PATSY'S RESCUE
Like a greyhound coursing sped the little mare. After Derry Down
stretched the more sturdily built Honeypot. He made no flourishes with
head or tail but simply laid well into his work, going so fast that his
rider Louis Raincy seemed to be bending to meet a strong wind. The
hedges and tree clumps poured behind as water from the prow of a
wind-driven boat in a difficult sea-way.
Three or four times Louis tried to stop his companion, but Stair had a
spot in his mind where he could hold up the carriage. It was a sharp
angle of road, designed in days when levels and gradients were unthought
of, and still permitted to linger on to the danger of travellers' necks.
In fact the White Loch elbow remains to the moment of writing, in spite
of all modern improvements, a trap for the unwary, merely because a
laird's lodge-gate lies a few hundred feet to the north, and any new
road must cut a shaving off the entrance to his avenue.
But that night Stair made use of the gates manorial. Tying their ponies
to trees, they lifted the heavy gates off their hinges and "angled" them
skillfully across the road so as to form a barrier which must stop the
horses and carriage. Stair would have set up the barricade between the
double turn of the S-shaped curve, but Louis pointed out that if the
carriage went over the bridge, Patsy might very well be injured. So the
gates were ultimately placed where the horses would be halted while
ascending the long after slope with slackened pace.
Where Stair and Louis placed themselves, though some considerable way
from the burn which ran at the bottom of the defile, they were still in
a very pit of darkness. The leaves were dense overhead, and only the
white gates gleamed very faintly in the trough of gloom where ran the
eastern military road.
Louis lay under a tremulous rustle of leaves, for the wind was coming in
from the sea, and listened to the trill and chirrup of the burn which
carried off the overflow of the White Loch, as it muttered over its
sands or clattered across the loose round pebbles of its numerous
shallows.
The lads waited long and anxiously, not that they had any fear of having
missed their mark, for Stair had searched in vain in all the softest
spots for any trace of carriage wheels. They _must_ pass this way. They
could not go off the road, because there was no other. But, what would
have spoiled the matter more than a squadron of cavalry in attendance,
was the fact that if they delayed much longer, the carriage would reach
the Elbow of the White Water after daybreak.
From where they lay they could see the ragged fantastic line of the
hills to the east behind which the sun would rise. Stair watched these
anxiously. They had a clear hour before them, but unless the mist came
up again with the tide, they could count on no more time.
Already out on the face of the moorland the curlews were crying
tentatively one to the other. Louis would gladly have talked, but Stair
sat grave and silent. At last, visibly unquiet, he betook himself up
through the wood to the edge of an old turf-built fold where in summer
the cows were wont to be milked. Here he occupied himself with the
priming of his gun and looked to his pistols. An undefined glimmer from
the sky and the absence of trees on the heathery slopes enabled him to
dispense with other light.
In ten minutes he was back again by the side of Louis Raincy.
"They are coming," he whispered, "up yonder I heard the rumble of the
carriage. Listen--we shall catch it in a minute."
Louis listened intently and at last could make out, from very far to the
west, the rhythmic and yet changeful beating of the feet of horses. But
it was not till the carriage had actually climbed to the summit and was
rumbling down the slope that Stair Garland moved.
"I am going to meet them there at the gates," he said, "be you ready
with the horses. There is a part of this business in which there is no
need of your being mixed up, only see that Honeypot and Derry Down are
ready for Patsy. If for any reason I cannot get away with you, take the
upper side of the White Loch till you strike the old track by which we
came, then give the little mare her head and she will carry you safe."
"But why will you not be with us? We can ride time about."
"There are certain risks," said Stair,--"I do not know what will come
out of all this. But at any rate your business is to get Patsy home to
her father's and then carry the word to my sister Jean that the house is
to be strongly guarded. She will understand."
The carriage was very close now. They could hear the labouring of the
horses, the wheezing of straining harness. Then the pole of the carriage
became entangled with Stair's carefully angled lodge-gates. The coach
stopped. The driver sprang from his seat and ran to keep his horses from
plunging over into the ravine. An angry voice from the inside called out
to know what was the matter.
A pistol shot rang out. Then several answered, followed by the roar of a
fully charged gun, a turmoil of voices, the stamping of horses, and a
voice that cried: "They have killed the Prince! The Duke is shot!"
The next moment through the green velvety dark Louis heard footsteps
approaching. Stair, his gun flung over his shoulder, had Patsy with him.
"Quick, up with you! There!"
He placed her on Derry Down.
"Now, Louis--off with you, and remember what I said. Keep the upper side
of the valley, and if in difficulty let the little mare lead. I shall
follow, as soon as I can get a horse to ride. One of our lads lives not
far from here!"
"You have not killed him?" said Louis, anxiously.
"I do not know. I certainly let the marauding Turks have the benefit of
a few slugs," said Stair with carelessness. "If his princeship is a
little worse splintered than the others, why, so much the better. But
they will all have a souvenir to carry away. Now, ride, and never mind
me!"
In ten minutes Louis and Patsy were fairly safe from pursuit--at least
from any immediate pursuit. They followed the line of the White
Loch--the shore sand gleaming like silver beneath them making the task a
simple one. Then by easier gradients than the path by which they had so
precipitately descended, Louis struck diagonally for the old drove road.
As they mounted higher they became aware that the day was breaking
behind the distant Minnegaff ridges--the hills of the great names,
Bennanbrack, Benyellaray, Craignairny, The Spear of the Merrick, and the
Dungeon of Buchan, coming up one by one in delicate aërial perspective.
In half an hour Louis Raincy could see Patsy's face suffused with eager
joy, freedom and the red in the east together making it flush like a
dusky peach.
"Oh, I am so glad," she broke out when at last they could ride together
over a little stretch of bent, "I had not even my Canary Island knife,
or anything, but somehow I thought that you or Stair would follow me."
"It was all Stair's doing," said Louis; "he called me, and gave me the
chance to help him when he could quite as well have taken one of his
brothers, Fergus or Agnew."
"Why did he stay behind just now?" Patsy asked. "If they capture him
they will kill him."
"I think there is no great fear of that, for the present, at least,"
said Louis Raincy, loyally. "Stair Garland has many hiding-places. I
don't believe any one can catch him in his own land. He is off to find a
moor-pony and will ride after us as soon as it is safe. If not, he will
come home on foot, lying up in the daytime. He knows every farm and
cothouse and is welcome at all. Sea-cave and moss-hag, wood-shelter and
whin-bush, he knows every hidie-hole for forty mile."
Louis and Patsy kept so far to the north among the flowes of the moors
that they never once came in sight of the road, along which all that day
frenzied messengers tore east and west with tidings that the King's son
had been murdered near the White Loch, by a gang of ruffians who had
laid a trap and overturned his carriage.
So the two young people travelled in a great loneliness of plovers and
curlews and peewits, all singing and calling and whistling their
hardest. They saw the glimmer of a herd's house or two, faint
whitewashed dots on the brown, surface of the moor. But of living souls
they met not one.
Nor had they seen anything of Stair when, at dusk, they breasted the
last bosky eyebrow of Raincy territory which overhung the rich Ferris
valleys, and saw beneath them, as it had been deserted, the House of
Cairn Ferris. Windows had been knocked out. Household gear lay scattered
in the yard and even littered the avenue. A great blackened oblong
showed the position of a burned hay-mow.
Louis halted a moment, in doubt what he should do, and then seeing that
there was no safety in such a place for Patsy, he turned the tired
horses about and rode straight for the great towers of Castle Raincy
which frowned above them out of the purple gloom of the woods.
* * * * *
"Grandfather," said Louis, still holding Patsy by the hand as he
penetrated unannounced into the Earl's study, "this is Miss Patricia
Ferris. The Duke of Lyonesse laid a trap for her. He carried her off,
bound and gagged, in Kennedy McClure's carriage, but Stair Garland and I
rescued her. There was a fight and I believe the Duke is hurt, but it
served him right. I took her home, but the house has been sacked. So I
brought her to you!"
The old man, who had nightly cursed the Ferrises, root and branch, all
his life, rose to his full height, for a moment irresolute. Then he
bowed, and took Patsy's hand in his.
"You are welcome," he said, "I am--hem--satisfied that my boy had the
pluck to put a bullet into the Hanoverian swine. He came and asked for
my carriage, curse his impudence--my carriage and horses to play his
Guelphish pranks on honest men's daughters. Royal prince or no royal
prince, I will stand by you, hang me if I don't! And when it comes to
the House of Lords, I shall have a few truths to tell the whole royal
gang which will make their ears tingle from the Regent himself to poor
Silly Billy."
In the meanwhile no news of Stair. He had, as it seemed, been entirely
blotted out. Had he fallen into the hands of the cavalry which after a
fruitless search had sacked Cairn Ferris at their pleasure upon the
first news of the killing of the king's son? They had departed to scour
the easterly roads and had been seen no more in the valleys or on the
heights of Raincy.
There was no news except that Kennedy McClure had been seen galloping
eastward in frantic search of his carriage and horses. The former had
been reported blown to flinders, and his two carefully matched horses
killed by the bandits. So he was now riding in his shirt-sleeves, the
cowrie shells at his watch fob clanging against the little bundle of
keys he wore there. In his mind he was doing sums of which the main
issues were, "What is the difference between the fifty pounds I have in
hand and the value of the carriage and horses, and will my loss give me
a claim on the royal family and the Government?" Kennedy McClure saw
before him endless Court of Session pleas, with expenses mounting
steadily up, and the verdict given in his favour upon appeal to the
House of Lords.
The Laird of Supsorrow, who loved a good-going plea, felt vaguely
consoled, but he spurred his beast all the same to find out what he had
to go upon. That the whole countryside spoke of the young prince as dead
was nothing to him. His horses and the precious chariot with the yellow
wheels, the pale blue body and linings, were more to him than the whole
royal house. There were a plenty of princes--and no great gain to the
country either by all accounts! But he, Kennedy of Supsorrow, had only
one chariot and one well-matched pair of carriage horses, for which he
had paid out good golden guineas.
As he rode he heard the sound of horses galloping behind him. They
turned out to be a patrol of dragoons from Cairnryan headed by Captain
Laurence. That officer was in great fear for his commission, being in
military command of the district; and though he had received the
Prince's own orders to confine himself to his barracks that the ways
might be clear, he could not hide from himself that if anything happened
to the King's favourite son, he might as well send in his papers.
So whenever he crossed a coast-guardsman, or even the most ignorant and
harmless farm-lad, he shouted to him, "The Duke--the Duke! What of the
Duke? Have they killed the Duke?"
To which Kennedy McClure of Supsorrow responded like an echo, "The
horses--the horses? What have they done to the horses? Have they killed
my horses?"