Samuel Rutherford Crockett – The Complete Collection

Chapter 30

One of the others again attempted to run, but he had not got beyond the dyke of the swine-ree when the cold rim of Mons Meg was laid to his ear.

"She's fu' to the muzzle, Wullie," said the Old Tory; "I wadna rin, gin I war you."

Willie did not run. On the contrary, he stood and shook visibly.

"She wad mak' an awfu' scatterment gin she war to gang aff. Ye had better be oot o' her reach. Ye are braw climbers. I saw ye on my riggin' the nicht already. Climb your ways back up again, and stick every man o' ye a bit o' the bonny yellow in your bonnets."

So the four jesters very reluctantly climbed away up to the rigging of David Armitt's house under the lowering threat of Mons Meg's iron jaws.

Then the Old Tory took out his pipe, primed it, lighted it, and sat down to wait for the dawning with grim determination. With one eye he appeared to observe the waxing and waning of his pipe; and with the other, c****d at an angle, he watched the four men on his rigging.

"It's a braw seat, up there, gentlemen. Fine for the breeks. Dinna hotch owre muckle, or ye'll maybe gang doon through, and I'm tellin' ye, ye'll rue it gin ye fa' on oor Meg and disturb her in her mornin' sleep. Hearken till her rowtin' like a coo! Certes, hoo wad ye like to sleep a' yer life ayont that? Ye wad be for takin' to the empty swine-ree that the sow gaed oot o', as weel as me."

So the Old Tory sat with his blunderbuss across his knees, and comforted the men on the roof with reminiscences of the snoring powers of his spouse Meg. But, in spite of the entertaining nature of the conversation, Jamie Wardhaugh and the others were more than usually silent. They sat in a row with their chins upon their knees and the ridiculous yellow favours streaming from their broad blue bonnets.

The morning came slowly. Gib Martin, the tailor, came to his door at ten minutes to six to look out. He had hastily drawn on his trousers, and he came out to spit and see what kind of morning it was; then he was going back to bed again. But he wished to tell the minister that he had been up before five that morning; and, as he was an elder, he did not want to tell a whole lie.

Gib glanced casually at the sky, looked west to the little turret on the kirk to see the clock, and was about to turn in again, when something black against the reddening eastern sky caught his eye.

"Preserve us a', what's yon on Davit Armitt's riggin'?" he cried.

And so surprised was Gib Martin, that he came all the way down the street in three spangs, and that on his stocking-feet, though he was a married man.

But he did not see the Old Tory sitting by the side of the pig-sty--a thing he had cause to be sorry for.

"Save us, Jamie, what are ye doin' sittin' on Davit Armitt's hoose-riggin'? Gin the doited auld Tory brute catches ye--"

"A fine mornin' to ye, tailor," said the Old Tory from the side of the dyke.

The tailor faced about with a sudden pallor.

The muzzle of Mons Meg was set fair upon him, and he felt for the first time in his life that he could not have threaded a needle had his life depended on it.

"Climb up there aside the other four," commanded David Armitt.

"I'm on my stockin'-feet, Davit!" said the tailor.

"It's brave an' dry for the stockin'-feet up on the riggin'," said the Old Tory. "Up wi' ye, lad; ye couldna do better."

And the tailor was beside the others before he knew it, a strand of the bright yellow streaming from the button-hole of his shirt. So one after another the inhabitants of Dullarg came out to wonder, and mounted to wear the badge of slavery; until, when the chariot of the Tory candidate dashed in at twenty minutes to seven on its way to the county town, the rigging of David Armitt's house was crowded with men all decorated with his yellow colours. Never had such a sight been seen in the Radical and Chartist village of Dullarg.

Then the Old Tory leaped to his feet as the horses went prancing by.

"Gie a cheer, boys!" he cried; and as the muzzle of Mons Meg swept down the file, a strange wavering cry arose, that was half a gowl of anger and half a broken-backed cheer.

Then "Bang!" went Mons Meg, and David Armitt took down the street at full speed with sixteen angry men jumping at his tail. But, by good luck, he got upon the back of the Laird's coach, and was borne rapidly out of their sight down the dusty road that led to the county town.

It was the Old Tory's Waterloo. He did not venture back till the time of the bee-killing. Then he came without fear, for he knew he was the only man who could take off the honey from the village hives to the satisfaction of the parish.

The Old Tory kept the secret of his Toryism to the last.

Only the minister caught it as he lay a-dying. He was not penitent, but he wanted to explain matters.

"It's no as they a' think, minister," he said, speaking with difficulty. "I cared nocht aboot it, ae way or the ither. I'm sure I aye wantit to be a douce man like the lave. But Meg was sair, sair to leeve wi'. She fair drave me till't. D'ye think the like o' that wull be ta'en into account, as it were--up yonder?"

The minister assured him that it would, and the Old Tory died in peace.

V

THE GREAT RIGHT-OF-WAY CASE

_The Vandal and the Visigoth come here, The trampler under foot, and he whose eyes, Unblest, behold not where the glory lies; The wallower in mire, whose sidelong leer_

_Degrades the wholesome earth--these all come near To gaze upon the wonder of the hills, And drink the limpid clearness of the rills. Yet each returns to what he holds most dear_,

_To change the script and grind the mammon mills Unpurified; for what men hither bring, That take they hence, and Nature doth appear_

_As one that spends herself for sodden wills, Who pearls of price before the swine doth fling, And from the shrine casts out the sacred gear._

Glen Conquhar was a summer resort. Its hillsides had never been barred by the intrusive and peremptory notice-board, a bugbear to ladies strolling book in hand, a c**k-shy to the children passing on their way to school. The Conquhar was a swift, clear-running river coursing over its bed of gneiss, well tucked-in on either side by green hayfields, where the grasshopper for ever "burred," and the haymakers stopped with elbows on their rakes to watch the passer-by. The Marquis had never enforced his rights of exclusion in his Highland solitudes. His shooting-lodge of Ben Dhu, which lay half a dozen miles to the north, was tenanted only by himself and a guest or two during the months of September and October. The visitors at the hotel above the Conquhar Water saw now and then a tall figure waiting at the bridge or scanning the hill-side through a pair of deer-stalker glasses. Then the underlings of the establishment would approach and in awe-struck tones whisper the information, "That's the Marquis!" For it is the next thing in these parts to being Providence to be the Marquis of Rannoch.

The hotel of Glen Conquhar was far from the haunts of men. Its quiet was never disturbed by the noise of roysterers. It was the summer home of a number of quiet people from the south--fishing men chiefly, who loved to hear the water rushing about their legs on the edges of the deep salmon-pools of the Conquhar Water. There was Cole, Radical M.P., impulsive and warm-hearted, a London lawyer who had declined, doubtless to his own monetary loss, to put his sense of justice permanently into a blue bag. There was Dr. Percival, the father of all them that cast the angle in Glen Conquhar, who now fished little in these degenerate days, but instead told tales of the great salmon of thirty years ago--fellows tremendous enough to make the spick-and-span rods of these days, with their finicking attachments, crack their joints even to think of holding the monsters. Chiefly and finally there was "Old Royle," who came in March, first of all the fishing clan, and lingered on till November, when nothing but the weathered birch-leaves spun down the flooded glen of the Conquhar. Old Royle regarded the best fishing in the water as his birthright, and every rival as an intruder. He showed this too, for there was no bashfulness about Old Royle. Young men who had just begun to fish consulted him as to where they should begin on the morrow. Old Royle was of opinion that there was not a single fish within at least five miles of the hotel. Indeed, he thought of "taking a trap" in the morning to a certain pool six miles up the water, where he had seen a round half-dozen of beauties only the night before. The young men departed, strapped and gaitered, at c**k-crow on the morrow. They fished all day, and caught nothing save and except numerous dead branches in the narrow swirls of the linn. But they lost, in addition to their tempers, the tops of a rod or two caught in the close birch tangles, many casts of flies, and a fly-book which one of them had dropped out of his breast-pocket while in act to disentangle his hook from the underlip of a caving bank. His fly-book and he had descended into the rushing Conquhar together. He clambered out fifty yards below; and as for the fly-book, it was given by a mother-salmon to her young barbarians to play with in the deepest pool between Glendona and Loch Alsh.

When these young men returned, jolly Mr. Forbes, of landlords the most excellent, received them with a merry twinkle in his eye. In the lobby, Old Royle was weighing his "take." He had caught two beautiful fish--one in the pool called "Black Duncan," and the other half a mile farther up. He had had the water to himself all day. These young men passed in to dinner with thoughts too deep for words.

Suddenly the quiet politics of the glen were stirred by the posting of a threatening notice, which appeared on the right across the bridge at the end of the path, along which from time immemorial the ladies of the hotel had been in the habit of straying in pairs, communing of feminine mysteries; or mooning singly with books and water-colour blocks, during the absence of the nominal heads of their houses, who were engaged in casting the fly far up the glen.

Once or twice a surly keeper peremptorily turned back the innocent and law-abiding s*x, but always when unaccompanied by the more persistent male. So there was wrath at the _table-d'hôte_. There was indignation in the houses of summer residence scattered up and down the strath. It was the new tenant of the Lodge of Glen Conquhar, or rather his wife, who had done this thing. For the first season for many years the shooting and fishing on the north side of the Conquhar had been let by the Marquis of Rannoch. From the minister's glebe for ten miles up the water these rights extended. They had been leased to the scion of a Black Country family, noble in the second generation by virtue of the paternal tubs and vats. The master was a shy man, dwelling in gaiters and great boots, only to be met with far on the hills, and then passing placidly on with quiet down-looking eyes. Contrariwise, the lady was much in evidence. Her noble proportions and determined eye made the boldest quail. The M.P. thanked Heaven three times a day that he was not her husband. She managed the house and the shooting as well. Among other things, she had resolved that no more should mere hotel-visitors walk to within sight of her windows, and that the path which led up the north side of the glen must be shut up for ever and ever. She procured a painted board from a cunning artificer in the neighbouring town of Portmore, which announced (quite illegally) the pains and penalties which would overtake those who ventured to set foot on the forbidden roadway.