PATSY RAISES THE COUNTRY
With three Galloway ponies and the contagion of her own enthusiasm Patsy
undertook to arouse the country. She would save Stair and Julian by
raising the siege of the Bothy on the Wild of Blairmore. She called upon
her father at the gloomy house of Cairn Ferris and explained to him what
she meant to do. She would not remain there in the meanwhile, but if he
would lend her a pony or two, either from his stable or from among those
running wild on the moors, she would not compromise him in any way.
"Whom, then, did she mean to compromise?" Her father put the question
patiently.
Oh, Kennedy McClure was helping her, and Frank Airie, the Poor Scholar,
and the Glenanmays lads--all the Stair Garland band, in fact. Yes, Miss
Aline and the Austrian hunter were safe at Ladykirk. She could not have
her mixed up in such a business, and Heinrich Wolf would look after her.
Adam Ferris listened and nodded his head.
"I am a barn-door fowl that has hatched out a sparrow-hawk," he said
meekly. "Do not pyke your father's eyes out, chicken!"
And with this paternal benediction Patsy went forth on her errand.
Stair's Honeypot was at the door. Fergus Garland had brought him,
offering at the same time to steal Derry Down from the Castle Raincy
meadows. But this Patsy refused. She was not feeling particularly well
affected towards Louis Raincy at that moment. Louis, as it were, had
outlived his popularity.
Then began a great time. As flame after flame of lambent fire plays over
the southern sky some eve of summer lightning, so Patsy came, and
flashed, and passed. Hearts waited expectant before her, grew angry and
determined as they listened (not the young men only) to the tale of her
wrongs, also of Stair Garland's courage and Julian Wemyss's duel. She
passed and left armed men with a definite rendezvous in her wake. Still
keeping high up upon the pony tracks of the moors, she passed eastwards
to the Cree, crossed it, and with Godfrey McCulloch to aid her, she
carried the fiery cross along the shore-side of Solway to the great arch
of the Needle's Eye, which is at Douglasha', in the parish of Colvend.
Here she turned, for she was frightened at what might be going on during
her absence in the dim region of the flowes and flooded marshes called
the Wild of Blairmore.
Behind her lads were marching. The countryside was moving. They had
sworn to save Stair Garland and Julian Wemyss, and, if need be, they
were ready to push the invaders of their Free Province into the sea.
Rebellion, not such a thing! Merely the affirmation of ancient
privileges.
Even the Lord-Lieutenant and the old hereditary sheriffs at Lochnaw were
displeased by any display of military force. They resented it, as the
intervention of troops has always been resented in Galloway. What could
the Government be thinking of? Why not let them settle matters in their
own way? They were bound officially, of course, to give the business
their countenance. Really, they liked it no better than did any member
of Stair Garland's band. Earl Raincy, the Stairs of Castle Kennedy, the
Monreith Maxwells, the Garthlands, and my Lord Garlies felt themselves
perfectly well able to maintain order in their own lands. They could
have removed Julian Wemyss to a quiet place over-seas, there to abide
till the Wargrove affair had blown over. Who thought the worse of him
for putting ten inches of steel through the pandar of a royal Duke, who
had treated Adam Ferris's daughter as if she walked the pavement of
Piccadilly or the Palais Royal? And as for Stair Garland--well, their
lads would smuggle. They always had smuggled. But he was a good and a
safe leader, who took his young men into no mischief and allowed no
ribaldry or contempt for local authority. What more could be hoped for
or expected, as long as young blood ran in young veins? And as to the
little matter of the slugs in the royal haunches--well, the man was more
frighted than hurt, and the twinges when the wind blew from the east
would remind even a royal duke to leave their maids alone.
If belted earls and honourable baronets, the men of ancientest lineage,
thought thus--consider what was the fierceness of public opinion among
the farmers and their folk--the herds on the hills, the ploughmen and
cattlemen, the crowds that gathered at kirk and market.
The provisions for the investing forces had actually to be brought from
Ireland, for the country wives suddenly discovered that they had nothing
to sell. Shops in town received known clients at the back door and
served them behind closed shutters in the murky gleam of a halfpenny
"dip." Had it not been for half-a-dozen sappers who had been busy with
the new naval base on Loch Swilly, his Majesty's forces would have been
starved out of the country, and Galloway would have added one more to
its long tale of the triumphs of passive resistance.
But the six Loch Swilly men had served in the Peninsula, and they were
under a Chatham sergeant, who was a perfect Gallio, in that he cared
nothing about all the things which were distracting the westernmost end
of Galloway which gives on the Atlantic. He looked at the Wild of
Blairmore from several sides. He swore that such a set of asses he had
never seen, and then he settled himself, with his five soldiers and a
couple of score of impressed men, to make a cutting through the
sand-dunes on the seaward side. This ditch or drain, now smooth and
greyish-green with bent and self-sown saplings, is still known as the
Sapper's Cut.
On the morning of the second day after Sergeant Robinson had started his
digging team, Stair looked out of the door of the Bothy and, instead of
the black spread of water he had left there over-night, the Wild of
Blairmore was dry. From the zigzag causeway on either side, stretched
away an array of empty moss-hags still glistening with moisture. Only in
the very deepest cuts a little water still lurked.
Stair Garland's lips tightened as he turned to the interior of the
Bothy.
"It is all up, Mr. Julian," he said, "I am sorry I have led you into
this--I knew the thing could be done, but they had been so long in
thinking of it that I had come to believe they would never hit on it at
all!"
"I am sorry, McClure!" he said to the spy, "you will have to give up the
money and jewels, but that I always meant you to do in any case. For the
rest--"
He paused a minute, not daring to trust himself to speak more words.
Then he continued--
"I have led you into all this. I thought there would have been a
rescue-party long before now. There would have been if Patsy Ferris had
been here. Now there is nothing for it but to give ourselves up. What is
the use of making things worse by shooting two or three poor enlisted
men who never did us any harm?"
And so it came to pass that Stair Garland and Eben the Spy were marched
under strong escort to the gaol of Stranryan, while Julian Wemyss was
shut up in his own house with a guard quartered on him. Thus had it been
ordered from London, for there the Princess Elsa had been busy, and the
local commanders knew that even when the Government is that of a Regent
George, it cannot treat an ex-ambassador like a common felon.
* * * * *
Stranryan is a largish town, historical and ancient, as its narrow and
crooked streets sufficiently attest. At that period of the year it was
exceedingly malodorous, and in the gutters tangle-headed children fished
for spoil, or with noise and clangour dragged the damaged dead cat and
the too-long-drowned puppy from the green ooze of one midden hole to
another.
But to make some amends for this, one was never far away from the salt
waters of the loch. And a breath straight from the great sea came every
now and then all day long, to air out the packed houses and crooked
alleys. Down on the sea front were many boats. For at the season when
the Bothy was captured and Stair and the spy led to the "Auld Castle,"
the herring boats were getting ready for the Loch Fyne catch--a good
three hundred of them, and their brown and red sails brightened
everything.
Fish-scales glistened on the cobbled quays of the little port. Salesmen
and buyers moved piles of fish contumeliously, saying, "It is naught! It
is naught!" after the manner of their kind since the days of
Solomon--who had experience in such matters, for he was undoubtedly
scandalously "had" in his traffic with the spice merchants.
The gaol of Stranryan was also on the water front, and especially when
the Irish harvesters landed among the products of the herring catch, it
was the witness of complex and accumulated villainies. There were
faction fights among the Irishry themselves. There were fights between
all the Irish united and the douce burghers and tradesmen of
Stranryan--fights about eggs and chickens, fights about water and other
privileges, fights which ended in sleepers being ousted from barns and
stables, or triumphantly retaining possession thereof. There were also
religious quarrels, in which the true "Protestants" of the two countries
broke the heads of the true "Kyatholics," and had their heads broken in
turn, all to the greater glory of God.
All these things were normal, and the participants seldom ended their
shillelah practice within the walls of "MacJannet's Hotel"--MacJannet
being the name of the chief gaoler of the town prison.
"The Castle" itself was a tall old hump of a building set in a courtyard
with high-spiked walls. It had once been a town house of the reigning
family of the Kennedys of Cassillis. They used to spend some time there
by the waterside during the summer after the long winter months at
Maybole, and, indeed, their doing so counted for much in the early
history of the compact little town at the head of the loch.
The lower part of the "Castle" had been fitted up as a guard-room, and
here, at all hours of the day, were to be found groups of soldiers,
making the time pass in various games of chance and skill, from plain
odd-and-even to _bouchon_ learned from certain captive Frenchmen who
were permitted to mingle with them under no very strict supervision. The
square tower of the original Cassillis house had been cut down and
roofed in, which gave it a very uneven and squat appearance, and all
about the walls little sheds had been erected, to shelter this
detachment and that on its way through to Ireland. Some of these were as
old as Claverhouse and his King's Life Guards in the bad days of the
covenant. But, one and all, they were insufficient, out of repair,
drippy, smelling of stale bad tobacco and wet wood ashes.
Tony MacJannet, chief keeper of the prison of Stranryan, installed Stair
Garland on the second story, immediately over the gate where the guard
was on duty. Stair had no view to the front, but two small windows
looked out on the courtyard, from which, through thick bars, he could
see the comings and goings of the French prisoners, and even watch the
ebb and flow of the games. Stair's chamber was spacious--the largest and
best in the gaol, but the roof had not been plastered, and he could see
the light through the slates, though some attempt had been made at
scantling, and even in one corner a quantity of plasterers' laths had
been piled. But there the matter had rested and was likely to rest.
As usual, the Town Council objected to spending money. The Government
sent down every year lists of "immediate requirements," which the
council as promptly filed owing to the lack of any accompanying draft.
To spend good siller "oot o' the Common Guid" and then look to a far-off
Government to reimburse them, was an affair in which the shrewd
burgesses of Stranryan very naturally declined to engage.
Julian Wemyss's case threatened to be a curious one. He had been
captured in Scotland at the request of the English Government for an
offence committed in France--in which country his crime was no offence
at all. Some loss of time and a great deal of employment for the lawyers
seemed the worst that could befall him.
It was quite otherwise with Eben McClure. He was a fugitive from
justice, and had been guilty of carrying off a large sum of money and
various jewels, the property of His Royal Highness the Duke of Lyonesse.
He was also suspected of having led the Prince and his party into an
ambuscade, where the son of the King had been wounded to the effusion of
blood and the danger of his life.
For the theft alone there was one sure penalty--death.
However, as things stood the spy's unpopularity made his fate of little
moment to anybody. The thoughts of all were centred on Stair Garland. He
was handsome, young and interesting. The maidens of the town of
Stranryan trigged themselves out in their best hats and dresses--they
donned their most becoming ribbons in order to promenade in front of the
"Castle."
"Three months he and the ither twa held the sodjers at bay, till they
had them clean wearied oot!" May Girmory explained to her bosom friend,
Lizzie McCreath, as they promenaded together; "but to my thinkin' there
is little that either of the ither two could do. It would be himsel',
Lizzie, that did the thinkin' and the fechtin'. He's the head o' a' the
Free Bands, ye ken, Lizzie!"
"Then, to my thinkin', it's but little that the 'bands' have done for
him, the poor lad--and the more shame to them," said Lizzie. "Now, over
yonder, in Ulster, if a quiet lad had been as long caged up by them
divils of red-coats--it's the good dustin' their jackets would be
gettin'. 'Tis Elizabeth McCreath and the daughter of a law-abiding
Orangeman that will be tellin' ye so!"
"Hoots, lassie," said her friend, "you Stranryan Irish or half-Irish are
all for doing a thing like the banging off of a peeoye. But what matters
a day or twa for a fine, strong lad in the best chamber of the Castle?
Stair Garland is not tried yet and, what is more, he is not sentenced.
And if he is sentenced, where will he serve his time? Will he be going
ayont seas to be sold in the tobacco plantations or off in a ship to
Botany Bay? I tell you the keel is not laid, and the mast is not out of
the acorn that will carry away Stair Garland. And as to hanging
him--faith, they will need all their forces back from the wars before
they could do siccan a thing in Galloway!"
She lowered her voice and spoke in the ear of the Irish girl, the
Orangeman's daughter.
"Lizzie McCreath," she whispered, "can you keep a secret?"
"What else, noo?" said Lizzie, with avidity, "did you ever hear tell
where you were with Sandy O'Neil on the night of the Saint John?"
"That's nothing," retorted May Girmory, "for where I was on the Beltane
eve, there in that very place ye were yourself--you and my brither Jo.
It is like that ye would keep _that_ secret? But this is different."
"I will keep it, 'by the hand and fut of Mary,'" said Lizzie McCreath,
quite forgetting that she was the daughter of the Grand Master of an
Orange Lodge.
"Well, then," said May, "there is a Princess riding about the country,
here and there and away. She has all Stair Garland's band ready, and
hundreds more, too--aye, thousands if need be, pledged to rescue the
lads laid up there. Jo is in it."
"Oh," said Liz McCreath, with a curious alteration of tone, "Jo is in
it, is he? And he never said a word to me."
"Neither did he to me, but somebody else telled me--"
"Sandy O'Neil, it would be, maybe then, like as not!"
"And what for no?" demanded the revealer of secrets, and so proceeded
unblushingly with her tale. She skipped some parts, to which she had
been sworn to particular secrecy. But Miss Liz McCreath, while noting
these, let the blanks pass, comfortably sure in her mind that so soon as
she got Jo Girmory by himself, she knew a way of making him tell her all
about it--the same, indeed, as that by which May Girmory had brought
Sandy O'Neil to full auricular confession.
"But what like is your Princess? Does she wear a goold crown now?" said
the Irish girl.
"Not her," said May Girmory, "she has a riding skirt, the way folk has
them made in London, and gangs by at a hand-gallop, a different powny
every time, and Lord, she doesna spare them!"
"That," said Liz McCreath with cold contempt, "is no Princess at all.
'Tis only little Patsy Ferris from Cairn Ferris, and I saw her faither
yesterday at the Apothecaries' Hall at the Vennel Head!"
"And what wad he be wantin' there, now?"
"He asked for 'something soothin'' and he appeared most terribly glad to
get it. He did be takin' a good drink on the spot."
"Puir man, I am sure he had need o't. He will maybe no be so very
anxious aboot this lad Garland as his dochter!"
"So I was thinking, but what garred ye be whistling in my lug that she
was a Princess? A laird's lass is no a Princess, that ever I heard of
over yonder!"
"There's a heap of things ye have not heard 'over yonder,' and this may
be one of them. But Patsy Ferris is a Princess because she could be a
Princess the very minute she made up her mind to marry a Prince that has
been askin' her and double asking her. Eelen Young, my cousin, that is
with Miss Aline at Ladykirk, was telling me all about it, and it appears
that up there in London our Miss Patsy could have had the pick of
princes and dukes--"
"And with all said an' done she runs away (Glory be to her brave sowl!)
just to raise the country and get Stair Garland safe over the sea!"
"Do not be foolish, Liz McCreath," said her comrade, "without doubt it
was to save her uncle that was trapped in the Bothy of Blairmore at the
same time!"
"Her uncle!--her uncle!" cried Liz McCreath; "the back o' me hand to all
your uncles. How much would you be doing now for all the half-score of
uncles that ye have in this parish? Not as much as would fatten a fly.
No, nor Elizabeth McCreath either. 'Tis her lad she is fightin' for--and
well do you know it, May Girmory. She will have sat out the Beltane
fires wid him, darlin', and certain that'll be the raison why!"