THROUGH DEATH'S DARK VALE.
Now this Eskdale was the Johnstone's own country, and one in which I was
noways at home--a country of wide green holms and deep blind "hopes" or
hollows among the mountains, where the cloud shadows bide and linger,
and whence they come out again to scud swiftly over the hips of the
hills. I had been trained to be pleasant and prudent in my conversation,
and there was little to take me out of myself in the company I had
perforce to keep. Yet I dared not withdraw myself from their train, lest
the jealousy of our band, which was latent among the more scurril of
them, should break out. So I rode mostly silent, but with a pleased
countenance which belied my heart.
Indeed, had it not been for the good liking which everywhere pursued my
cousin Lochinvar, I cannot tell what might have come out of the dislike
for us "Glenkens Whiggies," which was their mildest word for us. Yet my
man Hugh never said a word, for he was a prudent lad and slow of speech;
while I, being no man of war, also looked well to my words, and let a
wary tongue keep my head. As for John Meiklewood, honest man, he took
suddenly one morning what he termed a "sair income in his wame," and
leave being scantily asked, he hied him home to his wife and weans at
the Mains of Earlstoun.
Now this was the manner of our march. Claverhouse sent his horse
scouring up on the tops of the hills and along the higher grounds, while
his foot quartered the lower districts, bringing all such as were in any
way suspicious to the kirkyards to be examined. Old and young, men and
women alike, were taken; and often--chiefly, it is true, behind
Claverhouse's back--the soldiers were most cruel at the business, making
my blood boil, till I thought that I must fly out and strike some of
them. I wondered not any longer that my father had taken to the hill,
sick to death of the black terror which Charles's men caused daily to
fall upon all around them, wherever in Scotland men cared enough about
their religion to suffer for it.
How my cousin Lochinvar stood it I cannot tell. Indeed I think that but
for the teaching of his mother, and the presence of John Scarlet, who at
this time was a great King's man and of much influence with Wat Gordon,
he had been as much incensed as I.
One morning in especial I mind well. It was a Tuesday, and our company
was under the command of this Johnstone of Westerha', who of all the
clan, being a turncoat, was the cruellest and the worst. For the man was
in his own country, and among his own kenned faces, his holders and
cottiers--so that the slaughter of them was as easy as killing chickens
reared by hand.
And even Claverhouse rather suffered, and shut his eyes to it, than took
part in the hard driving.
"Draw your reins here," the Johnstone would say, as we came to the
loaning foot of some little white lime-washed house with a reeking lum.
"There are some Bible folk here that wad be none the worse o' a bit
ca'!"
So he rode up to the poor muirland housie sitting by itself all alone
among the red heather. Mostly the folk had marked us come, and often
there was no one to be seen, but, as it might be, a bairn or two playing
about the green.
Then he would have these poor bits of things gathered up and begin to
fear them, or contrariwise to offer them fair things if only they would
tell where their parents were, and who were used to come about the
house.
There is a place, Shieldhill by name, that sits blithely on the
brae-face at the entering in of Annandale. The country thereabouts is
not very wild, and there are many cotter houses set about the holms and
dotted among the knowes. Westerha' enclosed the whole with a ring of his
men, and came upon them as he thought unawares, for he said the place
was like a conventicle, and rife with psalm-singers. But he was a wild
man when he found the men and women all fled, and only the bairns, as
before, feared mostly out of their lives, sitting cowering together by
the ingle, or hiding about the byres.
"I'll fear them waur," said Westerha', as he came to the third house and
found as before only two-three weans, "or my name is no James
Johnstone."
So what did this ill-set Johnstone do, but gather them all up into a
knot by a great thorn-tree that grows on the slope. This Tuesday morn
was clear and sunny--not bright, but with a kind of diffused light, warm
and without shadows, as if the whole arch of the lift were but one sun,
yet not so bright as the sun we mostly have.
There were some thirty bairns by the tree, mostly of Westerha's own
name, save those that were Jardines, Grahams, and Charterises, for those
are the common names of that country-side. The children stood together,
huddled in a cloud, too frightened to speak or even to cry aloud. And
one thing I noticed, that the lassie bairns were stiller and grat not so
much as the boys--all save one, who was a laddie of about ten years. He
stood with his hands behind his back, and his face was very white; but
he threw back his head and looked the dragoons and Annandale's wild
riders fair in the face as one that has conquered fear.
Then Westerha' rode forward almost to the midst of the cloud of bairns,
"gollering" and roaring at the bit things to frighten them, as was his
custom with such. They were mostly from six to ten years of their age;
and when I saw them thus with their feared white faces, I wished that I
had been six foot of my inches, and with twenty good men of the Glen at
my back. But I minded that I was but a boy--"stay-at-home John," as
Sandy called me--and worth nothing with my hands. So I could only fret
and be silent. I looked for my cousin Lochinvar, but he was riding at
the Graham's bridle rein, and that day I saw nothing of him. But I
wondered how this matter of the bairns liked him.
So Westerha' rode nearer to them, shouting like a shepherd crying down
the wind tempestuously, when his dogs are working sourly.
"Hark ye," he cried, "ill bairns that ye are, ye are all to dee, and
that quickly, unless ye answer me what I shall ask of you."
Then I saw something that I had never seen but among the sheep, and it
was a most pitiful and heart-wringing thing to see, though now in the
telling it seems no great matter. There is a time of the year when it is
fitting that the lambs should be separated from the ewes; and it ever
touches me nearly to see the flock of poor lammies when first the dogs
come near to them to begin the work, and wear them in the direction in
which they are to depart. All their little lives the lambs had run to
their mothers at the first hint of danger. Now they have no mothers to
flee to, and you can see them huddle and pack in a frightened solid
bunch, quivering with apprehension, all with their sweet little winsome
faces turned one way. Then as the dogs run nearer to start them, there
comes from them a little low broken-hearted bleating, as if terror were
driving the cry out of them against their wills. Thus it is with the
lambs on the hill, and so also it was with the bairns that clung
together in a cluster on the brae-face.
A party of soldiers was now drawn out before them, and the young things
were bid look into the black muzzles of the muskets. They were indeed
loaded only with powder, but the children were not to know that.
"Now," cried Westerha', "tell me who comes to your houses at night, and
who goes away early in the morning!"
The children crept closer to one another, but none of them answered.
Whereupon Westerha' indicated one with his finger--the lad who stood up
so straightly and held his head back.
"You, young Cock-of-the-heather, what might be your black Whig's name?"
"Juist the same as your honour's--James Johnstone!" replied the boy, in
no way abashed.
Methought there ran a titter of laughter among the soldiers, for
Westerha' was noways so well liked among the soldiers as Claverhouse or
even roaring Grier of Lag.
"And what is your father's name?" continued Westerha', bending just one
black look upon the lad.
"James Johnstone!" yet again replied the boy.
Back in the ranks some one laughed.
Westerhall flung an oath over his shoulder.
"Who was the man who laughed? I shall teach you to laugh at the
Johnstone in his own country!"
"It was Jeems Johnstone of Wanphray that laughed, your honour," replied
the calm voice of a troop-sergeant.
Then Westerha' set himself without another word to the work of
examination, which suited him well.
"You will not answer, young rebels," he cried, "ken you what they get
that will not speak when the King bids them?"
"Are you the King?" said the lad of ten who had called himself James
Johnstone.
At this Westerhall waxed perfectly furious, with a pale and shaking fury
that I liked not to see. But indeed the whole was so distasteful to me
that sometimes I could but turn my head away.
"Now, ill bairns," said Westerha', "and you, my young rebel-namesake,
hearken ye. The King's command is not to be made light of. And I tell
you plainly that as you will not answer, I am resolved that you shall
all be shot dead on the spot!"
With that he sent men to set them out in rows, and make them kneel down
with kerchiefs over their eyes.
Now when the soldiers came near to the huddled cluster of bairns, that
same little heart-broken bleating which I have heard the lambs make,
broke again from them. It made my heart bleed and the nerves tingle in
my palms. And this was King Charles Stuart making war! It had not been
his father's way.
But the soldiers, though some few were smiling a little as at an
excellent play, were mostly black ashamed. Nevertheless they took the
bairns and made them kneel, for that was the order, and without mutiny
they could not better it.
"Sodger-man, wull ye let me tak' my wee brither by the hand and dee that
way? I think he wad thole it better!" said a little maid of eight,
looking up.
And the soldier let go a great oath and looked at Westerha' as though he
could have slain him.
"Bonny wark," he cried, "deil burn me gin I listed for this!"
But the little lass had already taken her brother by the hand.
"Bend doon bonny, Alec my man, doon on your knees!" said she.
The boy glanced up at her. He had long yellow hair like Jean Hamilton's
little Alec.
"Wull it be sair?" he asked. "Think ye, Maggie? I houp it'll no be awfu'
sair!"
"Na, Alec," his sister made answer, "it'll no be either lang or sair."
But the boy of ten, whose name was James Johnstone, neither bent nor
knelt.
"I hae dune nae wrang. I'll juist dee this way," he said; and he stood
up like one that straightens himself at drill.
Then Westerha' bid fire over the bairns' heads, which was cruel, cruel
work, and only some of the soldiers did it. But even the few pieces that
went off made a great noise in that lonely place. At the sound of the
muskets some of the bairns fell forward on their faces as if they had
been really shot. Some leapt in the air, but the most part knelt quietly
and composedly.
The little boy Alec, whose sister had his hand clasped in hers, made as
if he would rise.
"Bide ye doon, Alec," she said, very quietly, "it's no oor turn yet!"
At this the heart within me gave way, and I roared out in my helpless
pain a perfect "gowl" of anger and grief.
"Bonny Whigs ye are," cried Westerha', "to dee withoot even a prayer.
Put up a prayer this minute, for ye shall all dee, every one of you."
And the boy James Johnstone made answer to him:
"Sir, we cannot pray, for we be too young to pray."
"You are not too young to rebel, nor yet to die for it!" was the
brute-beast's answer.
Then with that the little girl held up a hand as if she were answering a
dominie in a class.
"An it please ye, sir," she said, "me an' Alec canna pray, but we can
sing 'The Lord's my Shepherd,' gin that wull do! My mither learned it us
afore she gaed awa'."
And before any one could stop her, she stood up like one that leads the
singing in a kirk. "Stan' up, Alec, my wee mannie," she said.
Then all the bairns stood up. I declare it minded me of Bethlehem and
the night when Herod's troopers rode down to look for Mary's bonny
Bairn.
Then from the lips of the babes and sucklings arose the quavering
strains:
"The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by."
As they sang I gripped out my pistols and began to sort and prime them,
hardly knowing what I did. For I was resolved to make a break for it,
and, at the least, to blow a hole in James Johnstone of Westerha' that
would mar him for life before I suffered any more of it.
But as they sang I saw trooper after trooper turn away his head, for,
being Scots bairns, they had all learned that psalm. The ranks shook.
Man after man fell out, and I saw the tears happing down their cheeks.
But it was Douglas of Morton, that stark persecutor, who first broke
down.
"Curse it, Westerha'," he cried, "I canna thole this langer. I'll war
nae mair wi' bairns for a' the earldom i' the North."
And at last even Westerha' turned his bridle rein, and rode away from
off the bonny holms of Shieldhill, for the victory was to the bairns. I
wonder what his thoughts were, for he too had learned that psalm at the
knees of his mother. And as the troopers rode loosely up hill and down
brae, broken and ashamed, the sound of these bairns' singing followed
after them, and soughing across the fells came the words:
"Yea, though I walk in Death's dark vale,
Yet will I fear none ill:
For Thou art with me; and Thy rod
And staff me comfort still."
Then Westerha' swore a great oath and put the spurs in his horse to get
clear of the sweet singing.