"Yes, written by the most reverend father, John of Douay (who was
butchered by the French in Flanders), foretelling that this child
would yet become great in the church, and would serve God at His
altar long and faithfully----"
"This was in the year 1772?" exclaimed Dick, who had listened
breathlessly.
"It was, sir. The poor child could tell me nothing of his parents,
and knew only that his name was Hamish--that he had seated himself in
an old boat upon the beach, and fallen asleep, after which he was
awaked by the rough rocking of his new cradle, as it tumbled on the
waves, which had risen and floated it out into the Sound. He wept
for his mother long and passionately; but I brought him hither, and
in the bosom of our Mother Church he soon learned to forget his
earthly mother, who is now, perhaps, awaiting him in heaven----"
"For her wish has doubtless been mysteriously fulfilled," said Duff,
incoherently. "Eternal Power! if this should be the case! Tell me,
good sir, is there a scar----"
"Upon his left side?--yes."
"The mark of a stag's-horn, which gored him on the rocks of
Loch-na-Keal."
"Yes, yes."
"Then this child whom you found floating on the sea, and who has
lived to become the Rector of your College, is my _brother_, Hamish
Duff, for whose supposed drowning in the Sound of Mull, our poor
mother died of grief on the sixteenth of November."
"The _sixteenth_ of November! the very day on which he has so long
believed he is himself to die."
Dick threw down his plumed bonnet and hastened to the bedside with
his eyes full of tears and a wild expression in his face.
"O how like our old father he looks!" he exclaimed, as he turned down
the coverlet.
There was no motion; he placed a hand on the rector's heart; but
there was no pulsation. He was dead--dead, but still warm.
At that moment the clock of the college tolled the half-hour _after_
twelve!
Thus as he had so long foretold and foreseen, but by what mysterious
intuition or presentiment, Heaven alone knows, he had actually passed
away on the early morning of the sixteenth day of November.
* * * * * *
The French cavalry were still pressing on, and the jaded allies were
still in full retreat; thus the Scottish fathers of the ancient
college hurried the funeral by the next noon, that the Lieutenant of
the Black Watch might lay his brother's head in the grave; and
accordingly the rector was lowered into the tomb which his own hands
had formed before the shrine of St. Margaret, the Patroness of
Scotland; and Dick Duff was a changed man, and a grave man too,
during the remainder of that horrible retreat, on which so many of
our brave soldiers perished of starvation and fatigue; and which Lord
Wellington continued without delay, until the Ebro and the Douro were
far in his rear; and his harassed army found winter quarters on the
frontier of Portugal.
Father John Cameron lived to a good old age, and died Catholic Bishop
of Edinburgh, where he now lies interred before the altar of St.
Mary's Chapel.
X.
THE FOREST OF GAICH;
OR, THE CAPTAIN DHU.
After the Flemish campaign, under his Royal Highness the Duke of
York, and the terrible retreat to Deventer--a retreat in which the
sufferings of our troops rivalled those endured by the French after
Moscow--the 42nd Highlanders were encamped during the spring of 1795
at Hanbury, in England, under the command of General Sir William
Meadows, when their strength, which had been weakened by their recent
operations against the French republican armies, was greatly
augmented by volunteers from various Highland fencible corps, which
had been raised in the preceding year. Among others, they were
joined by the two entire flank companies of the Grant Fencibles, or
old 97th Regiment, which had been raised to the number of thirteen
hundred men by Sir James Grant of Grant, Bart, (locally known as the
_Good_ Sir James), almost entirely among his own name and clan in
Strathspey, a district which has long been famous for its stirring
music and the military spirit of its people. These volunteers, in
the month of September, set out on their march through Badenoch to
join the 42nd, under the command of Captain MacPherson of
Ballychroan, who had been appointed to the corps, the colonel of
which was then Major-General Sir Hector Munro, K.B.
Evan MacPherson was generally known in that wild and mountainous
district named Badenoch as the Captain _Dhu_, or Black Officer, in
consequence of his raven-coloured hair, his swarthy complexion, and
dark eyes, and, perhaps also, from the peculiarities of his
character, which, though brave to recklessness, was stern, severe in
discipline, and at times mysterious, savage, and vindictive.
The captain swore high, drank deep, and gambled as if he had the
mines of Peru among the glens of Ballychroan. These qualities,
together with his great strength and stature, rendered him more
feared than loved in the district of Badenoch, where it was currently
believed that he was in league with the devil, and where the story of
his terrible end is yet remembered with a shudder by the people round
the winter hearth. There are many yet alive in Strathspey who saw
and knew Black Evan, and remember the events which I am about to
record.
From Speyside he marched his volunteers through Glentromie, and,
following the course of the river which gives that valley its name,
entered the wilder and more romantic parts of Badenoch, between the
Stoney Mountain ana Drum Ferrich, till about nightfall, when, to the
great bodily discomfort and greater mental discomposure of the
soldiers, who dared not complain save in whispers to each other, he
halted in the haunted Forest of Gaich, a wild and uninhabited tract
of country on the northern slope of the mighty Grampians.
There he ordered them to pile arms, and have a fire lighted in a
place which he indicated, near a well, deemed holy, as the water of
it had been blessed by St. Eonaig of old. On this, a white-haired
sergeant, Hamish Grant, from Brae Laggan, respectfully ventured to
suggest that the fire might burn equally well elsewhere.
MacPherson, who was not accustomed to be trifled with or have his
orders disputed, stormed and swore terribly, according to his wont,
both in Gaelic and English.
"Good will never come of it," said the sergeant, moodily.
"Let evil come if it may, and welcome be it!" responded MacPherson,
scornfully; "let the old fellow who blessed the well come from his
grave at Kilmaveonaig, and, if he chooses, I'll give him a jorum of
its water flavoured with Ferintosh."
Muffled in their grey great-coats, or in their plaids of the bright
red Grant tartan, the soldiers sat or lay in groups near the fire,
which burned cheerfully, and shed a wavering glare along the green
mountain slope. The night was calm, and the stars shone brightly
overhead; no moon was visible yet, and scarcely a breath of wind
stirred the light foliage of the silver birches. Attracted by the
unwonted light of the fire, the dun deer were visible at times, but
for a moment only, as they peered from their lair among the feathery
bracken leaves, and then fled to distant parts of the forest.
The soldiers sung Gaelic songs to while away the time, and each
shared with his comrade the contents of his canteen and havresack;
for, having just left their homes in Strathspey, all were amply
provided with bread and cheese, beef, venison, and plenty of good
usquebaugh; thus, though the place of their halt was weird, wild,
and--all save the little runnel that trickled down the heather
slope--unholy, the night seemed likely to pass merrily enough.
Apart from all his men lay Evan MacPherson, of Ballychroan, who on
this night was unusually sullen, gloomy, and taciturn; so much so,
that the soldiers, all of whom knew him well, remarked that a
_tarnecoill_, or black cloud, was upon him; for at times he had his
dark or melancholy hour.
"And how could he be otherwise?" said old Sergeant Hamish, in a
whisper, as he took a huge _sneishen_ from the silver-mounted mull of
Corporal Shon Grant, his own cousin, "only seventeen times removed,"
as Bailie Jarvie has it. "Oich! oich! who but he would have halted
in the Forest of Gaich, and at night too?"
"I'll sleep with one eye open, at all events," replied the corporal,
impressively, with a wink.
"And I with both my ears," said Duncan Bane, the piper; "for, by the
horns of the devil--"
"Whisht! Oich, don't name him here, for he is, perhaps, nearer than
we know of; but what were you about to say?"
"That we shall be lucky if we pass the night without hearing the
scream of Comyn's eagles as they fly towards the Tarff."
"It is said, they pass through the forest from Benoch Corrie Va
always at midnight," said Donald Bane Grant, or Fair-haired Donald
the piper, in a whisper.
Some of the younger soldiers laughed; but the older shrugged their
shoulders, and took an additional dram and sneishen, as they thought
of all the Forest of Gaich had witnessed in other times.
In a previous legend, the fate of the Red Comyn has been mentioned;
but this forest was the death-scene of his father, the equally
traitorous Black Comyn; and it was to the story of his terrible death
the soldiers referred.
"He was killed," said one, "by a fall from his horse, which a weird
woman had bewitched."
"Not at all," said the sergeant, bluntly; for he was well versed in
all the oral literature of his native hills.
"How then--how?" asked several.
"His death happened thus," began the sergeant in Gaelic. "The Black
Comyn was a fierce tyrant, who dwelt in the black Castle of
Inverlochy, to which he added the great round western tower, that
still bears his name; and there he and his wife, who was the Lady
Marjorie, daughter of John Baliol, King of Scotland, were a terror
and a grievance to the whole country by their exactions, extortions,
and severity. Every one in Badenoch knows the story of his
conceiving a love for two pretty girls whom he saw reaping in a field
near Croc Barrodh, and whom, because they fled from him, he ordered
his Lowland men-at-arms to strip nude as they came into the world,
and in that condition he compelled to finish the reaping of the field
in the light of open day, while he and his friends mocked them, and
looked on.
"Two days after this, he was at the Cell of St. Eonaig, in Blair
Athole, where he tarried at a wayside cottage to obtain a draught of
beer. The baron was thirsty, and he drank deep; the day was hot--he
had ridden far, and the beverage was cool, sharp, and refreshing.
"'This beer of yours pleases me much,' said he; 'whence get you it,
dame?'
"'I am my own brewer,' replied the cottager; 'but the malt is brought
from St. John's Town.'
"'And the water?'
"'From yonder stream.'
"'The Aldnehearlinn?'
"'Yes.'
"'Good! I shall have such beer made in my Castle of Inverlochy, if
it cost me a thousand lives and fifty thousand silver crowns!' said
Comyn, wiping the white froth from his coal-black beard with his
steel glove.
"'Then you must make a road over the Grampians,' said the woman.
"'And a road I shall make, dame,' he exclaimed.
"The woman laughed covertly, and bitterly uttered a curse under her
breath; for she was the mother of one of the young reapers whom he
had so recently dishonoured. Now this woman was a witch, and the
beer she had given the Lord of Badenoch was brewed under a spell;
thus, whoever drank thereof became her victim and the instrument of
her will.
"The Black Comyn resolved that whatever might be the result, he would
have beer of the same kind in his Castle of Inverlochy; but to
procure the ingredients a road was necessary, and he at once ordered
one to be made. Then thousands of men were soon seen at work, with
axe and shovel hewing a path from the lonely little cell of St.
Eonaig, through the dense fir woods of Craig Urrand, building a
bridge across the Bruar in Athole, and digging a way straight to this
Forest of Gaich; and thus far it was made when the work was stopped
by witchcraft.
"Daily the Black Comyn came to survey the road and to watch its
progress over hill and glen, and wood and water, and many observed
that daily two eagles hovered above his head, but high in mid-air,
where the arrows of his best archers failed to reach them; for these
screaming eagles were witches, the mother of the two pretty
reapers--the beer woman of St. Eonaig, and another cailloch who dwelt
by the Lochy, and who came hither to scheme out vengeance and to
destroy the Black Comyn's road, lest when finished it might prove an
easy avenue for the Perthshire clans to march into Badenoch.
"By the day of St. Eonaig the road had been made nearly to Gaich, and
the dun deer, roused from their lair, were flying before the workmen,
when the screams of the two giant eagles were heard overhead; the men
were dispersed or rendered powerless by a spell, while all their
horses and oxen took to flight, as if possessed by the demons which
entered the swine of old, and rushing headlong over the precipices
were destroyed.
"Corayn beheld this sudden catastrophe with emotions of astonishment
and rage, which were soon changed to fear, when the flapping wings
and shrill cries of the furious eagles rang close in his ears, and
with dusky wings outspread, and monstrous beaks open, he saw them
descending swoop upon him.
"He turned his fleet horse, and goring him with his spurs, fled he
knew not whither.
"The infernal birds pursued him closely, and the summer sun cast
their shadows like flying clouds upon his path. He crossed the ridge
of the Grampians, and galloped downward at a frightful pace towards
Craignaheilar; but there they overtook him, though he cowered upon
his horse's mane, and implored God to save him! His entreaties were
in vain, for God seemed to have abandoned the Black Comyn to the
fiends, even as He abandoned his son the Red Traitor to the dagger of
Bruce; and now the eagles, plunging their beaks and talons in his
flesh, tore him limb from limb, and scattered the reeking fragments
of his body in the wilderness. One of his legs was still dangling in
the silver stirrup when his terrified horse fell dead on the banks of
the Tarff.*
* At a place still named _Lechois_, or _one foot_, according to Mr.
Scrape. See his work on "Deerstalking."
"And once in every hundred years," concluded the sergeant, "his
spirit is said to ride from Gaich, followed by the screaming eagles."
"And here, too," said the corporal, glancing about him and stirring
the embers of the fire, "has been seen many a time, as I have heard
my mother say, the great Black Cat of the Woods--the king of all
cats."
"Aire Dhia!" exclaimed the sergeant, uneasily; "that is the devil
himself."
"Cat or devil, I care not which," said the corporal; "but we all know
the story of the Laird of Brae na Garacher, who fought in the wars of
Montrose, and when hunting here in Gaich, on Yule Eve, shot a black
cat of enormous size, and just as he approached, cautiously, to
examine the scratching brute, to his astonishment it opened its red
mouth and addressed him in very good Gaelic, begging that he would
have the Christian charity to inform the cats at home of his untimely
end. You may be sure that Brae na Garacher lost little time after
that in making his way out of the forest and reaching home, where he
related what had happened, and all the family laughed at him, saying,
there was nothing in the world like good Campbelton whiskey for
making even a cat speak!
"But lo! the moment his story was concluded, a little black kitten,
that sat by the hearth, sprang with a fierce bound to the back of a
high arm-chair, with its tail bushy like a fox's brush, its ears flat
on its head, its yellow eyes glaring with rage, its back erect, and
its little body swollen to all appearance thrice its usual size.
There it sat for a minute spitting and howling like an evil spirit,
and then vanished up the chimney! This event silenced the laughers,
and sorely disturbed the mind of the laird, who resolved to consult
with the minister about it on the morrow, and, in the meantime, to
drink deep before going to bed. About midnight he was awakened by a
sound, and, by the dim rays of his night-lamp, saw a black mass
hovering over him.
"It was the huge black cat he had shot in the Forest of Gaich!
"Its eyes shone like those of a snake, its fierce claws were extended
towards him, its red mouth was open, and its hot breath came
balefully upon his cheek, as slowly, surely, and deliberately, it
descended from the roof of his bed upon him, and clutching at his
throat, lacerated and strangled him to death!"
"And I have heard from my father, who was out with the Prince, God
rest them both!" said the piper, "that on the same night of Brae na
Garacher's death, when the minister of Kingussie was riding home by
the skirts of this forest, he passed a mighty multitude of cats.
They covered all the sides of the hills, and swarmed among the rocks
and trees, like mites in an old cheese. On reaching home, he found
that every cat in the village, and all the adjacent cottages, had
disappeared, and gone towards the Forest of Gaich, from whence they
never returned."
Just as this third veracious story was concluded by Donald Bane the
piper, he, the sergeant, and others who yet lingered by the
watch-fire, as if in that place, so weird and lone, they were loth to
commit themselves to sleep, were startled by the presence of a man--a
stranger--who suddenly appeared among them, without any one having
seen or heard him approach--appeared as if he had sprung from the
ground.
His aspect was remarkable, and had something alike impressive and
terrible about it. He was dressed like a Lowland peasant; but his
complexion was dark as that of a mulatto. His hair, beard, and
whiskers were of raven blackness; the latter appendages, which he
wore in great profusion, grew close up to his keen and restless eyes,
which glared from under the shadow of his beetling brows and broad
round bonnet, like those of a polecat from under a bush; but his grey
plaid, the folds of which were full and ample, rose high upon his
breast and concealed his mouth.
His eyes, which had all the fascinating glare of the fierce bright
orbs of the rattle-snake, leisurely surveyed the quailing soldiers
one after another in silence, and then he grinned, as if pleased by
the startling impression his sudden appearance created, and spreading
his strong, brown, swarthy hands over the flames, thrust them almost
into the fire, without seeming to feel the heat in any way oppressive.
"Who are you?' asked the sergeant, firmly.
"One whom you may perhaps know well enough by-and-by," replied the
other, with a grimace.
"Are you a Lowlander?" asked the corporal.
"Dioul!" growled the other; "did such pure Gaelic as mine ever come
from the tongue of a bodach in breeks? But speak out, my friends; of
what are you afraid?"
"I fear nothing human," replied the sergeant; "but I fear God, and
hate the devil and all his works."
"What wrong has the devil ever done you?"
"He put it in the heart of a vile Cateran to draw his dirk on me at
the Inverness cattle tryst in August last."
"Nay, sergeant, it was not the poor devil who caused this, but your
hot Highland whiskey and temper to boot. Yet I do not think you have
much to complain of, as you well nigh slew him afterwards."
"The devil?"
"No--the Cateran, as you call him. As for the devil, he, poor
fellow, is very much maligned on earth, I assure you."
"'Twas only a dab with a dirk I gave the Cateran, and he gave me
another."
"A dab--a severe wound?"
"Bah! I would let any honest man do as much to me, for a good dram,
any day; like true Highlanders, we parted after the first blood
drawn."
The dark man gave one of his ferocious grins, as he said,
"You parted--true; but how fared it with your assailant?"
"He was lodged by the meddling provost and bailies in the bottle
dungeon in the middle arch of Inverness Bridge."
"Yes--confined there, with nothing between him and the rain and wind
of heaven but an iron grating--a narrow hatch of steel ribs, over
which the wayfarers tread, and there he is yet."*
* This _oubliette_ perished with the old Bridge of Inverness.
"All this is the provost's fault, _not_ mine. _We_ march by
daybreak," said the sergeant, who had imbibed a strange mistrust and
fear of this nocturnal visitor; "whither go you?"
"To a warmer place than even the warmest West Indian Isle," was the
significant reply of the other, with a withering glance of
malevolence and irony; "but it was not to talk with you I sought the
Forest of Qaich to-night. My man is here!"
With these strange words, the tall dark man strode to the foot of a
tree. There, muffled in his cloak and fast asleep, or to all
appearance so, Captain MacPherson was lying with his head pillowed on
the root of a gigantic larch, and when shaken roughly by the
shoulder, he started up with one of his terrible oaths, but grew pale
on beholding the person who aroused him. On recovering himself
partially,
"What errand brings you here to-night?" he asked, in a low and
stifled voice.
"To see you," was the brief reply.
"But why now, fiend?"
"Where so fitting a place as the Forest of Gaich?"
"True--true! fool--madman that I was! What lured me to halt here?"
"What lured you?"
"Yes."
"Shall I tell you?" grinned the other.
"Yes."
"Fatality,"
"Alas! alas!"
"Come," said the visitor, fiercely, "for time presses."
"Hurry no man's cattle," grumbled MacPherson; "so begone, fiend, for
I go not with you to-night."
"You will not?"
"No!"
The dark stranger laughed till the very hills seemed to echo; and
that weird sound made the marrow freeze in the bones of the old
sergeant, who was listening.
"Come," continued the visitor, "lest I drag you hence."
"Drag!" reiterated the captain, with a furious malediction.
"Yes, drag; for you are powerless as a suckling, and your will is
mine."
For a moment their swarthy eyes glared like live coals upon each
other. At last those of the Captain Dhu lowered, and he said, in a
broken voice,
"Go to the place of tryst, and I shall be with you."
"When?"
"In the snapping of a flint," he groaned, while the perspiration
rolled over his pallid brow.
"Ha! ha! Nay, I go not without you."
"Then the curse of God--the bitter, blighting curse that marked the
front and withered up the soul of Cain--be on you!" exclaimed the
captain, maddened with fear and rage. "Hound of hell, lead on--I
follow you! Stand by your arms, men. Sergeant, at your peril, see
that no man follows us!"
The swarthy man grinned again on hearing this outburst and these
orders; and while the startled soldiers gazed in each other's faces
with blank astonishment at the progress and issue of a conversation
so strange, and at the aspect of one before whom this terrible
officer, the Captain Dhu--he so stern and stormy, so fierce and
unyielding--seemed to quail and bow, he and his weird-like visitor
went from amidst them, and together sought a lonelier and more
sequestered part of the forest.
They remained absent for some time. The whole party of soldiers were
now awakened, and muttered strangely among themselves; while,
regardless of the orders he had received, old Sergeant Hamish Grant,
impelled by an irresistible and, perhaps, laudable curiosity, crept
slowly forward on his hands and knees; but he had not proceeded far
thus, when he heard the voices of the captain and his nocturnal
visitor--the former in tones of entreaty, and the latter in those of
authority and fierce derision. Creeping on a few paces further, with
a drawn bayonet in his hand, he beheld a sight which, when he
considered the proud and stern character of his leader, filled him
with blank wonder.