I.

IT was the pause of the morning, when time stands, and night and day

breathe hard ere they get to grips. A cock with a foggy throat started

at the crowing, down at Slochd-a-Chubair. Over from Stron a shrewd thin

wind came to make stir among the trees in the Duke's big garden, and the

crows rasped their beaks on the beech-branches, for they knew that here

was the day's forerunner. Still and on the town slept, stretched full

out, dour set on the business. Its quirky lanes and closes were as black

as the pit. There was only one light in all the place, and a big town

and a bonny it is, house and house with high outside stairs and glass

windows, so that the wonder is the King himself does not take thought to

stay in it, even if it were only for the comfort of it and the company

of the MacCailein Mor. Only one light, and that was splashing, yellow,

and mixed with a thick peat-reek, out of Jean Rob's open door, facing

the bay, on the left, on the Lowlands road. Now and then Jean would come

to the door and stand, a blob of darkness in the yellow light, to see

if the day was afoot on Ben Ime, or to throw a look at the front of the

town for signs of folk stirring.

“Not a peep, not a peep! Sleep! sleep! Few of them part with a man

to-day with so sore a heart as Jean Rob.”

Then back to her Culross girdle, for she was at the baking of bannocks

to go in her husband's _dorlach_ for the wars.

She had not shut an eye all night. Rob snored at her side slow and heavy

while she lay on her back on a bed of white hay, staring up at the black

larch joists glinting with the red scad of the peats. She was a Crarae

woman, and that same people were given to be throng with the head,

and she kept thinking, thinking even on. At last she could bide it no

longer, so she up with a leap on the floor to face a new day and all the

luck of it.

About the luck being good or ill there might be little doubt. It was the

year after they started at the building of the Castle, a laggard spring

at the hind-end of a cruel winter, with not a fin in all the seas for

the poor fishermen, and black mutton at six Saxon shillings the side.

And what the wars were about Jean Rob or her like little knew or cared.

Very little, like enough, as is the way with wars, but any way wars

there were: the Duke and his House would have it that their people must

up and on with belt and target, and away on the weary road like their

fathers before them. Some said it was the old game with the Inverlochy

dogs (rive them and seize them!); others, that some bastard was at

variance with the Duke about the Papist Stewarts--a silly lad called

Tearlach with a pack of wild Irishers and daddy Macleans and Macdonalds

and Camerons from the Isles and the North at his back.

“Bundle and Go” it was any way in Campbell country from Cruachan to

Cowal, from Cantyre to the march of Keppochan, and that's the fine

rolling land of sappy grasses and thick woods. In the heart and midst

of it Duke Archie played dirl on the boss of his shield on a cold March

day, and before night swords were at the sharping from shore to shore.

That's war for ye--

quicker than flame, surer than word of mouth, and poor's the man who

says “What for?” to his chief.

Rob Donn, for all that, was vassal to no man; for he was come of the

swordsmiths of the glen, and they had paper to show that their rigs were

held for no service other than beating out good fighting steel on the

anvil. Poor, as he was, he could wear one feather in his bonnet if his

fancy was on feathers, and no one bragged more of his forefolk. But

Elrigmor--a thin old man with little stomach for quarrels--offered

twenty pounds English for a man to take his place with the Campbells;

and Rob took the money and the loan of Elrigmor's sword, half for the

sake of the money and half for the sake of a bit play with Sir Claymore.

Said he to his wife, jingling the Geordies in his hand on the day he got

them, “Here's the price of a hero; and troth it's little enough for a

good armsmith's blood!”

“Don't say it, Rob,” said Jean.

“Och! I am but laughing at thee, good-wife. Brave dogs would they be

that would face the tusks of the Diarmaid boars. Like the wind on the

chaff--troosh!--we'll scatter them! In a week I'll be home.”

“In a week?”

“To be sure, Jean. I'll buy with the money a stot or two on the road

to bring back with me, for there's little lifting in the Duke's corps,

more's the pity! My grandfather seldom came back from the wars without a

few head of cattle before him.”

So the money went in Rob Donn's sporran, and Jean would have bit her

tongue out before she would crave for part o't from a man going among

strangers and swords.

The bairn had but one word for her father from then till he started, and

that was “Cockade.” What it was the little one never knew, but that it

was something braw and costly, a plaything for a father to go far off

for.

“Two or three of them, my white love!” would Rob Donn say, fond and

hearty. “They'll be as thick as nuts on the ground when we're done of

the gentry that wear them on their bonnets.” And he had a soft wet eye

for the child, a weakling, white and thin, never quite the better of

the snell winds of winter. If cockades, indeed, were to be had for the

fighting of a fortnight without sleep, Rob Donn would have them for her.

So now was the morning to put on fighting gear and go on the foray for

white cockades.

By-and-by a cruisie-light crept out at the gables of the town, and the

darkness filled with the smell of new peat burning. Aora, spluttering

past Jean Rob's door with a gulp into the Cooper's Pool, made, within

the house, the only sound of the morning.

Jean scraped the meal off her hands and went again to the door to look

about and listen.

“Ay, ay! up at last,” she said to herself.

“There's the Major's light, and Kate Mhor up for the making of his

breakfast, and a lowe in the weaver's shed. The Provost's is dark--poor

man!--it's little his lady is caring!”

She was going to turn about and in, when the squeal of a bagpipe came

from the town-head, and the player started to put his drones in order.

“Ochan! ochan!” said poor Jean, for here, indeed, was the end of her

hopes; there was no putting back from the Duke's errand. She listened a

little to the tuning as if it was the finest of _piobaireachds_, and it

brought a curious notion to her mind of the first reel she danced with

her man to the squeezing of that same sheepskin. Then the reeds roared

into the air of “Baile Inneraora.”

“_Och a Dhé! siod e nis! Eirich, eirich, Rob!”_ she cried in to the man

among the blankets, but there was no need for the summons. The gathering

rang far ben in the chambers of sleep, and Rob was stark awake, with a

grasp at his hip for the claymore.

“Troth! I thought it was the camp! and them on us,” he laughed foolishly

in his beard.

Up and down the street went Dol' Dubh, the Duke's second piper, the same

who learned the art of music right well from the Macruimens of Boreraig,

and he had as sweet a finger on the chanter as Padruig himself, with the

nerve to go round the world. Fine, fine it was for him, be sure, to

be the summoner to battle! Lights jumped to the little lozens of the

windows and made streaks on the cracks of the doors, and the Major's man

came from his loft ganting with a mouth like the glee'd gun, a lantern

swinging on a finger, making for the stable to saddle his master's

horse. A garret window went up with a bang, and Peter MacIntyre, wright,

pat out a towsy head and snuffed the air. It was low tide in the two

bays, and the town was smelling less of peat-reek than of sea-wrack and

saltness. One star hung in the north over Dunchuach.

“They have the good day for starting the jaunt, whatever,” said the

wright. “If I was a stone or two lighter, and had one to look after the

shop, it's off on this ploy I would be too.” He took in his head, the

top nodding briskly on his Kilmarnock bonnet, and wakened the wife to

help him on with his clothes.

“Aora, Aora, Baile Inneraora,

I got a bidding to Baile Inneraora;

I got the bidding, but little they gave me,

Aora, Aora, Baile Chailein Mhoir!”

Dol' Dubh was up at the Cross, swelled out like a net-bow, blasting

furiously, his heart athump with the piper's zest. Doors drummed,

windows screeched in their cases, women's voices went from land to land,

and the laugh and cry of bairns new roused from the hot toss of dreams.

Far up the highroad a horse's hoofs were dunting hollow and hearty on

the stones, and by-and-by through the Arches trotted the Cornal, his

tall body straight and black against the dun of the gables. He had

a voice like a rutting deer. “Master Piper,” he roared to Dol' Dubh,

tugging his beast back on its haunches, “stop that braggart air and give

us 'Bundle and Go,' and God help the Campbell that's not on the Cadger's

Quay before the sun's over Stron Point!”

“Where is the air like it?” said Dol' to himself, slacking a reed with a

thumb-nail. “Well they ken it where little they love it with its

vaunting!” But he up with his drones on his shoulder and into the tune

that had the Cornal's fancy. Beside him the Cornal stood at his horse's

stirrup in the grey-brown of the morning, his head still light with the

bottle of claret wine his lady in Lecknamban had put before him ere he

had boot over saddle.

Then the town stirred to its affairs. The Major's horse went clattering

over the cobblestones to his door-end, the arm-room door opened, and old

Nanny Bheag, who kept the key, was lifted off her feet and in, on the

rush of young lads making for the new guns Lome Clerk had up from the

Low Country. On the belts of the older men, loth to leave the fire-end,

mothers and wives were hanging bags with thick farls of cake, and

cheese, and the old Aora salve for swordcuts.

If they had their way of it, these _caille-achan_, the fighting gear

would be all kebbucks of cheese and dry hose, and no powder and ball.

The men blustered, high-breasted, with big words in their beards, and

no name too dirty for the crew they were off to scatter--praising

themselves and making the fine prophecies, as their folks did before

them with better rights when the town was more in the way of going to

wars. Or they roundly scolded the weans for making noise, though their

eyes were learning every twist of the copper hair and every trick of the

last moment, to think on when long and dreary would be the road before

them.

There was a break in Dol' Dubh's music, and high over the big town rang

the Cornal's voice, starting the bairns in their sleep and setting them

up and screaming.

“Laggards! laggards! O lazy ones! Out! out! Campbells before were never

so swear't to be marching. It is time to be steeping the withies!”

Hard back went the stout doors on the walls, and out ran the folk. The

brogues skliffed and hammered; men with muskets, swords, dirks, and

targes ran down the street, and women and children behind them. A tumult

filled the town from side to side and end to end, and the lanes and

closes were streaming with the light from gaping doors.

Old and young, the boy and the snooded girl, women with bairn at breast,

_bodach_ and _cailleach_, took to the Cross muster, leaving the houses

open to the wind and to the world. The cats thrummed by the fires, and

the smell of the sea-wrack came in beside them.

“I have you here at last,” said the Cornal, dour and dark, throwing his

keen eyes along the row of men. “Little credit are ye to my clan and

chief, and here's to the Lowlands low, and would to God I was there now

among the true soldados with stomachs for slaughter and the right skill

of fence and musketoon! A short tulzie, and a tow at the thrapple of

bastard Chevalier would there be in that case. Here's but a wheen herds,

weavers, and gillies holding Brown Betty like a kail-runt!”

He was one of the Craignish Campbells, the Cornal--Dugald, brother

of Lachan who got death at a place called Fontenoy in the summer

before--very sib to the Duke, and it behoved the town-men to say

nothing. But they cursed his eyes to each other on the corners of their

mouths, and if he knew it he had sense enough to say nothing.

The women and bairns and the old folks stood in a great crowd behind

the Cornal's horse. The Major's mare with him in the sell was dancing an

uncanny spring near the Arches, full of freshness and fine feeding as

a battle-horse should be, but overly much that way for a man sixteen

finger-lengths round the belly and full of fish and ale. From Glen

Beag came the slow morning, gusty and stinging; Stob-an-Eas stood

black against the grey of it; the tide stretched from shore to shore

unfriendly and forlorn.

Jean Rob, with the bairn at her brattie-string, was with the other women

seeing her man away, stupid with two sorrows--one because he was going,

and the other because he had twenty pounds in his sporran that he might

well be doing without; for he was leaving the woman without a groat, and

only a boll of meal in the girnel and a wee firkin of salted fish.

The steady breeze came yet from Stron, and sat snug in the sails of the

six boats that carried the Duke's men over to Cowal. Brog-and-Turk's

skiff put out first, himself at the helm in his tarry jacket; the

others, deep down, followed close on her heels. One by one they fell

off from the quay. The men waved their bonnets and cried cheerily and

vaunting, as was aye the good grace of Clan Diarmaid at the first and

the last of forays.

“Blessings with ye!” cried the folk left behind, wet-eyed; and even the

Provost's wife took a grief at her inside to see her man with a shaking

lip look round the sail of the hin'most boat. Cheering and weeping,

singing and _ochain!_ there they were on the quay and on the sea, our

own folk, our dear folk; and who were ever like them when it came to the

bit, and stout hearts or kind hearts were wanted?

“Stand back, kindred!” cried the Cornal, putting spurs to his horse, and

he pranced up the town-head, a pretty man, to join the Major and gallop

round the loch-head to join the corps at Cairn-dubh.

Dol' Dubh stopped his playing at the bow of Brog-an-Turk's skiff when

she gulped the first quaich of brine, and the men in all the boats

started to sing the old boat-song of “Aora Mo Chridhe tha mi seoladh”--

“Aora, my heart, I am sailing, sailing,

Far to the South on the slope of the sea;

Aora _mo chridhe_, it is cold is the far land,

Bitter the stranger with wands on his doorway.

Aora Mochree!”

It came back on the wind with a sorrow to break hearts, sinking and

swelling as the wind took the fancy, and the long-necked herons stood

on the fringe of the tide with their heads high to listen. The sails got

scattered and shrunk, and the tune got thin and low, and lost at last in

the swish of the waves on the shore, and the ears of those who listened

heard the curlew piping cursedly loud over the Cooper's Pool. A grey

cold day with rain on the tail of it. High Creag Dubh with its firs and

alders and rowans stark and careless over the hollow town. Broad day and

brightness, and the cruisies and candles burning the ghosts of flame in

the empty houses, with doors wide to the empty street and the lanes and

closes!