a duty as well as a pleasure in every Highland home, and, after our trifles of a few minutes, she rose and went to give some order. When she returned she said she had a small treat in store for me, and it came into the room almost with herself. What do you think it was? Why, tea!

It was a beverage then almost unknown in the Scottish Highlands, but Marget's family, as she said, had at intervals received packets of it from their friends in the south. Those gifts were hoarded as if they contained treasure, and only dipped into for very special reasons.

"It flatters me," I remarked airily, "to think I am a special reason, because that must come near being a special friend."

"Oh," quoth Marget, "but you are an official enemy, so how could you be a special friend? And still such things are possible, you know, but I shall not tell you how they are possible. You would not understand a bit"; and, as she spoke, her eyes and hands were arranging the tea-table.

"I should, I assure you, try very hard," said I, "and it would be odd if I did not succeed, with a dish of tea for stimulant. I don't remember when I tasted tea last," I added laconically, as Marget poured it out of a quaint old pot into dwarfy cups of French mould. Most of the dainty things, the bric-a-brac of households in the Jacobite Highlands were from France, just as we had come to say "ashets" and "gigots" of mutton, and generally to graft French cookery into our Scottish meals, for the "Auld Alliance" had various harvests.

As we talked over the tea-cups, Marget and I, I thought how quickly in that Nature's cradle of Corgarff she had ripened to woman's estate. She had, at times, been in touch with the artificialities of social life, but they had not dulled her free, strong character. She had drawn her instincts, as she had drawn her blood, from the long hills, and she had no self-consciousness to dim her lights. But when I rose to leave she said merrily, "We have spoken much foolish nonsense, have we not, Captain Gordon?"

"Wise nonsense, Mistress Forbes," I answered.

"Thank you, but wise nonsense is most becoming when it is expressed as a parable."

"Then let us have the parable."

"Oh! parables are not in fashion with so many hard realities about, and there should not be three people in one. Three's never company, they say, good company, even in a parable."

"Then, dear lady, why put in three?"

"This parable, dear Captain, would need three; first, a high-minded young man who wears arms and dreams dreams, who is beloved by everybody for his good nature and qualities, who is on the other side of where he would be most welcome, and who will probably never summon courage to get there; secondly, an older man of more picturesque, more risky qualities, an adventurer in love and war, never afraid to strike, even if the stroke might wound, a personality able, on occasion, to commandeer what could not be secured by affection, thanks to an understanding of woman's nature and the imperfections of man's government; and, thirdly, between those personal forces a woman who might, to her undoing, be captured by the force of family and state circumstances, instead of by the man of her tell-tale heart's desire."

"A very subtle parable!" I remarked, for no reason whatever, but the tone of it held more than this banality, although she showed no heed of that, but remarked:

"No; a very common parable; it's what every woman knows by instinct or experience, if few would care to reveal it, even in a parable."

We said good-bye without more ado, and I set off for the castle, troubled for my unreadiness in woman nature, the most puzzling, calling, captivating skein in all the universe, because it holds, behind the silken veil of its treasure-house, the eternal mystery of creation, that something divine which is nearest to God Himself.

When in trouble, my trouble, anyhow, one sighs for a song, and my heart-quaking carried me to a ballad, very familiar in our countryside, which tells of an unbridled lover laying siege to a woman he covets. Her men were absent, and she and her domestics were the only garrison of the castle when he knocked roysterously at its gates:

"The lady ran up to her towe-head, As fast as she could drie, To see if by her fair speeches She could with him agree.

"As soon he saw the lady fair, And her yates all locked fast, He fell into a rage of wrath, And his heart was aghast.

"Cum doon to me, ye lady fair; Cum doon to me; let's see; This nigh ye's ly by my ain side The morn my bride sall be!"

It was pagan wooing, but it has often won the day, only why should I let it disturb me, whose cause stood by itself? What I must realize was that powers above me were at work, for "state reasons," on affairs in which I was concerned, privately. I must try to meet this influence without letting as much be known outwardly, because I was an officer bound by my commission to serve his Majesty's desires and commands.

Now I am no good schemer, and I merely drifted to those conclusions as a swimmer goes with a tide in which he happens to find himself. He feels that he is in its custody, but, on the instinct for life, he makes a stroke now and then and their cumulative effect probably bears him somewhere safe to land. Might it be so with me!

Unfortunately I was a swimmer in the dark, for I did not know, however I might guess, what Marget and her mother were thinking. Perhaps my heart really assured my mind as to Marget, or so I was fain to conclude. Her mother, however, might take a mother's view, the far-carrying view which thinks of daughters settled in such a manner as will continue the old line.

Every man has, deep down in him, the desire to own a little bit of land, even though most of us only get six feet for a grave. It is man's form of ancestor-worship, and in woman it finds expression in the home, and continuous olive branches to fill that home. The man likes to have his foot securely on a rood of Mother Earth, a patch to call his very own. The woman supplements that by peopling a house; and is not this service of the maternal instinct the greater, the finer of the two?

One placed in circumstances which need strong action, should not think too much, because by doing that he raises a wall of difficulties around him. Mental ghosts are no use to anybody, although, to be sure, they weren't unknown to me. So I welcomed a letter that reached me next morning from Marget's mother, but I opened it with a dread. It addressed me as "Dear Captain Gordon," and it read:

"I am troubling you for advice, because there is nobody else whom I can ask, and because the matter may interest you, both as a relative, far removed I admit, and as a soldier of the reigning king. You will guess what it is, and that makes it easier for me to explain.

"It has been made known to us in a round-about, but authoritative way, that it would give King George and his ministers satisfaction to see our house and people established again, and that Jock Farquharson, the laird of Inverey, would be confirmed in the chiefship, if as much were agreeable to my daughter and myself.

"They don't ask me will I give my daughter in ransom for the house and possessions of our ancestors, but that is what is meant, and you can judge how the idea has concerned me. You may also, however, concern and interest a mother at the same time, and I have hesitated to return a 'No,' especially as Marget said, about the letter, when I showed it to her, 'Well, the sons of the house have sacrificed enough for it. It may now be the turn of the daughter to sacrifice something . . .!"

"That was dutifully said, but what she expects, I'm certain, is that I shall say the 'No' of my own accord, and I want your advice as to the manner in which it can best be done. I want it at once, because news comes to me, through the early channel of our domestics, that the Black Colonel means to ride over upon us one of these evenings, a friendly call, I suppose. Marget does not know of this intention on his part, and I am not going to tell her, for a mother's instinct naturally wishes to shield a daughter from disturbance.

"If you would advise me how to say 'No' without bringing further displeasure from high places upon our ruined house, you would be doing us a service. If, besides that, you were to find a means of keeping the Black Colonel away, why, you would be doing a further service."

As I read that last sentence an idea struck me, and I at once sent a note to the dear lady, saying I would solve her difficulty. Then I dispatched a pair of trusty scouts in quest of certain information I needed, and in eight hours they were back with it. After that, I felt more myself than I had done for some time, just because I was now committed to definite, perhaps even dangerous, action.



XI—The Crack of Thunder

It is fine how the spur of danger, especially danger to somebody else, dear if not near, helps a man's spirits upward. The blood flows more quickly in him, his hand is surer, his brain works better. He feels that the die has been cast, that nothing more matters, except the reckoning, and, so feeling, he sheds all timorous self-consciousness and is himself.

That, at all events, was how I felt as I took the road southward, across the hills towards Deeside, with a cracking wind to walk against. I would intercept the Black Colonel's raid on Marget and her mother, and break the whole scheme behind it—if I could!

So we scheme, we glorious little fellows of this world, bent on love or hatred, and the Great Beneficence smiles at us, at our cleverness, or it may be the Great Furies, however you will have it. Anyway, Nature has merely to move and our grandest plans may crinkle up like a feather held to a "cruisie," the rude lamp, fed with dried splinters of fir-wood, or mutton tallow and a wick, which our Highlanders used for lighting.

But that was not in my thoughts when I came to the top of the last hill dividing our strath from the Black Colonel's. My estimate was that if I got there by break of day and waited I should, being in a high eyrie with a wide view, see him come from the opposite direction. My information from my scouts was that he would travel alone, a fit thing, having regard to his mission at the Dower House, Corgarff.

Tired and hungry, I looked about for a rock which would shield me from the wind, and got out my fodder. It consisted only of "whisky bukky," oatmeal rolled with whisky, not delicate stuff to eat, but easily carried and sustaining. Haggis is better food for the march, because it is tastier and still harder to digest, so even more lasting, as the Highlanders, for whose war sustenance it was, perhaps, invented, knew, but on leaving Corgarff Castle I had just taken what I could lay my hand upon.

While I ate I half-marvelled at the splendour of the scene about me, half-rehearsed my catechism with the Black Colonel, when he should appear. I would put it to him as a gentleman that he must not intrude upon the Forbes ladies, and, indeed, must frankly abandon his designs there. If reason failed, then we might be driven to solve the knot by a single combat, as the custom of the Highlands permitted, and, indeed, sometimes ordered, very much like the duel in the land of France. Why not such a combat, because the test was an honest if barbaric tribute to plain manliness? Give me that rather than the snivel, the chicane, the shake-you-by-the-hand and stab-you-in-the-gloaming, which passes by the name of diplomacy, high diplomacy, I believe.

The tradition of single combat went back into the very mists of time in the Highlands; and merely the form varied. There was Cam-Ruadh, the early red-haired man of tradition, who, fallen prisoner among a batch of hostile "kern," or outlaws, was offered his liberty if he could make so many good arrow-shots. He drew and drew, with much seeming innocence, on the arrows of his captors, and wove a circle of stabs in the ground about the target, but never did he hit it; oh, no!

They jeered at him when he came to the last arrow possessed by the company, saying he had better reserve it for himself and save them the trouble of making an end to him. Instead, he sent it, as he could have sent the others, straight into the middle of the target, and flew there almost with it. Before the outlaws could realize the logic of events he had gathered all the arrows under his arm, put one to the string of the bow and cried, "I am Cam-Ruadh, who never misses, never before until now, and you who are without arrows had better take leg-bail," which they quickly did.

Nearer in time was the duel of valiant Donald Oig with the chief of a band of "broken men" who had a grudge against him. Donald was a famous swordsman, and the chief had no active relish to try skill with him. But, again, it was the custom of the country, and the invitation could not be refused if the chiefship of the "broken men" was to be held, because here was a test of both courage and honour.

He was a slim fellow, however, this head raider, one with the false doctrine, as ancient as human nature, that if you succeed it matters little how. When, then, he and Donald Oig stood up to fight he exclaimed, "Shake hands on it, first!" But he gripped the extended right hand hard, intending, with it thus prisoned, to strike a foul blow and close, in his own favour, a duel which had not begun. Swift of instinct and eye, Donald saw this, caught out his dagger with his left hand, and stabbed the foul fighter. The rest of the "broken men," being witnesses of it all, had nothing to complain about, and Donald went his way.

While my thoughts wandered like that, and I ate and, from my pocket flask, washed my dry eating down, the weather changed with a swiftness familiar enough among the Scottish mountains. The heavens passed behind a veil of drifting clouds, through which the sun flared in red, angry bursts. The elements had declared hostilities, and when I looked down into the valley, two thousand feet beneath me, I saw a great thunderstorm on the march, the very panoply of havoc.

It moved as if it were an army going to war, with scout-like horns thrust out in front and on either side. These were constantly shot by fangs from the mass of lightning in the clouds, themselves a hell of angry colours, There was the inky black of the outer sheath, next a seam of half-black, half-orange, then a depth of iridescence which constantly changed its hues, and, finally, a molten pot boiling and rolling in august wrath.

Ah! it was a spectacle to watch, those thunder-clouds come through the glack, or rift, dividing the falling hill on which I stood, from the rising one beyond. Down in the valley ran a stream and a track used by cattle-drovers, and, as my eye went there, I thought I saw a tall figure. Certainly, for he looked up and, during a moment, we were both silhouetted in the radiance of light which the thunder-clouds, now massed into one huge bank, drove before it. If I saw that solitary figure it was likely he would see me, as we were the only living things in the landscape, and like turns to like, even making mutual communication, although witchcraft was the word for that then, and the mention of it dangerous.

Presently the terrific cloud ate up the spot where I had seen the man, for its base was in the valley and its top above my altitude. Never had I beheld such a thunder-cloud, but it was awe, a worship of the forces of Nature, which filled me, not fear. Why should I, a young, healthy man, with good nerves, be afraid, since the excessive tumult was below me, and I was a privileged spectator. Quickly, however, the cloud must burst, and then the sluices of heaven would indeed be open. How would it fare with myself and the figure lost in the valley?

That thunderstorm and the consequent flood became events in our local history, and to me a quick personal adventure. The rain came down, first in a thick shower, then in torrents, finally in sheets. The fall was so solid that it seemed to half-scotch the lightning and half-dull the roar of the thunder. Actually, for I record truly, the drops leapt up again in splashes as they struck the ground beside me, and in an instant I was soaked, though that was no unusual experience in our adventurous climate.

The thunder-cloud had now taken command of the whole firmament, so swiftly had its violence of contagion spread. Here, verily, was a rainfall on a great scale, and as it settled to business a sort of darkness spread over the land. I must seek shelter, and I would find it on the levels rather than on the exposed heights.

Therefore, I started for the valley, picking my way as best I could in the black deluge. You will scarce believe me if I again tell you that the rain-water ran down the hill-side with me, inches deep. It took gravel and stones with it, and scoured away the bedding of large rocks which, thus released, joined in the downward plunge. Some folk thought it was the Flood of the Bible come again as prophesied, and, at all events, the comparison gives a notion of it. The stream, which I had seen an insignificant stripe below, met me, a roaring river. Its waters had already overflowed the whole valley. Now you only saw the tops of hillocks or trees, for all else was a gurgling waste of waters.

Over those waters came a cry which caught me, even in my sorry plight, because it was human. Wild birds, beaten to the ground by the storm and then engulfed in the waters, were screeching as they drowned. Hares and rabbits, and a fox, wherever he came from, all went past me on a floating tree, and they were squealing for mercy, not from each other, but from the elements. The other sound I had heard, however, was quite different, and I listened for it again.

Ah! there it was! And as I bent to the level of the flowing waters and looked towards its source, I saw a man marooned on one of the hillocks which the flood had left unsubmerged. Evidently he had seen me first, for he was waving his hands and making signs with them. He was in keen alarm about his predicament, but method governed his alarm, and it was for me to discover it.

Clearly he was a prisoner on the island, in so far that he could not wade or swim through the roaring dam which divided us. Clearly, also, the water was rising by miraculous draughts upon the rain, and soon his refuge would be drowned, and he swept from it. What was to be done by me to save him, for action must be rapid?

He was beckoning up-stream with a meaning. Searching with my eye the meeting-place of land and water, I saw what looked like a boat. Where could it have come from? There had been an old broad-bottomed craft, used for fording in spate times, on a pool a mile or so up the glen, and the flood had brought it down and thrown it ashore. Could I get it afloat, navigate it to the perishing man, and rescue him?

No sooner said than done! Not at all; things don't happen so, at least, when anything worth doing has to be done. It took me a toilsome journey to the boat, and I found it half-full of flood-water. This I emptied by hauling the boat, as the river rose, on to a shelving rock. Then I waited for it to float free, having meanwhile got hold of a long, fir sapling, which, pruned of its branches, I thought to use as a guiding pole, helm or oar, as the rushing of many waters might demand.

Thus equipped, out I sailed on that uncharted ocean with never a thought in my head whether I should again see dry land or riot. The darkness had deepened, but I could still distinguish the hillock and the man thereon, now up to his waist in the waters, and for those fading signs I steered. Quickly I was in the flood race, but I kept my head, otherwise I should not have heard the voice come to me again in what seemed to be the words, "Hurry! For God's sake, hurry!"

Down-stream I rushed, here shoving from disaster against a tree trunk, there avoiding a smash with something else. How it was all done I have not the remotest notion—perhaps it was mere luck—but when I came level with the hillock I was only three feet clear of it on the near side.

"Jump," I roared, and the man with outstretched arms jumped strongly, and I felt a pull which almost upset me, for I had been standing in the boat. Two hands had caught the gunwale, and the pull of dead weight swung the heavy, clumsy craft round on a new course without, however, upsetting it. This took us into shallower waters, and presently the suction of the main surge got fainter and we were aground on the moorland edge.

I had not, in the dark, seen the face of my companion at all, and, trailing beside the boat, he had no opportunity for making himself known. I stepped out, knee-deep, to find him also a-foot, and seeking the land.

"Come on," I said, "whoever you may be."

"Yes," he answered; "whoever you may be, you are a friend in need."

I recognized his voice, and exclaimed, nay, shouted in my surprise, "Jock Farquharson!"

"Yes, Ian Gordon," he said in turn. "Would you rather not have saved me?"

"God's will be done," said I.

"Amen!" said he.

Dramas of life do end laconically, like that, as death often comes by casual side-steps.



XII—Raiders of the Dark

A man does something in a natural way and it takes the world's ear and is called heroism. Another man does a like thing, to all purpose, but the world does not listen to it, or, anyhow, sings him no praises, all of which we try to explain by saying "Luck."

It is natural for a man to show courage in extremes, for a woman to be loving, self-sacrificing. Every now and then the Great Bookkeeper records an example for the common good; and the rest are a lost legion. We do not know why, and if we did what good would it do us, though the curiosity for knowledge is inbred, like inability, sometimes, to use it?

News of my rescue of the Black Colonel from the flood got about, and I was acclaimed as a hero of sorts. He, I fancy, for his own ends, fathered a glowing account of what happened, and as it passed from mouth to mouth it grew in glory. He meant to be grateful, and his gratitude took that form. It was his airy way, for egotism, even when it is not dislikeable, must ever carry its possessor into the picture.

Perhaps he also thought to please me, and thus to win a point towards his larger ends, for I knew they would, in no wise, be modified by what had happened. By them, as he saw his case, he had to stand or fall, and thus, in this reasoning, he had no choice at all. His bonds, in that sense, were entwined with coming events, which do not necessarily cast their shadows before, anyhow when they are events of the heart.

Now, my secret hope for the Black Colonel, the inner prayer which I hardly whispered to myself, was that he should escape his troubles as a rebel, by going away to the foreign wars, and there make a new name. I thought I might help him out of the country, even if it had to be at the risk of my commission. He would be welcome wherever he found a British camp across the sea, and no questions would be asked. Truly, there would be need to ask none, because his repute as a fighting man among the Jacobites had gone far and wide. By-and-by he could return, when the feuds of Stuart and Guelph had died down to the dross they were, though they had made a bloody toll, and sit in the home of his fathers, not merely unmolested, but honoured by both sides.

I am not going to pretend that my own inclinations were not behind this plan, for they were. Why should I seek to hide them, even from the Black Colonel himself; a hopeless thing to try, anyhow. He had one scheme for getting back to the world, and it struck bitterly across my path. I offered him another, which would attain his end, and if that were so, why should he not take it and thank me? I was not ill-disposed to him personally; certainly well enough disposed to help him—to help me. When were we to make the reckoning?

He was seeking to live up to his new pretensions as a head of a clan, and he had to find the wherewithal on which to do it. The consequence was that he used Red Murdo for taxing the country in the matter of his necessaries. If somebody, early some morning while it was still dark, awoke to ask the question: "Are you come to harry and spulzie my ha'?" it would most likely be Red Murdo who gave an insolent answer. The fellow, in fact, got swollen upon the little plunderings which his master ordered, until he was hard to keep in hand. But this, again, suited the Black Colonel, because, to push his claims, he found money handy, there being always smaller fry of the other side of friendship, who have hungry purses, or none at all.

So Red Murdo, flown as he was with a lowly man's pride, which tends to an unbalancing, must launch upon an expedition of no common sort. It embellishes a ballad of which only two lines come to me as I write:

"There's four-and-twenty milk-white nowt, twal o' them kye In the woods of Glen-Tanner, it's there that they lie."

Beyond what the lines tell of a bold piece of rieving and spulzy by Jock Farquharson's henchman, and done for him, I need not trouble to instruct you, because the event only leads into our chronicle as by a tributary wind. When there is a mystery, and you cannot fathom it by direct evidence, you are driven back on motives. They are, in fact, the nut and kernel of what lawyers call circumstantial evidence, a fitting together of suspicions which have made the coffin of many an honest Highland rebel.

I sought to keep my soldiers as unseen as a not over-great distance from Marget and her mother at the Dower House would permit. Naturally the Hanoverian uniform was a sore sight for their eyes, and even a personal grief, in that it recalled dear ones who had perished on the losing side. My desire to spare them was known to my men, who, in the same spirit, would often walk a mile round not to show themselves to the desolated inmates of the Dower House.

But it was essential, if anything unusual were to happen there, that we should know, since it was part of our charge to protect Marget and her mother from perils incidental to an unsettled country. Therefore, I had a private understanding with an old retainer of the family that he was to hasten to me, should protection at the Dower House ever be necessary.

This he was to do quietly, before giving any general alarm, as that might not prove necessary, and also because I remembered an old Highland wisdom, "Never cry fire, unless you want the heather to catch." Its bearing, as you will grasp is on strifes and feuds set alive, not on the actual burning of heather, which is done to let grass, for the sheep beasts, grow without being choked.

Well, on a night which I recall for its dense blackness, there came a tap, tap, tap, three of them, slowly and distinctly, at the small window of my room in the Castle. I knew by the method of the disturbance that it was not an accident, but I was on my feet and peering hard into the outer darkness before I realized that here was the prearranged signal of danger at the Dower House.

A hand moved close to the window, signalling me, and I motioned back, though, on either side, all this was divined, as divination takes place in the dark, rather than seen at all. I picked up my sword, which always stood in a certain corner of my room, pulled the door gently towards me and stepped softly out on to the grass, which grew close up to the Castle walls.

"Come ye, fast, Captain Gordon," quietly said a figure gliding beside me, and without another word we made for the Dower House. When I felt myself beyond ear-shot of the sentry, I asked:

"What's happened—what's wrong?"

"I'm no' exac'ly sure," was the old retainer's answer, "but men hae been surroundin' the place, as if to attack it. They wakened me, bein' a light sleeper, because they made sounds different fae' the ordinary. It was like men crawlin' amon' the grass on a plan, and I slippit doon for you."

"What had we better do?" I asked formally, and not because I expected any answer, for I had decided to get into the Dower House without alarming anybody, if that could be done.

We managed to open a window and step through it, but then the dogs sleeping inside set up an alarm. This quickly awoke everybody, and the confusion set affairs moving outside, where I heard a voice that seemed familiarly like Red Murdo's cry hoarsely:

"Lie close, lie close!"

Presently Marget and her mother, who had both dressed hastily, came to the stair-head, holding a glimmering light over the darkness beneath. Behind them crowded their few scared domestics, and odd the whole scene looked, although, indeed, between keeping off the barking dogs and wondering what was to happen outside, I had no desire or time to study it.

"Who's there?" called Marget, in a not uncomposed but expectant voice, and I answered, telling in a few words what I knew. Quick in thought and action she thanked me for coming, and said she would just get her cloak. She took her mother with her, but in a moment was back again asking, "How can I be of service?"

She carried a stout walking-stick, and I looked at it as she came down the stairs to where I stood in the lobby, her mother following. "Yes," she said, "my hand lighted on it somewhere, perhaps because it has been through troubles and wars and is in the presence of more. Shall we say that the fighting instinct, even in a stick, leaps to the call?" She laughed quietly, but with a concerned note in the laugh, and I knew she was thinking of her mother's safety and health, both threatened by this strange incursion of ill-disposed men.

Wishful as one would be at such a moment to magnify a trifle, in order, if possible, to occupy an anxious woman's mind, I remarked, "Oh, a stick can be a very sound weapon in a good hand."

"It's about all that the orders of search and suppression have left us Jacobites," remarked Marget; "openly confessed, anyhow, for I suppose there may be a small, concealed arsenal or two, even among our Corgarff hills."

Nothing, apparently, had happened outside in those tense minutes, and it was the strain of waiting which made us resolutely talk of nothing—but a stick. There had been no further cry since the "Lie close" already mentioned, and it, no doubt, had been a mischance on the part of Red Murdo. All was silence and black without, and within all quiet alarm, such as you get when a household suppresses itself in obedience to some demand.

It was an oppressive silence, this waiting, and I was glad to hear Marget tap the floor with her sinewy hazel and say merrily, thinking to lighten her mother's concern, "My grandfather insisted that a stick with a nob was no stick for a Highland gentleman. It escaped, he would say, when it was most needed, and that might, at times, leave the best of Highland gentlemen by the wayside." Joking, under difficulties!

She paused, for there arose a crack-cracking as of men coming closer among the scrub of heather and fern which surrounded the Dower House, only it was quite momentary. The stick which she had half-lifted, an unconscious act of readiness for defence, tapped back on to the floor, and my sword-point made a sharper rattle, though I was unaware that my hand had even moved it. The tyranny of doing nothing began to be intolerable and to insist on an issue, be it what it might.

Think of the situation for me, and although I am, I hope, neither more selfish nor more cowardly than other men, I could not help doing that. Here was I, the chief and head of his Majesty's garrison at Corgarff Castle, standing defence on the door-step of a Jacobite household. Why was I there at all? What was I there to accomplish? How was I to do this unknown something and return with composure to my quarters, secure in my loyalty to King George and his ministers?

Moreover, what had I come out for to see? A mere expedition of burglary by a band of hungry caterans who took the chattels of friend or foe indifferently? Possibly that was all. Then I could have fetched half-a-dozen soldiers and apprehended those same footpads, or, at all events, driven them to the hills again. But at the head of what defensive force did I find myself? Why, a few domestics without resource enough even to escape from the danger, a dear old lady who anxiously wanted to mother the trouble about her, and a young woman of nerve and resolve, my only stand-by.

There, for it was a new discovery in our relationship, I realized that to have Marget by me was a very welcome comradeship, and, somehow, so natural, that it made the other things of no burden. I was curiously happy, and could have left matters at that, but what to do, what to do?

There must, in all of us, be an instinct for our keeping, when we are in danger. Give it headway and you will probably win through, as a thirsty horse knows how to reach a springwell among the hills. Argue with it and it says, "Take your reasoned method, your road of the better judgment, but don't blame me, your natural guardian, if you come to harm."

With this I got the strong intuition, possibly communicated to my mind or heart by Marget's nearness, that here was no ordinary raid for spoilage. Something else of a personal and intimate sort was behind, I was sure of it, something to which acute danger attached for my dearest wishes.

When you are, in small authority, set over the people of a locality, you are apt to develop a small official mind which obscures the power of seeing, understanding, divining. Such an attitude, as I had painfully seen in various parts of the Highlands, fretted the great sore of defeat that lay upon the Jacobites, whereas the effort should have been to heal it. My own mind I had tried to keep fresh and free in all my relationships at Corgarff, impelled, may be, by a nature which liked, possibly out of vanity, to give sympathy. From this and a mute speaking with one near and dear, I now had my personal reward, for I understood. Marget was the trophy sought in this dark raid, and she was to be the Black Colonel's trophy.

"Action, front!" I said to myself, in one of the drill-book commands. Offence is always a soldier's best defence, although it is a sailor's phrase, so I would go out and make a reconnaissance from the back of the Dower House. This should cause the invaders to show themselves, and might, if they thought the move stood for any force, even alarm them into a quiet retreat, which, for several reasons, was what I most desired.

Quickly I told Marget of my intention, and the need for it, and asked her to remain on guard where she was. She answered briskly, a woman determined to be brave and not a burden, that nobody should enter the place without feeling the weight of her grandfather's stick. She added, and here came in the other woman, that I was not to be long absent. This touched me sweetly, for it showed that Marget was thinking less of her own safety, or, at the moment, even of her mother's, than of mine in the night outside. Honestly, I went dancing from her side with a wine of joy in me that I had never tasted, for she had shown that I was something to her, perhaps more than something. I might have been drunk, and if I had I could not have been more lost than I was in the darkness behind the Dover House, because it instantly swallowed me up.

There is a darkness to which, after a little, the eye so accustoms itself that it can see trees and rocks and even faces in contour. There is another darkness which seals the eyes and numbs the mind and even weights the feet as with lead. This was that night's darkness, so pall-like that I was simply lost in it.

Nevertheless, calling up all my sense of locality, and feeling the way lightly with my bare, ready sword, I started to make a circle of the Dower House. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty cautious steps, with my sword-point probing the way, and it touched something soft and yielding. That something a-sort of whimpered, as a dog caught poaching would, or as a man might who felt a quick pain. A sword-prick stings, and the something leapt erect and with a curse turned at me, when I instinctively fell on guard. Another sword struck at mine, my blade slid up this other, caught in the handle and wrenched it from the unseen hand. The weapon fell among the bracken, but my man thought more of getting away than of looking for it, so he doubled round a tree and was gone.

Evidently I had struck the investing circle, and I went on cautiously, but never another figure did I perceive, though, before me, ran many soft noises of as many retreats. Finally there was a suppressed rush away, and with that I arrived at the front door of the Dower House to hear a mother's cry of distress, "Marget, Marget! oh, Marget, Marget!"

"Where is she?" said I anxiously.

"She grew alarmed for you," answered her mother more anxiously, "and went out, although I tried to keep her. Hardly had she gone when I heard a smothered sob, and then there was a hustle of feet as if she were being carried oft by force."

There was a boding of ill in her cry, like a coronach, and the domestics took it up in sympathy, as Highland women will. "Marget! Marget! Mistress Marget!" rose the cry, and we became aware that all the inmates of the castle were stirring to it. But never a response came from Marget, never a token from the raiders, and it was forced on me that she and they were both gone from us.

We called on her, and searched for them until the dawn came, but only found the sword which I had encountered, and I knew it as one the Black Colonel had long worn, and then, when he himself got a better, that with the "S" for "Stuart" on its handle, had given to Red Murdo. The larger knowledge, brought by the dawn, was that the raiders had vanished as secretly as they had come, and that they had, beyond doubt, taken Marget with them. For though—

"We sought her baith by bower and ha', The lady was not seen."



XIII—The Wound of Absence

You will probably know what it is to lose somebody who by physical fragrance, the mystery of a common spirituality, or both, has become essential to you. The wound is twice as bitter if, until the parting, you were unaware how much that presence really meant. It is as if you had come into a new world of your own and then found it vanish, before you could take possession.

I had no doubt, thanks to the hearing of his voice and the leaving behind of his sword, that the raiders were headed by Red Murdo, the Black Colonel's henchman. Actual light came during the morning, in the form of a message by word of mouth: "I am a prisoner in the topmost room of Lonach Tower, and Red Murdo and his men are camped below."

When the Highland woman who brought it had said that, she melted away again without taking bite or sup. She lived in the ruin of Lonach Tower, and that was how Marget had been able to send her with the message. She could not be too long absent, however, or she might be missed by Red Murdo, whom, she said, she had left snoring out his lost night's sleep.

I found a Highlander who had engaged in relations with Red Murdo, though their nature need not be mentioned, and who was anxious to score them off for a settled life. Working on that, I told him to go to Lonach Tower, where he would find Red Murdo, and say the Black Colonel was waiting at a fold of the hills, which I named—waiting to hear how the night's work had fared! That, as you will mark, was the nice significance of the message, which I hoped would move Red Murdo and his merry men—his master waited "to hear how the night's work had fared!"

If the Black Colonel was behind the business it would seem a natural message, nay, a command, and my messenger went off with it. When he had gone, I picked out a dozen of our best soldiers, and, hinting the mission, without explaining it, we followed at a distance. We halted behind the last peak of the hill which looks down on Lonach Tower and awaited events.

We saw the receding Highland figure wend slowly towards the bare, lean turret, and, when he reached it, my eyes lifted to its queer little windows, seeking to look through them. They gave no sign of anybody inside, and, indeed, the mullioning of time had so dimmed them that, perhaps, the outside world could hardly be seen from within.

My Highlander hammered at the one entrance door, and he had to hammer a while before it opened to him. Then it only opened partly, as if the guardian kept a shoulder to it, while he spoke the visitor. Next it shut again, leaving my man outside, but evidently the colloquy had not finished, for he waited.

Ten minutes more and the door drew wide, as we could see, and Red Murdo came out, his comrades with him, and there was more questioning of the bringer of news. Evidently he played his part well, perhaps because, knowing nothing of what lay behind, he simply stuck to the terms of his delivery, for presently Red Murdo's party set off towards the meeting-place I had named for them.

Here was my time to act, and I only waited until the coast, or rather the valley, was clear. When the tartans of Red Murdo's party had fluttered out of sight, in obedience, as they fancied, to the commands of their chief, I got my fellows quickly a-foot for Lonach Tower and she who was a captive there.

The heavy oaken, iron-clasped door had been locked by the departed raiders, and no sign of any tenant within fluttered out to us. Half-measures are no more useful in opening bolted doors, of which you have not the key, than they are in accomplishing other difficult things. So, finally, we put our collective weights against it, pushed hard and steadily, and when the weather-worn bars and hinges gave way, tumbled headlong into the old keep.

Nobody was in the ground-room floor, nothing, except the untidiness left by half-a-dozen rough men, and I mounted the narrow stair and tried the room above. Again we had to use force, and when the door flew inward I almost landed in the lap of Marget Forbes. There she was, bound to a rough seat, in the middle of the room, with a cravat tied round the lower part of her face, to keep her silent. Gently but swiftly I undid the gag, and after that cut the rough tow which bound her to the seat. Being thus freed, she told me, with an agitation which I tried to still, what had happened just before we came and on the previous night.

Red Murdo, she said, when she could speak, had told her, with awkward apologies, that he did not want to be unchivalrous but that he and his men were called away for a little and that he must make siccar about her custody, and no alarm giving, against his return. She had ceased asking him why she had been forcibly abducted and what was intended for her, because on that he would say nothing except, "You are quite safe, my young lady, quite safe. We may be plain fellows, but we are Highland men towards a woman, especially towards Mistress Marget Forbes of Corgarff." "But how," I asked, for she had now somewhat recovered her nerve and composure, and the agreeable surprise our arrival had caused her, "how did you fall into their hands at the Dower House?"

"Oh," said she, "that was simple. You went out to reconnoitre, and, hearing in the stillness, words and a noise like a passage of swords, I became anxious about you. Under this impulse I opened the front door and stepped out a few yards when a Highland plaid fell round my head, silencing me effectually before I could shout an alarm, and I was borne swiftly away by two men. My astonishment was so great that I am not sure if I attempted to resist until I was some distance from the Dower House. Then two other men relieved my captors in carrying me, and by stages, for I absolutely declined to walk a step, I was brought here and placed in this room."

"Where you have been unable to give any alarm?"

"That you can see, and all I knew was that Red Murdo was the leader of my captivity, because he grumbled about having been stabbed in the leg and about losing his sword. 'What,' I asked, 'could he and his master, the Black Colonel, want by spiriting me away?' But Red Murdo wouldn't answer the question, and I haven't been able to answer it myself. Somehow I have felt that no personal harm was intended me because my captors, if not exactly friends, were not strangers, but men in some relationship to our own people. Mostly I have been anxious for the anxiety of my mother," and her eyes looked concern at me.

"Well," I said, "we shall relieve that anxiety very soon now; you have probably had enough of Lonach Tower, which, I notice, is sadly in need of the repairer. Let us go home!"

I said that last word out of my heart, and I thought Marget answered with a gleam which comes into a woman's eyes only when her heart is somewhere behind it. We went down the slender, creaky stair, the soldiers following, and came to the door, where, if you please, we ran slap into the Black Colonel, Red Murdo, and the other caterans. In the unexpected lies drama, and here, indeed, was a dramatic confronting. We stared at each other for a moment as if asking who was to speak first, and, like himself, the Black Colonel managed to do it.

"I heard only an hour ago," he said, "of a lady in distress in this old house. I have come, at my best speed, to help her, as who would not, when that lady is Mistress Marget Forbes."

"Would it not have been better," I cut in, "if you had heard of her distress before and come earlier to remedy it?"

"Possibly," he answered, "but if I had been earlier, Captain Gordon, I might not have met you here. So you see," he added challengingly, "there are compensations, although these are things, as far as my experience goes, with which we could often dispense."

"Well," said I, "I have been able to render first aid to Mistress Forbes, but it would be a satisfaction if you could explain to us how she came to need it."

"Explain! How can I explain?"

"You have cultivated a name for gallantry, Colonel"—he bowed—"and it would be gallant to a lady if you would say why Red Murdo invaded the Dower House last night and carried its young mistress away?"

"Did he, the villain? He did not tell me of that, when I ran into him and his following this morning. He said he came to where we met, in response to an order from me. There was no such order, though it is true that I was keeping an open eye for Red Murdo, a habit I have when I know he is abroad, lest he might have anything for me."

By this time it was clear that the Black Colonel had commissioned Red Murdo to kidnap Marget in order that he might rescue her, and, by the act of so doing, advocate his plans towards her. He was denying it now that he found in Lonach Tower not Marget alone and a captive, but Marget with a good, stout bodyguard to look after her.

She had not spoken so far, partly because she had not been directly addressed, partly because, as I could see, she was in a hot fury with the Black Colonel. But the strange fascination of the man was working on her, as I could also see, and, woman-like, speak she would or die.

"If," she demanded of him quietly, slowly, for she had herself in hand, "you had anything special, even private to say to me, why did you not come to the Dower House instead of sending your handy men to scare us all and run off with me? Whatever you hoped to gain, that, you must know, was not the way to gain it."

The Black Colonel looked at her composedly for a moment and said, "Mistress Marget, I am the last person in the world to think that any form of duress would influence your actions. On the other hand, since the opportunity has come, I make bold, even in the presence of Captain Gordon and our respective followers, to say a word in frankness, out of regard for you and your house. There are events pending which might go far to re-establish your family, and you should know about them, not merely indirectly but directly from me, who am deeply concerned in the business."

Marget blushed and flushed and glanced at me, as if asking me to protect her from what was very like a manifesto for public knowledge, thrust upon her when she could not help it. Her unconscious appeal warmed my heart like the sun, but I held back, preferring she should give the word which would, once and for all, put the Black Colonel in his place.

"By what right," she said with dignity, "do you address your proposals to me as you have done? You have schemed them in an underground way. Must you commit the affront of offering them to me in public, after using force to bring me here?"

"I have told you," broke in the Black Colonel, "what I know of Red Murdo and his doings on this morning, and if you do not believe me, why, I cannot help it. It may be that I had a plan for meeting you face to face, but no plan like what has now emerged."

"No," said I, intervening, "your plan was to find Marget alone in this eerie place, to work on her woman's feelings, her anxiety for her mother, her regard for her house, all that you might commit her with the Crown authorities as assenting to the secret negotiations which you are ripening."

"Doesn't that reflection come oddly from an officer of the Crown," he retorted, "because I have not heard you have resigned your commission? You should leave it to us who are not honoured with service under the foreign king, to flout his Majesty."

"There are moments, Jock Farquharson," I hotly replied, "when one's first duty is to be a man, and this is such a moment. I tell you if you do not drop your persecution of this lady you will have to count on a forthright quarrel with me."

"A pretty speech, my Captain Gordon," he said, adding: "Pretty speeches have a habit of coming from those whose tongues are their boldest weapons."

"You credit me," I said warmly, "with an accomplishment which I may or may not have; you assail me for want of a quality which I beg you to permit me to prove here and now."

There was no mistaking that, and he and his men looked their understanding. My feelings were what you can imagine, but I spoke deliberately. Perhaps I realized the need for quiet resolution rather than temper, which is ever too brittle a weapon to work well. As I understood, the Black Colonel, having failed to get Marget into his hands, with the object of mentally coercing her, now wanted to break me, if he could, in her presence. There was no end to the man's resource when the bad side of his character got going, and no measure at which he would stick.

His insult to me had been spoken in a voice loud enough to be heard by everybody. He so meant it to be heard, but my reply, an instant acceptance of his challenge, surprised him for a moment. He looked at me, hesitating what to say, and I looked at him with a perfectly clear purpose in my face. We both looked at Marget, at his Highlanders and at my men, knowing that with all these for witness of what had happened, more must follow.

Deep down in my heart I felt relief, because I was sure that some day we must fight out the odds between us, and when you come to that pass with any man, it is best it should be settled. They say that delay is fatal in love and deadly in war, and with me the two risks combined, for mine was both a question of love and a question of war.

"Is it elegant," the Black Colonel said in a purring voice of which I knew the worth, "that two men who are kinsmen in a degree, should fight, in the presence of a young lady who is a kinswoman?"

"You should have thought of that before," I quickly retorted.

"I agree with Captain Cordon," said Marget, interrupting us, "for I come of a people who have never been afraid to see trouble through, and I beg of you, Colonel Jock Farquharson, not to let me stand in the way. Nay, if you will accept me, I shall be referee!"

I bent my head to thank her for this, and he bowed in the over-polite fashion which he had learned among the French. By this time our respective followers, now taking a fight for granted, had lined themselves up to watch it, one set of men in one row, the other set in another, with space between them. A spirit of the love of combat for combat's sake, shone in their expectant eyes and echoed in their suppressed, excited talk.

There had once been a small garden attached to the Tower of Lonach, but it had been so overgrown with grass, and the grass had been so industriously eaten by sheep and deer, that now it was a rough, hard green, an entirely good place for swordsmen. On it, as the sun began to dip behind the hills, we took our stand, with my sergeant for second to me, while Red Murdo filled the same office towards the Black Colonel.

Things had happened so swiftly that I had scarcely time to think, and perhaps that was well, for thought never nerves you in such business as I had before me. There was I confronted with one of the best swordsmen in the Highlands, while I was—well, passably good. He was bigger, stronger, a more heroic, more impressive figure altogether than I was, and these pictorial attitudes count by the impression they make. I had to rely on a cool head, a nimble wrist, and I must in no wise depart from the style of fighting by which alone, as I well knew, I could hope to hold my own.

The Black Colonel would be sure, following the untutored Highland manner, and keeping his French training in reserve, to attack furiously, hoping so to destroy me at the beginning. My plan, based upon the barracks and camp training of a regular soldier, was to parry with him, to hold him off, to wear him down, and then, if I had the luck, which Heaven give me, get a blow home.

Marget, for all her courage, had walked over to a far corner of the green, where, however, she could still see us, because my soldiers and the Black Colonel's men stood aside to let her do that. Their common instinct for a fight flamed while they waited, but I knew that there would be no interference from either party of retainers, however things fell out, and so I had no anxiety as to the quarrel going beyond the Black Colonel and myself. All men of Highland degree were brought up to believe that honest disputes could be settled better by combat than anyhow else, and, indeed, they almost have a traditional reverence for the broad-sword of their country.

Nobody called on us to begin, but when the Black Colonel and I, our few preparations made, had looked at each other for a minute from the measured distance which divided us, we both advanced. As I had expected, he came with a rush, and if it had not been for my sound training in defence he might have smitten me at once. As it was, by a turn which seemed new to him, I caught his sword under the point and lifted it lightly upward into the empty air. He almost flew past me with the motion which he had gathered, and we both had to face squarely round in order that we might continue.

This time, apparently, he meant to be more deliberate, thinking, perhaps, that if he missed me again with one of his wild lunges, he might meet the sting of my thrust. He played with me, and I responded to his caution, so far as he could be cautious, in the same spirit. Our swords were of equal length and about the same weight, but he had a longer arm than I, as well as a stronger one. Still, I made up for this, as he began to realize, by quicker work in what might be called the smaller craft of fighting. I could be here and there and somewhere else with my sword, while he was making a parry or a lunge or a level stroke, for he tried everything.

Now his sword ran safely under my left arm where I guided it, and the point of mine caught the breast-high edge of his kilt, where the cloth is closely plaited and therefore very resisting. My blade bent so that if it had been other than the finest steel it might have snapped. Then the grip in the cloth broke, the sword was free again, and we were without hurt, only the battle was growing warm.

Its contagion had agitated the men looking on, to a point where, forgetting themselves, they began to shout encouragement to us severally, the Black Colonel's men to him, mine to me. Red Murdo was urgently demonstrative, and my sergeant, as he afterwards told me, kept an eye on him lest he should be tempted to intervene. In the distance Marget, as I saw momentarily, stood still and quiet, but there was a fixed anxiety in her face, and the woman's horror of two men seeking to take each other's life on her account!

Now came the third bout, and knowing the limits of my strength I determined to make it the last, if I could. The Black Colonel, it encouraged me to notice, had also grown a little tired. His rush and dash were less strong when he came at me, and I thought I caught in his eye a new doubtfulness of success. He was famed for the quickness with which he could finish a duel, and probably he had also decided to settle this one at the third time of asking.

We parried and thrust, sword to sword, and I was driven to give way a few paces by the Colonel's onslaught. This led him to take risks, as I had hoped he might. Let him tire out his sword arm with heavy lunges and elaborate recoveries, while I kept myself on guard, and then, perhaps, my turn would come, for getting him. It did come, but it came, as most things come, in an unexpected fashion.

Sweating like a man in a fever, with his eyes wild and savage, the Black Colonel at last fairly flung himself on me. My face was also streaming with perspiration, but my head remained cool, perhaps because I felt that Marget was looking on. A warm heart and a cool head should neighbour an ordeal, and, in that assailing of me, my maintenance of this combination was everything.

As he leapt forward, purposing to overwhelm me, the Black Colonel's foot appeared to catch an uprising tuft that had been left unnibbled by the sheep, possibly on account of the coarse toughness of its grass. He lost his balance and shot heavily at me, holding his sword straight out, as if to drive it through me. Here was my chance, for he could not, in this act of falling, change the position of his weapon. I did that for him by a mere touch, and it ran by me, near, it is true, but without hurting me. Mine, on the other hand, pierced the muscle of the Black Colonel's right arm, and instantly his sword fell from his hand, rattling close to my foot. The blood spurted from him to the cry of the onlookers, "Ah, he's ill hit," for he looked it, lying there on the ground with a long, red gash in his arm.

"No," he said, slowly rising, "I am not ill hurt, but I am hurt in a measure which will keep me from fighting any more this afternoon. Here I am with a useless right hand, and I have never learned to use the left, so we must stop."

By this time Marget had come up, offering to bind the Black Colonel's wounded arm, and staunch the bleeding, a task which Red Murdo had already begun, only his hands were clumsy at it. Marget made him take off the strip of tartan which he was twisting tightly round the forearm and put her linen handkerchief nearest the wound. This tender and thoughtful attention seemed to soften the field of battle, and presently I found myself picking up the Colonel's sword and returning it to him.

"Thank you," he said; "I can only carry it in my belt at present, but I would not like to lose it, for it has proved you a better swordsman than I had expected."

Handsomely said, was it not? But we are always inclined to think a compliment to ourselves fitting, especially when it comes from an enemy as formidable as Jock Farquharson was.

"I hope, sir," I answered without undue gravity, "that I have earned the compliment and I accept it, as I accepted your challenge, without reserve. Now, I suppose, our meeting is finished, and so we may each go our own way. Mistress Forbes, will you allow me to see you home?" and I turned towards her.

She took my arm and we walked quietly from Lonach Tower and quietly across the hills to the Dower House, neither of us saying much on the way, possibly because our thoughts were not for the six soldier men who strode behind us.



XIV—The Cards of Love

A man who serves the cause of a good woman is serving well, her and himself, even if he only waits in the garden of the emotions. He is probably helping that woman in subtle, beautiful ways, to be herself, to realize the full majesty of her womanhood, which otherwise she might miss. I had the highest wish to help the interests of Marget, and if my heart beat an accompaniment, that was only another test of my sincerity.

There, perhaps, I have written as if I had grown sure of Marget, which I had no right to be, which no man can ever be of any Marget, else romance would perish. Typical of other youth and maid stories was ours, a story without a beginning, a middle, or an apparent ending; a sort of skein of hope and unspoken understanding such as links two people, until they come closer or drift apart, ships that pass in the night that should be the morning.

When did we begin to care for each other, if that state of regard as between us was to be assumed, because people do ask themselves such questions, and if they do, why not admit it? When does a flower begin to bloom? Who can tell? You see it, one unheralded high-noon, as if it were just ready to burst beautifully upon its world. So it is, still much depends on how the world is going to treat it. The flower blows, if sunshine greets and warms it. But let the sky be grey, sombre, leaden, and that flower cometh not to its full kingdom—cometh not, she said.

We had not spoken, Marget and I, to each other of love; we had not called it by a name to each other; we had only felt and dreamt it. Possibly, that is the natural course of a simple, true love, for it is undemonstrative. It likes the half-lights of the dusk, to live in the shadow of its silvery clouds, and to arrive round corners, if only that it may have a safe way of escape, should it be frightened. Ever it likes running away, and, better still, it likes being pursued!

All this goes with one dark little story of my love for Marget, and I would only tell it under the compulsion of a full-breasted honesty, because I judge it to be sacred to her as well as to me. It was when I first felt as if something hitherto unknown to me had come into my life at Corgarff. I had seen Marget once, with interest, because she was good to look upon, the second time with pleasure, because she seemed to see me, the third time with a sense of awkwardness, as if a mysterious contact had arisen between us.

Words will not take me nearer to the uncanny, covetous feeling than that, for they are bald, empty contrivances invented of this world and not, like love itself, the fruit of the spirit world. But perhaps you will understand, certainly if you have experienced yourself, and, understanding so much, you will be able to follow what came next.

Marget had been going somewhere, taking a mere walk, perhaps, and I had said, "May I not come," and she said, "No, there is really no need," and I did not go.

Unknowing youth! I saw my condemnation in her eye as she went her path resolutely, turning neither to the right nor to the left, a maiden determined to give me a lesson in this; that love, even when it is only dawning, loves to be assailed. That was a chapter of the spiritual story which lay within the outer story of our doings in Corgarff. You may say that it was a trifle, a thing not worth recalling, and that would be true for everybody except Marget and myself, who knew better then and confessed it to each other afterwards, because it was a first flicker of realization.

And, indeed, behind my marchings and counter-marchings around the grim old Castle of Corgarff there lay a mystery of feeling nearer to me than any call of arms could be. It was always present, the most potent influence that can exercise a man, born of one woman and in love with another. No doubt Marget and I shirked any admission, but it was in our bearing towards each other, that whisper of the heart's throne which calls and is answered.

This feeling was my settled comfort now that a cloud of events, as I assessed them, was hurrying the Black Colonel into a new necessity towards his personal aims and so towards Marget and myself. The "rough, raging, roaring, roystering, robustious rascal" side of him, and the description is not mine but taken from an extant document, had long been filling up. Presently it would overflow in happenings urgent enough to sweep our pilgrimage along like a high wind on the high hills of Corgarff.

They began with a fall out between the Black Colonel and his Red Murdo, some little time after the duel at Lonach. To get his injured but recovered sword-arm in trim again the Colonel had taken to practising on his man, also a sufficient swordsman, though always liable to make a foul stroke. This time he had to defend himself from a sudden, half-angry, half-playful, wholly energetic assault on the part of his master, and that without a sword in hand.

What do you think he did, this Red Murdo, when the Colonel's provoking blade had positively pinked him in the leg, above the garter and drawn blood? He picked up Jock Farquharson's pet dog, a wise and lively Scots terrier, and flung it, a protection against further pinking, on the sword-point, with the remark, "A good soldier never lacks a weapon."

The Black Colonel was fondly attached to his dog, and its death, for it died from the wound, upset him into other troubles. It is often the way, when one thing goes wrong that many things go wrong, time getting out of joint generally. Naturally, too, if we remember that life is a delicate machine which a small first unbalancing will throw into disorder, as take the Black Colonel in witness.

It became necessary for him to "raise the wind," as he spoke of the process, and to that end he sent Red Murdo on a foraging expedition. This worthy, wishful to do the business with as little trouble as possible, went after the first batch of cattle he could find. He planned to get them away in the dark of night, have them at a safe distance by morning, and then, at his leisure, drive them to a southern market and bring back to the Black Colonel what he got for them, less his own expenditure on victuals and drink, and the due entertaining of other gentlemen of the same kidney, met on the road, because its comradeship had to be justly handselled.

Now, shrewdly, as a matter of precaution against raiders high, or kern lowly, the owner of the grazing kine had put a white beast among them. Consequently when he was wakened by a loud lowing and came forth to find the reason, he saw that his cattle were being stolen away, for there walked the white one, a guiding star to his eye. He followed the drove quietly at a distance, summoning friends as he passed their several homes, and when he had gathered recruits enough, and while it was still dark, he set upon Red Murdo and his thieves, gave them the heartiest beating you could fancy, and re-captured the cattle.

This attempt to steal the kine was laid at the door of the Black Colonel, rightly so, and when he heard of it and its failure he swore at Red Murdo, saying he had lost all a henchman and provider's artistry. He was one of those men, very numerous in the world, who could ill-support a failure made by himself, and could not bear it at all when another failed who was acting for him.

"Why," he rated Red Murdo, "you can neither steal nor lie, as a Highland gentleman's ghillie should. You would have me do those petty things myself, and they are not for me, although, mayhap, I'd be equal enough to them."

Red Murdo answered nothing to his enraged chief, but perhaps made up for his silence by some hard thinking. When a rebuke is taken silently the wrath behind it is apt, in average human nature, to simmer out, but the Black Colonel's black fire burned on.

"Why," he roared, "didn't you think of an expedient to keep those cattle, the white one and all, for very probably it was a beast to fetch a good price? Where were your wits? You recollect when, for an act which has since been counted brave, I had to fly with half-a-dozen men on my heels, and how, coming to a mill, and nobody being there, I put on the miller's dusty suit. I was asked by my pursuers, sure that they had seen the man they pursued disappear into the mill a few minutes before, 'Did any one enter here?' 'Only the miller is here,' I told them, and, as it seemed so, they went their way, and, after a while, I went mine."

"But," said Red Murdo, "they wid na' hae believed me if I had sworn a score o' oaths that I was the miller. I'm nae sae good at swearin' untrooths as some folk you ken!"

"Possibly," quoth the Colonel loftily. "To be believed one must, after all, look one's words and you might find it a difficulty. But still a ghillie of better strategy would have kept those cattle and, what is worse, my friend, saved the suspicion which has fallen upon me."

"Nae for the first time," Red Murdo shot at the Black Colonel.

"It's not first times that matter," he retorted more quietly, being pleased, in a manner, with Red Murdo's spirit; "it's last times that count, and the need is to take care of them."

Possibly the Black Colonel might have met his material troubles for a while longer without having to fly from them, because he was full of stratagems. But on the sentimental side he fell into an affair of much sadness for a comely lady who, at her mid-age, should have known better, though, indeed, the forties have their storms, like the sea latitudes sailors call the "roaring forties." Delectable as detail might be, and desirable to illumine what all befell, I must, for I am no scandal-monger, be content to give you the romance and the tragedy in three snatches of verse begotten by the same.