dragoon's sword," replied Donald with malicious coolness.
"What?" cried Morag, wringing her hands, "John Smith dead! But no! it
is impossible!--and you are a lying loon, that would try to deceive me,
by telling me what I well enough know you would wish to be true. God
forgive you, Donald, for such cruel knavery!"
"Thanks to ye, Morag, for your civility," replied Donald Murdoch
calmly; "but if you wont believe me, believe that bit of ribbon--see,
the very bit of blue ribbon you tied round John Smith's neck, the
night you last so slighted me at the dance in the barn. See, it is
partly died red in his life's blood."
"It is the ribbon!" cried Morag, snatching it from his hand with
excessive agitation, and kissing it over and over again, and then
bursting into tears. "Alas! alas! it must be too true! What will become
of poor Morag!--why did I not go with him! What is this world to poor
desolate Morag now?--And yet--he may be but wounded after all. It
must be so--he cannot be killed. Where did you leave him?--quick,
tell me!--oh, tell me, Donald. Why do we tarry here? let us forward
and seek him!--there may be life in him yet, and whilst there is life
there is hope. Let me pass, Donald; I will fly to seek him!"
"I love you too well to let you pass on so foolish and dangerous an
errand," said Donald, endeavouring to detain her. "I tell you that
John Smith is dead; but you know, Morag, you will always find a friend
and a lover in me. So think no more----"
"I will pass, Donald," cried Morag, interrupting him, and making a
determined attempt to rush past him.
"That you shall not," replied Donald, catching her in his arms.
"Help, help!" cried Morag, struggling with all her might, and with
great vigour too, against his exertions to hold her.
At this moment the trampling of a horse was heard, and a mounted
dragoon came cantering down into the hollow. His sabre gleamed in the
air--and Donald Murdoch fell headlong down the bank into the little
rill, his skull nearly cleft in two, and perfectly bereft of life.
"A plague on the lousy Scot!" said the trooper, scanning the corpse
of his victim with a searching eye. "His life was not worth the
taking, had it not been, that the more of the rascally race that
are put out of this world, the better for the honest men that are
to remain in it, and therefore it was in the way of my duty to cut
him down. There is nought on his beggarly carcase to benefit any one
but the crows.--And so the knave would have kissed thee against thy
will, my bonny black-eyed wench. Well, 'tis no wonder thou shouldst
have scorned that carotty-pated fellow; you showed your taste in so
doing, my dear: and now you shall be rewarded by having a somewhat
better sweetheart.--Come!" continued he, alighting from his charger,
and approaching the agitated and panting girl--"Come, a kiss from
the lips of beauty is the best reward for brave deeds; and no one
deserves this reward better than I do, for brave deeds have I this
day performed. Why do you not speak, my dear? Have you no Christian
language to give me? Can it be possible that these pretty pouting
lips have no language but that of the savages of this country?--Come,
then, we must try the kissing language; I have always found that to
be well understood in all parts of the world."
"Petter tak' Tonald's pig puss o' money first," said Morag, pointing
down to the corpse in the hollow.
"Ha! money saidst thou, my gay girl?" cried the trooper. "Who would
have thought of a purse of money being in the pouch of such a miserable
rascally savage as that? But the best apple may sometimes have the
coarsest and most unpromising rhind; and so that fellow, unseemly and
wretched as he appears, may perchance have a well-lined purse after
all. If it be so, girl, I shall say that thy language is like the talk
of an angel. Then do you hold the rein of this bridle, do you see,
till I make sure of the coin in the first place--best secure that,
for no one can say what mischance may come; or whether some comrade
may not appear with a claim to go snacks with me. So lay hold of the
bridle, do you hear, and dont be afraid of old Canterbury, for the
brute is as quiet as a lamb."
Morag took the bridle. The trooper descended the bank, and he had
scarcely stooped over the body to commence his search for the dead
man's supposed purse, when the active girl, well accustomed to ride
horses in all manner of ways, vaulted into the saddle, and kicking
her heels into Canterbury's side, she was out of the hollow in a
moment. Looking over her shoulder, after she had gone some distance,
she beheld the raging dragoon puffing, storming, and swearing, and
striding after her, with, what might be called, that dignified sort
of agility, to which he was enforced by the weighty thraldom of his
immense jack-boots. Bewildered by the terror and the anxiety of her
escape, she flew over the country, for some time, without knowing
which way she fled. At length she began to recover her recollection,
so far as to enable her to recur to the object which had prompted her
to leave home. On the summit of a knoll she checked her steed--surveyed
the country,--and the whole tide of her feelings returning upon her;
she urged the animal furiously forward in the direction of the fatal
field of Culloden.
She had not proceeded far, when, on coming suddenly to the edge of a
rough little stoney ravine, she discovered five troopers refreshing
themselves and their horses from the little brook that had its course
through the bottom. She reined back her horse, with the intention of
stealing round to some other point of passage; but as she did so, a
shout arose from the hollow of the dell.--She had been perceived. In
an instant the mounted riders rushed, one after another, out of the
ravine, and she had no chance of escape left her, but to ride as
hard as the beast that carried her could fly, in the very opposite
direction to that which she had hitherto pursued, for there was no
other course of flight left open to her.
The five troopers were now in full chase after Morag, shouting out as
they rode, and urging on their horses to the top of their speed. The
ground, though rough, stony, and furzy, was for the most part firm
enough, and the poor girl, now driven from that purpose to which her
strong attachment to John Smith had so powerfully impelled her, and
being distracted by her griefs and her fears, spared not the animal
she rode, but forced him, by every means she could employ, either by
hands, limbs, or voice, to the utmost exertion of every muscle.
"Lord, how she does ride!" said one trooper to the others; "I wish
that she beant some of them witches, as, they say, be bred in this
here uncanny country of Scotland."
"Bless you no, man," said another; "them devils as you speak of ride
on broomsticks. Now, I'se much mistaken an' that be not Tom Dickenson's
horse Canterbury."
"Zounds, I believe you are right, Hall," said another man; "but that
beant no proof that she aint a witch, for nothing but a she-devil,
wot can ride on a broom, could ride ould Canterbury in that 'ere
fashion, I say."
"Witch or devil, my boys, let us ketch her if we can," shouted
another.--"Hurrah! hurrah!"
"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" re-echoed the others, burying their spurs
in their horses' sides, and bending forward, and grinning with very
eagerness.
For several miles Morag kept the full distance she had at first
gained on her pursuers, but having got into a road, fenced by a
rough stone wall upon one side, and a broad and very deep ditch on
the other, the troopers, if possible, doubled their speed, in the
full conviction that they must now very soon come up with her, and
capture her. Still Morag flew,--but as she every moment cast her eyes
over one or other of her shoulders, she was terrified to see that the
troopers were visibly gaining upon her. The road before her turned
suddenly at an angle,--and she had no sooner doubled it, than, there,
to her unspeakable horror--in the very midst of the way--stood Tom
Dickenson, the dismounted dragoon from whom she had taken the very
charger, called Canterbury, which she then rode. The time of the
action of what followed was very brief. For an instant she reined up
her horse till he was thrown back on his haunches.--Tom Dickenson's
sword-blade glittered in the sun.
"By the god of war, but I have you now!" cried he in a fury.
The triumphant shouts of Morag's pursuers increased, as they neared
her, and beheld the position in which she was now placed. No weapon
had she, but the large pair of scissors that hung dangling from her
side, in company with her pincushion. In desperation she grasped the
sharp-pointed implement dagger fashion, and directed old Canterbury's
head towards the ditch. Dickenson saw her intention, and wishing
to counteract it, he rushed to the edge of the ditch. The hand of
Morag which held the scissors descended on the flank of the horse,
and in defiance of his master, who stood in his way, and the gleaming
weapon with which he threatened him, old Canterbury, goaded by the
pain of the sharp wound inflicted on him, sprang towards the leap
with a wild energy, and despite of the cut, which deprived him of an
ear, and sheared a large slice of the skin off one side of his neck,
he plunged the unlucky Tom Dickenson backwards, swash into the water,
and carried his burden fairly over the ditch.
Morag tarried not to look behind her, until she had scoured across
a piece of moorish pasture land, and then casting her eyes over one
shoulder, she perceived that only two of the troopers had cleared
the ditch, and that the others had either failed in doing so, or
were engaged in hauling their half-drowned comrade out of it. The
two men who had taken the leap, however, were again hard after her,
shouting as before, and evidently gaining upon her. The moment she
perceived this, she dashed into a wide piece of mossy, boggy ground,
a description of soil with which she was well acquainted. There the
chase became intricate and complicated. Now her pursuers were so near
to her, as to believe that they were on the very point of seizing her,
and again some impassable obstacle would throw them quite out, and give
her the advantage of them. Various were the slips and plunges which
the horses made; but ere she had threaded through three-fourths of the
snares which she met with, she had the satisfaction of beholding one
of the riders who followed her, fairly unhorsed, and hauling at the
bridle of his beast, the head and neck of which alone appeared from
the slough, in which the rest of the poor animal was engulfed. The
man called loudly to his comrade, but he was too keenly intent on the
pursuit, to give heed to him. The hard ground was near at hand, and
he pushed on after Morag, who was now making towards it. She reached
it, and again she plied the points of her scissors on the heaving
flanks of old Canterbury. But she became sensible that his pace was
fast flagging,--and that the trooper was rapidly gaining on her. In
despair she made towards a small patch of natural wood.--She was
already within a short distance of it. But the blowing and snorting
of the horse behind her, and the blaspheming of his rider, came
every instant more distinctly upon her ear. Some fifty or an hundred
yards only now lay between her and the wood. Again, in desperation,
she gave the point of the scissors to her steed--when, all at once
he stopped--staggered--and, faint with fatigue and loss of blood,
old Canterbury fell forward headlong on the grass.
"Hurrah!" cried the trooper, who was close at his heels, "witch or
no witch, I think I'll grapple with thee now."
He threw himself from his heaving horse, and rushed towards Morag. But
she was already on her legs, and scouring away like a hare for the
covert. Jack-booted, and otherwise encumbered as he was, the bulky
trooper strode after her like a second Goliah of Gath, devouring the
way with as much expedition as he could possibly use. But Morag's
speed was like that of the wind, and he beheld her dive in among the
underwood before he had covered half the distance.
"A very witch in rayal arnest!" exclaimed the trooper, slackening
his pace in dismay and disappointment. And then turning towards
his comrade, who, having by this time succeeded in extricating his
horse from the slough, was now coming cantering towards him, "Hollo,
Bill!" shouted he, "I've run the blasted witch home here.--Come away,
man, do; for if so be that she dont arth like a badger, or furnish
herself with a new horse to her own fancy out of one of 'em 'ere
broom bushes, this covert aint so large but we must sartinly find
her. So come along, man, and be active."
But we must now return to poor John Smith, whom we have too long
left for dead in the bottom of a peat-hag. The cold and astringent
moss-water flowing about his head, by degrees checked the effusion
of his blood, and at length he began to revive.
When his senses returned to him, he gathered himself up, and leaning
his back against the perpendicular face of the peat bank above him,
he drank a little water from the hollow of his hand, and then washed
away the clotted blood from his eyes. The first object that broke upon
his newly recovered vision was an English trooper riding furiously
up to him, with his brandished sword. John was immediately persuaded
that he was a doomed man, for he felt that, in his case, resistance
was altogether out of the question. He threw himself on his back in
the bottom of the broad deep cut in the peat-hag. The trooper came
up, and having no time to dismount, he stooped from his saddle and
made one or two ineffectual cuts at the poor man. The horse shyed at
John's bloody head as it was raised in terror from the peat-hag, and
then the animal reared back as he felt the soft mossy ground sinking
under him. The trooper was determined,--got angry, and spurred the
beast forward, but the horse became obstinate and restive. At length
the trooper succeeded in bringing him up again to the edge of the
peat-hag; but just as he was craning his neck over its brink, John,
roused by desperation, pricked the creature's nose with the point of
his claymore. It so happened that he accidentally did this, at the
very instant that the irascible trooper was giving his horse a dig
with his spurs, and the consequence of these double, though antagonist
stimulis, was, that the brute made a desperate spring, and carried
himself and his rider clean over the hag-ditch, John Smith and all,
and then he ran off with his master through the broken moss-ground,
scattering the heaps of drying peats to right and left, until horse
and man were rolled over and over into the plashy bog.
Uninjured, except as to his gay clothes and accoutrements, which were
speedily dyed of a rich chocolate hue, the trooper arose in a rage,
and could he have by any means safely left his horse so as to have
secured his not running away, he would have charged the dying man on
foot, and so he would have very speedily sacrificed him; but dreading
to lose his charger if he should abandon him, he mounted him again,
and was in the act of returning to the attack, with the determination
of putting John to death, at all hazards, either by steel or by lead,
when he was arrested by the voice of his officer, who was then passing
along a road tract, at some little distance, with a few of his troop,
and who called out to him in a loud authoritative tone, "Come away
you, Jem Barnard! Why dont you follow the living? Why waste time by
cutting at the dying or dead?"
On hearing this command, the trooper uttered a half-smothered curse,
and unwillingly turned to ride after his comrades, throwing back bitter
execrations on John Smith as he went. John's tongue was otherwise
employed. He used it for the better purpose of returning thanks to
that Almighty Providence who had thus so wonderfully protected him.
After this pious mental exercise, John thought that he felt himself
somewhat better. He made a feeble effort to rise, but it was altogether
abortive. The blood still continued to flow from his head--he began
to feel very faint, and a raging thirst attacked him. Turning himself
round in the peat-hag, he contrived to lap up a considerable quantity
of the moss water, which, however muddy and distasteful it might be,
refreshed him so much as to give him strength sufficient to raise
himself up a little, so as to enable him to extend the circuit of his
view. He had now a moment's leisure to look about him, and to consider,
as well as the confusion of his ideas would allow him, what he had
best to do. But what was his surprise and dismay to see, that although
many were yet flying in all directions, and many more pursuing after
them, whole battalions of the enemy still remained unbroken in the
vicinity of the field of battle, and that some were marching up, in
close order, both to the right and left of him. There was but little
time left him for farther consideration, as one of these battalions
was so near to him, that he saw, from the course it was holding, that
it must soon march directly over the spot where he was. The first
thought that struck him was that his best plan would be to lie down
and feign that he was dead. But it immediately afterwards occurred to
him that a thrust from some curious or malicious person, who might be
the bearer of one of those bayonets, which already glittered in his
eyes, might do his business even more effectually than the sword of
the trooper might have done. He became convinced that he had nothing
left for it but to run. But although he was now somewhat revived, and
that the dread of death gave new strength to exhausted nature, he felt
persuaded of the truth, that if his wound should continue to bleed,
as it had already again began to do, his race could not be a long one
in any sense of the word, even if he should have the wonderful luck
to escape the chance of its being shortened by the sword, bayonet,
or bullet of an enemy. To give himself some small chance of life,
John, though he was no surgeon, would have fain tried some means of
stanching the blood, but he lacked all manner of materials for any such
operation, and he could only try to cover the wound very ineffectually
with both hands, whilst the red stream continued to run down through
his fingers. At length, necessity, that great mother of invention,
and wisest of all teachers, enabled him to hit off in a moment,
a remedy, which, as it was the best he could have possibly adopted in
his present difficult and distressing situation, might perhaps, even on
an occasion where no such embarrassment exists, be found as valuable
and effective as any other which the most favourable circumstances
could afford, or the most consummate skill devise. Stooping down,
he picked up a large mass of peaty turf, of nearly a foot square,
and two or three inches thick. This had been regularly cut by the
peat-diggers, but having tumbled by chance into the bottom of the
peat-hag, it had been there lying soaking till the soft unctuous matter
of which it was composed was completely saturated with water like a
sponge. John proceeded upon no certain ratio medicandi, except this,
that as his life's blood was manifestly welling fast away from him,
he thought that the wet peat would stop the flow of it, and as his
head was in a burning fever, every fibre of his scalp seemed to call
out for the immediate application of its cold and moist surface. John
seized it then with avidity, and clapping it instantly on his head,
with the black soft oleaginous side of it next to the wound, and
the heathery top of it outwards, he pressed it down with great care
all over his skull, and then quickly secured it fast, by tying a
coarse red handkerchief over it, the ends of which he fastened very
carefully under his chin. The outward appearance of this strange
uncouth head-gear may be easily imagined, with the heather-bush rising
everywhere around his head over the red tier that bound it on, and
surmounting a countenance so rueful and bloody; but the effect within
was so wonderfully refreshing and invigorating, that he felt himself
almost immediately restored to comparative strength. He started to
his feet; and, being yet uncertain as to which way he should run,
he raised his head slowly over the peat-hag to reconnoitre.
Now, it happened, that, at this very moment, a couple of English
foot soldiers came straggling along, thirsting for more slaughter,
and prowling about for prey and plunder. Ere John was aware of their
proximity to him, they were within a few yards of the peat-hag. As
he raised his head, he beheld them approaching with their muskets
and their bayonets reeking with gore. Believing himself to be now
utterly lost, a deep groan of despair escaped from him. The soldiers
had halted suddenly on beholding the bloody face and neck of what
scarcely seemed to be a human being, with a huge overgrown forest of
heather on the head instead of hair, appearing, as it were by magic,
out of the very earth. They started back, and stood for an instant
transfixed to the spot by superstitious fear.
"Waunds, Gilbert, wot is that?" cried one, his eyes staring at John
with horror.
Seeing, that as he was now discovered, his only chance lay in working
upon that dread which he saw that he had already excited, John first
gradually drew down his head below the bank, and then again raised
it slowly and portentously, and uttered another groan more deep and
ghostly and prolonged than the first. The effect was instantaneous.
"Oh Lord! oh Lord! one of them Highland warlocks of the bog, wot
dewours men, women, and children!" cried Gilbert. "Fly--fly, Warner,
for dear life!"
Off he ran, and his comrade staid not to question farther, but darted
away after him, and John had the satisfaction to see the two heroes,
from whom he had looked for nothing but sudden death, scouring away
over the field, and hardly daring to look behind them.