HIS LIFE IN HIS HAND
Louis Raincy rode right up to the door of Ladykirk and asked to see Miss
Aline, with whom he had always been a great favourite. As a boy he had
loved to play about her shrubberies. He remembered still the quaint
smell of the damp pine-needles on the ground, the bitterness of laurel
leaves which he broke across the centre and nibbled at, and above all,
the long pleasant days of Miss Aline's jam-making, when he skirmished in
and out and all about the kitchen and pantry, getting in everybody's
way. Why, his very breath smelled sweet to himself after he had cleaned
out brass pan after brass pan, with that worn spoon of horn warranted
not to scratch, kept and supplied by Miss Aline for the purpose.
Now he was grown up. School and college had passed him by, and much to
his own astonishment had left him in many ways as much a boy as ever. He
had not been allowed to enter either of the fighting services, so he
took what of adventure the country afforded--the rustic merry-making of
the "Kirn" in the days of harvest home, the coastwise adventure of
ships, and the midnight raid of the Free Traders with their clanking
keg-irons and long defiles of pack horses crowning the fells and bending
away towards the North star and safety.
Now Miss Aline greeted him cheerfully as he came in through the great
doors of the courtyard which had been shut that morning for the first
time since her father's funeral.
"Ah, Louis," she cried at sight of him, "it is easy to guess what brings
you to my door so early in the morning. It is long since the days of the
brass preserving-pan. Laddie, I'm feared that 'tis quite another
berrying of sweets which brings you so fast and so far!"
"Miss Aline," said the lad, with a frankness which made the good
chatelaine like him the better, "I rode over to see Patsy Ferris. I must
hear what all this is about the Duke of Lyonesse."
"Nothing, so far as I can hear, Louis," said Miss Aline; "but our maid
is afraid, and her father's house and her uncle's are both as full of
soldiers and ribaldry as ever in the times of the Covenant. So where
should she come if not to me? It was more wisely done than I could have
expected from that 'fechtin' fule' of a Stair Garland."
Louis Raincy saw Patsy. She was sitting in Miss Aline's own room among
the simple daintiness of many white linen "spreads" with raised
broidery, the work of Miss Aline's own hands. Here she told him her
determination to keep out of the way till the Prince and his train had
left the country. The reasons for her instinctive dislike of her uncle's
guest were not clear to any except herself, but on these Louis did not
insist. It was enough that Patsy was so minded. In any case he wished
her to know that he would follow the movements of the enemy with care,
and warn her of their intentions. Captain Laurence, especially, was a
free talker, and might let slip useful information. He, Louis, would
ride over to headquarters that very afternoon, and, if Laurence was
still absent, he would get an orderly to find him.
Thus was Patsy equipped with two cavaliers of courage and address, one
of whom had his entries everywhere, while the other possessed the
supreme skill of sea, shore, morass, hill, and heather, which comes only
after generations of practice. But against them they had a man
infinitely subtle and wholly without scruple. Eben McClure was of that
breed of Galloway Scot, which, having been kicked and humiliated in
youth for lack of strength and courage, pays back his own people by
treachery with interest thereto.
The like of Eben McClure had tracked with Lag when he made his tours
among his neighbours, with confiscation and fine for a main object, and
the murder of this or that man of prayer, covenant-keeper or
Bible-carrier, as only a wayside accident. Now Galloway is half Celtic,
and the other half, at least till the Ayrshire invasion, was mostly
Norse. So McClure was hated with all the Celtic vehemence which does not
stop short of blood. He was the salaried betrayer of his own, and in
time, unless he could make enough money and remove himself to some far
hiding-place, would assuredly die the death which such men die.
Of this, of course, he was perfectly aware, and had arranged his life
accordingly.
In the meantime he watched and pondered. He disguised himself and made
night journeys that he might learn what would suit his purpose. He could
be in turn an Irish drover, a Loch Fyne fisherman, a moor shepherd, a
flourishing burgess of Lanark or Ruglen, even an enterprising spirit
dealer from Edinburgh or Dundee, with facilities for storage of casks
when the Solway undutied cargoes should reach these cities.
And the marvel was that in none of his personations had he yet been
caught. In proof of which he was still alive, but McClure confessed to
himself that it was only a matter of time. He must make a grand stroke
for fortune--quick fortune, and then bolt for it. For his heart was sick
with thinking on the gunshot from behind the hedge or the knife between
his shoulders. He never now went to his own parish of Stonykirk where
his father had been a well-doing packman--which is to say, a travelling
merchant of silks and laces. McClure knew that he was in danger anywhere
west of the Cree, but the danger increased as he went westwards, and in
his own parish of Stonykirk there were at least a score of young blades
who would have taken his life with as little thought as they would have
blooded a pig--aye, and had sworn so to do, _handfasted_ upon it,
kissing alternately Bible and cold steel.
It was no difficult matter for McClure to possess himself of the
unavowed reason of my Lord Wargrove's ardent search for a carriage and
horses. Clearly it was for a secret purpose--one that could not be
declared. Because in any other case Lord Wargrove had only to take the
pair which belonged to his host, or more easily still, Adam Ferris's in
the north end of the Glen. If these were not regal enough, Earl Raincy
had in his stables the finest horses in the county, and would certainly,
though of old Jacobite stock, not refuse them to the King's son, albeit
only a Guelph. Then there was old Sir Bunny Bunny. His wife would gladly
have harnessed the horses herself and put her husband on the box, if
only she had suspected a desire which she could have treated as a royal
command.
As for the purpose, Eben McClure was in no greater difficulty. What but
a pretty woman to run away with, did any of the king's sons care for?
There was but one such girl in the countryside. She had made the Duke
hold wool for her--many hanks, it was said in the regiment--and he had
fallen in love with her on the spot.
But that girl, whether taking alarm or to increase her value, had gone
into hiding, and apparently no one knew where. It was certain that her
kin at one time or another had dipped their fingers pretty deeply in the
traffic. There were caves and hiding-places, which it would be death to
search except with a company of sappers. And more than that, he would
have to stay behind alone and face the back-stroke. He could not always
ride out with the helmets of the dragoons making a hedge about him.
Now McClure was a clever man, and he had been with the soldiers that day
when Whitefoot, questing for Jean, had entered the kitchen of the farm
of Glenanmays. He had wondered at the persistency with which the dog had
followed the girl. At first he had waited to see her give him something
to eat from the debris of the meal which was being prepared for the
soldiers.
But after Whitefoot had twice sniffed at the alms tossed him without
touching the gift, still continuing to follow Jean, now tugging at her
apron-string and now licking her hand, McClure, a man of the country,
began to suspect that the dog was a messenger from one of the lost
Garland boys whom they had missed so narrowly the other day in the
heather of the Wild of Blairmore.
So upon Jean's departure he stepped quietly to the door and noted that
she took the way down the valley towards the shore. He had not thought
much about it at the time, for at the moment all chasings of smugglers
and expeditions in aid of the manning of the fleet were absolutely at a
standstill. The Duke's arrival on the _Britomart_ by way of Stranryan
had mobilized all the forces of order, as escorts of safety or guards of
honour. So there would be no more raids till His Royal Highness was safe
across the Water of Nith.
There remained to McClure the alternative of following Jean on his own
responsibility, but the Stonykirker had far too great a respect for his
skin to search a valley bristling like a thousand hedgehogs with all
manner of thorn and gorse bushes, waved over with broom and darkened
with undergrowth, any single clump of which might conceal half-a-dozen
rifles, each with the eye of a sharpshooter behind it--a mere spark in
the sheltering dusk, but quite enough to frighten most men in his
position.
So, though strongly suspected, Jean sped on her way unopposed. McClure
put the incident away in the pigeon-holes of his memory. It might be
useful some day. He thought deeply upon the affair which now delayed
Royalty and, incidentally, was stopping his business. If he could put
the son of the King under a great obligation--he might at one stroke
make his fortune and save his life. He had had enough of Galloway, and a
permanent change of air was what he longed for--to a far land, under
other skies, and among a people of a strange tongue, who had never heard
of press-gangs and Solway smugglers.