Writing all this old ancient history down, I find it hard to riddle out
in my mind the things that have really direct and pregnant bearing on
the matter in hand. I am tempted to say a word or two anent my Lord
Marquis’s visit to my father, and his vain trial to get me enlisted
into his corps for Lorn. Something seems due, also, to be said about the
kindness I found from all the old folks of Inneraora, ever proud to
see a lad of their own of some repute come back among them; and of my
father’s grieving about his wae widowerhood: but these things must stand
by while I narrate how there arose a wild night in town Inneraora, with
the Highlandmen from the glens into it with dirk and sword and steel
Doune pistols, the flambeaux flaring against the tall lands, and the
Lowland burghers of the place standing up for peace and tranquil sleep.
The market-day came on the morning after the day John Splendid and I
foregathered with my Lord Archibald. It was a smaller market than usual,
by reason of the troublous times; but a few black and red cattle came
from the landward part of the parish and Knapdale side, while Lochow
and Bredalbane sent hoof nor horn. There was never a blacker sign of
the time’s unrest But men came from many parts of the shire, with
their chieftains or lairds, and there they went clamping about this
Lowland-looking town like foreigners. I counted ten tartans in as many
minutes between the cross and the kirk, most of them friendly with
MacCailein Mor, but a few, like that of MacLachlan of that ilk, at
variance, and the wearers with ugly whingers or claymores at their
belts. Than those MacLachlans one never saw a more barbarous-looking
set. There were a dozen of them in the tail or retinue of old Lachie’s
son--a henchman, piper, piper’s valet, _gille-mor_, _gille_ wet-sole, or
running footman, and such others as the more vain of our Highland gentry
at the time ever insisted on travelling about with, all stout junky men
of middle size, bearded to the brows, wearing flat blue bonnets with a
pervenke plant for badge on the sides of them, on their feet deerskin
brogues with the hair out, the rest of their costume all belted tartan,
and with arms clattering about them. With that proud pretence which is
common in our people when in strange unfamiliar occasions--and I would
be the last to dispraise it--they went about by no means braggardly but
with the aspect of men who had better streets and more shops to show
at home; surprised at nothing in their alert moments, but now and again
forgetting their dignity and looking into little shop-windows with the
wonder of bairns and great gabbling together, till MacLachlan fluted on
his whistle, and they came, like good hounds, to heel.
All day the town hummed with Gaelic and the round bellowing of cattle.
It was clear warm weather, never a breath of wind to stir the gilding
trees behind the burgh. At ebb-tide the sea-beach whitened and smoked
in the sun, and the hot air quivered over the stones and the crisping
wrack. In such a season the bustling town in the heart of the stem
Highlands seemed a fever spot. Children came boldly up to us for
fairings or gifts, and they strayed--the scamps!--behind the droves and
thumped manfully on the buttocks of the cattle. A constant stream of men
passed in and out at the change-house closes and about the Fisherland
tenements, where seafarers and drovers together sang the maddest
love-ditties in the voices of roaring bulls; beating the while with
their feet on the floor in our foolish Gaelic fashion, or, as one could
see through open windows, rugging and riving at the corners of a plaid
spread between them,--a trick, I daresay, picked up from women, who at
the waulking or washing of woollen cloth new spun, pull out the fabric
to tunes suited to such occasions.
I spent most of the day with John Splendid and one Tearlach Fraser, on
old comrade, and as luck, good or ill, would have it, the small hours of
morning were on me before I thought of going home. By dusk the bulk of
the strangers left the town by the highroads, among them the MacNicolls,
who had only by the cunning of several friends (Splendid as busy as any)
been kept from coming to blows with the MacLachlan tail. Earlier in the
day, by a galley or wherry, the MacLachlans also had left, but not the
young laird, who put up for the night at the house of Provost Brown.
The three of us I have mentioned sat at last playing cartes in the
ferry-house, where a good glass could be had and more tidiness than most
of the hostelries in the place could boast of. By the stroke of midnight
we were the only customers left in the house, and when, an hour after, I
made the move to set out for Glen Shira, John Splendid yoked on me as if
my sobriety were a crime.
“Wait, man, wait, and I’ll give you a convoy up the way,” he would say,
never thinking of the road he had himself to go down to Coillebhraid.
And aye it grew late and the night more still. There would be a foot
going by at first at short intervals, sometimes a staggering one and a
voice growling to itself in Gaelic; and anon the wayfarers were no more,
the world outside in a black and solemn silence. The man who kept the
ferry-house was often enough in the custom of staying up all night to
meet belated boats from Kilcatrine; we were gentrice and good customers,
so he composed himself in a lug chair and dovered in a little room
opening off ours, while we sat fingering the book. Our voices as we
called the cartes seemed now and then to me like a discourtesy to the
peace and order of the night.
“I must go,” said I a second time.
“Another one game,” cried John Splendid. He had been winning every bout,
but with a reluctance that shone honestly on his face, and I knew it was
to give Tearlach and me a chance to better our reputation that he would
have us hang on.
“You have hard luck indeed,” he would say. Or, “You played that trick as
few could do it” Or, “Am not I in the key to-night? there’s less craft
than luck here.” And he played even slovenly once or twice, flushing,
we could read, lest we should see the stratagem. At these times, by the
curious way of chance, he won more surely than ever.
“I must be going,” I said again. And this time I put the cartes bye,
firmly determined that my usual easy and pliant mood in fair company
would be my own enemy no more.
“Another chappin of ale,” said he. “Tearlach, get Elrigmore to bide
another bit. Tuts, the night’s but young, the chap of two and a fine
clear clean air with a wind behind you for Shira Glen.”
“Wheest!” said Tearlach of a sudden, and he put up a hand.
There was a skliffing of feet on the road outside--many feet and wary,
with men’s voices in a whisper caught at the teeth--a sound at that hour
full of menace. Only a moment and then all was by.
“There’s something strange here!” said John Splendid, “let’s out and
see.” He put round his rapier more on the groin, and gave a jerk at the
narrow belt creasing his fair-day crimson vest For me I had only the
dirk to speak of, for the _sgian dubh_ at my leg was a silver toy, and
Tearlach, being a burgh man, had no arm at all. He lay hold on an
oaken shinty stick that hung on the wall, property of the ferry-house
landlord’s son.
Out we went in the direction of the footsteps, round Gillemor’s corner
and the jail, past the Fencibles’ arm-room and into the main street of
the town, that held no light in door or window. There would have been
moon, but a black wrack of clouds filled the heavens. From the kirk
corner we could hear a hushed tumult down at the Provost’s close-mouth.
“Pikes and pistols!” cried Splendid. “Is it not as I said? yonder’s your
MacNicolls for you.”
In a flash I thought of Mistress Betty with her hair down, roused by the
marauding crew, and I ran hurriedly down the street shouting the burgh’s
slogan, “Slochd!”
“Damn the man’s hurry!” said John Splendid, trotting at my heels, and
with Tearlach too he gave lungs to the shout.
“Slochd!” I cried, and “Slochd!” they cried, and the whole town clanged
like a bell. Windows opened here and there, and out popped heads, and
then--
“Murder and thieves!” we cried stoutly again.
“Is’t the Athole dogs?” asked some one in bad English from a window, but
we did not bide to tell him.
“Slochd! slochd! club and steel!” more nimble burghers cried, jumping
out at closes in our rear, and following with neither hose nor brogue,
but the kilt thrown at one toss on the haunch and some weapon in hand.
And the whole wide street was stark awake.
The MacNicolls must have numbered fully threescore. They had only made
a pretence (we learned again) of leaving the town, and had hung on the
riverside till they fancied their attempt at seizing Maclachlan was
secure from the interference of the townfolk. They were packed in a mass
in the close and on the stair, and the foremost were solemnly battering
at the night door at the top of the first flight of stairs, crying,
“_Fuil airson fuil!_--blood for blood, out with young Lachie!”
We fell to on the rearmost with a will, first of all with the bare fist,
for half of this midnight army were my own neighbours in Glen Shira,
peaceable men in ordinary affairs, kirk-goers, law-abiders, though
maybe a little common in the quality, and between them and the mustering
burghers there was no feud. For a while we fought it dourly in the
darkness with the fingers at the throat or the fist in the face, or
wrestled warmly on the plain-stones, or laid out, such as had staves,
with good vigour on the bonneted heads. Into the close we could
not--soon I saw it--push our way, for the enemy filled it--a dense mass
of tartan--stinking with peat and oozing with the day’s debauchery.
“We’ll have him out, if it’s in bits,” they said, and aye upon the
stair-head banged the door.
“No remedy in this way for the folks besieged,” thought I, and stepping
aside I began to wonder how best to aid our friends by strategy rather
than force of arms. All at once I had mind that at the back of the land
facing the shore an outhouse with a thatched roof ran at a high pitch
well up against the kitchen window, and I stepped through a close
farther up and set, at this outhouse, to the climbing, leaving my
friends fighting out in the darkness in a town tumultuous. To get up
over the eaves of the outhouse was no easy task, and I would have failed
without a doubt had not the stratagem of John Splendid come to his aid
a little later than my own and sent him after me. He helped me first on
the roof, and I had him soon beside me. The window lay unguarded (all
the inmates of the house being at the front), and we stepped in and
found ourselves soon in a household vastly calm considering the rabble
dunting on its doors.
“A pot of scalding water and a servant wench at that back-window we came
in by would be a good sneck against all that think of coming after us,”
said John Splendid, stepping into the passage where we had met Mistress
Betty the day before--now with the stair-head door stoutly barred and
barricaded up with heavy chests and napery-aumries.
“God! I’m glad to see you, sir!” cried the Provost, “and you,
Elrigmore!” He came forward in a trepidation which was shared by few of
the people about him.
Young MacLachlan stood up against the wall facing the barricaded door, a
lad little over twenty, with a steel-grey quarrelsome eye, and there was
more bravado than music in a pipe-tune he was humming in a low key to
himself. A little beyond, at the door of the best room, half in and half
out, stood the goodwife Brown and her daughter. A long-legged lad, of
about thirteen, with a brog or awl was teasing out the end of a flambeau
in preparation to light it for some purpose not to be guessed at, and a
servant lass, pock-marked, with one eye on the pot and the other up the
lum, as we say of a glee or cast, made a storm of lamentation, crying in
Gaelic--
“My grief! my grief! what’s to come of poor Peggy?” (Peggy being
herself.) “Nothing for it but the wood and cave and the ravishing of the
Ben Bhuidhe wolves.”
Mistress Betty laughed at her notion, a sign of humour and courage in
her (considering the plight) that fairly took me.
“I daresay, Peggy, they’ll let us be,” she said, coming forward to shake
Splendid and me by the hand. “To keep me in braws and you in ashets to
break would be more than the poor creatures would face, I’m thinking.
You are late in the town, Elrigmore.”
“Colin,” I corrected her, and she bit the inside of her nether lip in a
style that means temper.
“It’s no time for dalliance, I think. I thought you had been up the
glen long syne, but we are glad to have your service in this trouble,
Master--Colin” (with a little laugh and a flush at the cheek), “also
Barbreck. Do you think they mean seriously ill by MacLachlan?”
“Ill enough, I have little doubt,” briskly replied Splendid. “A corps
of MacNicolls, arrant knaves from all airts, worse than the Macaulays
or the Gregarach themselves, do not come banging at the burgh door of
Inner-aora at this uncanny hour for a child’s play. Sir” (he went on,
to MacLachlan), “I mind you said last market-day at Kilmichael, with no
truth to back it, that you could run, shoot, or sing any Campbell ever
put on hose; let a Campbell show you the way out of a bees’-bike. Take
the back-window for it, and out the way we came in. I’ll warrant there’s
not a wise enough (let alone a sober enough) man among all the idiots
battering there who’ll think of watching for your retreat.”
MacLachlan, a most extraordinarily vain and pompous little fellow, put
his bonnet suddenly on his head, scragged it down vauntingly on one
side over the right eye, and stared at John Splendid with a good deal of
choler or hurt vanity.
“Sir,” said he, “this was our affair till you put a finger into it. You
might know me well enough to understand that none of our breed ever took
a back-door if a front offered.”
“Whilk it does not in this case,” said John Splendid, seemingly in a
mood to humour the man. “But I’ll allow there’s the right spirit in the
objection--to begin with in a young lad. When I was your age I had the
same good Highland notion that the hardest way to face the foe was
the handsomest ‘Pallas Armata’ * (is’t that you call the book of arms,
Elrigmore?) tells different; but ‘Pallas Armata’ (or whatever it is) is
for old men with cold blood.”
* It could hardly be ‘Pallas Armata.’ The narrator
anticipates Sir James Turner’s ingenious treatise by several
years.--N. M.
Of a sudden MacLachlan made dart at the chests and pulled them back
from the door with a most surprising vigour of arm before any one could
prevent him. The Provost vainly tried to make him desist; John Splendid
said in English, “Wha will to Cupar maun to Cupar,” and in a jiffy the
last of the barricade was down, but the door was still on two wooden
bars slipping into stout staples. Betty in a low whisper asked me to
save the poor fellow from his own hot temper.
At the minute I grudged him the lady’s consideration--too warm, I
thought, even in a far-out relative, but a look at her face showed she
was only in the alarm of a woman at the thought of any one’s danger.
I caught MacLachlan by the sleeve of his shirt--he had on but that and a
kilt and vest--and jerked him back from his fool’s employment; but I was
a shave late. He ran back both wooden bars before I let him.
With a roar and a display of teeth and steel the MacNicolls came into
the lobby from the crowded stair, and we were driven to the far parlour
end. In the forefront of them was Nicol Beg MacNicoll, the nearest
kinsman of the murdered Braleckan lad. He had a targe on his left arm--a
round buckler of _darach_ or oakwood covered with dun cow-hide, hair
out, and studded in a pleasing pattern with iron bosses--a prong several
inches long in the middle of it Like every other scamp in the pack, he
had dirk out. _Beg_ or little he was in the countryside’s bye-name, but
in truth he was a fellow of six feet, as hairy as a brock and in the
same straight bristly fashion. He put out his arms at full reach to keep
back his clansmen, who were stretching necks at poor MacLachlan like
weasels, him with his nostrils swelling and his teeth biting his bad
temper.
“Wait a bit, lads,” said Nicol Beg; “perhaps we may get our friend
here to come peaceably with us. I’m sorry” (he went on, addressing the
Provost) “to put an honest house to rabble at any time, and the Provost
of Inneraora specially, for I’m sure there’s kin’s blood by my mother’s
side between us; but there was no other way to get MacLachlan once his
tail was gone.”
“You’ll rue this, MacNicoll,” fumed the Provost--as red as a bubblyjock
at the face--mopping with a napkin at his neck in a sweat of annoyance;
“you’ll rue it, rue it, rue it!” and he went into a coil of lawyer’s
threats against the invaders, talking of brander-irons and gallows,
hame-sucken and housebreaking.
We were a daft-like lot in that long lobby in a wan candle-light. Over
me came that wonderment that falls on one upon stormy occasions (I mind
it at the sally of Lecheim), when the whirl of life seems to come to a
sudden stop, all’s but wooden dummies and a scene empty of atmosphere,
and between your hand on the basket-hilt and the drawing of the sword
is a lifetime. We could hear at the close-mouth and far up and down the
street the shouting of the burghers, and knew that at the stair-foot
they were trying to pull out the bottom-most of the marauders like tods
from a hole. For a second or two nobody said a word to Nicol MacNicoll’s
remark, for he put the issue so cool (like an invitation to saunter
along the road) that all at once it seemed a matter between him and
MacLachlan alone. I stood between the housebreakers and the women-folk
beside me--John Splendid looking wonderfully ugly for a man fairly clean
fashioned at the face by nature. We left the issue to MacLachlan, and I
must say he came up to the demands of the moment with gentlemanliness,
minding he was in another’s house than his own.
“What is it ye want?” he asked MacNicoll, burring out his Gaelic _r’s_
with punctilio.
“We want you in room of a murderer your father owes us,” said MacNicoll.
“You would slaughter me, then?” said MacLachlan, amazingly undisturbed,
but bringing again to the front, by a motion of the haunch accidental to
look at, the sword he leaned on.
“_Fuil airson fuil!_” cried the rabble on the stairs, and it seemed
ghastly like an answer to the young laird’s question; but Nicol Beg
demanded peace, and assured MacLachlan he was only sought for a hostage.
“We but want your red-handed friend Dark Neil,” said he; “your father
kens his lair, and the hour he puts him in our hands for justice, you’ll
have freedom.”
“Do you warrant me free of scaith?” asked the young laird.
“I’ll warrant not a hair of your head’s touched,” answered Nicol Beg--no
very sound warranty, I thought, from a man who, as he gave it, had to
put his weight back on the eager crew that pushed at his shoulders,
ready to spring like weasels at the throat of the gentleman in the red
tartan.
He was young, MacLachlan, as I said; for him this was a delicate
situation, and we about him were in no less a quandary than himself. If
he defied the Glen Shira men, he brought bloodshed on a peaceable house,
and ran the same risk of bodily harm that lay in the alternative of his
going with them that wanted him.
Round he turned and looked for guidance--broken just a little at the
pride, you could see by the lower lip. The Provost was the first to meet
him eye for eye.
“I have no opinion, Lachie,” said the old man, snuffing rappee with the
butt of an egg-spoon and spilling the brown dust in sheer nervousness
over the night-shirt bulging above the band of his breeks. “I’m wae to
see your father’s son in such a corner, and all my comfort is that
every tenant in Elrig and Braleckan pays at the Tolbooth or gallows of
Inneraora town for this night’s frolic.”
“A great consolation to think of!” said John Splendid.
The goodwife, a nervous body at her best, sobbed away with her
pock-marked hussy in the parlour, but Betty was to the fore in a passion
of vexation. To her the lad made next his appeal.
“Should I go?” he asked, and I thought he said it more like one who
almost craved to stay. I never saw a woman in such a coil. She looked
at the dark Mac-Nicolls, and syne she looked at the fair-haired young
fellow, and her eyes were swimming, her bosom heaving under her screen
of Campbell tartan, her fingers twisting at the pleated hair that fell
in sheeny cables to her waist.
“If I were a man I would stay, and yet--if you stay---- Oh, poor
Lachlan! I’m no judge,” she cried; “my cousin, my dear cousin!” and over
brimmed her tears.
All this took less time to happen than it tikes to tell with pen and
ink, and though there may seem in reading it to be too much palaver on
this stair-head, it was but a minute or two, after the bar was off the
door, that John Splendid took me by the coat-lapel and back a bit to
whisper in my ear--
“If he goes quietly or goes gaffed like a grilse, it’s all one on the
street. Out-bye the place is hotching with the town-people. Do you think
the MacNicolls could take a prisoner bye the Cross?”
“It’ll be cracked crowns on the causeway,” said I.
“Cracked crowns any way you take it,” said he, “and better on the
causeway than on Madame Brown’s parlour floor. It’s a gentleman’s
policy, I would think, to have the squabble in the open air, and save
the women the likely sight of bloody gashes.”
“What do you think, Elrigmore?” Betty cried to me the next moment, and I
said it were better the gentleman should go. The reason seemed to flash
on her there and then, and she backed my counsel; but the lad was not
the shrewdest I’ve seen, even for a Cowal man, and he seemed vexed that
she should seek to get rid of him, glancing at me with a scornful eye as
if I were to blame.
“Just so,” he said, a little bitterly; “the advice is well meant,” and
on went his jacket that had hung on a peg behind him, and his bonnet
played scrug on his forehead. A wiry young scamp, spirited too! He was
putting his sword into its scabbard, but MacNicoll stopped him, and he
went without it.
Now it was not the first time “Slochd a Chubair!” was cried as slogan in
Baile Inneraora in the memory of the youngest lad out that early morning
with a cudgel. The burgh settled to its Lowlandishness with something of
a grudge. For long the landward clans looked upon the incomers to it as
foreign and unfriendly. More than once in fierce or drunken escapades
they came into the place in their _mogans_ at night, quiet as ghosts,
mischievous as the winds, and set fire to wooden booths, or shot in
wantonness at any mischancy unkilted citizen late returning from the
change-house. The tartan was at those times the only passport to their
good favour; to them the black cloth knee-breeches were red rags to a
bull, and ill luck to the lad who wore the same anywhere outside the
Crooked Dyke that marks the town and policies of his lordship! If he
fared no worse, he came home with his coat-skirts scantily filling an
office unusual. Many a time “Slochd!” rang through the night on the
Athole winter when I dosed far off on the fields of Low Germanie,
or sweated in sallies from leaguered towns. And experience made the
burghers mighty tactical on such occasions. Old Leslie or ‘Pallas
Armata’ itself conferred no better notion of strategic sally than the
simple one they used when the MacNicolls came down the stair with their
prisoner; for they had dispersed themselves in little companies up the
closes on either side the street, and past the close the invaders bound
to go.
They might have known, the MacNicolls, that mischief was forward in that
black silence, but they were, like all Glen men, unacquaint with the
quirks of urban war. For them the fight in earnest was only fair that
was fought on the heather and the brae; and that was always my shame
of my countrymen, that a half company of hagbutiers, with wall cover
to depend on, could worst the most chivalrous clan that ever carried
triumph at a rush.
For the middle of the street the invaders made at once, half ready for
attack from before or behind, but ill prepared to meet it from all airts
as attack came. They were not ten yards on their way when Splendid and
I, emerging behind them, found them pricked in the rear by one company,
brought up short by another in front at Stonefield’s land, and harassed
on the flanks by the lads from the closes. They were caught in a ring.
Lowland and Highland, they roared lustily as they came to blows, and the
street boiled like a pot of herring: in the heart of the commotion young
MacLachlan tossed hither and yond--a stick in a linn. A half-score
more of MacNicolls might have made all the difference in the end of
the story, for they struck desperately, better men by far as weight
and agility went than the burgh half-breds, but (to their credit) so
unwilling to shed blood, that they used the flat of the claymore instead
of the edge and fired their pistols in the air.
The long-legged lad flung up a window and lit the street with the flare
of the flambeau he had been teasing out so earnestly, and dunt, dunt
went the oaken rungs on the bonnets of Glen Shira, till Glen Shira smelt
defeat and fell slowly back.
In all this horoyally I took but an onlooker’s part MacLachlan’s quarrel
was not mine, the burgh was none of my blood, and the Glen Shira men
were my father’s friends and neighbours. Splendid, too, candidly kept
out of the turmoil when he saw that young MacLachlan was safely free
of his warders, and that what had been a cause militant was now only a
Highland diversion.
“Let them play away at it,” he said; “I’m not keen to have wounds in a
burgher’s brawl in my own town when there’s promise of braver sport over
the hills among other tartans.”
Up the town drifted the little battle, no dead left as luck had it, but
many a gout of blood. The white gables clanged back the cries, in
claps like summer thunder, the crows in the beech-trees complained in
a rasping roupy chorus, and the house-doors banged at the back of men,
who, weary or wounded, sought home to bed. And Splendid and I were on
the point of parting, secure that the young laird of MacLachlan was at
liberty, when that gentleman himself came scouring along, hard pressed
by a couple of MacNicolls ready with brands out to cut him down. He was
without steel or stick, stumbling on the causeway-stones in a stupor of
weariness, his mouth gasping and his coat torn wellnigh off the back of
him. He was never in his twenty years of life nearer death than then,
and he knew it; but when he found John Splendid and me before him he
stopped and turned to face the pair that followed him--a fool’s vanity
to show fright had not put the heels to his hurry! We ran out beside
him, and the MacNicolls refused the _rencontre_, left their quarry,
and fled again to the town-head, where their friends were in a dusk the
long-legged lad’s flambeau failed to mitigate.
“I’ll never deny after this that you can outrun me!” said John Splendid,
putting up his small sword.
“I would have given them their kail through the reek in a double dose if
I had only a simple knife,” said the lad angrily, looking up the street,
where the fighting was now over. Then he whipped into Brown’s close and
up the stair, leaving us at the gable of Craignure’s house.
John Splendid, ganting sleepily, pointed at the fellow’s disappearing
skirts. “Do you see yon?” said he, and he broke into a line of a Gaelic
air that told his meaning.
“Lovers?” I asked.
“What do you think yourself?” said he.
“She is mighty put about at his hazard,” I confessed, reflecting on her
tears.
“Cousins, ye ken, cousins!” said Splendid, and he put a finger in my
side, laughing meaningly.
I got home when the day stirred among the mists over Strone.