advanced. But there was something so suspicious in the manner in which
the three fellows hung over the wall, as if they were watching the
public road, that he became at once convinced that they were lying
in wait for a prey; and although he had nothing to lose, he did not
feel quite assured as to the manner in which they might be disposed
to accost him; and in his present weak state, he felt prudence to be
the better part of valour. Availing himself of the concealment of the
bank, therefore, until he had entered a small opening in the churchyard
wall, he crept quietly across a dark part of the churchyard itself,
by which means he got into the deep shadow that fell with great
breadth all along the church wall, between the moon and the three
figures who were watching the road, and who consequently had their
backs to the old building. Having succeeded in accomplishing this,
John was stealing slowly and silently along the wall, with the hope of
passing by them, altogether unnoticed, when, as ill luck would have it,
one of them chanced to turn round, so as dimly to descry his figure.
"What the devil is that gliding along yonder?" cried the man, in
Gaelic, and in a voice that betrayed considerable fear.
"Halt you there!" cried another, who was somewhat bolder. "Halt,
I say, and give an account of yourself."
John saw that there was now no mode of escaping the danger but by
boldly bearding it. He halted therefore, but still keeping deep within
the shade, he drew out his claymore, and placed his back to the church
wall to prepare for defence.
"Ha! steel!" cried the third fellow; "I heard it clash on the
stones of the wall, and I saw it bring a flash of fire out of them
too. Come, come, goodman, whoever you are--come out here, and give
us your claymore."
"He that will have it, must come and take it by the point," said John,
in Gaelic, and in a stern, hoarse, hollow voice; "and he had better
have iron gloves on, or he will find it too hot for his palms."
"What the devil does he mean?" said the first.
"We'll detain you as a runaway rebel," said the third.
"The boldest of men could not detain me," replied John, now recognising
the last speaker, by the moonlight on his face, as well as by his
voice. "But for a base traitor like you, Neil MacCallum, better were
it for you to be lying dead, like your brave brother, among the slain
on Drummosie Moor, than to encounter me here in this churchyard,
at such an hour as this!"
"In the name of wonder, how knows he my name?" exclaimed MacCallum
in a voice that quavered considerably.
"Oh, Neil! Neil!" cried the first speaker, in great dismay, "it is
no man! it is something most uncanny: For the love of God, parley
with it no farther!"
"Pshaw--nonsense!" exclaimed the second speaker. "Its a man, and
nothing else. Let us all rush upon him at once. Surely, if he were
the devil himself, three of us ought to be a match for him."
"I am the devil himself!" cried John Smith in a terrible voice, and at
the same time stalking slowly forth from the shadow, with the bloody
blade of his claymore before him, he strode into the moonlight, which
at once fully disclosed his hideous head-gear and ghastly features,
to which at the same time it gave a tenfold effect of horror.
"Oh, the devil!--the devil!--the devil!" cried the fellows, the moment
they thus beheld him; and, overpowered by their terror, they rushed
forward towards the churchyard wall, and threw themselves over it
pell-mell, tumbling higgledy-piggledy into the road, and scampering
out of sight and out of hearing in a moment, leaving John Smith sole
master of the field.
In the midst of all his miseries, John could not help laughing
heartily at the suddenness of their retreat. But gravity of mood came
quickly over him again, when he heard his laugh re-echoed--he knew not
how, as it were in a tone of mockery, from the old church walls. He
began to recollect where he was, and he half repented that he had so
indiscreetly used the name of Satan in the manner he had done.
"The Lord be about us!" ejaculated John most fervently, whilst his
knees smote against each other violently, and his jaws were stretched
to a fearful extent.
He felt that the shorter time he tarried in that uncanny place the
better it would be for his comfort; and, accordingly, he began to
move forward as quickly as he could towards a wicket gate, which he
well knew gave exit to the footpath at the other end of the churchyard.
John, now proceeding at what might rather be called an anxious
pace than a quick one, had very nearly reached the wicket, when his
eye caught a tall white figure, standing within a few yards of it,
and posted close by the path which he must necessarily pursue. The
moonshine enabled him to see a terrible face, with a huge mouth; and,
so far as his recollection of his own natural physiognomy went, derived
as it was from his shavings on Saturday nights ever since his chin had
required a razor, he felt persuaded that the countenance before him
was a fac-simile of his own. It was, moreover, very ghastly, and very
bloody. His eyes fixed themselves upon it with unconquerable dismay,
and he shook throughout every nerve, like the trembling poplar. But
that which most astonished and terrified him, as he gazed on this
apparition, was, the strange circumstance, that he could distinctly
perceive, that it had already assumed a head-gear precisely similar
to the very remarkable one which he had been so recently compelled
from necessity to adopt. On the summit of its crown appeared a huge
sod, with all its native plants upon it, and these waved to and fro
before him with something like portentous omen. John felt as if he
had only fled from the battle-field of Culloden to meet both death
and burial in this most unchancy churchyard, and if his knees smote
each other before, they now increased their reciprocal antagonist
action in a degree that was tenfold more striking. John felt persuaded
beyond a doubt, that the devil had been permitted thus to assume his
own appearance, and to come thus personally to reprove him for the
indiscreet use which he had made of his name. Sudden death seemed to
be about to fall on him. The grave appeared to be about to open to
receive his wounded and worn-out body. But these were evils which,
at that dreadful moment, John hardly recognized, for the jaws of the
Evil Spirit himself seemed to him to be slowly and terribly expanding
themselves to swallow up his sinful soul. Fain would John have fled,
but he was rivetted to the spot. No way suggested itself to his
distracted mind by which he could escape, and he well knew that he had
no way that led homewards to that spot where he looked for concealment
and safety, save that which went directly by the dreaded object before
him. For some time he stood trembling and staring, in a cold sweat,
until at length, overpowered by his feelings, he dropped upon his
knees, and began putting up such snatches of prayer to Heaven, for
help against the powers of darkness, as his fears allowed him to utter.
As John thus sat on his knees, praying and quaking, his animal courage
so far returned to him as to permit him to observe that the object
of his terror remained unchanged and immovable. At length his mind
recovered itself to such an extent, as to enable him to revert to that
night of misery which he had so recently experienced, in beholding
that which he had believed to be the spirit of Dallas the packman,
and remembering how that matter had been cleared up by the appearance
of daylight, he began to reason with himself as to the possibility of
this being a somewhat similar case. Having thus so far reduced his
fears within the control of his reason, he summoned up resolution
to raise himself from his knees, and to advance one step nearer to
the phantom which had so long triumphed over the courage that was
within him. And, seeing that, notwithstanding this movement of his,
it still maintained its position, and uttered no sound, he ventured
to take a second step--and then a third step, until the truth, and
the whole truth, began gradually to dawn upon his eyes and his mind,
and then, at last, he discovered, to his very great relief, that the
horrible and much-dreaded demon whose appearance had so disturbed
and discomposed his nervous system, was no other than a tall old
tombstone, with a head so fearfully chisselled on the top of it, as
might have left it a very doubtful matter, even in the day-time, for
any one, however learned in such pieces of art, to have determined
whether the rustic sculptor had intended it for a death's-head or
a cherubim. Some idle artist of the brush, in passing by that way
with a pot full of red paint, prepared for giving a temporary glory
to a new cart about to be turned out from a neighbouring wright's
shop, had paused as he passed by, and exhausted the full extent of
his small talents in communicating to the countenance that bloody
appearance, the effect of which had so much appalled John Smith,
and some waggish schoolboy had finished the figure, by tearing up a
sod covered with plants of various kinds, and clapping it on its top,
so as thereby very much to augment its artificial terrors. John Smith
drew a long breath of inconceivable relief on making this discovery,
and then darting through the wicket, he pursued his journey with as
much expedition as his weakness and fatigue permitted him to use.
John walked on for some hour or twain with very determined resolution,
but at length the great loss of blood he had experienced, brought on so
unconquerable a drowsiness, that he felt he must have a little rest,
were it but for a few minutes, even if his taking it should be at
the risk of his life. John was never wont to be very particular as
to the place where he made his bed, but on the present occasion it
happened, probably from the blood-vessels of his body having been
so much drained, that he had a most unpleasant chill upon him. He
felt as if ice itself was shooting and crystallizing through every
vein and artery within him. Then the night had become somewhat raw,
and he had left his plaid, which is a Highlander's second house,
on the fatal field of battle. Under all these circumstances, John
was seized with a resistless desire to enjoy the luxury of sleep for
a short time, under the shelter of a roof, and in the vicinity of a
good peat fire. Calling to mind that there was an humble turf-built
cottage in a hollow a little way farther on, by the side of a small
rushy, mossy stream, he made the best of his way towards it.
The house consisted of three small apartments, one in the middle
of it, opposite to the outer door, and one at either end, which had
their entrances from that in the centre. When John came to the brow
of the bank that looked down upon this humble dwelling, he was by no
means sorry to perceive that the middle apartment had a good blazing
fire in it, as he could easily see through the window and outer door,
which last chanced to be invitingly open. John, altogether forgetful
of his uncouth and terrific appearance, lost not a moment in availing
himself of this lucky circumstance. But he had no sooner presented
his awful spectral form and visage within the threshold, than he
spread instantaneous terror over the group assembled within.
"Oh, a ghost! a ghost!" cried out in Gaelic a pale-faced girl of some
eight or nine years of age, as she dropped on her knees, shaken by
terror in every limb and feature.
"Oh, the devil! the devil!" roared an old man and woman, who also
sank down before John, bellowing out like frightened cattle. "Och,
och! we shall all be swallowed up quick by the Evil One!"
"Fear nothing," said John Smith, in a mild tone, and in the same
tongue. "I am but a poor wounded and wearied man. I only want to lie
down and rest me a little, if you will be so charitable as to grant
me leave."
"Wounded!" said the old man, rising from his knees, somewhat reassured;
"where were you wounded?"
"In the head here," said John, with a stare that again somewhat
disconcerted the old man; "and if it had not been for this peat that
I clapped on my skull, I believe my very brains would have been all
out of me."
"Mercy on us, where got ye such a mischance as that?" exclaimed the
old woman.
"At Culloden, I'll be sworn," said the old man.
"Aye, aye, it was at Culloden," replied John. "But, if ye be
Christians, give me a drink of warm milk and water, to put away this
shivering thirst that is on me, and let me lie down in a warm bed
for half an hour."
"Och aye, poor man, ye shall not want a drop of warm milk and water,
and such a bed as we can give you," said the old woman, moving about
to prepare the drink for him.
"Thank ye--thank ye!" said John, much refreshed and comforted by
swallowing the thin but hot potation. And then following the old
man into the inner apartment on the right hand, he sank down in a
darksome nook of it, on a pallet among straw, and covering himself up,
turf, nightcap and all, under a coarse blanket, he was sound asleep
before the old man had withdrawn the light, and shut the door of his
clay chamber.
"Oh that our boys were back again safe and sound!" cried the old woman,
wringing her hands.
"Safe and sound I fear we cannot expect them to be, Janet," replied
the old man. "But oh that we had them back again, though it was to
see them wounded as badly as that poor fellow! Much do I fear that
they are both corpses on Drummossie Moor."
"What will become of us!" cried the old woman, weeping bitterly; "what
will become of this poor motherless lassie now, if her father be gone?"
But, leaving this aged couple to complain, and John Smith to enjoy his
repose, we must now return to poor Morag, whom, as you may recollect,
gentlemen, we left hunted into covert by the two dragoons who had so
closely pursued her. The patch of natural wood into which she dived
was not large. It chiefly consisted of oaks and birches, which, though
they had grown to a considerable size in certain parts, so that their
wide-spreading heads had kept the knolls on which their stems stood,
altogether free from the incumbrance of any kind of brushwood,--had
yet in most places risen up thinner and smaller, leaving ample room
and air around them to support thickets of the tallest broom and
juniper bushes.
It chanced that Morag was not altogether unacquainted with the
nature of the place, having at one time, in earlier life, been hired
to tend the cows of a farmer at no great distance from it. She was
well aware that a rill, which had its origin in the higher grounds
at some distance, came wimpling into the upper part of the wood, and
thence, during its descent over the sloping surface of the ground,
from its having met with certain obstructions, or from some other
cause, it had worn itself a channel through the soft soil, to the
depth of some six feet or so, but which was yet so narrow, that the
ferns and bushes growing out of the undermined sods that fringed the
edges of it, almost entirely covered it with one continued tangled
and matted arch. Towards this rill Morag endeavoured to make her
way through the tall broom, and, as she was doing so, she heard the
dismounted trooper, who had by this time entered the wood after her,
calling to his comrade, who sat mounted outside:
"Bill! do you padderowl round the wood, and keep a sharp look out that
she don't bolt without your seeing her. I'll follow arter her here,
and try if I can't lay my hands on her; and if I do but chance to
light on her, be she witch or devil, I'll drag her out of her covert
by the scruff of the neck."
Morag heard no more than this.--She pressed forward towards the bed of
the rill, and having reached it, she stopped, like a chased doe, one
moment to listen, and hearing that the curses, as well as the crashing
of the jack-boots of her pursuer, as yet indicated that he was still at
some distance behind her, and evidently much entangled in his progress,
she carefully shed the pendulous plants of the ferns asunder, and then
slid herself gently down into the hollow channel. There finding her
feet safely planted on the bottom, she cautiously and silently groped
her way along the downward course of the rill, through the dark and
confined passage which it had worn out for its tiny stream. In this
way she soon came to the lower edge of the wood, where the hollow
channel became deeper, and where it assumed more of the character
of a ravine, but where it was still skirted with occasional oaks,
mingled with thickets of birches, hazels, and furze bushes.
Morag was about to emerge from the obscurity of this subterranean
arch, into the more open light, when, as she looked out, she beheld
the mounted trooper standing on his stirrups on the top of the bank,
eagerly gazing around him in all directions. The furze there grew too
thick and high for him to be able to force his way down to the bottom
of the ravine, even if he had accidently observed her. But his eyes
were directed to higher and more distant objects, and seeing that she
had been as yet unperceived, she instantly drew so far back, as to be
beyond all reach of his observation,--whilst she could perfectly well
watch him, so long as he maintained his present position. She listened
for the crashing strides of him who was engaged in searching the wood
for her. For a time they came faint and distant to her ear, but, by
degrees, they began to come nearer,--and then again the sound would
alternately diminish and increase, as he turned away in some other
direction, fighting through the opposing boughs, and then came beating
his way back again, in the same manner, with many a round oath. At
length she heard him raging forward in the direction of the rill, at
some forty yards above the place where she was, blaspheming as he went.
"Ten thousand devils!" cried he; "such a place as this I never se'ed
in all my life afore. If my heyes beant nearly whipt out of my head
with them 'ere blasted broom shafts, my name aint Tom Wetherby! Dang
it, there again! that whip has peeled the very skin off my cheek, and
made both my heyes run over with water like mill-sluices--I wonder
at all where this she-devil can be hidden? Curse her! Do you think,
Bill, that she can raaly have ridden off through the hair, as they
do say they do? But for a matter of that, she may be here somewhere
after all, for my heyes be so dimmed, that, dang me an' I could see
her if she were to rise up afore my very face. How they do smart
with pain! Oh! Lord, where am I going?" cried he, as he went smack
down through the ferns and brush into the concealed bed of the rill,
and was laid prostrate on his back in the narrow clayey bottom of it,
in such a position that it defied him to rise.
"Hollo Bill!" cried he, from the bowels of the earth, in a voice which
reached his comrade as if he had spoken with a pillow on his mouth,
but which rang with terrible distinctness down the hollow natural
tube to the spot where Morag was concealed. "Hollo!--help!--help!"
"What a murrain is the matter with ye?" cried Bill, very much
astonished.
"I've fallen plump into the witches' den!--into the very bottomless
pit!--Hollo!--hollo! Help!--help!" cried the fallen trooper from
the abyss.
"How the plague am I to get to ye if so be the pit be
bottomless?" cried Bill, in a drawling tone, that did not argue
much promise of any zealous exertion of effective aid on the part of
the speaker.
"Curse ye, come along quickly, or I shall be smothered in this here
infernal, dark, outlandish place," cried Tom Wetherby.
"Well,--well," replied Bill, with the same long-drawn tone of
philosophic indifference, "I'm a coming--I'm a coming. But you must
keep chaunting out from the bottom of that bottomless pit of yours, do
you hear, Tom, else I shall never find you in that 'ere wilderness. And
how the devil I am to get into it is more than I know."
The dragoon turned his horse very leisurely away, to look for some
place where he could best quit his saddle, in order to make good his
entrance on foot into the thicket. The moment the quick eyes of Morag
perceived that he had disappeared from his station on the brow of the
bank, she crept forth from her concealment, and keeping her way down
through the shallow stream, that her footsteps might leave no prints
behind them, she stole off, until she was beyond all hearing of the
two dragoons. Then it was that Morag began to ply her utmost speed,
and, after following the ravine until it expanded into a small and
partially wooded glen, she hurried on through it, until at length she
found herself emerging on the lower and more open country. Afraid of
being seen, she made a long circuitous sweep through some rough broomy
waste ground of considerable extent, towards a distant hummock, with
the shape of which she was familiar, and having thus gained a part of
the country with which she was acquainted, though it was still very
distant from her present home, she hailed the descent of the shades
of night with great satisfaction.
Under their protection she proceeded on her way with great alacrity,
and without apprehension, though with a torn heart, that made her
every now and then stop to give full vent to her grief for John
Smith, of whose death she had so little reason to doubt, from all the
circumstances she had heard. At length, fatigue came so powerfully upon
her, that she was not sorry to perceive, as she was about to descend
into a hollow, the light of a cheerful fire, that blazed through the
window of a turf-built cottage, and was reflected on the surface of
a rushy stream, that ran lazily through the bottom near to it. The
door was shut, but Morag descended the path that led towards it,
and knocked without scruple.
An old man and woman came immediately to open it, and looked out
eagerly, as if for some one whose coming they had expected, and
disappointment seemed to cloud their brows, when they found only her
who was a stranger to them. Morag, addressing them in Gaelic, entreated
for leave to rest herself for half an hour by their fireside. She was
admitted, after some hesitation and whispering between them, after
which she craved a morsel of oaten cake, and a draught of water. A
little girl, of some eight or nine years old, waited not to know her
granny's will, but ran to a cupboard for the cake; and brought it
to her, and then hastened to fill a bowl with water from a pitcher
that stood in a corner. The old couple would have fain pumped out
of Morag something of her history, and they put many questions to
her for that purpose. But she was too shrewd for them, and all they
could gather from her was, that she had been away seeing her friends
a long way off, and that she had first rode, and then walked so far,
that she was glad of a little rest, and a morsel to allay her hunger,
after which she would be enabled to continue her journey, with many
thanks to them for their hospitality.
Morag had not sat there for many minutes, when there came a rap to
the door. The old man sprang up to open it, and immediately three
Highlanders appeared, full armed with claymores and dirks, but very
much jaded and soiled with travel. Morag retired into a corner.
"Och, Ian! Ian!"--"Och, Hamish! Hamish!" cried the old couple,
embracing two of them, who appeared to be their sons; and, "Oh,
father! father!" cried the little girl, springing into Ian's arms.
"Tuts, don't be foolish, Kirstock!" cried Ian, in a surly tone, as
he shook off the little girl; "What's the use of all this nonsense,
father?--Better for you to be getting something for us and our comrade
MacCallum here to drink. We are almost famished for want;" and with
that he threw himself into the old man's wooden arm-chair.
"Aye, aye, father," said Hamish, occupying the seat where his mother
had sat, and motioning to MacCallum to take that which Morag had just
left; "we have had a sad tramp away from the battle. Would we had
never gone near it! Aye, and we got such a fright into the bargain."
"Fright!" cried the old man much excited; "Surely, surely, my sons
are not cowards!--Much as I love you, boys, I would rather that you
had both died than run away."
"Oh!" said MacCallum, now joining in the conversation, "we all three
fought like lions in the battle. But it requires nerves harder than
steel to look upon the Devil, and if ever he was seen on earth,
we saw him this precious night."
"Preserve us all!" said the old woman; "what was he like?"
"Never mind what he was like, mother," said Ian gruffly; "let us have
some of your bread and cheese, and a drop of Uisge-beatha to put some
heart in us."
"You shall have all that I have to give you, boys," said the old
man; "but that is not much. I would have fain given a sup out of the
bottle to the poor wounded man that came in here, a little time ago;
but I bethought me that you might want it all, and so we sent him to
his bed with a cup of warm milk and water."
"Bed, did you say?" cried Ian. "What! one of Prince Charley's men?"
"Surely, surely!" said the old man. "Troth, I should have been any
thing but fond of letting in any one else but a man who had fought
on the same side with yourselves."