"Between the hours of twelve and one, even at the turning of the
tide."
Men come from distant parts to admire the tides of Solloway, which race
in at flood and retreat at ebb with a greater speed than a horse can
follow. But nowhere are there queerer waters than in our own parish of
Caulds at the place called the Sker Bay, where between two horns of land
a shallow estuary receives the stream of the Sker. I never daunder by
its shores, and see the waters hurrying like messengers from the great
deep, without solemn thoughts and a memory of Scripture words on the
terror of the sea. The vast Atlantic may be fearful in its wrath, but
with us it is no clean open rage, but the deceit of the creature, the
unholy ways of quicksands when the waters are gone, and their stealthy
return like a thief in the night-watches. But in the times of which I
write there were more awful fears than any from the violence of nature.
It was before the day of my ministry in Caulds, for then I was a bit
callant in short clothes in my native parish of Lesmahagow; but the
worthy Doctor Chrystal, who had charge of spiritual things, has told me
often of the power of Satan and his emissaries in that lonely place. It
was the day of warlocks and apparitions, now happily driven out by the
zeal of the General Assembly. Witches pursued their wanchancy calling,
bairns were spirited away, young lassies selled their souls to the evil
one, and the accuser of the brethren in the shape of a black tyke was
seen about cottage-doors in the gloaming. Many and earnest were the
prayers of good Doctor Chrystal, but the evil thing, in spite of his
wrestling, grew and flourished in his midst. The parish stank of
idolatry, abominable rites were practised in secret, and in all the
bounds there was no one had a more evil name for this black traffic than
one Alison Sempill, who bode at the Skerburnfoot.
The cottage stood nigh the burn in a little garden with lilyoaks and
grosart-bushes lining the pathway. The Sker ran by in a linn among
hollins, and the noise of its waters was ever about the place. The
highroad on the other side was frequented by few, for a nearer-hand way
to the west had been made through the Lowe Moss. Sometimes a herd from
the hills would pass by with sheep, sometimes a tinkler or a wandering
merchant, and once in a long while the laird of Heriotside on his grey
horse riding to Gledsmuir. And they who passed would see Alison Hirpling
in her garden, speaking to herself like the ill wife she was, or sitting
on a cuttystool by the doorside with her eyes on other than mortal
sights. Where she came from no man could tell. There were some said she
was no woman, but a ghost haunting some mortal tenement. Others would
threep she was gentrice, come of a persecuting family in the west, that
had been ruined in the Revolution wars. She never seemed to want for
siller; the house was as bright as a new preen, the yaird better delved
than the manse garden; and there was routh of fowls and doos about the
small steading, forbye a wheen sheep and milk-kye in the fields. No man
ever saw Alison at any market in the countryside, and yet the
Skerburnfoot was plenished yearly in all proper order. One man only
worked on the place, a doited lad who had long been a charge to the
parish, and who had not the sense to fear danger or the wit to
understand it. Upon all other the sight of Alison, were it but for a
moment, cast a cold grue, not to be remembered without terror. It seems
she was not ordinarily ill-faured, as men use the word. She was maybe
sixty years in age, small and trig, with her grey hair folded neatly
under her mutch. But the sight of her eyes was not a thing to forget.
John Dodds said they were the een of a deer with the devil ahint them,
and indeed they would so appal an onlooker that a sudden unreasoning
terror came into his heart, while his feet would impel him to flight.
Once John, being overtaken in drink on the roadside by the cottage, and
dreaming that he was burning in hell, woke, and saw the old wife
hobbling towards him. Thereupon he fled soberly to the hills, and from
that day became a quiet-living humble-minded Christian. She moved about
the country like a wraith, gathering herbs in dark loanings, lingering
in kirkyairds, and casting a blight on innocent bairns. Once Robert
Smillie found her in a ruinous kirk on the Lang Muir where of old the
idolatrous rites of Rome were practised. It was a hot day, and in the
quiet place the flies buzzed in crowds, and he noted that she sat
clothed in them as with a garment, yet suffering no discomfort. Then he,
having mind of Beelzebub, the god of flies, fled without a halt
homewards; but, falling in the Coo's Loan, broke two ribs and a
collar-bone, the whilk misfortune was much blessed to his soul. And
there were darker tales in the countryside, of weans stolen, of lassies
misguided, of innocent beasts cruelly tortured, and in one and all there
came in the name of the wife of the Skerburnfoot. It was noted by them
that kenned best that her cantrips were at their worst when the tides in
the Sker Bay ebbed between the hours of twelve and one. At this season
of the night the tides of mortality run lowest, and when the outgoing of
these unco waters fell in with the setting of the current of life, then
indeed was the hour for unholy revels. While honest men slept in their
beds, the auld rudas carlines took their pleasure. That there is a
delight in sin no man denies, but to most it is but a broken glint in
the pauses of their conscience. But what must be the hellish joy of
those lost beings who have forsworn God and trysted with the Prince of
Darkness, it is not for a Christian to say. Certain it is that it must
be great, though their master waits at the end of the road to claim the
wizened things they call their souls. Serious men, notably Gidden Scott
in the Back of the Hill and Simon Wauch in the Sheiling of Chasehope,
have seen Alison wandering on the wet sands, dancing to no earthly
music, while the heavens, they said, were full of lights and sounds
which betokened the presence of the prince of the powers of the air. It
was a season of heart-searching for God's saints in Caulds, and the
dispensation was blessed to not a few.
It will seem strange that in all this time the presbytery was idle, and
no effort was made to rid the place of so fell an influence. But there
was a reason, and the reason, as in most like cases, was a lassie.
Forbye Alison there lived at the Skerburnfoot a young maid, Ailie
Sempill, who by all accounts was as good and bonnie as the other was
evil. She passed for a daughter of Alison's, whether born in wedlock or
not I cannot tell; but there were some said she was no kin to the auld
witch-wife, but some bairn spirited away from honest parents. She was
young and blithe, with a face like an April morning and a voice in her
that put the laverocks to shame. When she sang in the kirk folk have
told me that they had a foretaste of the music of the New Jerusalem,
and when she came in by the village of Caulds old men stottered to their
doors to look at her. Moreover from her earliest days the bairn had some
glimmerings of grace. Though no minister would visit the Skerburnfoot,
or if he went, departed quicker than he came, the girl Ailie attended
regular at the catechising at the Mains of Sker. It may be that Alison
thought she would be a better offering for the devil if she were given
the chance of forswearing God, or it may be that she was so occupied in
her own dark business that she had no care of the bairn. Meanwhile the
lass grew up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I have heard
Doctor Chrystal say that he never had a communicant more full of the
things of the Spirit. From the day when she first declared her wish to
come forward to the hour when she broke bread at the table, she walked
like one in a dream. The lads of the parish might cast admiring eyes on
her bright cheeks and yellow hair as she sat in her white gown in the
kirk, but well they knew she was not for them. To be the bride of Christ
was the thought that filled her heart; and when at the fencing of the
tables Doctor Chrystal preached from Matthew nine and fifteen, "Can the
children of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with
them?" it was remarked by sundry that Ailie's face was liker the
countenance of an angel than of a mortal lass.
It is with the day of her first communion that this narrative of mine
begins. As she walked home after the morning table she communed in
secret and her heart sank within her. She had mind of God's mercies in
the past, how He had kept her feet from the snares of evil-doers which
had been spread around her youth. She had been told unholy charms like
the seven south streams and the nine rowan berries, and it was noted
when she went first to the catechising that she prayed "Our Father which
wert in heaven," the prayer which the ill wife Alison had taught her,
meaning by it Lucifer who had been in heaven and had been cast out
therefrom. But when she had come to years of discretion she had freely
chosen the better part, and evil had ever been repelled from her soul
like Gled water from the stones of Gled brig. Now she was in a rapture
of holy content. The drucken bell--for the ungodly fashion lingered in
Caulds--was ringing in her ears as she left the village, but to her it
was but a kirk-bell and a goodly sound. As she went through the woods
where the primroses and the whitethorn were blossoming, the place
seemed as the land of Elam, wherein there were twelve wells and
threescore and ten palm-trees. And then, as it might be, another thought
came into her head, for it is ordained that frail mortality cannot long
continue in holy joy. In the kirk she had been only the bride of Christ;
but as she came through the wood, with the birds lilting and the winds
of the world blowing, she had mind of another lover. For this lass,
though so cold to men, had not escaped the common fate. It seemed that
the young Heriotside, riding by one day, stopped to speir something or
other, and got a glisk of Ailie's face, which caught his fancy. He
passed the road again many times, and then he would meet her in the
gloaming or of a morning in the field as she went to fetch the kye.
"Blue are the hills that are far away" is an owercome in the
countryside, and while at first on his side it may have been but a young
man's fancy, to her he was like the god Apollo descending from the
skies. He was good to look on, brawly dressed, and with a tongue in his
head that would have wiled the bird from the tree. Moreover, he was of
gentle kin, and she was a poor lass biding in a cot-house with an
ill-reputed mother. It seems that in time the young man, who had begun
the affair with no good intentions, fell honestly in love, while she
went singing about the doors as innocent as a bairn, thinking of him
when her thoughts were not on higher things. So it came about that long
ere Ailie reached home it was on young Heriotside that her mind dwelt,
and it was the love of him that made her eyes glow and her cheeks
redden.
Now it chanced that at that very hour her master had been with Alison,
and the pair of them were preparing a deadly pit. Let no man say that
the devil is not a cruel tyrant. He may give his folk some scrapings of
unhallowed pleasure; but he will exact tithes, yea of anise and cummin,
in return, and there is aye the reckoning to pay at the hinder end. It
seems that now he was driving Alison hard. She had been remiss of late,
fewer souls sent to hell, less zeal in quenching the Spirit, and above
all the crowning offence that her bairn had communicated in Christ's
kirk. She had waited overlong, and now it was like that Ailie would
escape her toils. I have no skill of fancy to tell of that dark
collogue, but the upshot was that Alison swore by her lost soul and the
pride of sin to bring the lass into thrall to her master. The fiend had
bare departed when Ailie came over the threshold to find the auld
carline glunching by the fire.
It was plain she was in the worst of tempers. She flyted on the lass
till the poor thing's cheek paled. "There you gang," she cried, "troking
wi' thae wearifu' Pharisees o' Caulds, whae daurna darken your mither's
door. A bonnie dutiful child, quotha! Wumman, ha ye nae pride?--no even
the mense o' a tinkler-lass?" And then she changed her voice, and would
be as soft as honey. "My puir wee Ailie! was I thrawn till ye? Never
mind, my bonnie. You and me are a' that's left, and we maunna be ill to
ither." And then the two had their dinner, and all the while the auld
wife was crooning over the lass. "We maun 'gree weel," she says, "for
we're like to be our lee-lane for the rest o' our days. They tell me
Heriotside is seeking Joan o' the Croft, and they're sune to be cried in
Gledsmuir kirk."
It was the first the lass had heard of it, and you may fancy she was
struck dumb. And so with one thing and other the auld witch raised the
fiends of jealousy in that innocent heart. She would cry out that
Heriotside was an ill-doing wastrel, and had no business to come and
flatter honest lasses. And then she would speak of his gentle birth and
his leddy mother, and say it was indeed presumption to hope that so
great a gentleman could mean all that he said. Before long Ailie was
silent and white, while her mother rhymed on about men and their ways.
And then she could thole it no longer, but must go out and walk by the
burn to cool her hot brow and calm her thoughts, while the witch indoors
laughed to herself at her devices.
For days Ailie had an absent eye and a sad face, and it so fell out that
in all that time young Heriotside, who had scarce missed a day, was laid
up with a broken arm and never came near her. So in a week's time she
was beginning to hearken to her mother when she spoke of incantations
and charms for restoring love. She kenned it was sin; but though not
seven days syne she had sat at the Lord's table, so strong is love in a
young heart that she was on the very brink of it. But the grace of God
was stronger than her weak will. She would have none of her mother's
runes and philters, though her soul cried out for them. Always when she
was most disposed to listen some merciful power stayed her consent.
Alison grew thrawner as the hours passed. She kenned of Heriotside's
broken arm, and she feared that any day he might recover and put her
stratagems to shame. And then it seems that she collogued with her
master and heard word of a subtler device. For it was approaching that
uncanny time of year, the festival of Beltane, when the auld pagans were
wont to sacrifice to their god Baal. In this season warlocks and
carlines have a special dispensation to do evil, and Alison waited on
its coming with graceless joy. As it happened, the tides in the Sker Bay
ebbed at this time between the hours of twelve and one, and, as I have
said, this was the hour above all others when the powers of darkness
were most potent. Would the lass but consent to go abroad in the
unhallowed place at this awful season and hour of the night, she was as
firmly handfasted to the devil as if she had signed a bond with her own
blood. For there, it seemed, the forces of good fled far away, the world
for one hour was given over to its ancient prince, and the man or woman
who willingly sought the spot was his bond-servant for ever. There are
deadly sins from which God's people may recover. A man may even
communicate unworthily, and yet, so be it he sin not against the Holy
Ghost, he may find forgiveness. But it seems that for this Beltane sin
there could be no pardon, and I can testify from my own knowledge that
they who once committed it became lost souls from that day. James
Deuchar, once a promising professor, fell thus out of sinful bravery and
died blaspheming; and of Kate Mallison, who went the same road, no man
can tell. Here, indeed, was the witch-wife's chance, and she was the
more keen, for her master had warned her that this was her last chance.
Either Ailie's soul would be his, or her auld wrinkled body and black
heart would be flung from this pleasant world to their apportioned
place.
Some days later it happened that young Heriotside was stepping home over
the Lang Muir about ten at night--it being his first jaunt from home
since his arm had mended. He had been to the supper of the Forest Club
at the Cross Keys in Gledsmuir, a clamjamfry of wild young blades who
passed the wine and played at cartes once a-fortnight. It seems he had
drunk well, so that the world ran round about and he was in the best of
tempers. The moon came down and bowed to him, and he took off his hat to
it. For every step he travelled miles, so that in a little he was beyond
Scotland altogether and pacing the Arabian desert. He thought he was the
Pope of Rome, so he held out his foot to be kissed, and rolled twenty
yards to the bottom of a small brae. Syne he was the King of France,
and fought hard with a whinbush till he had banged it to pieces. After
that nothing would content him but he must be a bogle, for he found his
head dunting on the stars and his legs were knocking the hills together.
He thought of the mischief he was doing to the auld earth, and sat down
and cried at his wickedness. Then he went on, and maybe the steep road
to the Moss Rig helped him, for he began to get soberer and ken his
whereabouts.
On a sudden he was aware of a man linking along at his side. He cried "A
fine night," and the man replied. Syne, being merry from his cups, he
tried to slap him on the back. The next he kenned he was rolling on the
grass, for his hand had gone clean through the body and found nothing
but air.
His head was so thick with wine that he found nothing droll in this.
"Faith, friend," he says, "that was a nasty fall for a fellow that has
supped weel. Where might your road be gaun to?"
"To the World's End," said the man; "but I stop at the Skerburnfoot."
"Bide the night at Heriotside," says he. "It's a thought out of your
way, but it's a comfortable bit."
"There's mair comfort at the Skerburnfoot," said the dark man.
Now the mention of the Skerburnfoot brought back to him only the thought
of Ailie and not of the witch-wife, her mother. So he jaloused no ill,
for at the best he was slow in the uptake.
The two of them went on together for a while, Heriotside's fool head
filled with the thought of the lass. Then the dark man broke silence.
"Ye're thinkin' o' the maid Ailie Sempill," says he.
"How ken ye that?" asked Heriotside.
"It is my business to read the herts o' men," said the other.
"And who may ye be?" said Heriotside, growing eerie.
"Just an auld packman," said he--"nae name ye wad ken, but kin to mony
gentle houses."
"And what about Ailie, you that ken sae muckle?" asked the young man.
"Naething," was the answer--"naething that concerns you, for ye'll never
get the lass."
"By God, and I will!" says Heriotside, for he was a profane swearer.
"That's the wrong name to seek her in, any way," said the man.
At this the young laird struck a great blow at him with his stick, but
found nothing to resist him but the hill-wind.
When they had gone on a bit the dark man spoke again. "The lassie is
thirled to holy things," says he. "She has nae care for flesh and blood,
only for devout contemplation."
"She loves me," says Heriotside.
"Not you," says the other, "but a shadow in your stead."
At this the young man's heart began to tremble, for it seemed that there
was truth in what his companion said, and he was ower drunk to think
gravely.
"I kenna whatna man ye are," he says, "but ye have the skill of lassies'
hearts. Tell me truly, is there no way to win her to common love?"
"One way there is," said the man, "and for our friendship's sake I will
tell it you. If ye can ever tryst wi' her on Beltane's Eve on the Sker
sands, at the green link o' the burn where the sands begin, on the ebb
o' the tide when the midnight is bye but afore cockcrow, she'll be
yours, body and soul, for this world and for ever."
And then it appeared to the young man that he was walking his lone up
the grass walk of Heriotside with the house close by him. He thought no
more of the stranger he had met, but the word stuck in his heart.
It seems that about this very time Alison was telling the same tale to
poor Ailie. She cast up to her every idle gossip she could think of.
"It's Joan o' the Croft," was aye her owercome, and she would threep
that they were to be cried in kirk on the first Sabbath of May. And then
she would rhyme on about the black cruelty of it, and cry down curses on
the lover, so that her daughter's heart grew cauld with fear. It is
terrible to think of the power of the world even in a redeemed soul.
Here was a maid who had drunk of the well of grace and tasted of God's
mercies, and yet there were moments when she was ready to renounce her
hope. At those awful seasons God seemed far off and the world very nigh,
and to sell her soul for love looked a fair bargain. At other times she
would resist the devil and comfort herself with prayer; but aye when she
woke there was the sore heart, and when she went to sleep there were the
weary eyes. There was no comfort in the goodliness of spring or the
bright sunshine weather, and she who had been wont to go about the
doors lightfoot and blithe was now as dowie as a widow woman.
And then one afternoon in the hinder end of April came young Heriotside
riding to the Skerburnfoot. His arm was healed, he had got him a fine
new suit of green, and his horse was a mettle beast that well set off
his figure. Ailie was standing by the doorstep as he came down the road,
and her heart stood still with joy. But a second thought gave her
anguish. This man, so gallant and braw, would never be for her;
doubtless the fine suit and the capering horse were for Joan o' the
Croft's pleasure. And he in turn, when he remarked her wan cheek and
dowie eyes, had mind of what the dark man said on the muir, and saw in
her a maid sworn to no mortal love. Yet the passion for her had grown
fiercer than ever, and he swore to himself that he would win her back
from her phantasies. She, one may believe, was ready enough to listen.
As she walked with him by the Sker water his words were like music to
her ears, and Alison within-doors laughed to herself and saw her devices
prosper.
He spoke to her of love and his own heart, and the girl hearkened
gladly. Syne he rebuked her coldness and cast scorn upon her piety, and
so far was she beguiled that she had no answer. Then from one thing and
another he spoke of some true token of their love. He said he was
jealous, and craved something to ease his care. "It's but a small thing
I ask," says he; "but it will make me a happy man, and nothing ever
shall come atween us. Tryst wi' me for Beltane's Eve on the Sker sands,
at the green link o' the burn where the sands begin, on the ebb o' the
tide when midnight is bye but afore cockcrow. For," said he, "that was
our forebears' tryst for true lovers, and wherefore no for you and me?"
The lassie had grace given her to refuse, but with a woful heart, and
Heriotside rode off in black discontent, leaving poor Ailie to sigh her
lone. He came back the next day and the next, but aye he got the same
answer. A season of great doubt fell upon her soul. She had no clearness
in her hope, nor any sense of God's promises. The Scriptures were an
idle tale to her, prayer brought her no refreshment, and she was
convicted in her conscience of the unpardonable sin. Had she been less
full of pride she would have taken her troubles to good Doctor Chrystal
and got comfort; but her grief made her silent and timorous, and she
found no help anywhere. Her mother was ever at her side, seeking with
coaxings and evil advice to drive her to the irrevocable step. And all
the while there was her love for the man riving in her bosom and giving
her no ease by night or day. She believed she had driven him away and
repented her denial. Only her pride held her back from going to
Heriotside and seeking him herself. She watched the road hourly for a
sight of his face, and when the darkness came she would sit in a corner
brooding over her sorrows.
At last he came, speiring the old question. He sought the same tryst,
but now he had a further tale. It seemed he was eager to get her away
from the Skerburnside and auld Alison. His aunt, the Lady Balcrynie,
would receive her gladly at his request till the day of their marriage.
Let her but tryst with him at the hour and place he named, and he would
carry her straight to Balcrynie, where she would be safe and happy. He
named that hour, he said, to escape men's observation for the sake of
her own good name. He named that place, for it was near her dwelling,
and on the road between Balcrynie and Heriotside, which fords the Sker
Burn. The temptation was more than mortal heart could resist. She gave
him the promise he sought, stifling the voice of conscience; and as she
clung to his neck it seemed to her that heaven was a poor thing compared
with a man's love.
Three days remained till Beltane's Eve, and throughout the time it was
noted that Heriotside behaved like one possessed. It may be that his
conscience pricked him, or that he had a glimpse of his sin and its
coming punishment. Certain it is that, if he had been daft before, he
now ran wild in his pranks, and an evil report of him was in every
mouth. He drank deep at the Cross Keys, and fought two battles with
young lads that had angered him. One he led off with a touch on the
shoulder, the other goes lame to this day from a wound he got in the
groin. There was word of the procurator-fiscal taking note of his
doings, and troth, if they had continued long he must have fled the
country. For a wager he rode his horse down the Dow Craig, wherefore the
name of the place is the Horseman's Craig to this day. He laid a hundred
guineas with the laird of Slipperfield that he would drive four horses
through the Slipperfield loch, and in the prank he had his bit chariot
dung to pieces and a good mare killed. And all men observed that his
eyes were wild and his face grey and thin, and that his hand would
twitch as he held the glass, like one with the palsy.
The eve of Beltane was lown and hot in the low country, with fire
hanging in the clouds and thunder grumbling about the heavens. It seems
that up in the hills it had been an awesome deluge of rain, but on the
coast it was still dry and lowering. It is a long road from Heriotside
to the Skerburnfoot. First you go down the Heriot Water, and syne over
the Lang Muir to the edge of Mucklewhan. When you pass the steadings of
Mirehope and Cockmalane you turn to the right and ford the Mire Burn.
That brings you on to the turnpike road, which you will ride till it
bends inland, while you keep on straight over the Whinny Knowes to the
Sker Bay. There, if you are in luck, you will find the tide out and the
place fordable dryshod for a man on a horse. But if the tide runs, you
will do well to sit down on the sands and content yourself till it turn,
or it will be the solans and scarts of the Solloway that will be seeing
the next of you. On this Beltane's Eve the young man, after supping with
some wild young blades, bade his horse be saddled about ten o'clock. The
company were eager to ken his errand, but he waved them back. "Bide
here," he says, "and birl the wine till I return. This is a ploy of my
own on which no man follows me." And there was that in his face as he
spoke which chilled the wildest, and left them well content to keep to
the good claret and the soft seat and let the daft laird go his own
ways.
Well and on, he rode down the bridle-path in the wood, along the top of
the Heriot glen, and as he rode he was aware of a great noise beneath
him. It was not wind, for there was none, and it was not the sound of
thunder, and aye as he speired at himself what it was it grew the louder
till he came to a break in the trees. And then he saw the cause, for
Heriot was coming down in a furious flood, sixty yards wide, tearing at
the roots of the aiks, and flinging red waves against the drystone
dykes. It was a sight and sound to solemnise a man's mind, deep calling
unto deep, the great waters of the hills running to meet with the great
waters of the sea. But Heriotside recked nothing of it, for his heart
had but one thought and the eye of his fancy one figure. Never had he
been so filled with love of the lass, and yet it was not happiness but a
deadly secret fear.
As he came to the Lang Muir it was geyan dark, though there was a moon
somewhere behind the clouds. It was little he could see of the road,
and ere long he had tried many moss-pools and sloughs, as his braw new
coat bare witness. Aye in front of him was the great hill of Mucklewhan,
where the road turned down by the Mire. The noise of the Heriot had not
long fallen behind him ere another began, the same eerie sound of burns
crying to ither in the darkness. It seemed that the whole earth was
overrun with waters. Every little runnel in the bog was astir, and yet
the land around him was as dry as flax, and no drop of rain had fallen.
As he rode on the din grew louder, and as he came over the top of
Mirehope he kenned by the mighty rushing noise that something uncommon
was happening with the Mire Burn. The light from Mirehope sheiling
twinkled on his left, and had the man not been dozened with his fancies
he might have observed that the steading was deserted and men were
crying below in the fields. But he rode on, thinking of but one thing,
till he came to the cot-house of Cockmalane, which is nigh the fords of
the Mire.
John Dodds, the herd who bode in the place, was standing at the door,
and he looked to see who was on the road so late.
"Stop," says he, "stop, Laird Heriotside. I kenna what your errand is,
but it is to no holy purpose that ye're out on Beltane Eve. D'ye no hear
the warning o' the waters?"
And then in the still night came the sound of Mire like the clash of
armies.
"I must win over the ford," says the laird quietly, thinking of another
thing.
"Ford!" cried John in scorn. "There'll be nae ford for you the nicht
unless it be the ford o' the river Jordan. The burns are up, and bigger
than man ever saw them. It'll be a Beltane's Eve that a' folk will
remember. They tell me that Gled valley is like a loch, and that there's
an awesome folk drooned in the hills. Gin ye were ower the Mire, what
about crossin' the Caulds and the Sker?" says he, for he jaloused he was
going to Gledsmuir.
And then it seemed that that word brought the laird to his senses. He
looked the airt the rain was coming from, and he saw it was the airt the
Sker flowed. In a second, he has told me, the works of the devil were
revealed to him. He saw himself a tool in Satan's hands, he saw his
tryst a device for the destruction of the body, as it was assuredly
meant for the destruction of the soul, and there came on his mind the
picture of an innocent lass borne down by the waters with no place for
repentance. His heart grew cold in his breast. He had but one thought, a
sinful and reckless one--to get to her side, that the two might go
together to their account. He heard the roar of the Mire as in a dream,
and when John Dodds laid hands on his bridle he felled him to the earth.
And the next seen of it was the laird riding the floods like a man
possessed.
The horse was the grey stallion he aye rode, the very beast he had
ridden for many a wager with the wild lads of the Cross Keys. No man but
himself durst back it, and it had lamed many a hostler lad and broke two
necks in its day. But it seemed it had the mettle for any flood, and
took the Mire with little spurring. The herds on the hillside looked to
see man and steed swept into eternity; but though the red waves were
breaking about his shoulders and he was swept far down, he aye held on
for the shore. The next thing the watchers saw was the laird struggling
up the far bank, and casting his coat from him, so that he rode in his
sark. And then he set off like a wildfire across the muir towards the
turnpike road. Two men saw him on the road and have recorded their
experience. One was a gangrel, by name M'Nab, who was travelling from
Gledsmuir to Allerkirk with a heavy pack on his back and a bowed head.
He heard a sound like wind afore him, and, looking up, saw coming down
the road a grey horse stretched out to a wild gallop and a man on its
back with a face like a soul in torment. He kenned not whether it was
devil or mortal, but flung himself on the roadside, and lay like a corp
for an hour or more till the rain aroused him. The other was one Sim
Doolittle, the fish-hawker from Allerfoot, jogging home in his fish-cart
from Gledsmuir fair. He had drunk more than was fit for him, and he was
singing some light song, when he saw approaching, as he said, the pale
horse mentioned in the Revelations, with Death seated as the rider.
Thoughts of his sins came on him like a thunder-clap, fear loosened his
knees, he leaped from the cart to the road, and from the road to the
back of a dyke. Thence he flew to the hills, and was found the next
morning far up among the Mire Craigs, while his horse and cart were
gotten on the Aller sands, the horse lamed and the cart without the
wheels.
At the tollhouse the road turns inland to Gledsmuir, and he who goes to
Sker Bay must leave it and cross the wild land called the Whinny
Knowes, a place rough with bracken and foxes' holes and old stone
cairns. The tollman, John Gilzean, was opening his window to get a
breath of air in the lown night when he heard or saw the approaching
horse. He kenned the beast for Heriotside's, and, being a friend of the
laird's, he ran down in all haste to open the yett, wondering to himself
about the laird's errand on this night. A voice came down the road to
him bidding him hurry; but John's old fingers were slow with the keys,
and so it happened that the horse had to stop, and John had time to look
up at the gash and woful face.
"Where away the nicht sae late, laird?" says John.
"I go to save a soul from hell," was the answer.
And then it seems that through the open door there came the chapping of
a clock.
"Whatna hour is that?" asks Heriotside.
"Midnicht," says John, trembling, for he did not like the look of
things.
There was no answer but a groan, and horse and man went racing down the
dark hollows of the Whinny Knowes.
How he escaped a broken neck in that dreadful place no human being will
ever tell. The sweat, he has told me, stood in cold drops upon his
forehead; he scarcely was aware of the saddle in which he sat; and his
eyes were stelled in his head, so that he saw nothing but the sky ayont
him. The night was growing colder, and there was a small sharp wind
stirring from the east. But, hot or cold, it was all one to him, who was
already cold as death. He heard not the sound of the sea nor the
peesweeps startled by his horse, for the sound that ran in his ears was
the roaring Sker Water and a girl's cry. The thought kept goading him,
and he spurred the grey till the creature was madder than himself. It
leaped the hole which they call the Devil's Mull as I would step over a
thistle, and the next he kenned he was on the edge of the Sker Bay.
It lay before him white and ghastly, with mist blowing in wafts across
it and a slow swaying of the tides. It was the better part of a mile
wide, but save for some fathoms in the middle where the Sker current
ran, it was no deeper even at flood than a horse's fetlocks. It looks
eerie at bright midday when the sun is shining and whaups are crying
among the seaweeds; but think what it was on that awesome night with the
powers of darkness brooding over it like a cloud. The rider's heart
quailed for a moment in natural fear. He stepped his beast a few feet
in, still staring afore him like a daft man. And then something in the
sound or the feel of the waters made him look down, and he perceived
that the ebb had begun and the tide was flowing out to sea.
He kenned that all was lost, and the knowledge drove him to stark
despair. His sins came in his face like birds of night, and his heart
shrank like a pea. He knew himself for a lost soul, and all that he
loved in the world was out in the tides. There, at any rate, he could go
too, and give back that gift of life he had so blackly misused. He cried
small and soft like a bairn, and drove the grey out into the waters. And
aye as he spurred it the foam should have been flying as high as his
head; but in that uncanny hour there was no foam, only the waves running
sleek like oil. It was not long ere he had come to the Sker channel,
where the red moss-waters were roaring to the sea, an ill place to ford
in midsummer heat, and certain death, as folks reputed it, at the
smallest spate. The grey was swimming, but it seemed the Lord had other
purposes for him than death, for neither man nor horse could drown. He
tried to leave the saddle, but he could not; he flung the bridle from
him, but the grey held on, as if some strong hand were guiding. He cried
out upon the devil to help his own, he renounced his Maker and his God;
but whatever his punishment, he was not to be drowned. And then he was
silent, for something was coming down the tide.
It came down as quiet as a sleeping bairn, straight for him as he sat
with his horse breasting the waters, and as it came the moon crept out
of a cloud and he saw a glint of yellow hair. And then his madness died
away and he was himself again, a weary and stricken man. He hung down
over the tides and caught the body in his arms, and then let the grey
make for the shallows. He cared no more for the devil and all his
myrmidons, for he kenned brawly he was damned. It seemed to him that his
soul had gone from him and he was as toom as a hazel-shell. His breath
rattled in his throat, the tears were dried up in his head, his body had
lost its strength, and yet he clung to the drowned maid as to a hope of
salvation. And then he noted something at which he marvelled dumbly. Her
hair was drookit back from her clay-cold brow, her eyes were shut, but
in her face there was the peace of a child. It seemed even that her lips
were smiling. Here, certes, was no lost soul, but one who had gone
joyfully to meet her Lord. It may be in that dark hour at the burn-foot,
before the spate caught her, she had been given grace to resist her
adversary and flung herself upon God's mercy.
And it would seem that it had been granted, for when he came to the
Skerburnfoot there in the corner sat the weird-wife Alison dead as a
stone and shrivelled like a heatherbirn.
For days Heriotside wandered the country or sat in his own house with
vacant eye and trembling hands. Conviction of sin held him like a vice:
he saw the lassie's death laid at his door, her face haunted him by day
and night, and the word of the Lord dirled in his ears telling of wrath
and punishment. The greatness of his anguish wore him to a shadow, and
at last he was stretched on his bed and like to perish. In his extremity
worthy Doctor Chrystal went to him unasked and strove to comfort him.
Long, long the good man wrestled, but it seemed as if his ministrations
were to be of no avail. The fever left his body, and he rose to stotter
about the doors; but he was still in his torments, and the mercy-seat
was far from him. At last in the back-end of the year came Mungo
Muirhead to Caulds to the autumn communion, and nothing would serve him
but he must try his hand at this storm-tossed soul. He spoke with power
and unction, and a blessing came with his words, the black cloud lifted
and showed a glimpse of grace, and in a little the man had some
assurance of salvation. He became a pillar of Christ's Kirk, prompt to
check abominations, notably the sin of witchcraft, foremost in good
works; but with it all a humble man, who walked contritely till his
death. When I came first to Caulds I sought to prevail upon him to
accept the eldership, but he aye put me by, and when I heard his tale I
saw that he had done wisely. I mind him well as he sat in his chair or
daundered through Caulds, a kind word for every one and sage counsel in
time of distress, but withal a severe man to himself and a crucifier of
the body. It seems that this severity weakened his frame, for three
years syne come Martinmas he was taken ill with a fever, and after a
week's sickness he went to his account, where I trust he is accepted.