THE TESTING OF THE TYKE.
At the head of the high natural wood which fringes about all the mansion
house of Balmaghie, we held down to the right through the copses, till
we came to the green policies that ring in the great house of McGhies.
As we went linking down this green pleasaunce, there met us one who came
towards us with his hands behind his back, stooping a little from the
shoulders down. He had on him a rich dress of dark stuff a good deal
worn, being that of a fashion one or two removes from the present. But
this rather, as it seemed, from habit and preference than from
need--like one that deigns not to go too fine.
"Where away, Heather Jock?" he cried as we made to go by, and turned
toward us.
"Whom have we here?" he asked, so soon as he saw me.
"A cousin o' mine from the hill country, laird," said Wat, with the
gruff courtesy of the gardener.
"Hoot, hoot--another! This will never do. Has he taken the Test?" said
the laird.
"I doubt he cannot read it even," said Wat, standing sheepishly before
him.
"That is all the better," said the tall grey man, shaking his head
gently and a little reproachfully. "It is easier gotten over that way."
"Have not you read it, sir?" asked Wat, glancing up at him curiously as
he stood and swung his cane.
"Faith no," he answered quickly; "for if I had read it, Heather Jock, I
might never have taken it. I could not run the risks."
"My friend will e'en take the Test the way that the Heriot's hospital
dog took it," said Wat, again smiling, "with a little butter and liberty
to spit it out."
"How now, Heather Jock, thou art a great fellow! Where didst thou get
all the stories of the city? The whaups do not tell them about the
Glenkens."
"Why, an it please your honour, I was half a year in the town with the
Lady Gordon, and gat the chapman's fly sheets that were hawked about the
causeways," answered Wat readily enough, making him an awkward bow.
"Tell me the story, rascal," said the tall man, whom I now knew for
Roger McGhie of Balmaghie. "I love a story, so that it be not too often
told."
Now I wondered to hear Wat Gordon of Lochinvar take the word "rascal" so
meekly, standing there on the road. It was, indeed, very far from being
his wont.
However, he began obediently enough to tell the story which Roger McGhie
asked of him.
For a Kate of the Black Eyebrows in the plot makes many a mighty
difference to the delicateness of a man's stomach.
"The story was only a bairn's ploy that I heard tell of, when I was in
town with my lady," he said, "nothing worth your honour's attention, yet
will I tell it from the printed sheet which for a bodle I bought."
"Let me be the judge of that," said the other.
"Well then, laird, there was in the hospital of George Heriot, late
jeweller to the King, a wheen loon scholar lads who had an ill-will at a
mastiff tyke, that lived in a barrel in the yard and keeped the
outermost gate. They suspected this dog of treason against the person of
his Majesty, and especially of treasonable opinions as to the succession
of the Duke of York. And, indeed, they had some ground for their
suspicion, for the mastiff growled one day at the King's High
Commissioner when he passed that way, and even bit a piece out of the
calf of one of the Duke of York's servitors that wore his Highness'
livery, at the time when his Grace was an indweller in Holyrood House."
The eye of the tall grave man changed. A look of humorous severity came
into it.
"Be cautious how you speak of dignities!" he said to Wat.
"Well," said Wat, "at any rate, this evil-minded tyke held an office of
trust, patently within the meaning of the act, and these loon lads of
Heriot's ordained him duly to take the Test, or be turned out of his
place of dignity and profit.
"So they formed a Summary Court, and the tyke was called and
interrogated in due form. The silly cur answered all their questions
with silence, which was held as a sign of a guilty conscience. And this
would have been registered as a direct refusal, but that one of the
loons, taking it upon him to be the tyke's advocate, argued that silence
commonly gave consent, and that the Test had not been presented to his
client in the form most plausible and agreeable to his tender stomach.
"The debate lasted long, but at last it was agreed that a printed copy
of the Test should be made into as little bulk as possible, smoothed
with butter, tallow, or whatever should be most tempting to his doggish
appetite. This being done, Tyke readily took it, and made a shift by
rowing it up and down his mouth, to separate what was pleasant to his
palate. When all seemed over and the dog appearingly well tested, the
loons saw somewhat, as it were one piece after another, drop from the
side of his mouth. Whereupon it was argued, as in the case of my Lord
Argyle, that this was much worse than a refusal, because it was a
separating of that which was pleasant from what was irksome. And that
this therefore, rightly interpreted, was no less than High Treason.
"But the tyke's advocate urged that his enemies had had the rowing up of
the paper, and very likely they had put some crooked pin or other
foreign object, unpleasant to a honest tyke's palate, within. So he
asked for a fair trial before his peers for his client.
"Then the Court being constitute and the assize set, there fell out a
great debate concerning this tyke dog. Some said that his chaming and
chirking of the paper was very ill-done of him, that he was over
malapert and took too much upon him. For his office being a lowly one,
it was no business of his to do other than bolt the Test at once.
"But his advocate urged that he had done his best, and that if one part
of the oath fell to hindering the other and fighting in his hass, it was
not his fault, but the fault of them that framed such-like. Also, that
if it had not hindered itself in going down, he would have taken it
gladly and willingly, as he had taken down many other untoothsome
morsels before, to the certain knowledge of the Court--such as dead
cats, old hosen and shoes, and a bit of the leg of one of the masters in
the hospital, who was known to be exceedingly unsavoury in his person.
"But all this did not save the poor tyke, for his action in mauling and
beslavering his Majesty's printing and paper was held to be, at least,
Interpretive Treason. And so he was ordered to close prison till such a
time as the Court should call him forth to be hanged like a dog. Which
was pronounced for doom."
Roger McGhie laughed at the tale's end with a gentle, inward laughter,
and tapped Wat with his cane.
"Thou art indeed a merry wag, and speak over well for a gardener," he
said; "but I know not if John Graham would not put a charge of lead into
thee, if he heard thy way of talking. But go thy ways. Tell me quickly
what befel the poor tyke."
"None so evil was his fate," said Wat, "for in the midst of the great
debate that the surprising verdict raised, the tyke drew on a fox's
skin, laid hold of the tail of another tyke, and so passed unobserved
out of the prison. At which many were glad. For, said they, he was a
good tyke that would not sup kail with the Pope nor yet the deil, and so
had no need of his long spoon. And others said that it were a pity to
hang so logical a tyke, for that he was surely no Aberdeen man, ever
ready to cant and recant again."
Roger McGhie laughed aloud and knocked his cane on the ground, for right
well he understood the meaning of all these things, being versed in
parties and politics, which I never was.
"It is mighty merry wit," he said, "and these colleginers are blythesome
blades. I wonder what John Graham will say to this. But go to the
bothies of the bachelor foresters, and get that which may comfort the
inner parts of your cousin from the hills--who, from the hang of his
head, seems not so ready of tongue as thou."
For, indeed, I had been most discreetly silent.
So the tall, grey-headed gentleman went away from us, tapping gently
with his fine cane on the ground, and often stopping to look curiously
at some knot on a tree or some chance puddock or grasshopper on the
roadside.
Then Wat told me that because of his quaint wit and great loyalty, Roger
McGhie of Balmaghie was in high favour with the ruling party, and that
none on his estates were ever molested. Also that Claverhouse frequented
the house greatly, often riding from Dumfries for a single night only to
have the pleasure of his society. He never quartered his men near by the
house of Balmaghie, but rode over alone or with but one attendant in the
forenights--perhaps to get away from roystering Lidderdale of the Isle,
red roaring Baldoon, drinking Winram, and the rest of the boon
companions.
"The laird of Claverhouse will come hither," said Wat, "with a proud set
face, stern and dark as Lucifer's, in the evening. And in the morning
ride away with so fresh a countenance and so pleasing an expression that
one might think him a spirit unfallen. For, as he says, Roger McGhie
does his heart good like medicine."