GREAT DUNDEE
At Keppoch the months passed slowly enough for our two exiles. They
heard no news from the south--of Barra nothing, no word of Kate McGhie.
The country about them was in a constant ferment--gatherings here and
there on behalf of King James; false reports about the doings of the
Hamiltonians and Conventiclers in Edinburgh; reports that the Westland
Whigs were marching to exterminate the lads of the glens, in revenge
for the doings of the Highland Host. They had sworn (so the tale ran)
to take back to Ayrshire and Galloway the booty of the "Seventy-nine,"
which still constituted the best part of the plenishings of most
Highland cottages to the north of the lands of Breadalbane and McCallum
More.
It was hard to wait in blank ignorance; but Wat knew that his best hope
of coming to his own again, and so to the winning of his love, was to
abide the chances of war, and by good service to the king to deserve
the restoration of his fiefs and heritages.
Luckily for the two outlaws, no French officers came to Keppoch, nor
any, indeed, who knew either Scarlett or Wat, otherwise their lives
had not been worth an hour's purchase. But as week after week went
by, they became great favorites with McDonald, and were taken on
several occasions to see Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiell--a wise, silent,
benignant man, who at first said little, but contented himself with
watching them silently and subtly from under his eyebrows.
"I remember your father," he said, suddenly flashing a look on Wat.
"You remember my father?" repeated Wat, eagerly; "I did not know he had
ever been in the Highlands."
"Nor was he," said Lochiell; "it was in Edinburgh, when his head was
cocked up on the Nether Bow, that I mind him--and a fine, wiselike;
honest-seeming head it was."
The young man straightened himself fiercely, suspecting an intention to
insult him.
"Na, na," said Lochiell, smilingly; "that's where every honest man's
head ought to land at the last. James Graham's was there afore your
father's, and mine, I doubt not, will follow one day. But they will
send Keppoch's black puddock-stool tied up in a poke to fricht the
bairns of Inverness."
"Ye are acquaint with my Lord Dundee, they tell me?" was Lochiell's
next question.
"Aye," said Wat, "and well acquaint--though I know not how he would
receive me now. Yet many a time have I ridden blithely enough at his
side when I was a lad, until I had the misfortune to be outlawed and
attainted by the Privy Council--"
"What was that for--not ony maitter o' religion and godliness, I hope?
Nae sic Whiggery about a brisk lad like you, surely?" said Keppoch.
"It was for the small matter of sticking a sword into a man or two
belonging to my Lord Duke of Wellwood," interrupted Scarlett, "and
maybe for helping his Grace himself to an ounce of lead--"
"Hoot!" cried Keppoch, "John Graham will never steer ye for ony sic
cause. He is great on the drill and discipline, but as to the richtin'
o' a bit private misunderstanding, that surely is every gentleman's ain
business."
"That was not the view the Council took of the matter," said Wat,
smiling.
"Oh, they wad doubtless be o' the ither man's clan, or his connections
and well-wishers in some shape--ye couldna blame them. They wad do the
best they could for their side, nae doot," answered Keppoch.
And Lochiell listened to all with a gravely smiling face, like a man
well pleased.
At Keppoch there was one day a muster and a show of weapons, after
which came sword-play and fighting with the Lochaber axe, assault with
targe and without targe--all of which Wat and Scarlett watched with
infinite zest and unwearied amusement.
When it was well over, and all the champions from the glens had
performed before the chief and Lochiell (who were then in great
amity), Keppoch invited Wat to try a bout with him. Wat professed his
inexperience with the heavier blade of the claymore, but asked to be
permitted to retain his own lighter and finer "Andrea"--which, indeed,
had scarcely ever left his side since he recovered it in the locker of
the boat from which he had been cast ashore on the isle of Fiara.
So before long, weapon in hand, the huge black chieftain faced
Lochinvar, towering over him like a son of Anak, his very sword casting
a shadow like a weaver's beam.
They saluted in form and fell-to.
Clash! The blades met, and almost immediately Keppoch swept his sword
in a full cut at Wat's shoulder. The young man measured his distance,
stepped aside, and the next moment his Andrea pricked Keppoch's side
below the arm. It was a mere touch with the point, but had the blade
stood a handbreadth in the giant's body, as it might have done, the
sons of Ian would have needed another chief.
Coll o' the Cows was more than a little astonished; but thinking the
matter some accidental chance which could not be repeated, he professed
his readiness to proceed.
"Man," cried Lochiell, who had been attentively watching the combat,
"not Coll o' the Cows, but Coll o' the Corbies ye would have been if
that laddie had liked. For oh, man, ye would hae been deid as Dugald
More, and the clan looking for a tree to hang the young man on by this
time."
With this most disabling thought in his mind to warn him from a too
complete victory, Wat once more guarded, and for a long time contented
himself with keeping off the furious strokes of the chief's assault,
as easily, to all appearance, as a roof turns aside the pelting of a
summer shower. Then, as Keppoch took breath a moment, his first fury
having worn itself out, Wat attacked in his turn, and, puzzling his
opponent, as was his wont, with the lightning swiftness of his thrust
and recovery, caught his claymore deftly near the hilt, and in a moment
it was flying out of his fingers.
Keppoch gazed after his weapon with as much surprise as if a hand had
been reached out of the blue sky to snatch it from his grasp.
"God!" he cried, "but ye are a most mighty sworder--ne'er a one like ye
within the Highland line. Who was your master at the play?"
Wat pointed to where old Jack Scarlett sat smiling complacently beside
Lochiell.
"There is my teacher," he said, "and at my best I am but a bairn with a
windlestraw in my master's hands."
Scarlett wagged his beard at Keppoch's evident consternation.
"No, no," he said, "I am old and stiff. Do not believe him. Why, lad,
ye beat me the last time I tried ye with that same trick, though indeed
I myself had taught it ye at the first."
"But I was vexed for the lad," he added under his breath, "and maybe I
did not just try my best."
Of course after this nothing would serve the chiefs but that Wat and
Scarlett must fight a long bout with the blunted point, which presently
they did amid tremendous excitement.
"Oich! Oich!" shouted the clansmen, jumping in the air and yelling at
every good stroke and lightning parry.
"Bone o' Dugald More--what heevenly fechtin'!" cried Keppoch. "I
declare I am like to greet--me that hasna grat since the year sixty,
when Ian Mackintosh of Auchnacarra died afore I could kill him. Oh, for
the like o' you twa to lead a foray intil the country of the Lochiell
Camerons--_I mean the Appin Stewarts, foul fa' them!_ We wad gang in
the daytime. For oh! it wad be a peety that sic bonny sword-play should
be wasted in killing folk in the nicht season."
And the tears actually streamed from the eye of Black Colin as he
watched the swords clash and click, meeting each other sweetly and
willingly like trysted lovers.
"This is worth a' the kye frae Achnasheen to Glen Urquhart," he cried.
"Ah, that was a stroke! 'Tis better than ganging to a kirk!"
More than once Wat nearly got home. But old Jack, standing a little
stiffly on his legs and biting at a bit of sour-grass, always turned
the point an inch aside at the critical moment. At last came the
opening, and the master's return flew like lightning. Wat's blade was
forced upward in spite of his lowered wrist, and lo! Scarlett's point
stood against the third button of his coat as steadily as a master in a
school points at the blackboard with his ferule.
A great shout went up from the throng. The hands of both combatants
were shaken. Keppoch's defeat was avenged. Such swordsmanship had never
before been seen by any son of Ian. The reputation of both master and
pupil was made on the spot. Lochiell and Keppoch vied with each other
in civilities, and the event became a daily one--but after this with a
pair of foils, which the master-at-arms deftly manufactured.
In many such ways the months passed, and the spring came again with
delicate green kindling along the watercourses, as the birch began to
cast her tresses to the winds, and the grass tufts fought hard with the
conquering heather.
But upon a day late in the month of May the party at Keppoch was broken
by a sudden definite call. Three horsemen rode up to the door one
blazing noontide. Scarlett and Keppoch were playing cards, the chief
eagerly and noisily, Scarlett with the dogged use-and-wont of a hundred
camps. Wat Gordon was cleaning his arms and accoutrements in the hall;
for though they two had landed with little save the swords by their
sides--now, thanks to their quality as swordsmen, and also somewhat
to the weight of the gold in Wat's belt (which had so nearly been the
death of him in the Suck of Suliscanna), they had been equipped with
all the necessities of war.
The first of the three riders who entered into the hall of Keppoch
was no other than my Lord Dundee. He looked thirty years older than
when Wat had seen him last riding by in the gloaming to the house of
Balmaghie--grayer, more wearied, sadder, too, with his face drawn and
pale in spite of the sun and the wind.
He greeted Keppoch courteously but without great cordiality, glanced
his eye once over Jack Scarlett, and seemed to take his quality in a
moment--gravely saluting the good soldier of any rank and all ranks.
Then he looked about him slowly.
"Why, Lochinvar!" he cried, astonished, "what wind hath blown you
here--not recruiting for the Prince of Orange, I hope, nor yet trying
to cut my favor with Keppoch?"
"Nay," said Wat, "but, if an outlaw and an exile may, ready as ever to
fight to the death for King James."
"Why, well said," answered my Lord Dundee, smiling, "yet, if I remember
rightly, I think you owed his Majesty not so much favor."
"In the matter of the Privy Council and my Lord Wellwood?" said Wat,
shrugging his shoulders. "As to that, I took my risks like another. And
if I had to pay the piper--why, it was at least no one but myself who
called the tune."
"Not my lady--my late Lady Wellwood, I mean?" said Dundee, glancing at
him with the pale ghost of mirthfulness on his face.
Wat shook his head.
"Of my own choice I took the barred road, and wherefore should I
complain that I had to settle the lawing when I came to the toll-gates?
But at least I am glad that you bear me no grudge, my lord," said Wat,
"for doubtless, after all, it was a matter of the king's justice."
"Grudge!" cried one of those who were with the viscount, "it had been a
God's blessing if you had stood your weapon a hand-breadth out on the
other side of his Grace of Wellwood when you were about it."
Whereupon, with no further word, Dundee and Keppoch retired to confer
apart; and that night, when the viscount rode away from the house, his
three followers had become four. For Wat Gordon rode by his side as in
old days on the braes of Garryhorn before any of these things befell.
But Jack Scarlett abode still with Keppoch and Lochiell to help them to
bring their clansmen into the field.