BY

*S. R. Crockett*

_POPULAR EDITION_

LONDON

T. FISHER UNWIN

ADELPHI TERRACE

MCMX

_To

W. R. NICOLL

are affectionately inscribed

these Chronicles of a Stormy Time--

in memory of

unforgotten Days of Peace and Quietness

spent with him and his._

[_All rights reserved_]

*CONTENTS*

I. The Oath of Swords

II. The Lass of the White Tower

III. The Second Taunting of Spurheel

IV. The Inn on the Red Moss

V. The Throwing of the Bloody Dagger

VI. The Crown of the Causeway

VII. My Lady's Favours

VIII. The Laird of Auchendrayne

IX. Cartel of Contumely

X. Sir Thomas of the Top-Knot

XI. Sword and Spit

XII. The Flitting of the Sow

XIII. The Tryst at Midnight

XIV. The Adventure of the Garden

XV. A Midnight Leaguer

XVI. Greybeards and Dimple Chins

XVII. The Corbies at the Eagle's Nest

XVIII. Bairns' Play

XIX. Fighting the Beasts

XX. The Secret of the Caird

XXI. Mine Ancient Sweetheart

XXII. A Marriage made in Hell

XXIII. A Galloway Raid

XXIV. The Slaughter in the Snow

XXV. Marjorie bids her Love Good-night

XXVI. Days of Quiet

XXVII. On the Heartsome Heather

XXVIII. Warm Backs make Braw Bairns

XXIX. The Murder among the Sandhills

XXX. I seek for Vengeance

XXXI. The Blue Blanket

XXXII. Greek meets Greek

XXXIII. The Devil is a Gentleman

XXXIV. In the Enemy's Country

XXXV. The Ogre's Castle

XXXVI. The Defence of Castle Ailsa

XXXVII. The Voice out of the Night

XXXVIII. A Rescue from the Sea

XXXIX. The Cleft in the Rock

XL. The Cave of Death

XLI. The Were-Wolf of Benerard

XLII. Ane Lochaber Aix gied Him his Paiks

XLIII. The Moot Hill of Girvan

XLIV. The Murder upon the Beach

XLV. The Man in the Wide Breeches

XLVI. The Judgment of God

XLVII. The Place of the Legion of Devils

XLVIII. The Finding of the Treasure of Kelwood

XLIX. The Great Day of Trial

L. The Last of the Grey Man

LI. Marjorie's Good-night

LII. Home-coming

*THE GREY MAN*

*CHAPTER I*

*THE OATH OF SWORDS*

Well do I mind the first time that ever I was in the heartsome town of

Ballantrae. My father seldom went thither, because it was a hold of the

Bargany folk, and it argued therefore sounder sense to give it the

go-by. But it came to pass upon a time that it was necessary for my

father to adventure from Kirrieoch on the border of Galloway, where we

dwelt high on the moors, to the seaside of Ayr.

My father's sister had married a man named Hew Grier, an indweller in

Maybole, who for gear's sake had settled down to his trade of tanner in

Ballantrae. It was to his burying that we went. We had seen him snugly

happed up, and the burial supper was over. We were already in a mind to

set about returning, when we heard the sound of a great rushing of

people hither and thither. I went aloft and looked through a gable

window upon the street. Arms were hastily being brought from beneath

the thatch, to which the laws of the King had committed them under the

late ordinance anent weapons of war. Leathern jackets were being

donned, and many folk cried 'Bargany!' in the streets without knowing

why.

My Aunt Grisel went out to ask what the stir might be, and came in again

with her face as white as a clout.

'It is the Cassillis folk that are besieging the Tower of Ardstinchar,

and they have come near to the taking of it, they say. Oh, what will

the folk of Ballantrae do to you, John, if they ken that you are here?

They will hang you for a spy, and that without question.'

'That,' said my father, 'is surely impossible. The Ballantrae folk

never had any great haul of sense ever since Stinchar water ran; but yet

they will hardly believe that Hew Grier, decent man--him that was your

marrow and lies now in his resting grave, poor body--took on himself to

die, just that I might come to Ballantrae to spy out the land!'

But my aunt, being easily flustered, would not hearken to him, thinking

that all terrible things were possible, and so hid the two of us in the

barn-loft till it should be the hour of the gloaming.

Then so soon as the darkening came, putting a flask of milk into my

pocket and giving a noble satchel of cakes to my father, she almost

pushed us out of her back door. To this day I remember how the unsteady

glare of a red burning filled all the street. And we could see

burghers' wives standing at their doors, all looking intently in the

direction of the Castle of Ardstinchar upon its lofty rock. Others set

their heads out of the little round 'jaw-holes' that opened in each

gable wall, and gossiped shrilly with their neighbours.

My father and I went cannily down by the riverside, and as soon as we

turned Hew-the-Friar's corner, we saw all the noble tower of Ardstinchar

flaming to the skies--every window belching fire, and the sparks fleeing

upward as before a mighty wind, though it was a stirless night with a

moon and stars floating serenely above.

Down by the waterside and straight before us we saw a post of men, and

we heard them clank their war-gear as they marched from side to side and

looked ever up at the castle on its steep, spitting like a furnace,

flaming like a torch. So at sight of them my father turned us about

sharply enough, because, in spite of what he had said to my Aunt Grisel,

he had much reason to fear for his neck. For if, on the night of a

Cassillis raid, one of the hated faction should be found in the town of

Ballantrae, little doubt there was but that a long tow and a short

shrift would be his fate.

We climbed the breast of the brae up from the waterside, intending to

make a detour behind the castle. My father said that there would be an

easy crossing at Heronford, where he knew a decent man that was of his

own party. Thence we could make up the glen of the Tigg Water, which in

the evil state of the country was as good and quiet a way back to

Minnochside as one might hope to find.

It seemed a most pitiful sight to me, that was but a young lad (and had

never seen a fire bigger than a screed of muirburn screeving across the

hills with a following wind at its tail), to watch the noble house with

all its wealth of plenishing and gear being burned up.

I said as much to my father, who swung along with his head bent to the

hill slope, dragging my arm oftentimes almost from the socket, in his

haste to get us out of such unwholesome company as the angry folk of

Ballantrae.

'It is an enemy's house!' he replied very hastily. 'Come thy ways,

lad!'

'But what harm have the Bargany folk done to us?' I asked. For this

thing seemed strange to me--that Kennedy should strive with Kennedy,

burn castle, kill man, harry mow and manger, drive cattle--and I never

be able to make out what it was all for.

'Hold your breath, Launcelot Kennedy!' said my father, testy with

shortness of wind and going uphill, 'or right speedily you will find out

for what! Is it not enough that you are born to love Cassillis and to

hate Bargany?'

'Are the folk of Cassillis, then, so much better than the folk of

Bargany?' I asked, taking what I well knew to be the chances of a civil

answer, or of a ring on the side of the head.

It was not the civil answer that I got.

And, indeed, it was an ill season for query and question, or for the

answering of them. In time we got to the angle of the castle, and there

we were somewhat sheltered from the fierce heat and from the glare of

light also. From the eminence we had gained, we could look away along

the shore side. My father pointed with his finger.

'Boy, do you see yon?' he whispered.

I looked long and eagerly with my unaccustomed eyes, before I could see

in the pale moonlight a dark train of horsemen that rode steadily

northward. Their line wimpled like a serpent, being pricked out to our

sight with little reeling twinkles of fire, which I took to be the moon

shining on their armour and the points of their spears.

'See,' said my father, 'yonder goes our good Earl home with the spoil.

Would that I were by his side! Why do I live so far among the hills, and

out of the call of my chief when he casts his war pennon to the winds?'

We looked all round the castle, and seeing no one, we made shift to get

about it and darn ourselves among the heather of the further hillside.

But even as we passed the angle and reached a broken part of the wall,

there came a trampling of iron-shod hoofs. And lo! a troop of horsemen

rode up to the main castle gate, that which looks to the north-west. It

was all we could do to clamber out of sight over the broken wall, my

father lifting me in his arms. There we lay flat and silent behind a

pile of stones, just where the breach had been made--over which we could

look into the courtyard and see the splotched causeway and the bodies of

the dead lying here and there athwart it in the ruddy light of burning.

Just as the foremost horseman came to the gate, which the riders of

Cassillis had left wide open, the roof of red tile fell in with an

awesome crash. The flames again sprang high and the sparks soared.

Soon all the courtyard was aglow with the red, unsteady leme which the

skies gave back, while the moon and stars paled and went out.

'Hist!' whispered my father, 'this is young Bargany himself who comes

first.'

I looked eagerly from behind a stone and saw the noblest figure of a

young man that ever I saw or shall see, riding on a black horse, sitting

framed in the dark of the gateway, the flames making a crimson flicker

about him. After a moment's pause he rode within the deserted close,

and there sat his horse, looking up sternly and silently at the leaping

flames and hearkening as it were to the crackling of the timbers as they

burned.

Then another and yet another horseman came riding within, some of whom

my father knew.

'See you, Launce, and remember,' he whispered; 'that loon there is

Thomas Kennedy of Drummurchie, Bargany's brother. Observe his fangs of

the wolf. He of all the crew is the wickedest and the worst.'

I looked forth and saw a gaunt, dark youth, with a short upper lip drawn

up from teeth that shone white in the leaping flame which harvested the

goodly gear of the house of Ardstinchar.

'There also is Blairquhan the Simpleton, Cloncaird of the Black Heart,

and Benane the Laird's brother--a very debauched man--and there, I

declare, is my Lord Ochiltree. Upon soul and conscience, I wonder what

he does here thus riding with the Barganies?'

As soon as the fire died down a little, some of the party began to

search about among the defences and outhouses, and a few even entered

into the inner part of the tower. In twos and threes they came forth,

some bringing a wounded man, some a dead man, till, on the cool, grey

stones of the court, there rested five that lay motionless on their

backs, and two that moaned a while and then were still. The more lightly

wounded were cared for in a chamber within the gate. Then we could see

all the gentlemen of the Bargany side dismounted from their horses and

standing about those five that were killed.

'Alas for young Girvanmains!' I heard one cry, for we were very near.

'What shall we say to his father? And here also is Walter Pollock, the

cunning scrivener--and James Dalrymple, that was a kindly little man and

never harmed anyone--the Lord do so to me, and more also, if I write not

this killing in blood upon the walls of Cassillis!'

The crowd thinned a little, and I saw it was the Laird himself that

spoke.

Then this same young Bargany, who was taller by a head than any there,

called for room. So they made a ring, with the dead men in the midst,

and Bargany standing a little before. He bent him over the body of

Walter Pollock, the young clerk, and drew forth a book from his breast.

'Listen!' he cried, 'all you that love Bargany, and who now behold this

deed of dule and cruelty. Here lie our dead. Here is the Book of God

that I have taken from one of the servants of peace, cruelly bereft of

life by our enemies!'

'I warrant he drew a good sword when it came to the fighting, clerk

though he might be,' whispered my father, 'I know the Pollock breed!'

Bargany looked at the book in his grasp and again at the hand which had

held it.

'This falls out well,' he said. 'Here in the presence of our dead, upon

the Bible that is wet with the blood of the unjustly slain, let us band

ourselves together and take oath to be avenged upon the cruel house--the

house of over-trampling pride--the house that has ever wrought us woe!

Will ye swear?'

He looked round a circle of faces that shone fierce and dark in the lowe

of the furnace beyond. As he did so he unsheathed his sword, and

pointed with it to the topmost pinnacles of Ardstinchar. In a moment

there was a ring of steel all about him, for, quick as his own, every

man's hand went out to his scabbard, and in every man's grip there

gleamed a bare blade. And the sight thrilled me to see it, ay, more

than all the religion I had ever been taught, for I was but a boy. And

even though religion be learned in youth, the strength and the use of it

comes not till after.

Thus Bargany stood with the brand in his right hand and the Bible in his

left, to take, as was ancient custom in our countryside, the solemn oath

of vengeance and eternal enmity. And thus he spake,--

'By this Holy Book and by the wet blood upon it, I, Gilbert Kennedy of

Bargany, swear never to satisfy my just feud against the bloody house of

Cassillis, till of all their defenced towers there stands not one stone

in its place, remains alive not one scion of its cruel race. I who

stand here, in the presence of these dead men of my folk, charge the

Kennedies of the North with the blood of my kin, the spoiling of my

vassals, and the heart-breaking of my father. In the name of God I

swear! If I stay my hand and make not an end, the God of Battles do so

to me, and more also!'

Gilbert Kennedy kissed the book which he gripped in his left hand, and

then with sudden gesture of hatred he flung down the sword which he had

held aloft in his right. It fell with a ringing dirl of iron upon the

stones of the pavement beside the slain men, and the sound of its fall

made the flesh creep on my bones.

Then the Laird's wicked brother, Thomas, called the Wolf of Drummurchie,

came forward, hatred fairly sparkling in his eyes, and his teeth set in

a girn of devil's anger.

'I swear,' he cried, 'to harry John of Cassillis, the enemy that has

wrought us this woe, with fire and sword--to cut off him and his with

dagger and spear, to light the thack and to lift the cattle. I will be

an outlaw, a prey for the hunters for their sake. For Cassillis it was

who first slandered me to the King, chased me from my home, and made me

no better than a robber man upon the mountains.'

And in turn he kissed the Book, and his sword rang grimly on the

pavement beside his brother's. So one by one the men of Bargany took

the solemn band of eternal and bloody feud. Presently an old man stood

forth. He held a spear in his hand, being, as my father whispered, but

a tenant vassal and keeping to the ancient Scottish yeoman's weapon.

'By the blood of my son that lies here before me, by this spear which he

held in his dying hand, I, that am but the poor goodman of Girvanmains,

before death takes me to where all vengeance is Another's, I swear the

vengeance of blood!'

And he cast the spear beside the swords of the gentlemen. Then issuing

forth from the chamber over the gate, and leaning heavily upon the arm

of a young page boy, there came creeping the strangest shape of a

man--his countenance thrawed and drawn, his shrunk shanks twisted, his

feet wambling one over another like those of a mummer's bear. Bowed

double the man was, and he walked with a staff that tapped and rattled

tremblingly on the pavement as he came. The men of war turned at the

sound, for there had been stark silence among them after old Girvanmains

had let his spear fall.

Like one risen from the dead, the old man looked up at the tower which

was now beginning to show black against the dulling red glow of the

dying fire.

'Thou tower of Ardstinchar,' he cried, lifting up a voice like the wind

whistling through scrannel pipes, 'they have burned you that erstwhile

burned me. Curse me Cassillis and the Lords of it! Curse me all that

cleave to it, for their tender mercies are cruel. I, Allan Stewart,

sometime Abbot of Crossraguel, lay my curse bitterly upon them for the

cruel burning they gave me before their fire in the Black Vault of

Dunure. But bless me the House of Bargany, that rescued me from torture

and took me to their strong tower, wherein I have to this day found in

peace a quiet abiding chamber.'

'Mark well, boy,' whispered my father; 'remember this to tell it in

after days to your children's children. Your eyes have seen the Abbot

of Crossraguel whom the King of Carrick, the father of our Earl John,

roasted quick in the vault of Dunure--a deed which has wrought mickle

woe, and will yet work more.'

And even as my father spoke I saw the old cripple hirple away, the young

Laird himself helping him with the kindliest courtesy.

Then, last of all that spake, came a voice from one who had remained in

the gloomy archway of the gate, by the entering in of the courtyard. He

that broke the silence was a tall man who sat on a grey horse, and was

clad from head to foot in a cloak of grey, having his face shaded with a

high-crowned, broad-brimmed hat of the ancient fashion.

'Give me the Book and I also will swear an oath!' he said, in a voice

which made all turn towards him.

'Who may that man be? I ken him not,' said my father, for he had named

all the others as they came within.

So one gave the man the blood-stained Bible, and he held it in his hand

a moment. He was silent a space before he spoke.

'By this Christian Book and among this Christian people,' he cried, 'I

swear to root out and slay utterly all the house of Cassillis and

Culzean, pursuing them, man, woman and child, with fire and sword till

they die the death of pain and scorn, or I who swear die in the

accomplishing of it.'

The unknown paused at the end of this terrible oath, and gazed again at

the Book. The dying flame within the castle flared up for a chance

moment as another rafter caught fire.

'Fauch!' said he of the grey cloak, looking at the Bible in his hand,

'there is blood upon thee. Go thou into the burning as the seal of our

oaths. A bloody Bible is no Christian book!'

And with that he threw the Bible into the red embers that glowed

sullenly within the tower.

There broke a cry of horror from all that saw. For though in this dark

land of Carrick deeds of blood were done every day, this Bible-burning

was accounted rank blasphemy and ungodly sacrilege. But I was not

prepared for its effect upon my father. He trembled in all his limbs,

and I felt the stones shake upon which he now leaned breast high,

careless who should see him.

'This is fair devil's work,' he muttered. 'The fires of Sodom, the

brimstone of Gomorrah shall light upon us all for this deed!'

He would have said more, but I never heard him finish his words. Sudden

as a springing deer, he tore from the covert of the wall by my side and

bounded across the court, threading the surprised group and overleaping

the swords and the bodies of the slain men. He disappeared in a moment

through the door into the tower, within which the flames still glowed

red, and from which every instant the crash of falling timber and the

leaping flames answered each other.

Ere my father sprang back, his figure stood plain and dark against the

fire within, like that of a smith at his forge seen in the bygoing upon

a snowy night. He held the unburned Bible clasped to his breast, but

his left hand hung straight down by his side.

A moment after he had sprung from a window and fallen upon his face on

the pavement with the Bible beneath him.

A dozen men ran towards him and seized him--Thomas of Drummurchie the

first among them.

'A traitor! A spy!' he cried, lifting a sword from the pile with clear

purpose to kill. 'To the death with him! It is John Kennedy of

Kirrieoch--I ken him well, a rank Cassillis thief!'

And he would have slain my father forthwith, but that I ran among his

legs and gripped him so close to me that he fell clattering on the

pavement among the swords. Then I went and took my father's hand,

standing by his side and crying out the while,--

'Ye shallna, ye shallna kill my father. He never did ye harm a' the

days o' his life!'

'Who are you, and what do you here?' asked young Bargany in a voice of

command, when they had set my father on his feet.

'I am John Kennedy of Kirrieoch on Minnochside, and I came to Ballantrae

to bury the corpse of my sister's man, Hew Grier, merchant and indweller

there, that was this day laid in the earth.'

So, right quietly and calmly, my father spoke among them all.

'But what seek you in my burned Castle of Ardstinchar and alone with

these dead men?' asked the young Bargany.

With a quietness that came of the hills my father told the chieftain his

plain tale, and his words were not words that any man could gainsay.

Then Bargany answered him without consulting the others, as none but a

great chief does whose lightest word is life or death.

'Ye are here within my danger, and had I been even as your folk of

Cassillis, ye should have died the death; but because ye stopped devil's

work and, it may be, kept away a curse from us for the burning of the

Holy Book, ye shall not die in my house. Take your life and your son's

life, as a gift from Gilbert Kennedy of Bargany.'

My father bowed his head and thanked his house's enemy.

'Bring a horse,' cried the Laird, and immediately they set my father on

a beast, and me in the saddle before him. 'Put the Bible for a keepsake

in your winnock sole, turn out the steed on Minnochside, and come no

more to Ballantrae in time of feud, lest a worse thing befall you!' So

said he, and waved us away, as I thought grandly.

Some of the men that had sworn enmity murmured behind him.

'Silence!' he cried, 'am not I Lord of Bargany? Shall I not do as I

will? Take your life, Kirrieoch. And whenever a Bargany rides by your

door, ye shall give him bite and sup for the favour that was this night

shown you in the courtyard of Ardstinchar.'

'Ye shall get that, Bargany, and welcome, whether ye let me gang or no!'

said my father. And pressing the Book to his bosom, and gathering up

the reins in his unwounded hand, we rode unquestioned through the arch

of the wall into the silence of the night. And the hill winds and the

stillnesses without were like God's blessing about us.

But from a knoll on the left of the entrance the man of the grey habit,

he who had thrown the Bible, sat silent upon his horse and watched. And

as we looked back, he still sat and watched. Him my father took to have

been the devil, as he said to me many times that night ere we got to

Minnochside.

Also ere we left the clattering pavement behind, looking out from the

postern door we saw the thrawn visage of him who was Allan Stewart, the

tortured residue of the man who had once been Abbot of Crossraguel, and

in stature like a square-shouldered tower.

And this is the way my father brought home the burnt Bible to the house

of Kirrieoch. There it bides to this day, blackened as to its bindings

and charred at the edges, but safe in the wall press at my father's

bed-head, a famous book in all the land, even as far as Glencaird and

Dranie Manors upon the Waters of Trool.

But it brought good fortune with it--a fortune which, God be thanked,

still remains and grows. And as for my father, he never lifted sword

nor spear against the house of Bargany from that day to this, because of

the usage which Gilbert Kennedy gave him that night at the burning of

Ardstinchar.

Nevertheless, for all that, he exercised me tightly in the use of every

weapon of war, from the skill of the bow to the shooting of the

hackbutt. For it was his constant intent to make me an esquire in the

service of Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean,[#] reputed the wisest man and

the best soldier in all the parts of Carrick and Ayr. As, indeed, I

have found him.

[#] Culzean is pronounced Culayne, as though to rhyme with 'domain.'

And this saving of the burning Bible was, as I guess, the beginning of

my respect for religion--which, alas! I fear this chronicle will show to

have been both a late-garnered and a thin-sown crop.

*CHAPTER II*

*THE LASS OF THE WHITE TOWER*

Now, as the manner is, I must make haste to tell something of myself and

have by with it.

My name is Launcelot Kennedy, and I alone am the teller of this tale.

In a country where all are Kennedies, friends and foes alike, this name

of mine is no great head-mark. So 'Launcelot of the Spurs' I am called,

or sometimes, by those who would taunt me, 'Launcelot Spurheel.' But

for all that I come of a decent muirland house, the Kennedies of

Kirrieoch, who were ever lovers of the Cassillis blue and gold--which

are the royal colours of France, in memory of the ancient alliance--and

ever haters of the red and white of Bargany, which we hold no better

than butchers' colours, bloody and desolate.

The story, or at least my own part in it, properly begins upon the night

of the fair at Maybole--whither to my shame I had gone without troubling

my master, Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean, with the slight matter of

asking his permission. Indeed, none so much as knew that I had been to

the town of Maybole save Helen Kennedy alone; and she, as I well knew

(although I called her Light-head Clattertongue), would not in any wise

tell tales upon me. There at the fair I had spent all my silver, buying

of trittle-trattles at the lucky-booths and about the market-stalls.

But upon my return I meant to divide fairly with Helen Kennedy, though

she was fully two years younger than I--indeed, only sixteen years of

her age, though I grant long of the leg and a good runner.

So, being advised of my excellent intentions, you shall judge if I was

not justified of all that I did to be revenged on the girl afterwards.

It was the early morning of a March day when I came to the foot of the

Castle of Culzean. I went with quiet steps along the shore by the

little path that leads to the coves beneath. I carried the things that

I had bought in a napkin, all tied safely together. Now, the towers of

Culzean are builded upon a cliff, steep and perilous, overlooking the

sea. And I, being but a squire of eighteen (though for my age strong

and bold, and not to be beaten by anything or feared by any man), was

lodged high up in the White Tower, which rises from the extremest point

of the rock.

Now, as I say, I had not made mention of the little matter of my going

abroad to Sir Thomas, both because it was unnecessary to trouble him

with so small a thing, and also on account of the strictness of his

opinions. It was, therefore, the more requisite that I should regain my

chamber without putting lazy Gilbert in the watch-house at the gate to

the trouble of letting fall the drawbridge for me. I did not, indeed,

desire to disturb or disarrange him, for he would surely tell his

master, being well called Gabby Gib-cat, because he came of a race that

never in their lives has been able to hold a secret for a single day in

the belly of them--at least, not if it meant money, ale, or the goodwill

of their lord.

So it happened that before I went to Maybole I dropped a ladder of rope

from the stanchions of my window, extremely strong and convenient, which

came down to a ledge someway up among the rocks, at a place which I

could easily reach by climbing. Thither I made my way while, as I tell

you, the night was just beginning to dusk toward the dawning. I had all

my buyings in my arms, tied up well and that tightly in the napkin, just

as I had carried them from the lucky-booths of Maybole. I tied the

outer knot of my bundle firmly to the last rung of the ladder, praying

within me that Sir Thomas might be fast asleep. For I had to pass

within three feet of his window, and, being an old man, he was somewhat

wakerife in the mornings, easily started, and given to staring out of

his lattice without method or sense, in a manner which had often filled

me with pain and foreboding for his reason.

But by the blessing of God, and because he was somewhat tired with

walking in the fields with his baron-officer the night before, it

happened that Sir Thomas was sound asleep, so that I was nothing

troubled with him. But immediately beneath me, in the White Tower, were

the rooms of his two daughters, Marjorie and Helen Kennedy; and of these

Helen's room was to the front, so that my rope ladder passed immediately

in front of her window, while the chamber of Marjorie was to the back,

and, in this instance, concerned me not at all.

So as I scrambled up the swinging ladder (and, indeed, there are not

many that would venture as much on a cold March morning) I passed Helen

Kennedy's window. As I went by, the devil (as I take it) prompted me to

scratch with my toe upon the leaden frame of her lattice, for the lass

was mortally afraid of ghosts. So I pictured to myself that, hearing

the noise at the window, she would take it for the scraping of an evil

spirit trying to find a way in, and forthwith draw the clothes over her

head and lie trembling.

Pleasing myself, therefore, with this picture, I scraped away and

laughed within myself till I nearly fell from the ladder. Presently I

heard a stirring within the chamber, and stopped to listen.

'She has her head under the clothes by now,' I said to myself, as I

climbed on up to my own window, which I found unhasped even as I had

left it. I entered, gripping the edge of the broad sill and lifting

myself over with ease, being very strong of the forearm. Indeed, I had

won a prize for wrestling at the fair that day, in spite of my youth--a

thing which I intended to keep secret till Helen Kennedy should begin to

taunt me with being but a boy and feckless.

It chanced, however, that I, who had been thus victorious with men older

than myself, was now to be vanquished, conquered, and overset, by one

who was two years younger, and she a lassie. Then being safe in my

chamber, I began to pull up the ladder of cords with all my goods and

chattels tied at the end of it. And my thoughts were already running on

the good things therein--cakes and comfits, sweetmeats, some bottles of

Canary wine, and gee-gaws for the adorning of my person when I rode

forth--the latter not for pride, of which I have none, but in order that

I might ride in good squirely fashion, and as became the gentleman

attendant of so great a lord as Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean, Tutor of

Cassillis, brother of the late, and uncle of the present Earl of that

name.

I drew up my rope ladder all softly and with success, because from the

stanchions it swung clear of the walls of the castle, for the reason

that my turret jutted a little way over, as is the custom with towers of

that architecture. And so all went well till my bundle came opposite the

window of Helen Kennedy's room. There it was suddenly caught and

gripped tight, so that I could in no wise pull it further. Nevertheless

I wrestled with it so strongly, even as I had done with grown men at

Maybole, that the cord suddenly gave way. And what with the stress and

pith of pulling, I fell _blaff_ on my back, hitting my head upon one of

the low cross-beams of my little chamberlet.

This made me very angry indeed, but I leave you to judge how much more

angered I was, when I found that the cords of my rope ladder had been

cleanly severed with a knife, and that my bundle and all it contained

had been most foully stolen from me.