morning mail from Dumfries to Edinburgh was already late in reaching
Moffat. Would "she" go on, would "she" risk the terrible drifts that
even now must have formed nearer the bleak moorland summit? And the
little knot of faithful admirers who, according to custom, daily
assembled by one's and two's about the inn door at Moffat to wait the
coming of the coach--their one excitement--agreed that "MacGeorge would
gang on if the de'il himsel' stude across the road." MacGeorge was
guard of the mail-coach, a fine, determined man, an old soldier, one
imbued with abnormally strong sense of duty. Once before, for some quite
unavoidable delay, the Post-Office authorities had "quarrelled" him (as
he expressed it), and this undeserved blame rankled in the old soldier's
heart. It should not be said of him a second time that he had failed to
get his mails through on time. So it came to pass that, in spite of
rising gale and fiercer driving snow, in spite of earnest remonstrance
from innkeepers and spectators, with "toot-toot" of horn away into the
white smother, spectral-like, glided the silent coach. A mile from the
inn she was blocked by a huge drift. That safely won through, a couple
of miles farther she plodded on, slowly and ever more slow; and finally,
in a mighty wreath, stuck fast; "all the King's horses" might not have
brought her through that. MacGeorge was urged to turn now, to make the
best of a bad business and to go back to Moffat. The delay was
unavoidable; no one could cast blame on him, for the worst part of the
road was yet to come, and no power on earth could get the mails through
that. But no! It was his duty to go on, and go he would.
The horses were taken out of the coach. Some were sent back to Moffat in
charge of the lads who rode the extra tracers used in snowy weather for
the few miles of heavy collar-work out of Moffat; of the rest, loaded
with the mail-bags, MacGeorge led one, Goodfellow, the coachman,
another; and the two set off for Tweedshaws, accompanied by a man named
Marchbanks, the Moffat roadman, who had been a passenger on the coach.
It was but four miles to Tweedshaws, yet before they had struggled
through half the distance the horses had come to a standstill, utterly
blown and exhausted; nothing could get them to stir forward, or longer
to face the drift. Marchbanks suggested that now at length they might
reasonably turn and fight their way back. Goodfellow hesitated.
"What say ye, Jamie?" he asked of MacGeorge.
"Come ye or bide ye, I go on," answered the stern old soldier. "I can
carry the bags mysel'."
"Then that settles the maitter. If ye gang, I gang."
So the horses were turned adrift to find their own way home, and the two
men went off into the mirk, carrying the bags; whilst Marchbanks, on
their urgent advice, turned to force his arduous way back to Moffat.
Snow still fell in the morning, but the worst of the storm seemed over
when Marchbanks again started to try for Tweedshaws to ascertain if
MacGeorge and Goodfellow had won their way through. The country was one
vast drift; the snow-posts by the roadside, where not altogether buried
or so plastered with the driving snow on their weather side as to be
invisible, pushed their black heads through the universal ghostly
shroud; where the road had been, the abandoned coach itself loomed, a
shapeless white mound. On and on Marchbanks toiled, and, far past the
spot where last night he had parted from his comrades, something unusual
hanging to a snow post caught his eye. It was the mail-bags, securely
tied there by hands which too evidently had been bleeding from the cold;
but of guard or coachman there was never a sign. The meagre winter day
was already drawing to a close; with the gathering darkness a rising
wind drove the snow once more before it, and the clouds to windward
piled black and ominous. By himself Marchbanks was powerless to help, if
help were indeed yet possible; he could but return to Moffat and give
the alarm.
That night men with lanterns and snow-poles fought their way to
Tweedshaws, only to learn there what all had feared--neither guard nor
coachman had come through. Therefore, if by remote chance they still
lived, the men must lie buried in the snow, perhaps within very few
yards of the high-road. For two days scores of men searched every likely
spot, but never a clue they found, except Goodfellow's hat, which lay in
a peat-hag at no great distance from the post where the mail-bags had
been hung.
Then--some said it was a dream that guided them--some one thought of an
old, disused road along which there was possibility the lost men might
have made their way. There, from a drift protruded something black--a
boot; and on his back, deep buried, lay Goodfellow. Near at hand they
found MacGeorge, in an easy attitude, as if quietly sleeping, on his
face a smile--"a kind o' a pleasure," the finders called it--such a
smile, perhaps, as the face of the "good and faithful servant" may wear
when he entereth into the joy of his Lord.
Many have been the snowy years since that in which MacGeorge threw away
life for duty's sake. Besides winters, such as that hard "Crimean" one
of 1854-5, there have been, for example, the terrible season of 1860-1,
the bitter winter of 1878-9, when snow lay, practically unbroken, from
November till March, and the frost was unrelenting in severity; and
there have been others, too numerous to specify. Many a man has perished
on the hill, before and since, but no tragedy ever seized the popular
imagination so firmly as did that on the Moffat road in 1831. It is a
district lonely enough even in summer time, that joint watershed of
Tweed, Annan, and Clyde, but when winter gales sweep over those lofty
moorlands, and snow drives down before the bitter blast, let no man
unused to the hill attempt that road. It was but the other year that a
lonely shepherd's wife near Tweedshaws, one stormy evening when snow
drove wildly across the moor, thought that she heard the cry of a human
voice come down the gale. Again and again, as she sat by her cosy fire
of glowing peat she imagined that some one called for help. Again and
again she rose, and opening the door, listened, but never, when she
stood by the open door waiting for the call to come again, was anything
to be heard but the noise of the storm and the rush of the wind,
anything to be seen but the driving snow. Long she listened, but the cry
came no more, and naturally she concluded that imagination had fooled
her. In the morning, not very many yards away from the door,
half-covered by its snowy winding-sheet, lay the stiff-frozen body of a
young man. There had been the breakdown of some vehicle down the road
the previous evening, and he had thought to make his way to Moffat on
foot. Of what do men think when they are lost in the snow? Of nothing,
probably, one may conclude; very likely, before it has dawned upon them
that there is danger, the mind, like the body, has become numbed with
the cold, and they probably only think of rest and sleep. To some spot
sheltered from the blast they may perhaps have stumbled, and they pause
to take breath. After the turmoil through which they have been
struggling, this sheltered spot seems a quiet little back-water, out of
the raging torrent, peaceful, even warm, by comparison. A little
rest--even, it may be, a few minutes' sleep--will revive them, and
afterwards they will push on, refreshed. All will be well; it is not far
to safety. And the snow falls quietly, ceaselessly, softly lapping them
in its gentle folds, and the roar of the wind comes now from very far
away--their last lullaby, heard vaguely through "death's twilight dim."
The desire to sleep, men say, is irresistible, and once yielded to,
sleep's twin brother, death, is very near at hand. There was found many
years ago in the Border hills the body of a man, who had taken off his
plaid, folded it carefully to make a pillow, on it had rested his head,
and so had passed to his long rest, contented enough, if one might judge
from the smile on his face.
But men do not always thus loose consciousness when buried in the snow.
There was the case of Mr. Alexander Laidlaw of Bowerhope, on St. Mary's
Loch, in the year 1842. One wild day of storm and deep-lying snow he
started out to see after the safety of his sheep. Hours had passed,
darkness had fallen, and he did not come home. Then a shepherd
remembered having seen him crossing a certain hill where snow lay extra
deep. To this hill in the morning the searchers betook themselves, to
find that a great avalanche had taken place, leaving the hill bare but
for the night's coating of snow. At the hill-foot the old snow was piled
in giant masses. Here a dog sniffed, and whimpered, and began to scrape.
They found Laidlaw buried there in tons of snow, uninjured save in one
arm, and after fourteen hours burial in his snowy sepulchre he was still
partly conscious. When the tumbling snow mass overwhelmed him he had had
presence of mind and strength to clear from before his face breathing
space sufficient to preserve life. Laidlaw lived for many years after,
in no permanent respect a sufferer from his burial and resurrection.
His was an experience of no common order, yet it was a case less strange
than that of a sportsman, many years ago, who, unused to the hills, was
lost amongst the snow one evening of sudden storm. Far and long he
wandered, till, utterly exhausted, dropping from fatigue and cold, he
chanced on a roof-less cottage, the crumbling walls of which promised
some shelter from the wind and the terrible drifting snow. By the empty
chimney-place he sat down, thankful that at least the bitter gale no
longer buffeted him. But the snow fell thick and fast, eddying into
every corner, gently covering his feet and stealing up over his body. A
drowsy languor crept over his senses, an irresistible feeling of warmth
and comfort came to him; his head fell forward. Again and again, knowing
the deadly peril, he roused himself with ever-increasing effort; again
and again his head sank. Then suddenly it seemed that all was well. How
_could_ he have fancied that he was out amongst the snow? The sound of
the gale still thundered in his ears, but dully, muffled by thick walls,
and he stood in a bedroom wherein burned a cheerful fire. On the bed lay
a man, who presently, with a start, sat up, looked at him, and lay down
again. Three times this happened, but the fourth time the man in bed got
up and hurriedly began to dress. He was a man unknown to the dreamer--if
dreaming he was--but his features were strongly marked, and bore a
scar on the cheek, unmistakable to anyone who had once seen it. Then,
suddenly, except for himself, the room was empty, and, as the dreamer in
his dream strove to reach the fire, to thrust cold hands close to the
pleasant glow, room and fire faded, and he knew no more till a bright
light shone in his dazed eyes, and by his side, a hand on his shoulder,
vigorously shaking him, knelt the man whom he had seen in his dreams. "I
knew you were coming," drowsily murmured the awakened sleeper, glancing
feebly at his rescuer, and immediately dropping off to sleep again.
When next he came to full consciousness, it was in a warm bed in a
comfortable room, where every evidence of luxury met his eyes. In an
armchair by the fire, with outstretched feet, sat his rescuer, his face
turned towards the bed. And presently:
"Why did you say last night that you knew I was coming?" he asked.
And when the dreamer had told his dream:
"It is strange," said the other, "that last night I should have been
forced, as it were, to get up and go to the old cottage by the wood.
Over and over again I woke, plagued by an unaccountable impulse to visit
those ruined walls. Struggle as I might against it, argue with myself as
I would on its folly, it always returned; and at last, about midnight,
it conquered me, and I arose and went."
THE MURDER OF COLONEL STEWART OF HARTRIGGE
Since a time long prior to the Raid of the Redeswire--when on Caterfell
the rallying cry, "Jethart's here," fell like sweetest music on the ears
of a sore-pressed little band of armed Scots, fighting for their lives,
and giving back sullenly before superior English strength--the worst
enemies of Jedburgh have never been able to taunt her with apathy, or
with want of strenuousness. In the fighting of days long gone by, in
questions social or political of more modern times, lack of zeal has not
been one of her characteristics; nor, perhaps, in past times have her
inhabitants, or those resident in the district, been conspicuous for
tolerance of the religious or political convictions of neighbours who
might chance not to see eye to eye with them in such matters.
The first half of the eighteenth century was a time more fully charged
than most with questions which, on the Border as elsewhere, goaded men
to fury. There was, for example, the Union; there had been, prior to
that, the unhappy Darien Scheme, which ruined half Scotland and raised
hatred of England to white heat; there was, later, the advent of George
the First and his "Hanoverian Rats," to the final ousting of the
rightful King over the water; there was the Rising of 1715, and,
finally, there was the gallant attempt by Bonnie Prince Charlie to
regain his father's crown in 1745. Thus they had, indeed, a superfluity
of subjects over which men might legitimately quarrel. And when it is
remembered that gentlemen in those days universally carried swords, and
as a rule possessed some knowledge of how to use them, and that the man
who did not habitually drink too much at dinner was a veritable _rara
avis_--a poor creature, unworthy to be deemed wholly a man--the wonder
will be, not that so many, but rather that so few, fatal quarrels took
place.
Whatever in other respects might be their failings--and these were,
indeed, many and grave--Scottish inns in those days were noted for the
goodness of their claret. As a consequence of our ancient alliance and
direct trade with France, that wine was not only good, but was plentiful
and cheap--cheap enough, indeed, to become almost the national
drink--and vast quantities were daily consumed; though there were not
wanting those who, protesting that claret was "shilpit" and "cauld on
the stomach," called loudly for brandy, and with copious draughts of
that spirit corrected the acidity of the less potent wine.
Possibly the very depth of the drinking in those days guarded many a
life from sacrifice; the hand is not steady, nor the foot sure, when the
brain is muddled by fumes of wine, and it was perhaps more often chance
than design that guided the sword's point in some of these combats.
Still, even so, Death too often claimed his toll from such chance
strokes.
A duel between opponents equally armed was fair enough, provided that
the skill and sobriety were not unequally divided, and that one of the
fighters did not chance to be unduly handicapped by age. If a man wore a
sword, he knew that he might be called upon to use it--even the most
peace-loving of men might not then, without loss of honour, always
succeed in avoiding a brawl; the blame was his own if he had neglected
to make himself proficient in the use of his weapon. At that period the
tongue of the libeller was not tied by fear of the law; for the man
insulted or libelled there existed no means of redress other than that
of shedding, or trying to shed, his insulter's blood. It was a rough and
ready mode of obtaining justice; and if it had its manifest
disadvantages, it was at least not wholly unsuited to the rough and
ready times.
But cases, unhappily, were not unknown in which one or other of the
tipsy combatants--in his sober moments possibly an honourable and
kindly-natured man--thrust suddenly and without warning, giving his
opponent small time to draw, or even, perhaps, to rise from his chair, a
course of action which, even under the easy moral code of those days,
was accounted as murder.
Such a case occurred at Jedburgh in the year 1726. Sir Gilbert Eliott of
Stobs and Colonel Stewart of Stewartfield (now called Hartrigge) were
the principals in the affair.
Sir Gilbert (father of the General Eliott afterwards so famed for his
defence of Gibraltar in the great siege of 1779-83) was a man who had
spent some part of his youth in London, a place then, as ever, little
calculated to repress leanings towards conviviality in young men
possessing the command of money. Probably the habits there contracted
were emphasized later, when ebbing fortune consigned him for good to
what no doubt then seemed to him the deadly dull life of a dull
country-side. More than likely, too, he was a little scornful of his
neighbours who knew not the delights of London, a trifle contemptuous of
their country manners, and possibly he may have been of quarrelsome
disposition, when in his cups quick to take offence and to see slights
where none existed. In any event, if one may judge from the evidence
given later at an inquiry held in Jedburgh, throughout the affair with
Colonel Stewart, Sir Gilbert Eliott was the aggressor. Possibly, after
the fashion of the day, both were more or less tipsy; certainly, without
any doubt, Sir Gilbert was greatly the worse of liquor, and did not
carry that liquor as a gentleman was expected to carry it. He
persistently forced a quarrel on the Colonel.
It was in the old Black Bull Inn at Jedburgh that the meeting took
place. There had been a Head Court that forenoon to determine the list
of voters for the year, and a large and already somewhat convivial
company assembled afterwards in the dining-room of the Black Bull. Wine
flowed, and as the evening waned, guest after guest prudently took
himself off, till of the original party there were left but five--Sir
Gilbert, Colonel Stewart, two officers of the Royal Regiment of North
British Dragoons (the Scots Greys), and the proprietor of
Timpendean--the latter described in the evidence as being "very noysie."
It is easy to imagine the scene. The long, low-ceilinged room, lit by
candles, reeking of dinner and of wine. Eliott, still brooding over his
defeat in the recent parliamentary election, bent on picking a quarrel;
Stewart, amiable and for a time conciliatory, till goaded beyond
endurance; the two officers, very red in the face, laughing and treating
the whole affair as a huge joke; and Timpendean, the while, in a
monotonous loud bawl, chanting, very much out of tune, a song, most of
the verses of which he forgot before he had sung two lines, ever
starting afresh _ad nauseam_, after the manner of drunken men. It was
not a seemly spectacle, but it was the fashion of the day, and but for
Eliott all might have ended with no worse effect than a bad headache
next morning. But for Eliott--unfortunately. Nothing, apparently, would
satisfy that gentleman. Colonel Stewart had let fall words which were
twisted into an affront. The Colonel assured him that no such words had
passed his lips; but that if he had by chance uttered anything which
could be construed as an insult, or if anything said by him had hurt Sir
Gilbert's feelings, he was sorry for it, and he willingly apologised.
Then Sir Gilbert must needs drag in politics. There was the burning
question of the late election. Why had Colonel Stewart voted against
him? He would have expected the Colonel's vote sooner than anybody's,
and he took it ill that it had not been given to him. Colonel Stewart
explained that as he lay under very great obligations to Sir Patrick
Scott and his family, he considered that he had no choice but to vote as
he had done; but this did not satisfy Sir Gilbert; the vote _should_
have been his by rights, and all the efforts of Captain Ross as
peacemaker could not keep him from harping on this one string--the
supposed slight put upon him in the matter of the vote. Colonel Stewart
was more than willing to drop the subject, and at last Captain Ross,
thinking the matter settled, momentarily turned away, in an endeavour to
stop the monotony of Timpendean's tuneless, dreary song.
And then the mischief began. Sir Gilbert used words which, owing to
Timpendean's noise, Ross did not catch, but he heard Colonel Stewart's
reply: "Pray, Sir Gilbert, you have said a great deal already to provoke
me; don't provoke me further." Then more hot words from Eliott, and
Colonel Stewart threw a glass of wine in the baronet's face. With that,
Eliott started to his feet, drew his sword, and plunged it into
Stewart's stomach before the latter could rise from his chair or defend
himself in any way.
Thereupon arose a babel of sound--a shout, the scuffle and tramp of
unsteady feet, noise of chairs pushed aside and overturned on the bare
boards, servants running to and fro. And Colonel Stewart, with clammy
brow and failing limbs, sat silent in his chair, a dying man.
Captain Ross and his brother officer secured the swords of both
men--shutting the stable door, indeed, after the steed was stolen; in
hot haste doctors were sent for; and 'mid the bustle and "strow" Eliott
stumbled from the room and down the stair, "wanting his wig," as the
landlady, whom he passed on the way, deponed. Sir Gilbert's old and
faithful servant hurried his master out of the inn, and behind a great
tombstone in the Abbey churchyard hid him till the cool night air gave
him sense to attempt escape.
In a thick wood near the head of Rulewater Sir Gilbert Eliott lay
concealed, till his friends succeeded in smuggling him aboard a small
craft off the coast of Berwickshire, and an outlaw, with a warrant out
against him, he lived an uneasy life in Holland for some years, until
influential friends with difficulty got him pardon, and enabled him
again to return to the Border.
That is the story as it is usually known. But it is fair to add that the
tale is differently told in Chambers' _Domestic Annals of Scotland_,
where it is stated that Colonel Stewart was "a huffing, hectoring
person," and that he had given "great provocation, and gentlemen
afterwards admitted that Stobbs was called upon by the laws of honour to
take notice of the offence." Evidence given at the inquiry, however,
hardly seems to favour this view. Possibly neither side was quite free
from blame; wine has other effects than to make glad the heart of man.
AULD RINGAN OLIVER
Amongst the flying, broken rabble that represented all that was left of
the Covenanting army after the disastrous business of Bothwell Bridge, a
dismounted Borderer, with one or two other stout hearts by no means
disposed even now to give up the day, continued still to strike fiercely
at Claverhouse's pursuing troopers. But their efforts to stem the tide
of disaster were utterly without avail, and the Borderer, zealously
protesting and struggling, was at length swept off the field by a wild
panic rush of the fugitives. Missing his footing on the broken ground as
the flying mob pressed on to him, the Borderer fell, and, hampered by
the bodies of a couple of wounded and exhausted countrymen, ere he could
again struggle to his feet, the horse of more than one spurring rider
had trampled over him, and he lay disabled and helpless, at the mercy of
any dragoon who might chance to ride that way.
"'The Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger,'" groaned
the Covenanter. "'He hath made my strength to fall; the Lord hath
delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.'"
"Aye!" whimpered a wounded man who lay partly across the Borderer's
legs. "'The Lord was as an enemy; He hath swallowed up Israel.' And I'm
thinkin', 'gin He send nae help, and that sune, we're no muckle better
than deid men. Eh! weary fa' the day I left my ain pleugh stilts, an' my
ain fireside."
"Na, na, freend. He that setteth his hand to the plough, let him not
look back," answered the Borderer. "'Gin I win oot o' this, I trow I'll
'hew Agag in pieces before the Lord,' or a's dune. We will yet smite the
Philistines, destroy utterly the Amalakites! Aye! smite them hip and
thigh, even from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof!"
This fiery Borderer, Ringan Oliver by name, a man of gigantic strength
and great courage, a strong pillar of the Covenant, was a native of
Jedwater, where he and his fathers before him had for generations
occupied the small holding of Smailcleuchfoot. From the turmoil of the
disastrous flight after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and from the
close search of the pursuing soldiers, Ringan Oliver did eventually
escape, sore battered, and not without much difficulty and danger, and
for many a month thereafter he lay in hiding; caves, holes in the moors,
and dripping peat hags, were his shelter, heather and ferns his bed,
many a time when the hunt waxed hot. And in 1680, hearing of the return
from Holland of the outlawed Hall of Haughhead, he speedily joined that
noted Covenanter, hiding with him, "lurking as privily as they could
about Borrowstounness and other places on both sides of the Firth of
Forth"; and he was with Hall and "worthy Mr. Cargill" when "these two
bloody hounds, the curates of Borrowstounness and Carriden, smelled out
Mr. Cargill and his companion," and sent to the Governor of
Borrowstounness that information which led to the death of one of the
three Covenanters. Mr. Cargill and Ringan Oliver got clear away from the
house at Queensferry where Colonel Middleton, single-handed, tried to
arrest them, but Hall, severely wounded in the head, was taken, and died
before he could be carried even so far as Edinburgh.