"And all this happened here?" repeated Sweetheart,
incredulously, pointing up at the dark purple
mountains of Screel and Ben Gairn.
"Well," I answered, "Scott's Solway is the Dumfries
Solway, not the Galloway Solway. Portanferry exists
not far from Glencaple on the eastern bank of Nith,
and the castle of Ellangowan is as like as possible
to Caerlaverock."
"But he _says_ Galloway!" objected Sweetheart, who
has a pretty persistence of her own. "And I wanted
Ellangowan to be in Galloway. What with Carlyle
having been born there, the Dumfries folk have
quite enough to be proud of!"
"Yes, Scott _says_ Ellangowan is in Galloway," said
I, "but nevertheless to any one who knows the
country, it remains obstinately in Dumfries-shire.
His swamps and morasses are those of Lochar. The
frith is the Dumfries-shire Solway, the castle a
Dumfries-shire castle, and what Scott put in of
Galloway tradition was sent him by his friend the
Castle Douglas exciseman."
"Oh!" said Sweetheart, a little ruefully, "but are
you sure?"
"Certain," I answered, "if you consider time and
distance from the border--say from Charlies-hope,
you will see that Brown could not possibly have
reached the heart of Galloway. Besides, Scott was
far too wise a man to write about what he did not
know. So he wove in Train's Galloway legends, but
he put the people into his own well-kenned dresses,
and set them to act their parts under familiar
skies. Hence it is, that though the taste of Scott
was never stronger than in _Guy Mannering_, the
flavour of Galloway is somehow not in the mouth!"
"What does it matter where it all happened?" cried
Hugh John; "it is a rattling good tale, anyway, and
if the Man-who-Wrote-It imagined that it all
happened in Galloway, surely _we_ can!"
This being both sensible and unanswerable, the
party scattered to improvise old castles of
Ellangowan, and to squabble for what was to them
the only wholly desirable part, that of Dirk
Hatteraick. The combat between the smuggler and the
exciseman was executed with particular zeal and
spirit, Sir Toady Lion prancing and curvetting, as
Frank Kennedy, on an invisible steed, with Maid
Margaret before him on the saddle. So active was
the fight indeed, that the bold bad smuggler, Dirk,
assailed as to the upper part of his body by Sir
Toady, and with the Heir tugging at his legs, found
himself presently worsted and precipitated over the
cliff in place of Frank Kennedy. This ending
considerably disarranged the story, so that it was
with no little trouble that the pair of strutting
victors were induced to "play by the book," and to
accept (severally) death and captivity in the hold
of the smuggling lugger.
On the other hand, after I had read the
Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Chapters of _Guy
Mannering_ to them in the original, it was
remarkable with what accuracy of detail Sweetheart
wrapped a plaid about her and played the witch, Meg
Merrilies, singing wild dirges over an imaginary
dead body, while Hugh John hid among the straw till
Sir Toady and Maid Margaret rushed in with
incredible hubbub and sat down to carouse like a
real gang of the most desperate characters.
Seated on a barrel of gunpowder, Sir Toady declared
that he smelt traitors in the camp, whereupon he
held a (paper) knife aloft in the air, and cried,
"If any deceive us or betray the gang, we will
destroy them--_thus!_"
"Yes," chimed in the rosebud mouth of Maid
Margaret, "and us will chop them into teeny-weeny
little bits wif a sausage minchine, and feed them
to our b-r-r-lood-hounds!"
"Little monsters!" cried Sweetheart, for the moment
forgetting her proper character of witch-wife.
Nevertheless, all in the Kairn of Derncleugh were
happy, save Hugh John, who declared that Scott's
heroes were always getting put under soft cushions
or up the chimney. "You can't really distinguish
yourself," he insisted, "in such situations!" And
he referred once more to the luck of a certain Mr.
James Hawkins, ship's boy, late of "Treasure
Island."
"It's the nobodies that have all the fun--real
heroes don't count!" he continued ruefully, as he
dusted himself from the bits of straw.
"Wait," said I; "you have not heard the third tale
from Guy Mannering. Then there will be lots for you
to do!"
"High time!" he answered with awful irony.