I RIDE AGAIN TO McALLAN'S LOCKER.
There came a weariness of the spirit over me that long dreary winter,
and all nature was there to be seconding my dismal thoughts. For
months never did I awake but my first thought would be, "What is there
not right?" and then I would be remembering that Bryde was not any more
on the moorlands.
It seemed to me that always there was a drizzle of soft rain and a
blanket of cold mist, that would be half hiding the friendly places,
that the very hills were become the abode of strange uncanny beasts
instead of decent ewes and fat wethers, and that the mists would be
hiding the revels of the folk a man does not care to be speaking of.
The trees would be dreary and sad--the sea always grey and gurly and
ochone, the very roads had the look of bareness and emptiness, as
though all a man's friends had marched over them, never to return.
Margaret, the Flower of Nourn, had taken to walking alone in the rain,
under the trees by the burnside, or maybe I would be seeing her on the
shore, and looking to the sea, and her songs were sad--ay, when she
tried to be at her gayest. And once I am minding, when she was with me
on the shore-head watching the men at the wrack-carting--
"I am wondering," said she, dipping her hands in the little waves, "I
am wondering if these little waves will maybe once have swirled under
the forefoot of his ship," and I had not the heart to be giving her a
lesson on physics, and a little understanding of the laws that will be
governing the waves.
And Hugh that was the gallant would be interesting himself in all the
matters of farming, and seldom riding out with his clean stirrups and
polished leathers, and there were times when I was sore put to it to be
keeping my hands off him, because he would be so douce and agreeable.
I would be trying the drink often, and took my glass with the Laird, my
uncle, but it would not be bettering me any, and a man that drink will
not be making merrier company of is in no good way.
At the farm in the hills the halflin would be doing finely--a little
lavish with the feeding, as a body will be when the keep is not his
own, but the beasts would be looking well, and the steading clean and
tidy. Belle, it seemed to me, was a little dazed for many a long day,
and whiles I would be finding her with some wee childish garb of
Bryde's, and greeting and laughing at it in her hands, and old Betty
yammering by the fireside, mixing her stories of bawkins and wee folk,
and the ploys she would be having in her young days at the peats.
There was a moon at the New Year, I mind, and me standing in front of
Belle's house, and Belle herself at the open door, with the light
behind her, when there came to my ears the sound of a shod beast
walking, and, thinks I to myself, this will be a horse broke loose.
Then I saw the beast, and after a little wheedling and coaxing I was
able to get my hand on his bridle. He was a great horse, bigger than
any of ours, and a weight-carrier; but it was the gear on him that I
could not be understanding, for there was on him a heavy saddle with a
high pommel and cantle, and his bridle would have strange contrivances
on it, but especially a spare curb chain strapped to the headpiece, and
the bit was altogether new to me, resembling the bit with the long
curving bars that the old crusaders would be using long ago.
He was thin and drawn up at the belly, but his eye was full and fiery,
and I kent this was no serving-man's beast, but I took him to the
stable and gave him a stall, with dry bracken for a bedding, and a
measure of corn and peas, and the halflin came from the loft and got at
the rubbing of him down, gabbling all the time about pasterns and
withers, and Belle watched me, saying no word.
"There will be word for him in the morning," said I; "this will surely
be a beast from the Castle," and at that Belle went into the house, and
I left the halflin still watching the strange horse and made my way on
foot across the hill. The peewits were circling over me with eerie
cries, and now and then on the moor-side the curlews would be crying
into the night--lonely as I was lonely; and in every heather tussock I
would be seeing shapes, and dreading the thought of the Nameless Man
and his brindled hunter, till my hair was like to rise on my head, and
I would feel it in my legs to be running, but that I kent my folk, dead
and gone, would be laughing at me, in their own place, for our past
folk are not so much dead as just away, and maybe watching; and maybe I
would be comforting myself with the thought that the Killer would be
dead long syne in the course of nature--he and his great dog--but for
all that I had a twig of rowan in my hand, for the night was not canny.
And there came a kind of lifting of my spirit when I got the glint of
the lights of the Big House, and kent there would be folks to be
talking to and dogs to give a man heart.
When I was come to the stable door, there was old Tam, thrang with his
bottles of straw for the horses' last bite (a thing to bring a man to
himself it is to listen to horse beasts riving at straw and crunching
into turnips), but Tam laid down his bundle and came close to me.
"There was a man here," says he, "in the gloaming after you would be
leaving for your ceilidhing, and he would be giving me a _festner_,"
says he, with a toothless grin and his old eyes gleaming; "ay, a noble
_festner_," says he, "_from the bottle_. He would be wanting speech
with you."
"Whatna man was he?" said I.
"A red-faced man and very clean," says he, "and his face shining like a
wean's. Och, he might be wan of the Elect but for the glint in the
eyes o' him and free wi' the bottle--a great _performer_ with the
bottle."
"Would he be leaving any word?" said I, for I would be wearying to come
at the man's business.
"He kind o' let on tae some knowledge o' a place McEilin's Locker or
that," says Tam. "Ye would be expected there the night. I am minding
he would be calling himself McNeilage--the mother o' him was Sassenach."
"Would he be speaking o' the _Gull_?" said I.
"No, man, but a party told me," said the old rascal, "a party told me
that the skiffs were below Bealach an sgadan before the moon was up,
and Tam is thinking that there will be some fine, fine water on the
mainland side before the morning--afore the more-nin," says he.
There was a strange thumping at my ribs when I had the garron at the
door, and would be tramping the long yellow straw from his forefeet,
and I led him out of the yard and we were on the shoulder of the black
hill when the moon was beginning to go down. And now there were no
thoughts of ghosts or bawkins in my head, and I would be laughing when
the moor-birds would be rising with a quick whirring of wings under the
horse's feet in the heather. At a long loping canter we crossed the
peat hags, and slithered into the valley on the other side and made the
burn. I mind I stood the horse in the burn to his knees, and he cooled
a little, and then started to be pawing at the water, and snoring at it
glinting past his legs, and tinkling and laughing down the glen. The
heather was dark and withered, and at the banks of the stream I am
seeing yet the long tufts of white grass, like an old man's beard,
shaking with a dry rustle, and there was the sparkle of the last of the
moon making a granite boulder gleam into jewel points, and then we made
our way to the Locker. I was not very sure of the place, but I made
the three long whistles on my fingers that the boys will be using when
there is help needed. From the hillside I got the answer, clear and
piercing like a shepherd's, and then all would be silent except for the
swishing of the heather and the thumping at the ribs of me, for I would
be sure now that Bryde was in the Locker on some mad ploy. When I was
come near the entrance I dismounted and left the beast loose, for I
kent he would make his way home to his stable. As I was clambering up
the last of it, a voice came to me.
"Oh man, Hamish, hurry," and it was not the voice of Bryde, but I kent
the voice, and the eagerness of it and the gladness.
"Dan," I cried, "och, Dan," and after that I am not remembering. How I
came to be sitting in the Locker with Dan beside me, and the smoke
eddying up, and the droll-shaped pond and the queer carving all there,
as it would be yon daft night twenty years ago, I am not remembering.
But there was Dan McBride with a sabre slash from his ear to the point
of his chin, and a proud set to his head, and a way of bending from his
hips like a man reared in the saddle. A great martial moustache curled
at the corners of his mouth. Dan McBride that was away for twenty
years, and mair. He was arrayed in some outlandish soldier rig, with
great boots and prodigious spurs.
"The lass," says he at the first go-off, "what came o' the lass that
will be my wife?" says he, with a great breath. "Is all things right
with Belle?"
"Finely," says I; "you will be seeing her with the daylight."
"Man, I will have been needing that word," says he.
"What am I to be calling ye, man?"
"Hooch," says he, and his words were sharper and fiercer than of yore.
"My father's rank will be good enough for me, but ye will call me Dan
McBride and naething else. Major I was in the Low Countries, and the
warrant's in my saddle-bags," says he. "Wae's me, for I've lost that,
horse and all."
But I had a word to say to that.
"The horse will be sleeping in the stable," said I, "and I will be the
man that's put him there," and told him about the strange horse.
"Yon crater, Dol Beag, didna just dee," says he after a while.
"Nor a drop out of his lug," says I, "if ye will be overlooking a
crooked back. I sent ye that word with the heathen."
"The heathen--the skemp--yon was the last o' the heathen--hilt or hair
o' him that I saw, and me mixed up wi' daftlike wars--it was a packet
that reached me--in Dantzig," says he, "after lying a year, frae some
sensible wench calling hersel' Helen Stockdale. . . ."
I was dumb at that, but I was remembering the lass asking of the Scot
that took the Pagan to the mouth of the Rouen river. "Ay, a priest
gave the packet to a Scots friend o' mine in Rouen, and then it came to
me at a tavern in Dantzig. I didna bide long there. I was landed wi'
the smugglers at Fowey," says he, "and McNeilage put me ashore last
night at the Point and was to leave word for ye. It was a thought
gruesome here," says he, "wi' McAllan and the dog among the bones ben
there--deid? Ay, deid twenty years, Hamish, by the look o' things.
Tell me about Belle," said he, "Belle and the boy, Hamish. The lass
that wrote had a great word o' the boy, and she wanted me hame. I am
not sure why--weemen are such droll . . . Is she religious?" says he.
"Ye'll be seeing," says I.
And then again, "I had to have a crack wi' ye, Hamish, before I could
be doing anything; it's no' canny coming in on folk after a matter o'
twenty years."
All that night we sat before a fire with no other light, and many a
time I would be thinking of the Killer dying in there in the dark, and
the dog beside him; the Nameless Man was not in Dan's mind, but the
length of the night.
"Belle and the boy--'a likely lad,' ye say. Hoch, he'll come hame,
Hamish, never fear--the lasses will be taking him hame at his age."
And when we were stretched before the red glow of the fire he would
still be at the talking, and the last I am minding was his voice.
"I will have lain beside the fire on the battlefield and seen the eyes
o' the wolves glowering through the lowes, Hamish; but, man, it was a
king to this weary waiting, a king to this."