THE BOWER OF THE STAR.
Day by day I tended him as gently as I could, till in the cave our
provisions were well-nigh spent. Then, one grey morning I took my pistol
to go out on the hillside to see if I could shoot aught to eat. But
because of my nervousness, or other cause, I could at that time do
nothing. Indeed, not so much as a whaup came near me on that great,
wide, dappled hill.
I saw a hill fox rise and run. He was a fine beast and very red, and
held his tail nobly behind him like a flag. But, hardly beset as we
were, we could with difficulty have eaten fox, even had I been able to
shoot him, which I was not.
The day passed slowly, the night came, and it went sore to my heart that
I was able to do so little for the friend of one I loved. I saw that he
would have mended readily enough, if he had received the right
nutriment, which, alas! it seemed far out of my power to obtain. Yet in
the morning, when I went to the mouth of the cave, lo! there,
immediately to the right of me, on a bare place, were two great whaup
eggs, broad-buttocked and splashed with black. I never was gladder to
see food. It was late for the whaups to be breeding; and, indeed, they
had mostly left the moorland by that time. But, nevertheless, it was
manifest that Providence had bidden some bird, perhaps disappointed of
an earlier brood or late mated, to come and lay the eggs before our
door.
I bade Anton take the eggs by the ancient method of sucking--which he
made shift to do, and was very greatly strengthened thereby. So every
morning as long as we remained there, the wild bird laid an egg in the
morning, which made the Covenanter's breakfast. This is but one of the
daily marvels from the Lord which attended our progress. For whensoever
those that have been through the perilous time come together, they
recount these things to one another, and each has his like tale of
preservation and protection to tell.
But that minds me of a strange thing. Once during the little while when
I companied with the Compellers, it was my hap to meet with clattering
John Crichton, that rank persecutor. And what was my surprise to hear
that all his talk ran upon certain providential dreams he had had in the
night time, by which there was revealed to him the hiding place of many
of the "fanatics." Aye, and even the very place pointed out to him in
the dream where it would be most convenient to compass their capturing.
And this in due time he brought about, or said he did. But, for all
that, I do not think that the company he was among set great store by
his truthfulness. For after each wondrous story of adventure and
second-sight they would roar with laughter, and say: "Well done,
Crichton! Out with another one!"
After a day or two of this lack of food, it came suddenly to me what a
dumbhead I was, to bide with an empty belly in a place where at least
there must be plenty of fish near at hand. So I rose early from off my
bed of heather tops, and betook me down to the river edge. It is nothing
but a burn which they call the Eglin Lane, a long, bare water, slow and
peaty, but with some trout of size in it. Also from the broads of Loch
Macaterick, there came another burn with clearer sparkling water and
much sand in the pools. There were trout in both, as one might see by
stealing up to the edge of the brow and looking over quickly. But owing
to the drought, there was water only in the pools of Eglin, and often
but the smallest trickle beneath the stones.
I had a beauty out in a few moments; for so eager was I that I leaped
into the burn just as I was, without so much as waiting to take off any
of my garments. So in the pool there was a-rushing and a-chasing till I
had him out on the grass, his speckled sides glinting bonny on the
heather as he tossed himself briskly from side to side. I followed the
burn down to the fork of the water that flows from Loch Macaterick, and
fished all the pools in this manner. By that time I had enough for three
meals at the least; or perhaps, considering the poor state of our
appetites, for more than that. I put those we should not want that day
into a pretty little fish-pond, which makes a kind of backwater on one
of the burns springing down from the side of the Rig of the Star. And
this was the beginning of the fish-pond which continued to supply us
with food all the time we abode there.
While I was in the river bottom, it chanced that I looked up the great
smooth slopes of the opposite hill, which is one of the range of Kells.
There is a little shaggy clump of trees on the bare side of it, and I
could have sworn that among the trees I saw people stirring.
I could only think that the people there were wanderers like ourselves,
or else spies sent to keep an eye on this wide, wild valley between the
Garryhorn hill and the Spear of the Merrick.
So I came back to the cave no little dashed in spirit, in spite of my
great successes with the trout. I said nothing about what I had seen to
Auld Anton, for he was both weak and feverish. And though certainly
mending, he was not yet able to move out into the sunshine and lie among
the bracken, a thing which would have done him much good on these still
warm days.
But I made a fire with heather and the roots of ancient trees, which in
that strange wild desert stick out of the peat at every step. There I
roasted the trout, of which Anton Lennox ate heartily. I think they had
more relish to a sick man's palate than whaup eggs, even though these
came to him as it were in a miraculous manner; while I had guddled the
trout with my boots and breeks on.
When the meal was over, I bethought me that I should make an excuse, and
steal away over to the side of the Meaull, to see what it might be that
was stirring on that lonely brae-face. For save the scraggy scrunts of
the rowan trees and birks that surround the cave, there was not a tree
within sight, till the woods at the upper end of Loch Doon began to take
the sun.
I carefully charged my pistols and told Anton how I proposed to go out
to shoot mountain hares or other victual that I could see.
He did not say a word to bid me stay, but only advised me to keep very
close to the cave. Because, once off the bosky face of the cliff, there
was no saying what hidden eyes might spy me out. For Lag, he said, was
certainly lying in hold at Garryhorn at that time, and Claverhouse
himself was on the borders of the country. Concerning this last I knew
better than he, and was much desirous that we could get Anton well
enough to move further out of the reach of his formidable foes.
I started just when the heated haze of the afternoon was clearing with
the first early-falling chill of even. The hills were casting shadows
upon each other towards the Dungeon and Loch Enoch, where, in the
wildest and most rugged country, some of the folk of the wilderness were
in hiding.
As I went I heard the grey crow croak and the muckle corbie cry "Glonk,"
somewhere over by the Slock of the Hooden. They had got a lamb to
themselves or a dead sheep belike. But to me it sounded like the
gloating of the dragoons over some captured company of the poor
wandering Presbyters. It seemed a strange thing for me, when I came to
think of it, that I, the son of the Laird of Earlstoun, my mother, that
had long time been the lady thereof, and my brother Sandy, that was now
Earlstoun himself, should all be skipping and hiding like thieves, with
the dragoons at our tail. Now this thought came not often to us, who
were born during the low estate of the Scottish kirk. But when it did
come, the thought was even more bitter to us, because we had no
sustaining memories of her former high estate, nor remembered what God's
kirk had been in Scotland from the year 1638 down to the weary coming of
Charles Stuart and the down-sitting of the Drunken Parliament in the
Black Year of Sixty.
But for all that I thought on these things as I went. Right carefully I
kept the cover of every heather bush, peat hag, muckle grey granite
stone, and waving clump of bracken. So that in no long space, by making
a wide circuit, I came to look down upon the little clump of trees,
where I had seen the figures moving, as I guddled the trout for our
dinner in the reaches of the Eglin Lane.
Now, however, there seemed to be a great quietness all about the place,
and the scanty trees did not so much as wave a branch in the still air
of the afternoon.
Yet I saw, as it had been the waft of a jaypiet's wing among them, when
I came over the steep rocks of the Hooden's Slock, and went to ford the
Gala Lane--which like the other water was, by the action of the long dry
year, sunken to no more than a chain of pools. But as I circled about
and came behind the trees, there was, as I say, a great quiet. My heart
went up and down like a man's hand at the flail in a barn. Yet for my
unquiet, there was no great apparent reason. It might be, indeed, that
the enemies had laid a snare for me, and that I was already as good as
setting out for the Grassmarket, with the ladder and the rope before me,
and the lad with the piebald coat at my tail. And this was a sore
thought to me, for we Gordons are not of a race that take hanging
lightly. We never had more religion than we could carry for comfort. Yet
we always got our paiks for what little we had, on which side soever we
might be. It is a strange thing that we should always have managed to
come out undermost whichever party was on top, and of this I cannot tell
the reason. On the other hand, the Kennedies trimmed their sails to the
breeze as it blew, and were ever on the wave's crest. But then they were
Ayrshiremen. And Ayr, it is well kenned, aye beats Galloway--that is,
till it comes to the deadly bellyful of fighting.
Thus I communed with myself, ever drawing nearer to the clump of trees
on the side of the Meaull, and murmuring good Protestant prayers, as if
they had been no better than Mary's beads all the time.
As I came to the little gairy above the trees, I looked down, and from
the verge of it I saw the strangest contrivance. It was a hut beside a
tiny runlet of water--a kind of bower with the sides made of bog-oak
stobs taken from the edges of the strands. The roof was daintily theeked
with green rushes and withes, bound about with heather. Heather also was
mingled with the thatching rushes, so that from a little distance the
structure seemed to be part of the heath. I lay and watched to see what
curious birds had made such a bower on the Star in the dark days. For
such dainty carefulness was not the wont of us chiels of the Covenant,
and I could not think that any of the rough-riders after us would so
have spent their time. An inn yard, a pint stoup, and a well-cockered
doxie were more to their liking, than plaiting the bonny heather into a
puppet's house upon the hillside.