THE LITTLE LADY OF EARLSTOUN.
But it was not the will of God that I should warn my mother that day;
for even as I ran, threading my way among the scattered boulders and
whin bushes of the lower slopes, I came upon that which surprised me
almost as greatly as the shooting itself.
Right in my path a little girl was sitting on a green mound like a
deserted ant hillock: She had long yellow hair, and a red cloak was
about her, with a hood to it, which came over her head and partly shaded
her brow. A wooden pail had been placed carefully on the heather at her
feet. Now, what with the perturbation of my spirits and my head being
full of country tales of bogles and elves, at the first glance I took
the maid for one of these, and would have avoided and given her a wide
berth as something much less than canny.
But she wiped her eyes with her little white hand, and as I looked more
closely I saw that she had been crying, for her face was rubbed red, and
her cheeks all harrowed and begrutten with tears.
So at that I feared no more, but went nearer. She seemed about seven or
eight, and very well grown for her age.
“Why do you cry, little maid?” I said to her, standing before her in the
green path.
For a while she did not answer, but continued to sob. I went near to
comfort her, but she thrust her hand impatiently out at me.
“Do not touch me, ragged boy,” she said; “it is not for herd laddies to
touch little ladies.”
And she spoke the words with such mightily offended dignity that on
another occasion I would have laughed.
Then she commanded herself and dried her eyes on her red cloak.
“Carry the can and come with me to find my father,” she ordered,
pointing imperiously with her finger as if I had been no better than a
blackamoor slave in the plantations.
I lifted the wooden pail. It contained, as I think, cakes of oatmeal
with cheese and butter wrapped in green leaves. But the little girl
would not let me so much as look within.
“These are for my father,” she said; “my father is the greatest man in
the whole world!”
“But who may your father be, little one?” I asked her, standing stock
still on the green highway with the can in my hand. She was daintily
arranging the cloak about her like a fine lady. She paused, and looked
at me very grave and not a little indignant.
“That is not for you to know,” she said, with dignity; “follow me with
the pail.”
So saying she stalked away with dignified carriage in the direction of
the hill-top. A wild fear seized me. One of the two men I had seen
fleeing might be the little girl’s father. Perhaps he into whose
back--ah! at all hazards I must not let her go that way.
“Could we not rest awhile here,” I suggested, “here behind this bush?
There are wicked men upon the hill, and they might take away the pail
from us.”
“Then my father would kill them,” she said, shaking her head sagely, but
never stopping a moment on her upward way. “Besides, my mother told me
to take the pail to the hill-top and stand there in my red cloak till my
father should come. But it was so hot and the pail so heavy that----”
“That you cried?” I said as she stopped.
“Nay,” she answered with an offended look; “little ladies do not cry. I
was only sorry out loud that my father should be kept waiting so long.”
“And your mother sent you all this way by yourself; was not that cruel
of her?” I went on to try her.
“Little ragged boy,” she said, looking at me with a certain compassion,
“you do not know what you are saying. I cannot, indeed, tell you who my
father is, but I am Mary Gordon, and my mother is the Lady of
Earlstoun.”
So I was speaking to the daughter of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, the
most famous Covenanter in Scotland, and, next to my Lord Viscount of
Kenmure, the chief landowner in our countryside.
“And have you come alone all the way from Earlstoun hither?” I asked in
astonishment, for the distance was at least four or five miles and the
road rough and ill-trodden.
“Nay,” she made answer, “not so. My mother set me so far upon the way,
and now she waits for me by the bushes yonder, so that I must make haste
and return. We came in a boat to your water-foot down there where the
little bay is and the pretty white sand.”
And she pointed with her hand to where the peaty water of the moorland
stream mingled with and stained the deep blue of the loch.
“Haste you, laddie,” she cried sharply a moment after; “my father is not
a one to be kept waiting. He will be impatient and angry. And because he
is so great a man his anger is hard to bide.”
“You must not go up to the hill-top,” I said, “for there are many bad
men on the Bennan to-day, and they would perhaps kill you.”
“But my father is there,” said she, stopping and looking at me
reproachfully. “I must go; my mother bade me.”
And haply at that moment I saw the entire company of soldiers, led by
the man in the red coat, stringing down the farther side of the mountain
in the line of flight by which the second fugitive had made good his
escape. So I judged it might be as well to satisfy the lass and let her
go on to the top. Indeed, short of laying hold of her by force, I knew
not well how to hinder so instant and imperious a dame.
Besides, I thought that by a little generalship I would be able to keep
her wide of the place where lay the poor body of the slain man.
So straight up the hill upon which I had seen such terrible things we
went, Ashie and Gray slinking unwillingly and shamefacedly behind. And
as I went I cast an eye to my flock. And it appeared strange to me that
the lambs should still be feeding quietly and peacefully down there,
cropping and straying on the green scattered pastures of Ardarroch. Yet
in the interval all the world had changed to me.
We reached the summit.
“Here is the place I was to wait for my father,” said Mary Gordon. “I
must arrange my hair, little boy, for my father loves to see me
well-ordered, though he is indeed himself most careless in his
attiring.”
She gave vent to a long sigh, as if her father’s delinquencies of
toilette had proved a matter of lifelong sorrow to her.
“But then, you see, my father is a great man and does as he pleases.”
She put her hand to her brow and looked under the sun this way and that
over the moor.
“There are so many evil men hereabout--your father may have gone down
the further side to escape them,” I said. For I desired to withdraw her
gaze from the northern verge of the tableland, where, as I well knew,
lay a poor riven body, which, for all I knew, might be that of the
little maid’s father, silent, shapeless, and for ever at rest.
“Let us go there, then, and wait,” she said, more placably and in more
docile fashion than she had yet shown.
So we crossed the short crisp heather, and I walked between her and that
which lay off upon our right hand, so that she should not see it.
But the dogs Ashie and Gray were almost too much for me. For they had
gone straight to the body of the slain man, and Ashie, ill-conditioned
brute, sat him down as a dog does when he bays the moon, and, stretching
out his neck and head towards the sky, he gave vent to his feelings in a
long howl of agony. Gray snuffed at the body, but contented herself with
a sharp occasional snarl of angry protest.
“What is that the dogs have found over there?” said the little maid,
looking round me.
“Some dead sheep or other; there are many of them about,” I answered,
with shameless mendacity.
“Have your Bennan sheep brown coats?” she asked, innocently enough.
I looked and saw that the homespun of the man’s attire was plain to be
seen. “My father has been here before me, and has cast his mantle over
the sheep to keep the body from the sun and the flies.”
For which lie the Lord will, I trust, pardon me, considering the
necessity and that I was but a lad.
At any rate the maid was satisfied, and we took our way to the northern
edge of the Bennan top.