NEXT morning (I continued, looking up for inspiration to the pinnacles
of Melrose, cut against the clear sky of evening, as sharply as when
"John Morow, master mason," looked upon his finished work and found it
very good)--next morning, as Captain Edward Waverley was setting out for
his morning walk, he found the castle of Bradwardine by no means the
enchanted palace of silence he had first discovered. Milkmaids,
bare-legged and wild-haired, ran about distractedly with pails and
three-legged stools in their hands, crying, "Lord, guide us!" and "Eh,
sirs!"
Bailie Macwheeble, mounted on his dumpy, round-barrelled pony, rode
hither and thither with half the ragged rascals of the neighbourhood
clattering after him. The Baron paced the terrace, every moment glancing
angrily up at the Highland hills from under his bushy grey eyebrows.
From the byre-lasses and the Bailie, Edward could obtain no satisfactory
explanation of the disturbance. He judged it wiser not to seek it from
the angry Baron.
Within-doors, however, he found Rose, who, though troubled and anxious,
replied to his questions readily enough.
"There has been a 'creach,' that is, a raid of cattle-stealers from out
of the Highland hills," she told him, hardly able to keep back her
tears--not, she explained, because of the lost cattle, but because she
feared that the anger of her father might end in the slaying of some of
the Caterans, and in a blood-feud which would last as long as they or
any of their family lived.
"And all because my father is too proud to pay blackmail to Vich Ian
Vohr!" she added.
"Is the gentleman with that curious name," said Edward, "a local robber
or a thief-taker?"
"Oh, no," Rose laughed outright at his southern ignorance, "he is a
great Highland chief and a very handsome man. Ah, if only my father
would be friends with Fergus Mac-Ivor, then Tully-Veolan would once
again be a safe and happy home. He and my father quarrelled at a county
meeting about who should take the first place. In his heat he told my
father that he was under his banner and paid him tribute. But it was
Bailie Macwheeble who had paid the money without my father's knowledge.
And since then he and Vich Ian Vohr have not been friends."
"But what is blackmail?" Edward asked in astonishment. For he thought
that such things had been done away with long ago. All this was just
like reading an old black-letter book in his uncle's library.
"It is money," Rose explained, "which, if you live near the Highland
border, you must pay to the nearest powerful chief--such as Vich Ian
Vohr. And then, if your cattle are driven away, all you have to do is
just to send him word and he will have them sent back, or others as good
in their places. Oh, you do not know how dreadful to be at feud with a
man like Fergus Mac-Ivor. I was only a girl of ten when my father and
his servants had a skirmish with a party of them, near our home-farm--so
near, indeed, that some of the windows of the house were broken by the
bullets, and three of the Highland raiders were killed. I remember
seeing them brought in and laid on the floor in the hall, each wrapped
in his plaid. And next morning their wives and daughters came, clapping
their hands and crying the _coronach_ and shrieking--and they carried
away the dead bodies, with the pipes playing before them. Oh, I could
not sleep for weeks afterward, without starting up, thinking that I
heard again these terrible cries."
All this seemed like a dream to Waverley--to hear this young gentle girl
of seventeen talk familiarly of dark and bloody deeds, such as even he,
a grown man and a soldier, had only imagined--yet which she had seen
with her own eyes!
By dinner-time the Baron's mood had grown somewhat less stormy. He
seemed for the moment to forget his wounded honour, and was even
offering, as soon as the quarrel was made up, to provide Edward with
introductions to many powerful northern chiefs, when the door opened,
and a Highlander in full costume was shown in by the butler.
"Welcome, Evan Dhu Maccombich!" said the Baron, without rising, and
speaking in the manner of a prince receiving an embassy; "what news from
Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian Vohr?"
The ambassador delivered a courteous greeting from the Highland chief.
"Fergus Mac-Ivor (he said) was sorry for the cloud that hung between him
and his ancient friend. He hoped that the Baron would be sorry too--and
that he should say so. More than this he did not ask."
This the Baron readily did, drinking to the health of the chief of the
Mac-Ivors, while Evan Maccombich in turn drank prosperity to the house
of Bradwardine.