THE HOME OF MY LOVE.
Anthony Lennox presently took me by the hand, and led me over to where
in the Duchrae kitchen the dark young man sat, whose noble head and
carriage I had remarked.
"Mr. Cameron," he said gravely, and with respect, "this is the son of a
brave man and princely contender with his Master--William Gordon of
Earlstoun, lately gone from us."
And for the first time I gave my hand to Richard Cameron, whom men
called the Lion of the Covenant--a great hill-preacher, who, strangely
enough, like some others of the prominent disaffected to the Government,
had been bred of the party of Prelacy.
As I looked upon him I saw that he was girt with a sword, and that he
had a habit of gripping the hilt when he spoke, as though at the pinch
he had yet another argument which all might understand. And being a
soldier's son I own that I liked him the better for it. Then I
remembered what (it was reported) he had said on the Holms of Kirkmahoe
when he preached there.
"I am no reed to be shaken with the wind, as Charles Stuart shall one
day know."
And it was here that I got my first waft of the new tongue which these
hill-folk spake among themselves. I heard of "singular Christians," and
concerning the evils of paying the "cess" or King's tax--things of which
I had never heard in my father's house, the necessity not having arisen
before Bothwell to discuss these questions.
When all the men were gathered into the wide house-place, some sitting,
some standing, the grave-faced woman knocked with her knuckles gently on
a door which opened into an inner room. Instantly Maisie Lennox and
other two maids came out bearing refreshments, which they handed round
to all that were in the house. The carriage of one of these three
surprised me much, and I observed that my cousin Wat did not take his
eyes from her.
"Who may these maids be?" he whispered in my ear.
"Nay, but I ken not them all," I answered. "Bide, and we shall hear."
For, indeed, I knew only one of them, but her very well.
And when they came to us in our turn, Maisie Lennox nodded to me as to a
friend of familiar discourse, to whom nothing needs to be explained. And
she that was the tallest of the maids handed Wat the well-curled oaten
cake on a trencher. Then he rose and bowed courteously to her, whereat
there was first a silence and then a wonder among the men in the house,
for the manner of the reverence was strange to the stiff backs of the
hill-folk. But Anthony Lennox stilled them, telling of the introduction
he had gotten concerning Walter, and that both our fathers had made a
good end for the faith, so that we were presently considered wholly free
of the meeting.
We heard that there was to be a field conventicle near by, at which Mr.
Cameron was to preach. This was the reason of so great a gathering, many
having come out of Ayrshire, and even as far as Lesmahagow in the Upper
Ward of Lanark, where there are many very zealous for the truth.
Then they fell again to the talking, while I noted how the maids
comported themselves. The eldest of them and the tallest, was a lass of
mettle, with dark, bent brows. She held her head high, and seemed, by
her attiring and dignity, accustomed to other places than this moorland
farm-town. Yet here she was, handing victual like a servitor, before a
field-preaching. And this I was soon to learn was a common thing in
Galloway, where nearly the whole of the gentry, and still more of their
wives and daughters, were on the side of the Covenant. It was no
uncommon thing for a King's man, when he was disturbing a
conventicle--"skailing a bees' byke" as it was called--to come on his
own wife's or, it might be, his daughter's palfrey, tethered in waiting
to the root of some birk-tree.
"Keep your black-tail coats closer in by!" said Duke Rothes once to his
lady, who notoriously harboured outed preachers, "or I shall have to do
some of them a hurt! Ca' your messans to your foot, else I'll hae to
kennel them for ye!"
There was however no such safe hiding as in some of the great houses of
the strict persecutors.
So in a little while, the most part of the company going out, this tall,
dark-browed maid was made known to us by Matthew of the Dub, as Mistress
Kate McGhie, daughter of the Laird of Balmaghie, within which parish we
were.
Then Maisie Lennox beckoned to the third maid, and she came forward with
shyness and grace. She was younger than the other two, and seemed to be
a well-grown lass of thirteen or fourteen.
"This," said Maisie Lennox, "is my cousin Margaret of Glen Vernock."
The maid whom she so named blushed, and spoke to us in the broader
accent of the Shire, yet pleasantly and frankly as one well reared.
Presently there came to us the taller maid--she who was called Kate, the
Laird's daughter.
She held out her hand to me.
"Ah, Will of Earlstoun, I have heard of you!"
I answered that I hoped it was for good.
"It was from Maisie there that I heard it," she said, which indeed told
me nothing. But Kate McGhie shook her head at us, which tempted me to
think her a flighty maid. However, I remembered her words often
afterwards when I was in hiding.
Thereupon I presented my cousin Wat to her, and they bowed to one
another with a very courtly grace. I declare it was pretty to see them,
and also most strange in a house where the hill-folk were gathered
together. But for the sake of my father and brother we were never so
much as questioned.
Presently there was one came to the door, and cried that the preaching
was called and about to begin. So we took our bonnets and the maids
their shawls about them, and set forth. It was a grey, unkindly day, and
the clouds hung upon the heights. There are many woods of pine and oak
about the Duchrae; and we went through one of them to an ancient
moat-hill or place of defence on a hillside, with a ditch about it of
three or four yards wideness, which overlooked the narrow pack road by
the water's edge.
As we went Kate McGhie walked by my side, and we talked together. She
told me that she came against her parents' will, though not without her
father's knowledge; and that it was her great love for Maisie Lennox,
who was her friend and gossip, which had first drawn her to a belief in
the faith of the hill-folk.
"But there is one thing," said she, "that I cannot hold with them in. I
am no rebel, and I care not to disown the authority of the King!"
"Yet you look not like a sufferer in silence!" I said, smiling at her.
"Are you a maid of the Quaker folk?"
At which she was fain to laugh and deny it.
"But," I said, "if you are a King's woman, you will surely find yourself
in a strange company to-day. Yet there is one here of the same mind as
yourself."
Then she entreated me to tell her who that might be.
"Oh, not I," I replied, "I have had enough of Charles Stuart. I could
eat with ease all I like of him, or his brother either! It is my cousin
of Lochinvar, who has been lately put to the horn and outlawed."
At the name she seemed much surprised.
"It were well not to name him here," she said, "for the chief men know
of his past companying with Claverhouse and other malignants, and they
might distrust his honesty and yours."
We had other pleasant talk by the way, and she told me of all her house,
of her uncle that was at Kirkcudbright with Captain Winram and the
garrison there, and of her father that had forbidden her to go to the
field-meetings.
"Which is perhaps why I am here!" she said, glancing at me with her bold
black eyes.
As I went I could hear behind us the soft words and low speech of Maisie
Lennox, who came with my cousin Wat and Margaret of Glen Vernock. What
was the matter of their speech I could not discover, though I own I was
eager to learn. But they seemed to agree well together, which seemed
strange to me, for I was a much older acquaintance than he.
Now, especially when in the wilder places, we came to walk all four
together, it seemed a very pleasant thing to me to go thus to the
worship of God in company. And I began from that hour to think kindlier
of the field-folks' way of hearing a preacher in the open country. This,
as I well know, says but little for me; yet I will be plain and conceal
nothing of the way by which I was led from being a careless and formal
home-keeper, to cast in my lot with the remnant who abode in the fields
and were persecuted.