MAJOR HUSKE'S REVENGE.
For a moment Rob, who had been scouting or reconnoitring in person by
the Earl of Seaforth's request, surveyed the major with evident doubt
and irresolution expressed in his sunburnt face, for this was the
hour when, as the Celts suppose, the spirits of evil are abroad, and
when wraiths and demons of the air may assume the forms of human
beings at will; while, on the other hand, Huske, to whom no such
absurd idea occurred, and who had just reason to respect and fear
Rob's personal strength, thrust his cocked-hat firmly upon his head,
and surveyed his foe, with fury and hatred sparkling in his sombre
eyes.
"So, villain!" he exclaimed, "we are fated to meet again!"
"Beware how we part, if this is to be the style of our conversation!"
replied MacGregor, sternly.
"Fellow, are you so ignorant, or so stupid, as to be unaware that by
uttering a shout or firing this pistol I can have you surrounded, and
hanged or shot, in three minutes?"
"Then, beware, Major Huske, how you fire the shot or utter the shout;
for ere you finished either, my father's sword would clatter in your
breast-bone," replied the other, quietly.
"Defend yourself, then, traitor though you be!" said Huske, drawing a
pistol from his girdle and cocking it.
"I am no traitor," retorted MacGregor, proudly, "for I never owned as
king the German prince you serve, but am the liegeman of James VIII.,
whose enemies may God confound! Moreover, I have no wish to
encounter you again, Major Huske--at least, until this child, which
has been long my peculiar care, is in a place of safety." As he
spoke he pointed to a boy, who was no other than little Harry, the
child taken at Inversnaid, and who was sound asleep on the soft
heather, with Rob's tartan plaid wrapped round him.
"Right," said Huske, hoarsely; "my time for retribution has come;
this child shall go before the Highland dog his father!"
Levelling his pistol in an instant, and before MacGregor could
interpose, the major shot the sleeping child through the body. There
was a convulsive gasp, a shudder under the tartan plaid, and all was
over! "Unfortunate wretch--oh, mistaken coward!" exclaimed Rob Roy,
in a piercing voice. "Major Huske, by Heaven and St. Mary, you have
destroyed your own son!"
"How--how?" cried Huske, wildly; for the solemn and excited manner of
MacGregor impressed him with a terrible conviction of truth; "my son,
say you--my son?"
"I have spoken but too truly," said the Highlander, while, heedless
of what Huske might do with sword or pistol, he knelt, with a sob in
his throat, and unfolding the bloody plaid, showed to the
horror-stricken officer the dead body of a little golden-haired boy,
whose features he could not fail to recognize.
He covered his face with his hands, exclaiming--
"Oh, MacGregor, what dreadful deed is this I have done?"
There was a long pause, and then Rob said--
"My people found your son asleep in his little bed at Inversnaid, and
carefully preserved him until such time as he could be restored to
you, his father, or friends. Hunted and proscribed as we are,
treated by such as you like wolves or other wild beasts, a hundred
difficulties were in the way of having the child thus restored; and
the poor little fellow learned to love us, to be the playmate of my
children, the sharer of our humble hearth and frugal board, while my
good and gentle wife, who knew that the boy was motherless, nurtured
him tenderly. Being certain that you would be with the army sent
against Seaforth and the Spaniards, I brought hither the child that
we might restore him, in the hope that for the good deed we had done
you might allow, as we say in Scotland, bygones between us to be
bygones; but, alas! this is the restoration that Helen's heart
foreboded!"
"How, Macgregor?"
"When she predicted so often that the child was too sweet in temper
and too fair in form to find a place on earth; and now, woe worth the
hour! he has been sent by his father's hand to Heaven, from whence he
came!"
When MacGregor ceased, Huske had cast himself on his knees among the
heather, cowering down, in wretchedness, with his face buried in his
hands, and sobbing heavily; while the former covered up the little
body, tenderly and gently, in his plaid, lest the sight of its blood
should too much shock the murderer.
"Go, Major Huske,--return to your men," said he, laying a hand kindly
on the shoulder of the officer; "my hand can never inflict on you a
deeper wound than your own has done. From my soul I pity you! When
seeking to wrong me--wrong me cruelly and foully--you have destroyed
your fair little boy, whom I was learning to love as if he had been
my own; but," added Rob, taking off his bonnet and pointing upward,
"his pure spirit is among the flowers that the angels will gather at
the foot of His throne who is above us."
"Oh, MacGregor," groaned Huske, "end, I pray you, my existence!"
"That I may not do; and I pray you to avoid me when next we meet."
"Where?" asked Huske, incoherently.
"Where the angel of death is hovering--on the hills of Glensheil,"
replied Rob Roy, as he sprang up some rocks that were close by and
disappeared; for at that moment an officer named Captain Dawnes, who
had heard the explosion of the pistol, came hurriedly up with some
twenty men of the picket, all with their bayonets fixed.