THE STANDARD BEARER
BOOKS BY S. R. CROCKETT.
Uniform edition. Each, 12 mo. Cloth, $1.50.
Lads’ Love.
_Illustrated._
In this fresh and charming story, which in some respects recalls “The
Lilac Sunbonnet,” Mr. Crockett returns to Galloway and pictures the
humor and pathos of the life which he knows so well.
[Illustration: text decoration]
Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City.
His Progress and Adventures.
_Illustrated._
“A masterpiece which Mark Twain himself has never rivaled.... If ever
there was an ideal character in fiction it is this heroic
ragamuffin.”--_London Daily Chronicle._
“In no one of his books does Mr. Crockett give us a brighter or more
graphic picture of contemporary Scotch life than in ‘Cleg Kelly.’ It is
one of the great books.”--_Boston Advertiser._
[Illustration: text decoration]
Bog-Myrtle and Peat.
“Here are idyls, epics, dramas of human life written in words that
thrill and burn.... All are set down in words that are fit, chaste, and
noble. Each is a poem that has the immortal flavor.”--_Boston Courier._
[Illustration: text decoration]
The Lilac Sunbonnet.
“A love story pure and simple--one of the old-fashioned, wholesome,
sunshiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound-hearted hero, and a heroine who
is merely a good and beautiful woman; and if any other love story half
so sweet has been written this year it has escaped our notice.”--_New
York Times._
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
THE STANDARD BEARER
BY
S. R. CROCKETT
AUTHOR OF
THE LILAC SUNBONNET, BOG-MYRTLE AND PEAT,
CLEG KELLY, LADS’ LOVE, THE RAIDERS, ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1898
COPYRIGHT, 1897, 1898,
BY S. R. CROCKETT.
_GRATEFULLY AND RESPECTFULLY
I DEDICATE
TO THE GOOD AND KINDLY FOLK
OF MY NATIVE PARISH OF BALMAGHIE
THIS RENDERING OF
STRANGE HAPPENINGS AMONG THEIR FOREBEARS,
OF WHICH THEY HAVE
NOT YET QUITE LOST THE MEMORY._
THE FOREWORD.
A book iron-grey and chill is this that I have written, the tale of
times when the passions of men were still working like a yeasty sea
after the storms of the Great Killing. If these pages should chance to
be read when the leaves are greening, they may taste somewhat
unseasonably in the mouth. For in these days the things of the spirit
had lost their old authority without gaining a new graciousness, and
save for one man the ancient war-cry of “God and the Kirk” had become
degraded to “The Kirk and God.”
This is the story of the one man whose weak and uncertain hand held
aloft the Banner of Blue that I have striven to tell--his failures
mostly, his loves and hates, his few bright days and his many dark
nights. Yet withal I have found green vales of rest between wherein the
swallow swept and the cuckoo called to her mate the cry of love and
spring.
Who would know further and better of the certainty of these things must
procure and read A Cameronian Apostle, by my excellent friend, the
Reverend H. M. B. Reid, presently minister of the parish wherein these
things were done, in whose faithful and sympathetic narrative they will
find many things better told than I can tell them. The book may be had
of the Messrs. Gardiner, of Paisley, in Scotland.
Yet even in this imperfect narrative of strange events there may be
heard the beating of a man’s heart, weak or strong, now arrogant, and
now abased, not according to the fear of man or even of the glory of
God, but more according to the kindness which dwelt in woman’s eyes.
For there is but one thing stronger in the world than the love of woman.
And that is not of this world.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE YEAR TERRIBLE 1
II.--THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS 15
III.--THE LITTLE LADY OF EARLSTOUN 22
IV.--MY SISTER ANNA 30
V.--I CONSTRUCT A RAFT 42
VI.--ACROSS THE MOONLIGHT 52
VII.--MY BROTHER HOB 60
VIII.--THE MUSTER OF THE HILL FOLK 69
IX.--I MEET MARY GORDON FOR THE SECOND TIME 76
X.--THE BLUE BANNER IS UP 85
XI.--THE RED GRANT 93
XII.--THE LASS IN THE KIRKYARD 105
XIII.--MY LADY OF PRIDE 112
XIV.--THE TALE OF MESS HAIRRY 120
XV.--ALEXANDER-JONITA 129
XVI.--THE CORBIES AT THE FEAST 137
XVII.--THE BONNY LASS OF EARLSTOUN 144
XVIII.--ONE WAY OF LOVE 154
XIX.--ANOTHER WAY OF LOVE 169
XX.--MUTTERINGS OF STORM 185
XXI.--THE EYES OF A MAID 193
XXII.--THE ANGER OF ALEXANDER-JONITA 204
XXIII.--AT BAY 215
XXIV.--MARY GORDON’S LAST WORD 225
XXV.--BEHIND THE BROOM 233
XXVI.--JEAN GEMMELL’S BARGAIN WITH GOD 240
XXVII.--RUMOUR OF WAR 252
XXVIII.--ALEXANDER-JONITA’S VICTORY 262
XXIX.--THE ELDERS OF THE HILL FOLK 269
XXX.--SILENCE IS GOLDEN 275
XXXI.--THE FALL OF EARLSTOUN 286
XXXII.--LOVE OR DUTY 293
XXXIII.--THE DEMONIAC IN THE GARRET 304
XXXIV.--THE CURSING OF THE PRESBYTERY 310
XXXV.--LIKE THE SPIRIT OF A LITTLE CHILD 317
XXXVI.--THE STONE OF STUMBLING 325
XXXVII.--FARE YOU WELL! 331
XXXVIII.--“I LOVE YOU, QUINTIN!” 338
XXXIX.--THE LAST ROARING OF THE BULL 350
THE STANDARD BEARER.
CHAPTER I.
THE YEAR TERRIBLE.
This is what I, Quintin MacClellan, saw on the grassy summit of the
Bennan--a thing which, being seen and overpast in an hour, changed all
my life, and so in time by the grace of God and the chafe of
circumstances made me for good or evil the man I am.
I was a herd laddie at the time, like David, keeping my father’s flocks
and kicking up my heels among the collie tykes, with many another
shepherd-boy in the wide moorish parishes of Minnigaff, Dalry and the
Kells.
Now my father (and his father before him) had been all his life
“indweller” in the hill farm of Ardarroch which sits on the purple
braeface above the loch of Ken, with a little circumambient yard
enclosed by cattle-offices and a dozen red-stemmed fir trees, in which
the winds and the birds sing after their kind, winter and summer.
A sweet and grateful spot do I now remember that Ardarroch to be, and in
these later days when I have tried so mickle of bliss and teen, and
wearied my life out in so many wanderings and strivings, my heart still
goes out kindly to the well-beloved place of my bairn-play.
It was the high summer of the fatal year 1685, when I saw the sight
which put an end to my childhood. Well do I mind it that year, for
amongst others, my father had to go for a while into hiding--not that he
was any over-strenuous Covenant man, but solely because he had never in
his life refused bite and sup to any neighbour hard pressed, nor yet to
any decent chiel who might scarcely be able to give an account of the
quarrel he had with the Tyrant’s laws.
So, during his absence, my brothers and I had the work of the farm to
attend to. No dawn of day sifting from the east through the greenery of
the great sloughing beeches and firs about the door ever found any of
the three of us in our beds. For me, I was up and away to the
hills--where sometimes in the full lambing time I would spend all night
on the heathery fells or among the lirks and hidden dells of the
mountain fastnesses.
And oh, but it was pleasant work and I liked it well! The breathing
airs; the wide, starry arch I looked up into, when night had drawn her
night-cap low down over the girdling blue-black hills; the moon glinting
on the breast of Loch Ken; the moor-birds, whaup and snipe, plover and
wild duck cheeping and chummering in their nests, while the wood-doves’
moan rose plaintive from every copse and covert--it was a fit birthplace
for a young lad’s soul. Though indeed at that time none was farther from
guessing it than Quintin MacClellan. For as I went hither and thither I
pondered on nothing except the fine hunger the hills gave me, and the
glorious draughts of whey and buttermilk my mother would serve out to me
on my return, calling me meantime the greatest and silliest of her
calves, besides tweaking my ears at the milk-house door if she could
catch me ere I set my bare legs twinkling down the loaning.
For the time being I say nothing more of my father, “douce John of
Ardarroch,” as all the parish called him, save that he was a moderate
man and no high-flier as he would have described himself--yet out of
whom his wife (and my good mother) had, by the constant dropping of
argument, made a Covenant man, and even a fairly consistent follower of
the Hill Folk. Neither will I bide to speak of my brothers Hob and
David, for their names and characters will have occasion to appear as I
write down my own strange history. Nor yet can I pause to tell of the
sweetness and grace of my sister Anna, whose brown eyes held a charm
which even my boyish and brotherly insensibility acknowledged and
delighted in, being my elder by half-a-dozen years, and growing up
amongst us rough louts of the heather like a white rose in the stocky
corner of an herb-garden.
For I must tell of myself and what befell me on the Bennan top the
twenty-first day of June--high Midsummer Day of the Year Terrible, and
of all that it brought to me.
I had heard, indeed, often enough of chasings, of prisonments, of men
and women sent away over-seas to the cruel plantations, of the boot and
the thumbscrew, of the blood of slain men reddening the heather behind
dyke-backs. There was indeed little talk of anything else throughout all
the land of the South and West. But it so chanced that our House of
Ardarroch, being set high up on the side of Bennan, and with no
prominent Covenanters near by to be a mark for the fury of the
persecutor, we MacClellans had thus far escaped unquestioned and
scathless.
Once, indeed, Lidderdale of the Isle, with twenty men, had made us a
visitation and inquired somewhat curiously of us, and specially of my
mother, whom we had entertained on such a night and whom on such
another. After this occasion it was judged expedient that my father
should keep wide of his own house for a while, lest the strict laws
against intercommuning[1] should lay him by the heels in the gaol of
Kirkcudbright.
But to the young and healthy--so long at least as there is clothing for
the back, good filling for the hungry belly, and no startling and
personal evil befal--tales of ill, unseen and unproven, fall on the ear
like the clatter of ancient head-shaking beldames croaking to each
other by unswept ingle-nooks. At least, so it was with me.
But to my tale of Midsummer Day of the Terrible Year.
I had been out, since earliest morn, over the rough rigs of heather
looking tentily to my sheep, for I had been “hefting” (as the business
is called in our Galloway land) a double score of lambs which had just
been brought from a neighbouring lowland farm to summer upon our scanty
upland pastures. Now it is the nature of sheep to return if they can to
their mother-hill, or, at least, to stray further and further seeking
some well-known landmark. So, till such new-comers grow satisfied and
“heft” (or attach) themselves to the soil, they must be watched
carefully both night and day.
I was at this time thirteen years of my age, well nourished and light of
foot as a mountain goat. Indeed, there was not a goat in the herd that I
could not run down and grip by the neck. And when Hob, my elder brother,
would take after me because of some mischief I had wrought, I warrant he
had a long chase and a sore sweat before he caught me, if I got but ten
yards’ start and the heather free before me.
This day I had a couple of fine muckle scones in my pocket, which my
mother had given me, besides one I had purloined for myself when she was
not looking, but which my sister Anna had seen me take and silently
shaken her head. That, however, I minded not a fly. Also I snatched up a
little square book from the window-sill, hoping that in it I might find
some entertainment to while away the hours in the bield of some granite
stone or behind some bush of heather. But I found it to be the collect
of Mr. Samuel Rutherford, his letters from Aberdeen and Anwoth, and at
first I counted the reading of it dull enough work. But afterwards,
because of the names of kenned places in our Galloway and also the fine
well-smacking Scottish words in it, I liked it none so ill.
Ashie and Gray, my dogs, sat on either side of me. Brother and sister
they were, of one year and litter, yet diverse as any human brother and
sister--Ashie being gay and frisky, ever full of freits and caperings;
his sister Gray, on the other hand, sober as a hill-preaching when
Clavers is out on the heather looking for it.
As for Ashie, he nipped himself in the flank and pursued after his own
tail as if he had taken some ill-will at it. But old-maidish Gray sat
erect, cocking her short ears and keeping a sharp eye on the “hefting”
lambs, which went aimlessly straying and cropping below, seeking in vain
for holms as kindly and pastures as succulent as those of the
valley-crofts from which my father had driven them a day or two before.
For myself, in the intervals of my reading, I had been singing a merry
stave, one you may be sure that I did not let my mother or my sister
Anna hear. I had learnt it from wild David, who had brought the broad
sheet back with him from Keltonhill Fair. Thus I had been carolling, gay
as the laverock which I watched flirting and pulsing upwards out of the
dun bents of the fell. But after a while the small print of my book and,
perhaps, also the high instructiveness of the matter inclined me towards
sleep.
The bleating of the sundered lambs desirous of lost motherly udders fell
more soothingly and plaintively upon my ear. It seemed to bring dreams
pleasant and delightful with it. I heard the note sink and change to
that heavenly murmuring that comes with drowsiness, or which, mayhap, is
but the sound of the porter opening the Poppy Gates of sleep--and which
may break yet more delightfully on our ears when the gates that open
for us are the gates of death.
I suppose that all the afternoon the whaups had piped and “willywhaaed,”
the snipes bleated and whinnied overhead, and that the peewits had
complained to each other of the question boy-beast below them, which ran
on two legs and waved other two so foolishly in the air. But I did not
hear them. My ears were dulled. The moorland sounds melted deliciously
into the very sough and murmur of reposefulness. I was already well on
my way to Drowsieland. I heard my mother sing me a lullaby somewhere
among the tranced fields. Suddenly the cradle-song ceased. Through shut
eyelids I grew conscious of a disturbing influence. Though my face
nestled deep down in the crook of my arm I knew that Ashie and Gray had
all suddenly sat up.
“_Ouf-f!_” quoth Ashie protestingly, deep in his stomach so that the
sound would carry no further than his master’s ear.
“_Gur-r-r!_” growled Gray, his sister, yet more softly, the black wicks
of her mouth pulled away from her wicked shining eye-teeth.
Thinking that the sheep were straying and that it might be as well by a
timely shout to save myself miles and miles of hot chase over the
heather, I sat up, ungraciously discontented to be thus aroused, and yet
more unreasonably angry with the dogs whose watchfulness had recalled me
to the realities of life. As I raised my head, the sounds of the hills
broke on my ear suddenly loud--indeed almost insolently insistant. The
suppressed far-away hush of Dreamland scattered itself like a broken
glass before the brisk clamour of the broad wind-stirred day.
I glanced at the flock beneath me. They were feeding and straying
quietly enough--rather widely perhaps, but nothing to make a fret about.
“Restless tykes!” I muttered irritably, striking right and left at the
dogs with my staff. “De’il take you, silly beasts that ye are!”
“_Ouf-f!_” said Ashie, warningly as before, but from a safer distance,
his nose pointing directly away from the hefting lambs. Gray said
nothing, but uncovered her shining teeth a little further and cocked her
ears more directly towards the summit of the Bennan behind me.
I looked about me high and low, but still I could see no cause for
alarm.
“Daft brutes! Silly beasts!” I cried again more crossly than ever. And
with that I was about to consign myself to sleep again, or at least to
seek the pleasant paths of the day-dreamland from which I had been so
abruptly recalled.
But the dogs with bristling hair, cocked ears and proudly-plumaged tails
were already ten yards up the slope towards the top of the fell,
sniffing belligerently as though they scented an intrusive stranger dog
at the entering in of the sacred enclosure of the farmyard of Ardarroch.
I was reaching for my stick to deal it liberally between them when a
waft of warm summer wind brought to my ear the sound of the distant
crying of men. Then came the clear, imperative “Crack! Crack!” of musket
shots--first two, and then half-a-dozen close together, sharp and
distinct as an eager schoolboy snapping his finger and thumb to call the
attention of the master to whom he has been forbidden to speak.
Then, again, on the back of this arrived silence, issuing presently in a
great disturbed clamour of peewit flocks on the table-lands above me,
clouds of them stooping and swooping, screaming and scolding at some
unlicensed and unprincipled intruders by me unseen.
I knew well what it meant in a moment. The man-hunt was afoot. The folk
of God were once more being pursued like the partridge upon the
mountain. It might be that the blood of my own father was even now
making another crimson blossom of martyr blood upon the moors of
Scotland.
“Down, down, Ashie!” I cried, but under my breath. “Come in to my foot,
Gray!” And, knowing by the voice that I was much in earnest, very
obediently the dogs slung behind with, however, many little protesting
“_gurrs_” and chest rumblings of muffled rage.
“It must be Lag himself from the Garry-horn,” I thought; “he will be at
his old work of pursuing the wanderers with bloodhound and troop-horse.”
Then, with the craft which had perhaps been born in me and which had
certainly been fostered by the years of watching and hiding, of open
hatred and secret suspicion, I crept cautiously up the side of the fell,
taking advantage of every tummock of heather and boss of tall bent
grass. Ashie and Gray crawled after me, stiff with intent hate, but
every whit as flatly prone and as infinitely cautious as their master.
For they, too, had been born in the Days of Fear, and the spirit of the
game had entered into them ere ever they emerged from the blindness of
puppydom.
As we ascended, nearer and nearer sounded the turmoil. I heard, as it
were, the sound of men’s voices encouraging each other, as the huntsmen
do on the hillsides when they drive the red fox from his lair. Then came
the baying of dogs and the clattering of irregular musketry.
Till now the collies and I had been sheltered by the grey clints and
lichened rocks of the Bennan, but now we had to come out into the open.
The last thirty yards of ascent were bare and shelterless, the short,
mossy scalp of turf upon them being clean shaven as if cut with a razor.
My heart beat fast, I can tell you who read this tale so comfortably by
the ingle-nook. I held it down with my hand as I crept upwards. Ashie
and Gray followed like four-footed guardian angels behind, now dragging
themselves painfully yard by yard upon their bellies, now lying
motionless as stone statues, their moist jowls pressed to the ground
and their dilated nostrils snuffing the air for the intelligence which
only my duller eyes could bring me.
Yet I knew the risks of the attempt. For as soon as I had left the
shelter of the boulders and scattered clumps of heather and bent, I was
plain to the sight as a fly crawling over the shell of an egg.
Nevertheless, with a quick rush I reached the top and set my head over.