CHAPTER I.

LAURA EVERINGHAM;

OR,

THE HIGHLANDERS OF GLEN ORA.

BY

JAMES GRANT,

AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE AIDE-DE-CAMP,"

ETC. ETC.

"Ruin's wheel has driven o'er us,

Not a hope dare now attend;

The world wide is all before us,

But a world without a friend!"

_Strathallan's Lament._

LONDON:

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,

THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.

NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET.

LONDON:

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

I. The Foster Brothers

II. The Feudal Lords of the Nineteenth Century

III. Mr. Ephraim Snaggs

IV. The Rock of the Boar

V. Callum Dhu

VI. Which Treats of many Things

VII. The Rent Court

VIII. Minnie

IX. The Red Priest of Applecross

X. The Stone of the Sun

XI. My Mother

XII. The Gathering

XIII. The Stone of Strength

XIV. The Seven Bullets

XV. The Sixth Day

XVI. Sir Horace

XVII. Mr. Snobleigh

XVIII. Death!

XIX. The Eviction

XX. Desolation

XXI. The Heather on Fire!

XXII. The Uisc Dhu

XXIII. The Ruined Cottage

XXIV. The White Stag

XXV. The Gael and the Saxon

XXVI. A Last Interview

XXVII. Dumbarton

XXVIII. My Regiment

XXIX. The Route--We Sail

XXX. The Troop Ship

XXXI. The Reefs of Palegrossa

XXXII. The Yuze Bashi

XXXIII. The Khan

XXXIV. Story of the Greek Lieutenant

XXXV. The Execution

XXXVI. In Orders for Duty

XXXVII. I March To Rodosdchigg

XXXVIII. The Vision of Corporal Moustapha

XXXIX. The Turkish Veil

XL. A Love Adventure

XLI. A Strange Task

XLII. Two Charming Eyes

XLIII. I Scale the Window

XLIV. Temptation and Folly

XLV. Story of the Wise King and the Wicked Geni

XLVI. Hussein's Wrath

XLVII. Sequel to Chapter Forty-Three

XLVIII. The Turkish Boat

XLIX. The Bagnio

L. The Two Turkish Lieutenants

LI. Dreams and Longings

LII. The Galiondoi

LIII. A Row in the Bagnio

LIV. Flight

LV. Resume my Command

LVI. Biodh Treun!

LVII. The Isle of Marmora

LVIII. The Fairy Bell

LIX. A Gleam of other Days

LX. Farewell

THE HIGHLANDERS OF GLEN ORA.

CHAPTER I.

THE FOSTER-BROTHERS.

It was after sunset in the month of April three years ago.

The hills of the Western Highlands were still tipped with a golden

gleam, but the deep and savage hollows of Glen Ora were gloomy and

full of dark shadows. Still crowned with the snow of last winter,

above it towered Ben Ora, beneath whose mighty scalp the giant peaks

of the north and west were dwindled down to little hills; for among

those stupendous mountains the eye becomes so accustomed to their

colossal proportions, that all just ideas of size and distance are

lost. At its base spread one of those vast tracts of brown or purple

heath so common in the Scottish Highlands, overspread by a wilderness

of stones, and torn by ghastly ravines from which the mist of

downward torrents rose. The sides of these were tufted by those

black whin bushes, the introduction of which tradition ascribes to

the hunting Stuarts, as a cover for their game.

On the western shoulder of Ben Ora, a ridge of riven and naked rocks,

resembling the skeleton of a mountain range, stood a herd of deer,

with all their proud antlers visible against the clear bright flush

of the sunset sky.

Two men were observing them from the rugged bank of one of the

watercourses, in which they were half hidden. One carried a

fishing-rod, and the other a gun.

He with the rod was a tall, stout, and well-made lad of some twenty

years, with dark-blue eyes, curly brown hair, and a sunburnt visage;

he wore a grey shooting-jacket and kilt, a sporran, of badger-skin,

and a heather-coloured bonnet. His companion was a few years older,

larger in form, brawny, thickset, and strong as a Highland bull, and

his knees, where shown by his tattered kilt and well-worn hose, of no

colour known in nature, were almost as hairy as those of the same

animal. He wore the usual coarse blue jacket and bonnet of a

Highland peasant.

His hair, beard, and whiskers, which grew all matted in a curly mass,

were black, almost to that deep tint which seems blue when touched by

the light; his eyes were dark, restless, keen, and sparkling; his

nose somewhat short and saucy, but his face, which was browned to the

hue of mahogany by exposure to the weather, was thoughtful, stern,

anxious, and at times even haggard in expression. Save his gun and

skene-dhu, he had no weapon, though his aspect and bearing were rough

and wild as those of any Celtic bandit we have read of in romance;

but then his figure was a model of manly beauty, symmetry, and grace.

The first personage with the red was Allan Mac Innon, MYSELF, and the

dark and handsome man was my foster-brother---my _co-dhalta_--Black

Mac Ian--usually named by us Callum Dhu, and on this eventful evening

we were observing a party of five English tourists or visitors, who

were somewhat rashly (as they were without a guide) urging their

shaggy shelties up the side of Ben Ora, to obtain a view of the

scenery by moonlight.

This party consisted of two fair and laughing English girls, wearing

broad brown straw hats; and three gentlemen clad in those peculiar

coats and tartan caps, without which no Sassenach deems himself

eligible to pass the Highland frontier.

'Callum,' said I, 'shall I net warn them to beware?'

'It would ill become your father's son to run after _their_ tails,

like a keeper or gilly,' said he, grasping my arm angrily, as we

spoke in Gaelic, to give the original of which would fidget my friend

the printer.

'Callum, they are not more than half-a-mile off now.'

'Oh, what a pity it is, that the half-mile was not a thousand, ay, or

ten thousand! The fires that may be extinguished this summer on many

a hearth in Glen Ora would burn all the brighter perhaps in winter.'

'Not in the least, Callum; for if we had not one truculent tyrant

over us,' said I, 'we would be certain to have another.'

'Aich ay; for the Mac Innons of Glen Ora are doomed men! and--'

'See, see,' I exclaimed, 'they have almost reached the

Craig-na-tuirc, and if they attempt to descend after nightfall,

something terrible will happen.'

'Let it happen: if it is their fate, can we avert it?' said Callum,

with a dark scowl in his eyes which sparkled in the last flush of the

west; 'what matter is it to you, Allan Mac Innon? Has not this

man--this Horace Everingham, Baronet, and so forth, who bought the

fair patrimony your father's brother wasted in all manner of riotous

living--told you coldly, when begging a six months' mercy for your

sick mother, and for the two-and-thirty poor families in the glen,

that he intrusted all such petty affairs to his factor, (that mangy

Lowland cur, Ephraim Snaggs, with his Bible phrases and pious

quotations,) and what said _he_? That the new proprietor had

resolved to turn the glen into a deer forest---a hunting field--and

that whether the rents were forthcoming or not, the people must go!

That Canada was a fine place for such as they, and that hampers of

foreign game would soon replace them. The curse of heaven be on his

foreign game, say I! When the Queen wants men to recruit the ranks

of the Black Watch, of the Gordon Highlanders, and the Ross-shire

Buffs, will she borrow the contents of the Lowlander's hamper? Let

these moonlight visitors go over the rocks if they will--let Loch Ora

receive their bodies and the devil their souls, for what matters it

to you, Mac Innon, or to me?'

'True, true,' said I, bitterly, 'but there are two ladies with

them--Laura, the daughter of Sir Horace, and her friend.'

'They, at least, are kind to the poor people, and gave many a pound

to the women of Glentuirc, when they were expatriated last year; yet

evil comes over every stranger who crosses Ben Ora.'

'A spirit is said to haunt it,' said I.

'Would to heaven a spirit haunted the glen, and kept out all but

those whose right comes not from paper or from parchment--but from

the hand of God!'

'But the women, Callum?'

'_Co-dhalta_, be not a soft-hearted fool,' was the pettish response;

'who cared for _our_ women, when the sheriff, Mac Fee, with his

police and soldiers, came here and tore down the huts, and fired

through the thatch to force the people out? Who cared for old

bedridden Aileen Mac Donuil, whose four sons died with eight hundred

of our Cameronians in India, and who was shot through the body, and

died miserably on the wet hill side three days after? And so, forth

were they all driven to the shore by the baton and bayonet--the old

and the young, the strong man and the infant, the aged, the frail,

and the women almost in labour--to be crammed on board the great

ship, the _Duchess_, and taken to America, like slaves from Africa,

and why? Because the land that gave corn and potatoes to the people

was wanted to fatten the grouse and red deer, and thus were they

driven forth from their fathers' holdings, their fathers' homes and

graves; so Allan, believe me, your sympathy for the strangers who are

now on the hill, is all moonshine in the water. Ha! ha! something

always happens to those who go up Ben Ora after nightfall. You

remember the story of Alaster Grant, the Captain Dhu, or Black

Alexander from Urquhart? He was a frightfully immoral character,

savage and fierce, and was said to have done dreadful things in the

Indian wars, fighting, plundering, and sparing neither man, woman,

nor child. Well, this dissolute soldier was shooting with some of

his wild companions from Fort William, about a year after Waterloo.

They spent a night on Ben Ora, and all that night the lightning

played about its scalp. Next morning a shepherd--old Alisdair Mac

Gouran--found their hut torn to pieces; the whole party, to all

appearance, strangled, their gun-barrels twisted like corkscrews, and

the Black Captain's body torn limb from limb, and strewed all around;

but whether by a thunderbolt or the devil, no man knew, though many

averred it must have been the latter. Six months ago, I watched an

Englishman or a Lowlander, (which, I neither know nor care,) go up

the Craig-na-tuirc, and he never more came down; but three months

after, his bones, or little more, were found at the mouth of the Uisc

Dhu, with his travelling knapsack and sketch-book close by; for six

long miles the Lammas floods had swept them from the spot where he

must have perished. Two others went up in October, and in ascending

the mountain were singing merrily; but the snow came down that night,

and hid the path; the cold was bitter, and the deer were driven down

to the clachan in the glen. Next day we found the strangers stiff

enough, and piled a cairn to mark the spot. I warned another

traveller, a Scotsman too, from the Braes of Angus, against ascending

the Ben alone! He, too, went up laughing, and came down no more. A

week or two after I was standing on the brow of the Craig-na-tuirc,

and saw a gathering of the ravens in the corrie below. I heard their

exulting croak, and the flap of their dusky wings; and there, in the

moss of the wet ravine, we found the traveller's body wedged up to

the neck, and his bare skull divested of eyes, nose, and hair, picked

white and clean by these birds of evil omen. Then we all know the

story of the keeper that was gored by the white stag, on the night

your father died.'

'All this I know well enough,' said I, 'and hence my anxiety for the

two ladies, who are now in the dusk, ascending that dangerous

precipice.'

'Who pities our women--yet they are starving?'

'God pities them.'

'He alone!' responded Callum, lifting his tattered bonnet at the

name; 'yet my poor mother died in my arms of sheer hunger, and

Snaggs, the factor, mocked me at her funeral, because I had a piper

who played the march of Gil Chriosd before her coffin; but I heard

him with scorn, for I knew that my mother--she who nursed you, Allan

Mac Innon, had now that inheritance of which not even her Grace of

Sutherland, or the great Lord of Breadalbane, can deprive the poor

Highlander--a grave on the mountain side, and a home among the angels

in heaven.'

The words of my foster-brother raised a momentary glow of indignation

in my breast; and turning away from the mountain, we began to descend

into the glen in the twilight, and I strove to think no more about

the strangers or their fate, but in vain, for Laura Everingham, with

all her pretty winning ways, was still before me, and her voice was

in my ear.

We had met repeatedly in our mutual rides, rambles, and wanderings,

and the impression she made upon me, when acting as her guide to the

old ruined chapels, towers, and burial-places, the high cascades, and

deep corries of the Ora, and other solemn scenes of nature, with

which our district abounded, was lasting, pure, and deep. I was

learning to love her, more dearly than I dared to tell, for

poverty--crushing, grinding poverty--like a mountain weighed upon my

heart and tongue; yet Laura knew my secret--at least I hoped so; pure

devotion and true tenderness cannot remain long concealed; a woman

soon discovers them by a mysterious intuition, and as Laura (knowing

this) neither repulsed nor shunned me, was I not justified in

believing myself not altogether indifferent to her?

Time will tell. 'Happy age,' says some Italian writer, 'when a look,

the rustle of a garment--a flower--a mere nothing, suffice to make

the youthful heart overflow with torrents of joy!'

The severity of Sir Horace, and the pride, petulance, and hostility

of my mother, of whom more in good time, had partly estranged us of

late; but Laura had repeatedly said,

'If I knew your mother, Allan, I am sure she would learn to love me.'

'I know not, Miss Everingham, how any one could help loving you!' was

my reply, and I trembled at my own temerity.

One word more for Callum Dhu, and he and my reader must be acquainted

for life.

His grandfather was that noble and heroic Mac Ian, who, after the

defeat of Prince Charles, watched over him with matchless fidelity

for weeks, concealing him in the mountains at the risk of his life,

and robbing for his support while his own children were starving, and

though he knew that 30,000_l._ were set upon the head of the royal

fugitive. This poor man was afterwards, when in extreme old age,

hanged at Inverness, for 'lifting' a sheep; but, though impelled by

hunger to borrow subsistence from the folds of the wealthy, he had

scrupulously avoided the possessions of the poor; and before death,

took off his bonnet, to 'thank the blessed God that he had never

betrayed his trust, never injured the poor, nor refused to share his

crust with the stranger, the needy, or the fatherless.'

This poor sheepstealer died like a Christian and a hero, and had in

youth been one of those Highland warriors whose more than Spartan

faith and truth a late pitiful historian has dared to stigmatize as

mere ignorance of the value of gold. Under the same circumstances,

we presume, this Scottish writer would have known to a penny the

value set upon the head of his fugitive guest.

With his blood and spirit, Callum Dhu had inherited many of the wild

ideas and primitive Celtic virtues of his ancestor, as the reader

will see when they become better acquainted.