Подготовка текста, комментарии и словарь Д. В. Павлоцкого

I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father’s house. The sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road; and by the time I had come as far as the manse, the blackbirds were whistling in the garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of the dawn was beginning to arise and die away.

Mr. Campbell, the minister of Essendean, was waiting for me by the garden gate, good man! He asked me if I had breakfasted; and hearing that I lacked for nothing, he took my hand in both of his and clapped it kindly under his arm.

‘Well, Davie, lad,’ said he, ‘I will go with you as far as the ford, to set you on the way.’ And we began to walk forward in silence.

‘Are ye sorry to leave Essendean?’ said he, after awhile.

‘Why, sir,’ said I, ‘if I knew where I was going, or what was likely to become of me, I would tell you candidly. Essendean is a good place indeed, and I have been very happy there; but then I have never been anywhere else. My father and mother, since they are both dead, I shall be no nearer to in Essendean than in the Kingdom of Hungary, and, to speak truth, if I thought I had a chance to better myself where I was going I would go with a good will.’

‘Ay?’ said Mr. Campbell. ‘Very well, Davie. Then it behoves me to tell your fortune; or so far as I may. When your mother was gone, and your father (the worthy, Christian man) began to sicken for his end, he gave me in charge a certain letter, which he said was your inheritance. “So soon,” says he, “as I am gone, and the house is redd up and the gear disposed of” (all which, Davie, hath been done), “give my boy this letter into his hand, and start him off to the house of Shaws, not far from Cramond. That is the place I came from,” he said, “and it’s where it befits that my boy should return. He is a steady lad,” your father said, “and a canny goer; and I doubt not he will come safe, and be well lived where he goes.’’’

‘The house of Shaws!’ I cried. ‘What had my poor father to do with the house of Shaws?’

‘Nay,’ said Mr. Campbell, ‘who can tell that for a surety?

But the name of that family, Davie, boy, is the name you bear – Balfours of Shaws: an ancient, honest, reputable house, peradventure in these latter days decayed. Your father, too, was a man of learning as befitted his position; no man more plausibly conducted school; nor had he the manner or the speech of a common dominie; all well-kenned[1] gentlemen, had pleasure in his society. Lastly, to put all the elements of this affair before you, here is the testamentary letter itself, superscrived by the own hand of our departed brother.’

He gave me the letter, which was addressed in these words: ‘To the hands of Ebenezer Balfour, Esquire, of Shaws, in his house of Shaws, these will be delivered by my son, David Balfour.’ My heart was beating hard at this great prospect now suddenly opening before a lad of seventeen years of age, the son of a poor country dominie in the Forest of Ettrick.

‘Mr. Campbell,’ I stammered, ‘and if you were in my shoes, would you go?’

‘Of a surety,’ said the minister, ‘that would I, and without pause. If the worst came to the worst, and your high relations (as I cannot but suppose them to be somewhat of your blood) should put you to the door, ye can but walk the two days back again and risp at the manse door. But I would rather hope that ye shall be well received, as your poor father forecast for you, and for anything that I ken come to be a great man in time. And here, Davie, laddie[2],’ he resumed, ‘it lies near upon my conscience to improve this parting, and set you on the right guard against the dangers of the world.’

There, then, with uplifted forefinger, he first put me on my guard against a considerable number of heresies, to which I had no temptation, and urged upon me to be instant in my prayers and reading of the Bible. That done, he drew a picture of the great house that I was bound to, and how I should conduct myself with its inhabitants.

‘Be soople, Davie, in things immaterial,’ said he. ‘Bear ye this in mind, that, though gentle born, ye have had a country rearing. Dinnae[3] shame us, Davie, dinnae shame us! In yon[4] great, muckle house, with all these domestics, upper and under, show yourself as nice, as circumspect, as quick at the conception, and as slow of speech as any. As for the laird[5] – remember he’s the laird; I say no more: honour to whom honour. It’s a pleasure to obey a laird; or should be, to the young.’

‘Well, sir,’ said I, ‘it may be; and I’ll promise you I’ll try to make it so.’

‘Why, very well said,’ replied Mr. Campbell, heartily. ‘And now to come to the material, or (to make a quibble) to the immaterial. I have here a little packet which contains four things.’ He tugged it, as he spoke, and with some great difficulty, from the skirt pocket of his coat. ‘Of these four things, the first is your legal due: the little pickle money for your father’s books and plenishing. The other three are gifties that Mrs. Campbell and myself would be blithe of your acceptance. The first, which is round, will likely please ye best at the first off-go; but, O Davie, laddie, it’s but a drop of water in the sea; it’ll help you but a step, and vanish like the morning. The second, which is flat and square and written upon, will stand by you through life, like a good staff for the road, and a good pillow to your head in sickness. And as for the last, which is cubical, that’ll see you, it’s my prayerful wish, into a better land.’

With that he got upon his feet, took off his hat, and prayed a little while aloud; then suddenly took me in his arms and embraced me very hard; then held me at arm’s length, looking at me with his face all working with sorrow; and then whipped about, and crying good-bye to me, set off backward by the way that we had come at a sort of jogging run. Then it came in upon my mind that this was all his sorrow at my departure; and my conscience smote me hard and fast, because I, for my part, was overjoyed to get away out of that quiet country-side, and go to a great, busy house, among rich and respected gentlefolk of my own name and blood.

‘Davie, Davie,’ I thought, ‘was ever seen such black ingratitude? Can you forget old favours and old friends at the mere whistle of a name? Fie, fie; think shame.’

And I sat down and opened the parcel to see the nature of my gifts. That which he had called cubical, I had never had much doubt of; sure enough it was a little Bible. That which he had called round, I found to be a shilling piece; and the third, which was to help me so wonderfully both in health and sickness all the days of my life, was a little piece of coarse yellow paper, written upon thus in red ink:

‘TO MAKE LILLY OF THE VALLEY WATER. – Take the flowers of lilly of the valley and distil them in sack, and drink a spooneful or two as there is occasion. It restores speech to those that have the dumb palsey. It is good against the gout; it comforts the heart and strengthens the memory; it is good, ill or well, and whether man or woman.’

And then, in the minister’s own hand, was added: ‘Likewise for sprains, rub it in; and for the cholic, a great spooneful in the hour.’

To be sure, I laughed over this; but it was rather tremulous laughter; and I was glad to get my bundle on my staff ’s end and set out over the ford and up the hill upon the farther side; till, just as I came on the green drove-road running wide through the heather, I took my last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard where my father and my mother lay.

On the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in the midst of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh smoking like a kiln. There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying anchored in the firth; both of which, for as far away as they were, I could distinguish clearly; and both brought my country heart into my mouth.

Presently after, I came by a house where a shepherd lived, and got a rough direction for the neighbourhood of Cramond[6]. A little farther on I was told I was in Cramond parish, and began to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of Shaws. It was a word that seemed to surprise those of whom I sought my way. At first I thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit, and that all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place to which I was bound. But after two, or maybe three, had given me the same look and the same answer, I began to take it in my head there was something strange about the Shaws itself.

I changed the form of my inquiries; and spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the house of Shaws.

‘What’ll like be your business, mannie[7]?’

‘I was led to think that I would get a situation,’ I said, looking as modest as I could.

‘What?’ cries the carter, in so sharp a note that his very horse started; and then, ‘Well, mannie,’ he added, ‘it’s nane of my affairs; but ye seem a decent-spoken lad; and if ye’ll take a word from me, ye’ll keep clear of the Shaws.’

The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful white wig, whom I saw to be a barber on his rounds; and knowing well that barbers were great gossips, I asked him plainly what sort of a man was Mr. Balfour of the Shaws.

‘Hoot, hoot, hoot,’ said the barber, ‘nae kind of a man, nae kind of a man at all’;

I cannot well describe the blow this dealt to my illusions. What kind of a great house was this or what sort of a gentleman? If an hour’s walking would have brought me back to Essendean, had left my adventure then and there, and returned to Mr. Campbell’s. But when I had come so far already, mere shame would not suffer me to desist till I had put the matter to the touch of proof; and little as I liked the sound of what I heard, I still kept asking my way and still kept advancing.

It was drawing on to sundown when I met a stout, dark, sour-looking woman coming trudging down a hill; and she, when I had put my usual question, turned sharp about, accompanied me back to the summit she had just left, and pointed to a great bulk of building standing very bare upon a green in the bottom of the next valley. The country was pleasant round about, running in low hills, pleasantly watered and wooded, and the crops, to my eyes, wonderfully good; but the house itself appeared to be a kind of ruin; no road led up to it; no smoke arose from any of the chimneys; nor was there any semblance of a garden. My heart sank.

‘That!’ I cried.

The woman’s face lit up with a malignant anger. ‘That is the house of Shaws!’ she cried. ‘Blood built it; blood stopped the building of it; blood shall bring it down. See here!’ she cried again – ‘I spit upon the ground, and crack my thumb at it! Black be its fall!’

And the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one took the pith out of my legs.

I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws. The more I looked, the pleasanter that countryside appeared; and yet the barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy.

At last the sun went down, and then, right up against the yellow sky, I saw a scroll of smoke go mounting; there it was, and meant a fire, and warmth, and cookery, and some living inhabitant that must have lit it; and this comforted my heart. So I set forward by a little faint track in the grass that led in my direction.

The nearer I got to the house, the drearier it appeared. It seemed like the one wing of a house that had never been finished. What should have been the inner end stood open on the upper floors, and showed against the sky with steps and stairs of uncompleted masonry. Many of the windows were unglazed, and bats flew in and out like doves out of a dove-cote.

The night had begun to fall as I got close; and in three of the lower windows, which were very high up and narrow, and well-barred, the changing light of a little fire began to glimmer. I came forward cautiously, and giving ear as I came, heard someone rattling with dishes, and a little dry, eager cough that came in fits; but there was no sound of speech, and not a dog barked.

I lifted my hand with a faint heart under my jacket, and knocked once. Then I stood and waited. The house had fallen into a dead silence; a whole minute passed away, and nothing stirred but the bats overhead. Whoever was in that house kept deadly still, and must have held his breath.

I was in two minds whether to run away; but anger got the upper hand, and I began instead to rain kicks and buffets on the door, and to shout out aloud for Mr. Balfour. I was in full career, when I heard the cough right overhead, and jumping back and looking up, beheld a man’s head in a tall nightcap, and the bell mouth of a blunderbuss, at one of the first-storey windows.

‘It’s loaded,’ said a voice.

‘I have come here with a letter,’ I said, ‘to Mr. Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws. Is he here?’

‘Well,’ was the reply, ‘ye can put it down upon the doorstep, and be off with ye.’

‘I will do no such thing,’ I cried. ‘I will deliver it into Mr. Balfour’s hands, as it was meant I should. It is a letter of introduction.’

‘Who are ye, yourself?’ he asked, after a considerable pause.

‘I am not ashamed of my name,’ said I. ‘They call me David Balfour.’

At that, I made sure the man started, for I heard the blunderbuss rattle on the window-sill; and it was after quite a long pause, and with a curious change of voice, that the next question followed: ‘Is your father dead?’

I was so much surprised at this, that I could find no voice to answer, but stood staring.

‘Ay,’ the man resumed, ‘he’ll be dead, no doubt; and that’ll be what brings ye chapping to my door.’ Another pause, and then defiantly, ‘Well, man,’ he said, ‘I’ll let ye in;’ and he disappeared from the window.

Presently there came a great rattling of chains and bolts, and the door was cautiously opened and shut to again behind me as soon as I had passed.

‘Go into the kitchen and touch naething[8],’ said the voice; and while the person of the house set himself to replacing the defences of the door, I groped my way forward and entered the kitchen.

As soon as the last chain was up, the man rejoined me. He was a mean, stooping, narrow-shouldered, clay-faced creature; and his age might have been anything between fifty and seventy. His nightcap was of flannel, and so was the nightgown that he wore, instead of coat and waistcoat, over his ragged shirt. He was long unshaved; but what most distressed and even daunted me, he would neither take his eyes away from me nor look me fairly in the face. What he was, whether by trade or birth, was more than I could fathom; but he seemed most like an old, unprofitable serving-man, who should have been left in charge of that big house upon board wages.

‘Are ye sharp-set?’ he asked, glancing at about the level of my knee. ‘Ye can eat that drop parritch[9]?’

I said I feared it was his own supper.

‘O,’ said he, ‘I can do fine wanting it. I’ll take the ale, though, for it slockens my cough.’ He drank the cup about half out, still keeping an eye upon me as he drank; and then suddenly held out his hand. ‘Let’s see the letter,’ said he.

I told him the letter was for Mr. Balfour; not for him. ‘And who do ye think I am?’ says he. ‘Give me Alexander’s letter.’

‘You know my father’s name?’

‘It would be strange if I didnae,’ he returned, ‘for he was my born brother; and little as ye seem to like either me or my house, or my good parritch, I’m your born uncle, Davie, my man, and you my born nephew. So give us the letter, and sit down and fill your kyte.’

I sat down to the porridge with as little appetite for meat as ever a young man had. Meanwhile, my uncle, stooping over the fire, turned the letter over and over in his hands.

‘Do ye ken what’s in it?’ he asked, suddenly.

‘You see for yourself, sir,’ said I, ‘that the seal has not been broken.’

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘but what brought you here?’

‘To give the letter,’ said I.

‘No,’ says he, cunningly, ‘but ye’ll have had some hopes, nae doubt?’

‘I confess, sir,’ said I, ‘when I was told that I had kinsfolk well-to-do, I did indeed indulge the hope that they might help me in my life. But I am no beggar; I look for no favours at your hands, and I want none that are not freely given. For as poor as I appear, I have friends of my own that will be blithe to help me.’

‘Hoot-toot!’ said Uncle Ebenezer, ‘dinnae fly up in the snuff at me. We’ll agree fine yet. And, Davie, my man, if you’re done with that bit parritch, I could just take a sup of it myself. Ay,’ he continued, as soon as he had ousted me from the stool and spoon, ‘they’re fine, halesome[10] food – they’re grand food, parritch. Your father was very fond of his meat, I mind; he was a hearty, if not a great eater; but as for me, I could never do mair[11] than pyke at food.’

He continued to eat like a man under some pressure of time, and to throw out little darting glances now at my shoes and now at my home-spun stockings. Once only, when he had ventured to look a little higher, our eyes met; and no thief taken with a hand in a man’s pocket could have shown more lively signals of distress. This set me in a muse, whether his timidity arose from too long a disuse of any human company; and whether perhaps, upon a little trial, it might pass off, and my uncle change into an altogether different man. From this I was awakened by his sharp voice.

‘Your father’s been long dead?’ he asked.

‘Three weeks, sir,’ said I.

‘He was a secret man, Alexander – a secret, silent man,’ he continued. ‘He never said muckle when he was young. He’ll never have spoken muckle of me?’

‘I never knew, sir, till you told it me yourself, that he had any brother.’

‘Dear me, dear me!’ said Ebenezer. ‘Nor yet of Shaws, I dare say?’

‘Not so much as the name, sir,’ said I.

‘To think o’ that!’ said he. ‘A strange nature of a man!’ For all that, he seemed singularly satisfied, but whether with himself, or me, or with this conduct of my father’s, was more than I could read. Certainly, however, he seemed to be outgrowing that distaste, or ill-will, that he had conceived at first against my person; for presently he jumped up, came across the room behind me, and hit me a smack upon the shoulder. ‘We’ll agree fine yet!’ he cried. ‘I’m just as glad I let you in. And now come awa’ to your bed.’

To my surprise, he lit no lamp or candle, but set forth into the dark passage up a flight of steps, and paused before a door, which he unlocked. He bade me go in, for that was my chamber. I did as he bid, but paused after a few steps, and begged a light to go to bed with.

‘Hoot-toot!’ said Uncle Ebenezer, ‘there’s a fine moon.’

‘Neither moon nor star, sir, and pit-mirk[12],’ said I. ‘I cannae see the bed.’

‘Hoot-toot, hoot-toot!’ said he. ‘Lights in a house is a thing I dinnae agree with. I’m unco feared of fires. Good-night to ye, Davie, my man.’ And before I had time to add a further protest, he pulled the door to, and I heard him lock me in from the outside.

With the first peep of day I opened my eyes, to find myself in a great chamber, hung with stamped leather, furnished with fine embroidered furniture, and lit by three fair windows. Ten years ago it must have been as pleasant a room to lie down or to awake in as a man could wish; but damp, dirt, disuse, and the mice and spiders had done their worst since then; and being very cold in that miserable room, I knocked and shouted till my gaoler came and let me out. He carried me to the back of the house, where was a draw-well, and told me to ‘wash my face there, if I wanted;’ and when that was done, I made the best of my own way back to the kitchen, where he had lit the fire and was making the porridge.

When we had made an end of our meal, my uncle sat down in the sun at one of the windows and silently smoked. From time to time his eyes came coasting round to me, and he shot out one of his questions. Once it was, ‘And your mother?’ and when I had told him that she, too, was dead, ‘Ay, she was a bonnie lassie[13]!’ Then, after another long pause, ‘Whae[14] were these friends o’ yours?’ I told him they were different gentlemen of the name of Campbell; though, indeed, there was only one, and that the minister, that had ever taken the least note of me; but I began to think my uncle made too light of my position, and finding myself all alone with him, I did not wish him to suppose me helpless.

He seemed to turn this over in his mind; and then, ‘Davie, my man,’ said he, ‘ye’ve come to the right bit when ye came to your uncle Ebenezer. I’ve a great notion of the family, and I mean to do the right by you; but while I’m taking a bit think to mysel’ of what’s the best thing to put you to – whether the law, or the meenistry, or maybe the army, whilk[15] is what boys are fondest of – I wouldnae like the Balfours to be humbled before a wheen[16] Hieland Campbells, and I’ll ask you to keep your tongue within your teeth. Nae letters; nae messages; no kind of word to onybody; or else – there’s my door.’

‘Uncle Ebenezer,’ said I, ‘I’ve no manner of reason to suppose you mean anything but well by me. For all that, I would have you to know that I have a pride of my own. It was by no will of mine that I came seeking you; and if you show me your door again, I’ll take you at the word.’

He seemed grievously put out. ‘Hoots-toots,’ said he, ‘ca’ cannie, man – ca’ cannie! Just you give me a day or two, and say naething to naebody, and as sure as sure, I’ll do the right by you.’

‘Very well,’ said I, ‘enough said. If you want to help me, there’s no doubt but I’ll be glad of it, and none but I’ll be grateful.’

It seemed to me (too soon, I dare say) that I was getting the upper hand of my uncle; and I began next to say that I must have the bed and bedclothes aired and put to sun-dry; for nothing would make me sleep in such a pickle.

‘Is this my house or yours?’ said he, in his keen voice, and then all of a sudden broke off. ‘Na, na,’ said he, ‘I didnae mean that. What’s mine is yours, Davie, my man, and what’s yours is mine. Blood’s thicker than water; and there’s naebody but you and me that ought the name.’ And then on he rambled about the family, and its ancient greatness, and his father that began to enlarge the house, and himself that stopped the building as a sinful waste.

‘I’ll aff[17] and see the session clerk,’ uncle said in the end. He was for setting out, when a thought arrested him. ‘I cannae leave you by yoursel’ in the house,’ said he. ‘I’ll have to lock you out.’ The blood came to my face. ‘If you lock me out,’ I said, ‘it’ll be the last you’ll see of me in friendship.’

Uncle Ebenezer turned very pale, and sucked his mouth in. He went and looked out of the window for awhile. I could see him all trembling and twitching, like a man with palsy. But when he turned round, he had a smile upon his face.

‘Well, well,’ said he, ‘we must bear and forbear. I’ll no go; that’s all that’s to be said of it.’

‘Uncle Ebenezer,’ I said, ‘I can make nothing out of this. You use me like a thief; you hate to have me in this house. Why do you seek to keep me, then? Let me gang back to the friends I have, and that like me!’

‘Na, na; na, na,’ he said, very earnestly. ‘I like you fine; and for the honour of the house I couldnae let you leave the way ye came. Just you bide here quiet a bittie[18], and ye’ll find that we agree.’

‘Well, sir,’ said I, after I had thought the matter out in silence, ‘I’ll stay awhile. It’s more just I should be helped by my own blood than strangers; and if we don’t agree, I’ll do my best it shall be through no fault of mine.’

For a day that was begun so ill, the day passed fairly well. We had the porridge cold again at noon, and hot porridge at night; porridge and small beer was my uncle’s diet. He spoke but little, and that in the same way as before, shooting a question at me after a long silence; and when I sought to lead him to talk about my future, slipped out of it again. In a room next door to the kitchen, where he suffered me to go, I found a great number of books, both Latin and English, in which I took great pleasure all the afternoon. Indeed, the time passed so lightly in this good company, that I began to be almost reconciled to my residence at Shaws; and nothing but the sight of my uncle, and his eyes playing hide-and-seek with mine, revived the force of my distrust.

One thing I discovered, which put me in some doubt. This was an entry on the fly-leaf of a chapbook plainly written by my father’s hand and thus conceived: ‘To my brother Ebenezer on his fifth birthday’. Now, what puzzled me was this: That, as my father was of course the younger brother, he must either have made some strange error, or he must have written, before he was yet five, an excellent, clear manly hand of writing.

I tried to get this out of my head; but when at length I went back into the kitchen, and sat down once more to porridge and small beer, the first thing I said to Uncle Ebenezer was to ask him if my father had not been very quick at his book.

‘Alexander? No him!’ was the reply. ‘I was far quicker mysel’; I was a clever chappie when I was young. Why, I could read as soon as he could.’

This puzzled me yet more; and a thought coming into my head, I asked if he and my father had been twins.

He jumped upon his stool, and the horn spoon fell out of his hand upon the floor. ‘What gars[19] ye ask that?’ he said, and he caught me by the breast of the jacket, and looked this time straight into my eyes: his own were little and light, and bright like a bird’s, blinking and winking strangely.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, very calmly, for I was far stronger than he, and not easily frightened. ‘Take your hand from my jacket. This is no way to behave.’

My uncle seemed to make a great effort upon himself. ‘Dod man, David,’ he said, ‘ye shouldnae speak to me about your father. That’s where the mistake is.’ He sat awhile and shook, blinking in his plate: ‘He was all the brother that ever I had,’ he added, but with no heart in his voice; and then he caught up his spoon and fell to supper again, but still shaking.

Now this last passage, this laying of hands upon my person and sudden profession of love for my dead father, went so clean beyond my comprehension that it put me into both fear and hope. On the one hand, I began to think my uncle was perhaps insane and might be dangerous; on the other, there came up into my mind (quite unbidden by me and even discouraged) a story like some ballad I had heard folk singing, of a poor lad that was a rightful heir and a wicked kinsman that tried to keep him from his own. For why should my uncle play a part with a relative that came, almost a beggar, to his door, unless in his heart he had some cause to fear him?

‘Davie,’ he said, at length, ‘I’ve been thinking;’ then he paused, and said it again. ‘There’s a wee bit siller[20] that I half promised ye before ye were born,’ he continued; ‘promised it to your father. O, naething legal, ye understand; just gentlemen dafing at their wine. Well, I keepit[21] that bit money separate – it was a great expense, but a promise is a promise – and it has grown by now to be a matter of just precisely – just exactly’ – and here he paused and stumbled – ‘of just exactly forty pounds!’ This last he rapped out with a sidelong glance over his shoulder; and the next moment added, almost with a scream, ‘Scots!’

The pound Scots being the same thing as an English shilling, the difference made by this second thought was considerable; I could see, besides, that the whole story was a lie, invented with some end which it puzzled me to guess; and I made no attempt to conceal the tone of raillery in which I answered —

‘O, think again, sir! Pounds sterling, I believe!’

‘That’s what I said,’ returned my uncle: ‘pounds sterling! And if you’ll step out-by to the door a minute, just to see what kind of a night it is, I’ll get it out to ye and call ye in again.’

I did his will, smiling to myself in my contempt that he should think I was so easily to be deceived. It was a dark night, with a few stars low down; and as I stood just outside the door, I heard a hollow moaning of wind far off among the hills. I said to myself there was something thundery and changeful in the weather, and little knew of what a vast importance that should prove to me before the evening passed.

When I was called in again, my uncle counted out into my hand seven and thirty golden guinea[22] pieces; the rest was in his hand, in small gold and silver; but his heart failed him there, and he crammed the change into his pocket.

‘There,’ said he, ‘that’ll show you! I’m a queer man, and strange wi’ strangers; but my word is my bond, and there’s the proof of it.’

Now, my uncle seemed so miserly that I was struck dumb by this sudden generosity, and could find no words in which to thank him.

‘No a word!’ said he. ‘Nae thanks; I want nae thanks. I do my duty. I’m no saying that everybody would have, done it; but for my part (though I’m a careful body, too) it’s a pleasure to me to do the right by my brother’s son; and it’s a pleasure to me to think that now we’ll agree as such near friends should.’

I spoke him in return as handsomely as I was able; but all the while I was wondering what would come next, and why he had parted with his precious guineas; for as to the reason he had given, a baby would have refused it.

Presently he looked towards me sideways.

‘And see here,’ says he, ‘tit for tat.’

I told him I was ready to prove my gratitude in any reasonable degree, and then waited, looking for some monstrous demand. And yet, when at last he plucked up courage to speak, it was only to tell me (very properly, as I thought) that he was growing old and a little broken, and that he would expect me to help him with the house and the bit garden.

I answered, and expressed my readiness to serve. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s begin.’ He pulled out of his pocket a rusty key. ‘There,’ says he, ‘there’s the key of the stair-tower at the far end of the house. Ye can only win into it from the outside, for that part of the house is no finished. Gang[23] ye in there, and up the stairs, and bring me down the chest that’s at the top. There’s papers in’t,’ he added.

‘Can I have a light, sir?’ said I.

‘Na,’ said he, very cunningly. ‘Nae lights in my house.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said I. ‘Are the stairs good?’

‘They’re grand,’ said he; and then, as I was going, ‘Keep to the wall,’ he added; ‘there’s nae bannisters. But the stairs are grand underfoot.’

Out I went into the night. It had fallen blacker than ever; and I was glad to feel along the wall, till I came the length of the stair-tower door at the far end of the unfinished wing. I had got the key into the keyhole and had just turned it, when all upon a sudden, without sound of wind or thunder, the whole sky lighted up with wild fire and went black again. I had to put my hand over my eyes to get back to the colour of the darkness; and indeed I was already half blinded when I stepped into the tower.

The wall, by the touch, was of fine hewn stone; the steps too, though somewhat steep and narrow, were of polished masonwork, and regular and solid underfoot. Minding my uncle’s word about the bannisters, I kept close to the tower side, and felt my way in the pitch darkness with a beating heart.

As I advanced, it seemed to me the stair grew airier and a thought more lightsome; and I was wondering what might be the cause of this change, when a second blink of the summer lightning came and went. If I did not cry out, it was because fear had me by the throat; and if I did not fall, it was more by Heaven’s mercy than my own strength. It was not only that the flash shone in on every side through breaches in the wall, so that I seemed to be clambering aloft upon an open scaffold, but the same passing brightness showed me the steps were of unequal length, and that one of my feet rested that moment within two inches of the well.

This was the grand stair! I thought; and with the thought, a gust of a kind of angry courage came into my heart. My uncle had sent me here, certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. I swore I would settle that ‘perhaps,’ if I should break my neck for it; got me down upon my hands and knees; and as slowly as a snail, feeling before me every inch, and testing the solidity of every stone, I continued to ascend the stair. The darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have redoubled.

I had come close to one of the turns, when, feeling forward as usual, my hand slipped upon an edge and found nothing but emptiness beyond it. The stair had been carried no higher; to set a stranger mounting it in the darkness was to send him straight to his death; and the mere thought of the peril in which I might have stood, and the dreadful height I might have fallen from, brought out the sweat upon my body and relaxed my joints.

But I knew what I wanted now, and turned and groped my way down again, with a wonderful anger in my heart. I put out my head into the storm, and looked along towards the kitchen. The door, which I had shut behind me when I left, now stood open, and shed a little glimmer of light; and I thought I could see a figure standing in the rain, quite still, like a man hearkening. And then there came a blinding flash, which showed me my uncle plainly, just where I had fancied him to stand; and hard upon the heels of it, a great tow-row of thunder. Now, whether my uncle thought the crash to be the sound of my fall, or whether he heard in it God’s voice denouncing murder, he was seized on by a kind of panic fear, and that he ran into the house and left the door open behind him. I followed as softly as I could, and, coming unheard into the kitchen, stood and watched him.

He had found time to open the corner cupboard and bring out a great case bottle of aqua vitae, and now sat with his back towards me at the table. I stepped forward, came close behind him where he sat, and suddenly clapping my two hands down upon his shoulders – ‘Ah!’ cried I.

My uncle gave a kind of broken cry like a sheep’s bleat, flung up his arms, and tumbled to the floor like a dead man. Fear came on me that he was dead; then I got water and dashed it in his face; and with that he seemed to come a little to himself, working his mouth and fluttering his eyelids. At last he looked up and saw me, and there came into his eyes a terror that was not of this world.

‘Come, come,’ said I; ‘sit up.’

‘Are ye alive?’ he sobbed. ‘O man, are ye alive?’

‘That am I,’ said I. ‘Small thanks to you!’

He had begun to seek for his breath with deep sighs. ‘The blue phial,’ said he – ‘in the aumry – the blue phial.’ His breath came slower still. I ran to the cupboard, and, sure enough, found there a blue phial of medicine, with the dose written on it on a paper, and this I administered to him with what speed I might.

‘It’s the trouble,’ said he, reviving a little; ‘I have a trouble, Davie. It’s the heart.’

I set him on a chair and looked at him. It is true I felt some pity for a man that looked so sick, but I was full besides of righteous anger; and I numbered over before him the points on which I wanted explanation: why he lied to me at every word; why he feared that I should leave him; why he disliked it to be hinted that he and my father were twins; why he had given me money to which I was convinced I had no claim; and, last of all, why he had tried to kill me. He heard me all through in silence; and then, in a broken voice, begged me to let him go to bed.

‘I’ll tell ye the morn[24],’ he said; ‘as sure as death I will.’

And so weak was he that I could do nothing but consent. I locked him into his room, however, and pocketed the key, and then returning to the kitchen, made up such a blaze as had not shone there for many a long year, and wrapping myself in my plaid, lay down upon the chests and fell asleep.

Much rain fell in the night; and the next morning there blew a bitter wintry wind out of the northwest, driving scattered clouds. I made my way to the side of the burn, and had a plunge in a deep whirling pool. All aglow from my bath, I sat down once more beside the fire, which I replenished, and began gravely to consider my position.

There was now no doubt about my uncle’s enmity. But I was young and spirited, and like most lads that have been country-bred, I had a great opinion of my shrewdness. He had met me with treachery and violence; it would be a fine consummation to take the upper hand, and drive him like a herd of sheep.

Presently, all swollen with conceit, I went upstairs and gave my prisoner his liberty. He gave me good-morning civilly; and I gave the same to him, smiling down upon him, from the heights of my sufficiency. Soon we were set to breakfast, as it might have been the day before.

‘Well, sir,’ said I, with a jeering tone, ‘have you nothing more to say to me? It will be time, I think, to understand each other. You took me for a country Johnnie Raw[25], with no more mother-wit or courage than a porridge-stick. I took you for a good man, or no worse than others at the least. It seems we were both wrong. What cause you have to fear me, to cheat me, and to attempt my life?’

I saw by his face that he had no lie ready for me, though he was hard at work preparing one; and I think I was about to tell him so, when we were interrupted by a knocking at the door.

Bidding my uncle sit where he was, I went to open it, and found on the doorstep a half-grown boy in sea-clothes. He had no sooner seen me than he began to dance some steps of the sea-hornpipe[26], snapping his fingers in the air and footing it right cleverly. For all that, he was blue with the cold; and there was something in his face, a look between tears and laughter, that was highly pathetic and consisted ill with this gaiety of manner.

I asked him soberly to name his pleasure. ‘If you have no business at all, I will even be so unmannerly as to shut you out.’

‘Stay, brother!’ he cried. ‘I’ve brought a letter from old Heasyoasy to Mr. Belflower.’ He showed me a letter as he spoke. ‘And I say, mate,’ he added, ‘I’m mortal hungry.’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘come into the house, and you shall have a bite if I go empty for it.’

With that I brought him in and set him down to my own place, where he fell-to greedily on the remains of breakfast. Meanwhile, my uncle had read the letter and sat thinking; then, suddenly, he got to his feet with a great air of liveliness, and pulled me apart into the farthest corner of the room. ‘Read that,’ said he, and put the letter in my hand. Here it is, lying before me as I write:

‘You see, Davie,’ resumed my uncle, as soon as he saw that I had done, ‘I have a venture with this man Hoseason, the captain of a trading brig, the Covenant[29], of Dysart. Now, if you and me was to walk over with yon lad, I could see the captain at the Hawes, or maybe on board the Covenant if there was papers to be signed; and so far from a loss of time, we can jog on to the lawyer, Mr. Rankeillor’s. After a’ that’s come and gone, ye would be swier[30] to believe me upon my naked word; but ye’ll believe Rankeillor. He’s factor to half the gentry in these parts; an auld[31] man, forby: highly respeckit[32], and he kenned your father.’

I stood awhile and thought. Once there, I believed I could force on the visit to the lawyer, even if my uncle were now insincere in proposing it; and, perhaps, in the bottom of my heart, I wished a nearer view of the sea and ships. One thing with another, I made up my mind.

‘Very well,’ says I, ‘let us go to the Ferry.’

Uncle Ebenezer never said a word the whole way; and I was thrown for talk on the cabin-boy. He told me his name was Ransome, and that he had followed the sea since he was nine, but could not say how old he was, as he had lost his reckoning. He showed me tattoo marks; and boasted of many wild and bad things that he had done: stealthy thefts, false accusations, ay, and even murder; but all with such a dearth of likelihood in the details, and such a weak and crazy swagger in the delivery, as disposed me rather to pity than to believe him.

I asked him of the brig (which he declared was the finest ship that sailed) and of Captain Hoseason, in whose praises he was equally loud. It was a man that minded for nothing either in heaven or earth; rough, fierce, unscrupulous, and brutal; and all this my poor cabin-boy had taught himself to admire as something seamanlike and manly. He would only admit one flaw in his idol. ‘He ain’t no seaman,’ he admitted. ‘That’s Mr. Shuan that navigates the brig; he’s the finest seaman in the trade, only for drink; and I tell you I believe it! Why, look’ere;’ and turning down his stocking he showed me a great, raw, red wound that made my blood run cold. ‘He done that – Mr. Shuan done it,’ he said, with an air of pride.

‘What!’ I cried, ‘You are no slave, to be so handled!’

‘No,’ said the poor moon-calf, changing his tune at once, ‘and so he’ll find. See’ere;’ and he showed me a great case-knife, which he told me was stolen.

I have never felt such pity for anyone in this wide world as I felt for that half-witted creature, and it began to come over me that the brig Covenant (for all her pious name) was little better than a hell upon the seas.

‘In Heaven’s name,’ cried I, ‘can you find no reputable life on shore?’

‘O, no,’ says he, winking and looking very sly, ‘they would put me to a trade!’

I asked him what trade could be so dreadful as the one he followed, where he ran the continual peril of his life, not alone from wind and sea, but by the horrid cruelty of those who were his masters. He said it was very true; and then began to praise the life, and tell what a pleasure it was to get on shore with money in his pocket, and spend it like a man, and buy apples, and swagger, and surprise what he called stick-in-the-mud boys.

Just then we came to the top of the hill, and looked down on the Ferry and the Hope. I could see the building which they called the Hawes Inn.

The boat had just gone north with passengers. A skiff, however, lay beside the pier, with some seamen sleeping on the thwarts; this, as Ransome told me, was the brig’s boat waiting for the captain; and about half a mile off, and all alone in the anchorage, he showed me the Covenant herself. There was a sea-going bustle on board; yards were swinging into place; and as the wind blew from that quarter, I could hear the song of the sailors as they pulled upon the ropes. After all I had listened to upon the way, I looked at that ship with an extreme abhorrence; and from the bottom of my heart I pitied all poor souls that were condemned to sail in her.

We had all three pulled up on the brow of the hill; and now I marched across the road and addressed my uncle. ‘I think it right to tell you, sir.’ says I, ‘there’s nothing that will bring me on board that Covenant.’

‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to please ye, I suppose. But what are we standing here for? It’s perishing cold; and if I’m no mistaken, they’re busking the Covenant for sea.’

As soon as we came to the inn, Ransome led us up the stair to a small room, with a bed in it, and heated like an oven by a great fire of coal. At a table hard by the chimney, a tall, dark, sober-looking man sat writing. In spite of the heat of the room, he wore a thick sea-jacket, buttoned to the neck, and a tall hairy cap drawn down over his ears; yet I never saw any man, not even a judge upon the bench, look cooler, or more studious and self-possessed, than this ship-captain.

He got to his feet at once, and coming forward, offered his large hand to Ebenezer. ‘I am proud to see you, Mr. Balfour,’ said he, in a fine deep voice, ‘and glad that ye are here in time. The wind’s fair, and the tide upon the turn; we’ll see the old coal-bucket burning on the Isle of May[33] before tonight.’

Though I had promised myself not to let my kinsman out of sight, I was both so impatient for a nearer look of the sea, and so sickened by the closeness of the room, that when he told me to ‘run down-stairs and play myself awhile,’ I was fool enough to take him at his word. Away I went, therefore, leaving the two men sitting down to a bottle.

Even so far up the firth, the smell of the sea-water was exceedingly salt and stirring; the Covenant, besides, was beginning to shake out her sails, which hung upon the yards in clusters; and the spirit of all that I beheld put me in thoughts of far voyages and foreign places.

Ransome soon came out of the inn and ran to me, crying for a bowl of punch. I told him I would give him no such thing, for neither he nor I was of an age for such indulgences. ‘But a glass of ale you may have, and welcome,’ said I. He mopped and mowed at me, and called me names; but he was glad to get the ale, for all that; and presently we were set down at a table in the front room of the inn, and both eating and drinking with a good appetite.

Here it occurred to me that, as the landlord was a man of that county, I might do well to make a friend of him. I offered him a share, as was much the custom in those days; but he was far too great a man to sit with such poor customers as Ransome and myself, and he was leaving the room, when I called him back to ask if he knew Mr. Rankeillor.

‘Hoot, ay,’ says he, ‘and a very honest man. And, O, by-the-by,’ says he, ‘was it you that came in with Ebenezer?’ And when I had told him yes, ‘Ye’ll be no friend of his?’ he asked, meaning, in the Scottish way, that I would be no relative.

I told him no, none.

‘I thought not,’ said he, ‘and yet ye have a kind of gliff[34] of Mr. Alexander.’ I said it seemed that Ebenezer was ill-seen in the country.

‘Nae doubt,’ said the landlord. ‘He’s a wicked auld man, and there’s many would like to see him girning in the tow[35]. Jennet Clouston and mony mair that he has harried out of house and hame. And yet he was ance[36] a fine young fellow, too. But that was before the sough[37] gaed abroad about Mr. Alexander, that was like the death of him.’

‘And what was it?’ I asked.

‘Ou, just that he had killed him,’ said the landlord.

‘Did ye never hear that?’

‘And what would he kill him for?’ said I.

‘And what for, but just to get the place,’ said he.

‘The place?’ said I. ‘The Shaws?’

‘Nae other place that I ken,’ said he.

‘Ay, man?’ said I. ‘Is that so? Was my – was Alexander the eldest son?’

‘Deed[38] was he,’ said the landlord. ‘What else would he have killed him for?’ And with that he went away, as he had been impatient to do from the beginning.

Of course, I had guessed it a long while ago; but it is one thing to guess, another to know; and I sat stunned with my good fortune, and could scarce grow to believe that the same poor lad who had trudged in the dust from Ettrick Forest not two days ago, was now one of the rich of the earth.

I sat staring before me out of the inn window and my eye lighted on Captain Hoseason down on the pier among his seamen, and speaking with some authority. And presently he came marching back towards the house, with no mark of a sailor’s clumsiness, but carrying his fine, tall figure with a manly bearing, and still with the same sober, grave expression on his face. I wondered if it was possible that Ransome’s stories could be true, and half disbelieved them; they fitted so ill with the man’s looks. But indeed, he was neither so good as I supposed him, nor quite so bad as Ransome did; for, in fact, he was two men, and left the better one behind as soon as he set foot on board his vessel.

The next thing, I heard my uncle calling me, and found the pair in the road together. It was the captain who addressed me, and that with an air (very flattering to a young lad) of grave equality.

‘Sir,’ said he, ‘Mr. Balfour tells me great things of you; and for my own part, I like your looks. I wish I was for longer here, that we might make the better friends; but we’ll make the most of what we have. Ye shall come on board my brig for half an hour, till the ebb sets, and drink a bowl with me.’

Now, I longed to see the inside of a ship more than words can tell; but I was not going to put myself in jeopardy, and I told him my uncle and I had an appointment with a lawyer.

‘Ay, ay,’ said he, ‘he passed me word of that. But, ye see, the boat’ll set ye ashore at the town pier, and that’s but a penny stonecast from Rankeillor’s house.’ And here he suddenly leaned down and whispered in my ear: ‘Take care of the old tod[39]; he means mischief. Come aboard till I can get a word with ye.’ And then, passing his arm through mine, he set off towards his boat. When we were at the boat-side he handed me in. I did not dream of hanging back; I thought (the poor fool!) that I had found a good friend and helper, and I was rejoiced to see the ship.

As soon as we were alongside, Hoseason, declaring that he and I must be the first aboard, ordered a tackle to be sent down from the main-yard. In this I was whipped into the air and set down again on the deck, where the captain stood ready waiting for me, and instantly slipped back his arm under mine.

‘But where is my uncle?’ said I suddenly.

‘Ay,’ said Hoseason, with a sudden grimness, ‘that’s the point.’

I felt I was lost. With all my strength, I plucked myself clear of him and ran to the bulwarks. Sure enough, there was the boat pulling for the town, with my uncle sitting in the stern. I gave a piercing cry – ‘Help, help! Murder!’ – so that both sides of the anchorage rang with it, and my uncle turned round where he was sitting, and showed me a face full of cruelty and terror.

It was the last I saw. Already strong hands had been plucking me back from the ship’s side; and now a thunderbolt seemed to strike me; I saw a great flash of fire, and fell senseless.

I came to myself in darkness, in great pain, bound hand and foot, and deafened by many unfamiliar noises. The whole world now heaved giddily up, and now rushed giddily downward; and so sick and hurt was I in body, and my mind so much confounded, that it took me a long while, chasing my thoughts up and down, and ever stunned again by a fresh stab of pain, to realise that I must be lying somewhere bound in the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened to a gale. To my other pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman on the sea.

I had no measure of time; day and night were alike in that ill-smelling cavern of the ship’s bowels where, I lay; but sleep at length stole from me the consciousness of sorrow.

I was awakened by the light of a hand-lantern shining in my face. A small man of about thirty, with green eyes and a tangle of fair hair, stood looking down at me.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘how goes it?’

I answered by a sob; and my visitor then felt my pulse and temples, and set himself to wash and dress the wound upon my scalp.

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘a sore dunt[40]. What, man? Cheer up! The world’s no done; you’ve made a bad start of it but you’ll make a better. Have you had any meat?’

I said I could not look at it: and thereupon he gave me some brandy and water in a tin pannikin, and left me once more to myself.

The next time he came to see me I was lying betwixt sleep and waking. I ached in every limb, and the cords that bound me seemed to be of fire. I had suffered tortures of fear, now from the scurrying of the ship’s rats that sometimes pattered on my very face and from the dismal imaginings that haunt the bed of fever.

The glimmer of the lantern, as a trap opened, shone in like the heaven’s sunlight. The man with the green eyes was the first to descend the ladder, and I noticed that he came somewhat unsteadily. He was followed by the captain. Neither said a word; but the first set to and examined me, and dressed my wound as before, while Hoseason looked me in my face with an odd, black look.

‘Now, sir, you see for yourself,’ said the first: ‘a high fever, no appetite, no light, no meat: you see for yourself what that means. I want that boy taken out of this hole and put in the forecastle,’ said Riach.

‘What ye may want, sir, is a matter of concern to nobody but yoursel’, returned the captain; ‘but I can tell ye that which is to be. Here he is; here he shall bide,’ he added, in a sharper note, and set one foot upon the ladder.

But Mr. Riach caught him by the sleeve.

‘Admitting that you have been paid to do a murder —’ he began.

Hoseason turned upon him with a flash. ‘What’s that?’ he cried. ‘What kind of talk is that?’

‘It seems it is the talk that you can understand,’ said Mr. Riach, looking him steadily in the face.

‘Mr. Riach, I have sailed with ye three cruises,’ replied the captain. ‘In all that time, sir, ye should have learned to know me: I’m a stiff man, and a dour man; but for what ye say the now – fie, fie! – it comes from a bad heart and a black conscience. If ye say the lad will die —’

‘Ay, will he!’ said Mr. Riach.

‘Well, sir, is not that enough?’ said Hoseason. ‘Flit him where ye please!’

Thereupon the captain ascended the ladder; and I, who had lain silent throughout this strange conversation, beheld Mr. Riach turn after him and bow as low as to his knees in what was plainly a spirit of derision. Even in my then state of sickness, I perceived two things: that the mate was touched with liquor and that (drunk or sober) he was like to prove a valuable friend.

Five minutes afterwards my bonds were cut, I was hoisted on a man’s back, carried up to the forecastle, and laid in a bunk on some sea-blankets; where the first thing that I did was to lose my senses.

Here I lay for the space of many days a close prisoner, and not only got my health again, but came to know my companions. They were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are. There were some among them that had sailed with the pirates and seen things it would be a shame even to speak of; some were men that had run from the king’s ships, and went with a halter round their necks, of which they made no secret; and all, as the saying goes, were ‘at a word and a blow’ with their best friends. Yet I had not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when I thought they had been unclean beasts. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.

Among other good deeds that they did, they returned my money, which had been shared among them; and though it was about a third short, I was very glad to get it, and hoped great good from it in the land I was going to. The ship was bound for the Carolinas; In those days of my youth, white men were still sold into slavery on the plantations, and that was the destiny to which my wicked uncle had condemned me.

The cabin-boy Ransome (from whom I had first heard of these atrocities) came in at times from the round-house, where he berthed and served, now nursing a bruised limb in silent agony, now raving against the cruelty of Mr. Shuan. It made my heart bleed; but the men had a great respect for the chief mate, who was, as they said, ‘the only seaman of the whole jing-bang, and none such a bad man when he was sober.’

I did my best in the small time allowed me to make something like a man, or rather I should say something like a boy, of the poor creature, Ransome. But his mind was scarce truly human. He could remember nothing of the time before he came to sea. He had a strange notion of the dry land, picked up from sailor’s stories: that it was a place where lads were put to some kind of slavery called a trade, and where apprentices were continually lashed and clapped into foul prisons. To be sure, I would tell him how kindly I had myself been used upon that dry land he was so much afraid of, and how well fed and carefully taught both by my friends and my parents: and if he had been recently hurt, he would weep bitterly and swear to run away; but if he was in his usual crackbrain humour, or (still more) if he had had a glass of spirits in the round-house, he would deride the notion.

All this time, you should know, the Covenant was meeting continual head-winds and tumbling up and down against head-seas, so that the scuttle was almost constantly shut, and the forecastle lighted only by a swinging lantern on a beam. I was never allowed to set my foot on deck, you can picture to yourselves how weary of my life I grew to be, and how impatient for a change.

And a change I was to get, as you shall hear; but I must first tell of a conversation I had with Mr. Riach, which put a little heart in me to bear my troubles. Getting him in a favourable stage of drink (for indeed he never looked near me when he was sober), I pledged him to secrecy, and told him my whole story.

He declared it was like a ballad; that he would do his best to help me; that I should have paper, pen, and ink, and write one line to Mr. Campbell and another to Mr. Rankeillor; and that if I had told the truth, ten to one he would be able (with their help) to pull me through and set me in my rights.

‘And in the meantime,’ says he, ‘keep your heart up. You’re not the only one, I’ll tell you that. There’s many a man hoeing tobacco over-seas that should be mounting his horse at his own door at home; many and many! And life is all a variorum, at the best. Look at me: I’m a laird’s son and more than half a doctor, and here I am, man-Jack[41] to Hoseason!’

I thought it would be civil to ask him for his story.

He whistled loud.

‘Never had one,’ said he. ‘I like fun, that’s all.’ And he skipped out of the forecastle.

One night, about eleven o’clock, a man of Mr. Riach’s watch (which was on deck) came below for his jacket; and instantly there began to go a whisper about the forecastle that ‘Shuan had done for him at last.’ There was no need of a name; we all knew who was meant; but we had scarce time to get the idea rightly in our heads, far less to speak of it, when the scuttle was again flung open, and Captain Hoseason came down the ladder. He looked sharply round the bunks in the tossing light of the lantern; and then, walking straight up to me, he addressed me, to my surprise, in tones of kindness.

‘My man,’ said he, ‘we want ye to serve in the roundhouse. You and Ransome are to change berths. Run away aft with ye.’

Even as he spoke, two seamen appeared in the scuttle, carrying Ransome in their arms; and the ship at that moment giving a great sheer into the sea, and the lantern swinging, the light fell direct on the boy’s face. It was as white as wax, and had a look upon it like a dreadful smile. The blood in me ran cold, and I drew in my breath as if I had been struck.

‘Run away aft; run away aft with ye!’ cried Ho-season.

And at that I brushed by the sailors and the boy (who neither spoke nor moved), and ran up the ladder on deck.

The round-house, for which I was bound, and where I was now to sleep and serve, stood some six feet above the decks, and considering the size of the brig, was of good dimensions. Inside were a fixed table and bench, and two berths, one for the captain and the other for the two mates, turn and turn about. It was all fitted with lockers from top to bottom, so as to stow away the officers’ belongings and a part of the ship’s stores. A small window with a shutter on each side, and a skylight in the roof, gave it light by day; and after dark there was a lamp always burning. It was burning when I entered, not brightly, but enough to show Mr. Shuan sitting at the table, with the brandy bottle and a tin pannikin in front of him. He was a tall man, strongly made and very black; and he stared before him on the table like one stupid.

He took no notice of my coming in; nor did he move when the captain followed and leant on the berth beside me, looking darkly at the mate.

Presently Mr. Riach came in. He gave the captain a glance that meant the boy was dead as plain as speaking, and took his place like the rest of us; so that we all three stood without a word, staring down at Mr. Shuan, and Mr. Shuan (on his side) sat without a word, looking hard upon the table.

All of a sudden he put out his hand to take the bottle; and at that Mr. Riach started forward, caught it away from him and tossed the bottle into the sea.

Mr. Shuan was on his feet in a trice; he still looked dazed, but he meant murder, ay, and would have done it, for the second time that night, had not the captain stepped in between him and his victim.

‘Sit down!’ roars the captain. ‘Ye sot and swine, do ye know what ye’ve done? Ye’ve murdered the boy!’

Mr. Shuan seemed to understand; for he sat down again, and put up his hand to his brow.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘he brought me a dirty panni-kin!’

At that word, the captain and I and Mr. Riach all looked at each other for a second with a kind of frightened look; and then Hoseason walked up to his chief officer, took him by the shoulder, led him across to his bunk, and bade him lie down and go to sleep, as you might speak to a bad child.

That was the first night of my new duties; and in the course of the next day I had got well into the run of them. I had to serve at the meals, which the captain took at regular hours, sitting down with the officer who was off duty; all the day through I would be running with a dram to one or other of my three masters; and at night I slept on a blanket thrown on the deck boards at the aftermost end of the roundhouse, and right in the draught of the two doors. It was a hard and a cold bed.

And yet in other ways it was an easy service. There was no cloth to lay; the meals were either of oatmeal porridge or salt junk, except twice a week, when there was duff: and though I was clumsy enough and (not being firm on my sealegs) sometimes fell with what I was bringing them, both Mr. Riach and the captain were singularly patient. I could not but fancy they were making up lee-way with their consciences, and that they would scarce have been so good with me if they had not been worse with Ransome.

Altogether it was no very hard life for the time it lasted, which (as you are to hear) was not long. I was as well fed as the best of them; even their pickles, which were the great dainty, I was allowed my share of; and had I liked I might have been drunk from morning to night, like Mr. Shuan. I had company, too, and good company of its sort. Mr. Riach, who had been to the college, spoke to me like a friend when he was not sulking, and told me many curious things, and some that were informing; and even the captain, though he kept me at the stick’s end the most part of the time, would sometimes unbuckle a bit, and tell me of the fine countries he had visited.

The shadow of poor Ransome, to be sure, lay on all four of us, and on me and Mr. Shuan in particular, most heavily. And then I had another trouble of my own. Here I was, doing dirty work for three men that I looked down upon, and one of whom, at least, should have hung upon a gallows; that was for the present; and as for the future, I could only see myself slaving alongside of negroes in the tobacco fields. Mr. Riach, perhaps from caution, would never suffer me to say another word about my story; the captain, whom I tried to approach, rebuffed me like a dog and would not hear a word; and as the days came and went, my heart sank lower and lower, till I was even glad of the work which kept me from thinking.

More than a week went by, in which the ill-luck that had hitherto pursued the Covenant upon this voyage grew yet more strongly marked. Some days she made a little way; others, she was driven actually back. There followed on that a council of the officers, and some decision which I did not rightly understand, seeing only the result: that we had made a fair wind of a foul one and were running south.

The tenth afternoon there was a falling swell and a thick, wet, white fog that hid one end of the brig from the other. Maybe about ten at night, I was serving Mr. Riach and the captain at their supper, when the ship struck something with a great sound, and we heard voices singing out. My two masters leaped to their feet.

‘She’s struck!’ said Mr. Riach.

‘No, sir,’ said the captain. ‘We’ve only run a boat down.’

And they hurried out.

The captain was in the right of it. We had run down a boat in the fog, and she had parted in the midst and gone to the bottom with all her crew but one. This man (as I heard afterwards) had been sitting in the stern as a passenger, while the rest were on the benches rowing. At the moment of the blow, the stern had been thrown into the air, and the man (having his hands free, and for all he was encumbered with a frieze overcoat that came below his knees) had leaped up and caught hold of the brig’s bowsprit. It showed he had luck and much agility and unusual strength, that he should have thus saved himself from such a pass. And yet, when the captain brought him into the round-house, and I set eyes on him for the first time, he looked as cool as I did.

He was smallish in stature, but well-set and as nimble as a goat; his face was of a good open expression, but sunburnt very dark, and heavily freckled and pitted with the small-pox; his eyes were unusually light and had a kind of dancing madness in them, that was both engaging and alarming; and when he took off his great-coat, he laid a pair of fine silver-mounted pistols on the table, and I saw that he was belted with a great sword. His manners, besides, were elegant, and he pledged the captain handsomely. Altogether I thought of him, at the first sight, that here was a man I would rather call my friend than my enemy.

The captain, too, was taking his observations, but rather of the man’s clothes than his person. And to be sure, as soon as he had taken off the great-coat, he showed forth mighty fine for the round-house of a merchant brig: having a hat with feathers, a red waistcoat, breeches of black plush, and a blue coat with silver buttons and handsome silver lace; costly clothes, though somewhat spoiled with the fog and being slept in.

‘I’m vexed, sir, about the boat,’ says the captain.

‘There are some pretty men gone to the bottom,’ said the stranger, ‘that I would rather see on the dry land again than half a score of boats.’

‘Friends of yours?’ said Hoseason.

‘You have none such friends in your country,’ was the reply. ‘They would have died for me like dogs.’

‘Well, sir,’ said the captain, still watching him, ‘there are more men in the world than boats to put them in.’

‘And that’s true, too,’ cried the other, ‘and ye seem to be a gentleman of great penetration.’

‘I have been in France, sir,’ says the captain, it was plain he meant more by the words than showed upon the face of them.

‘Well, sir,’ says the other, ‘and so has many a pretty man, for the matter of that.’

‘No doubt, sir,’ says the captain, ‘and fine coats.’

‘Oho!’ says the stranger, ‘is that how the wind sets?’ And he laid his hand quickly on his pistols.

‘Don’t be hasty,’ said the captain. ‘Don’t do a mischief before ye see the need of it. Ye’ve a French soldier’s coat upon your back and a Scotch tongue in your head, to be sure; but so has many an honest fellow in these days, and I dare say none the worse of it.’

‘So?’ said the gentleman in the fine coat: ‘are ye of the honest party?’ (meaning, Was he a Jacobite[42]? for each side, in these sort of civil broils, takes the name of honesty for its own).

‘Why, sir,’ replied the captain, ‘I am a true-blue Protestant, and I thank God for it. But, for all that,’ says he, ‘I can be sorry to see another man with his back to the wall.’

‘Can ye so, indeed?’ asked the Jacobite. ‘Well, sir, to be quite plain with ye, I am one of those honest gentlemen that were in trouble about the years forty-five and six[43]; and (to be still quite plain with ye) if I got into the hands of any of the red-coated gentry, it’s like it would go hard with me. Now, sir, I was for France; and there was a French ship cruising here to pick me up; but she gave us the go-by in the fog – as I wish from the heart that ye had done yoursel’! And the best that I can say is this: If ye can set me ashore where I was going, I have that upon me will reward you highly for your trouble.’

‘In France?’ says the captain. ‘No, sir; that I cannot do. But where ye come from – we might talk of that.’

And then, unhappily, he observed me standing in my corner, and packed me off to the galley to get supper for the gentleman. I lost no time, I promise you; and when I came back into the round-house, I found the gentleman had taken a money-belt from about his waist, and poured out a guinea or two upon the table. The captain was looking at the guineas, and then at the belt, and then at the gentleman’s face; and I thought he seemed excited.

‘Half of it,’ he cried, ‘and I’m your man!’

The other swept back the guineas into the belt, and put it on again under his waistcoat. ‘I have told ye’ sir’ said he, ‘that not one doit of it belongs to me. It belongs to my chieftain,’ and here he touched his hat. ‘Thirty guineas on the seaside, or sixty if ye set me on the Linnhe Loch. Take it, if ye will; if not, ye can do your worst.’

‘Ay,’ said Hoseason. ‘And if I give ye over to the soldiers?’

‘Ye would make a fool’s bargain,’ said the other.

‘Well,’ returned the captain, ‘what must be must. Sixty guineas, and done. Here’s my hand upon it.’

‘And here’s mine,’ said the other.

And thereupon the captain went out (rather hurriedly, I thought), and left me alone in the roundhouse with the stranger.

‘And so you’re a Jacobite?’ said I, as I set meat before him.

‘Ay,’ said he, beginning to eat. ‘And you, by your long face, should be a Whig?’[44]

‘Betwixt and between,’ said I, not to annoy him; for indeed I was as good a Whig as Mr. Campbell could make me.

‘And that’s naething,’ said he. ‘But I’m saying, Mr. Betwixt-and-Between,’ he added, ‘this bottle of yours is dry; and it’s hard if I’m to pay sixty guineas and be grudged a dram upon the back of it.’

‘I’ll go and ask for the key,’ said I, and stepped on deck.

The captain and the two officers were in the waist with their heads together. It struck me (I don’t know why) that they were after no good; and the first word I heard, as I drew softly near, more than confirmed me.

It was Mr. Riach, crying out as if upon a sudden thought: ‘Couldn’t we wile him out of the roundhouse?’

‘He’s better where he is,’ returned Hoseason; ‘he hasn’t room to use his sword.’

‘Well, that’s true,’ said Riach; ‘but he’s hard to come at.’

‘Hut!’ said Hoseason. ‘We can get the man in talk, one upon each side, and pin him by the two arms.’

At this hearing, I was seized with both fear and anger at these treacherous, greedy, bloody men that I sailed with. My first mind was to run away; my second was bolder. ‘Captain,’ said I, ‘the gentleman is seeking a dram, and the bottle’s out. Will you give me the key?’

They all started and turned about.

‘Why, here’s our chance to get the firearms!’ Riach cried; and then to me: ‘Hark ye, David,’ he said, ‘do ye ken where the pistols are?’

‘Ay, ay,’ put in Hoseason. ‘David kens; David’s a good lad.’

I had never been so be-Davided since I came on board: but I said Yes, as if all I heard were quite natural.

‘The trouble is,’ resumed the captain, ‘that all our fire-locks, great and little, are in the round-house under this man’s nose. A lad like you, David, might snap up a horn and a pistol or two without remark. And if ye can do it cleverly, I’ll bear it in mind when we come to Carolina.’

Here Mr. Riach whispered him a little.

‘Very right, sir,’ said the captain; and then to myself: ‘And see here, David, yon man has a beltful of gold, and I give you my word that you shall have your fingers in it.’

I told him I would do as he wished, and upon that he gave me the key of the spirit locker, and I began to go slowly back to the round-house. What was I to do? They had stolen me from my own country; they had killed poor Ransome; and was I to hold the candle to another murder? But then, upon the other hand, what could a boy and a man against a whole ship’s company?

I was still arguing it back and forth, and getting no great clearness, when I came into the roundhouse and saw the Jacobite eating his supper under the lamp; and at that my mind was made up all in a moment. I walked right up to the table and put my hand on his shoulder.

‘Do ye want to be killed?’ said I. He sprang to his feet, and looked a question at me as clear as if he had spoken. ‘O!’ cried I, ‘they’re all murderers here; it’s a ship full of them! They’ve murdered a boy already. Now it’s you.’ ‘

‘Ay, ay,’ said he; ‘but they haven’t got me yet.’ And then looking at me curiously, ‘Will ye stand with me?’

‘That will I!’ said I. ‘I am no thief, nor yet murderer. I’ll stand by you.’

‘Why, then,’ said he, ‘what’s your name?’

‘David Balfour,’ said I; and then, thinking that a man with so fine a coat must like fine people, I added for the first time, ‘of Shaws.’

‘My name is Stewart,’ he said, drawing himself up. ‘Alan Breck[45], they call me. A king’s name is good enough for me, though I bear it plain and have the name of no farm-midden to clap to the hind-end of it.’

He turned to examine our defences. Then he gave me from the rack a cutlass, and next he set me down to the table with a powder-horn, a bag of bullets and all the pistols, which he bade me charge.

‘And that will be better work, let me tell you,’ said he, ‘for a gentleman of decent birth, than scraping plates and raxing[46] drams to a wheen tarry sailors.’

Thereupon he stood up in the midst with his face to the door, and drawing his great sword, made trial of the room he had to wield it in.

‘And, now,’ said he, ‘do you keep on charging the pistols, and give heed to me.’

I told him I would listen closely.

‘First of all,’ said he, ‘how many are against us?’

‘Fifteen,’ said I.

Alan whistled. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘that can’t be cured. And now follow me. It is my part to keep this door, where I look for the main battle. In that, ye have no hand. And mind and dinnae fire to this side unless they get me down; for I would rather have ten foes in front of me than one friend like you cracking pistols at my back.’

I told him, indeed I was no great shot.

‘And that’s very bravely said! There’s many a pretty gentleman that wouldnae dare to say it.’

‘But then, sir,’ said I, ‘there is the door behind you which they may perhaps break in.’

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘and that is a part of your work. No sooner the pistols charged, than ye must climb up into yon bed where ye’re handy at the window; and if they lift hand, against the door, ye’re to shoot. But that’s not all. Let’s make a bit of a soldier of ye, David. What else have ye to guard?’

‘There’s the skylight,’ said I. ‘But indeed, Mr. Stewart, I would need to have eyes upon both sides to keep the two of them; for when my face is at the one, my back is to the other.’

‘And that’s very true,’ said Alan. ‘But have ye no ears to your head?’

‘To be sure!’ cried I. ‘I must hear the bursting of the glass!’

‘Ye have some rudiments of sense,’ said Alan, grimly.

But now our time of truce was come to an end. Those on deck had waited for my coming till they grew impatient; and scarce had Alan spoken, when the captain showed face in the open door.

‘Stand!’ cried Alan, and pointed his sword at him. The captain stood, indeed; but he neither winced nor drew back a foot.

‘A naked sword?’ says he. ‘This is a strange return for hospitality.’

‘Do ye see me?’ said Alan. ‘Do ye see my sword? The sooner the clash begins, the sooner ye’ll taste this steel throughout your vitals.’

The captain said nothing to Alan, but he looked over at me with an ugly look. ‘David,’ said he, ‘I’ll mind this.’

Next moment he was gone.

‘And now,’ said Alan, ‘let your hand keep your head, for the grip is coming.’

Alan drew a dirk, which he held in his left hand in case they should run in under his sword. I, on my part, clambered up into the berth with an armful of pistols and something of a heavy heart, and set open the window where I was to watch. There was a great stillness in the ship, in which I made sure I heard the sound of muttering voices. A little after, and there came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which I knew they were dealing out the cutlasses, and after that, silence again.

I do not know if I was what you call afraid; but my heart beat like a bird’s; and there was a dimness came before my eyes. As for hope, I had none; but only a darkness of despair and a sort of anger against all the world that made me long to sell my life as dear as I was able. My chief wish was to have the thing begin and be done with it.

It came all of a sudden when it did, with a rush of feet and a roar, and then a shout from Alan, and a sound of blows and someone crying out as if hurt. I looked back over my shoulder, and saw Mr. Shuan in the doorway, crossing blades with Alan.

‘That’s him that killed the boy!’ I cried.

‘Look to your window!’ said Alan; and as I turned back to my place, I saw him pass his sword through the mate’s body.

It was none too soon for me to look to my own part; for five men, carrying a spare yard for a battering-ram, ran past me and took post to drive the door in. I had never fired with a pistol in my life. But it was now or never; and just as they swang the yard, I cried out: ‘Take that!’ and shot into their midst.

I must have hit one of them, for he sang out and gave back a step, and the rest stopped as if a little disconcerted. Before they had time to recover, I sent another ball over their heads; and at my third shot (which went as wide as the second) the whole party threw down the yard and ran for it.

Then I looked round again into the deck-house. There was Alan, standing as before; only now his sword was running blood to the hilt, and himself so swelled with triumph and fallen into so fine an attitude, that he looked to be invincible. Right before him on the floor was Mr. Shuan, he was sinking slowly lower, with a terrible, white face; and just as I looked, some of those from behind caught hold of him by the heels and dragged him bodily out of the round-house. I believe he died as they were doing it.

‘There’s one of your Whigs for ye!’ cried Alan; and then turning to me, he asked if I had done much execution. I told him I had winged one, and thought it was the captain.

‘And I’ve settled two,’ says he. ‘No, there’s not enough blood let; they’ll be back again. To your watch, David. This was but a dram before meat.’

I settled back to my place, re-charging the three pistols I had fired, and keeping watch with both eye and ear.

Our enemies were disputing not far off upon the deck, one person spoke most of the time, as though laying down a plan, and first one and then another answered him briefly, like men taking orders. By this, I made sure they were coming on again, and told Alan.

‘It’s what we have to pray for,’ said he. ‘But this time, mind, they’ll be in earnest.’

By this, my pistols were ready, and there was nothing to do but listen and wait.

I began to hear stealthy steps and a brushing of men’s clothes against the round-house wall, and knew they were taking their places in the dark.

All this was upon Alan’s side; and I had begun to think my share of the fight was at an end, when I heard someone drop softly on the roof above me.

Then there came a single call on the sea-pipe, and that was the signal. A knot of them made one rush of it, cutlass in hand, against the door; and at the same moment, the glass of the skylight was dashed in a thousand pieces, and a man leaped through and landed on the floor. Before he got his feet, I had clapped a pistol to his back, and might have shot him, too; only at the touch of him (and him alive) my whole flesh misgave me, and I could no more pull the trigger than I could have flown.

He had dropped his cutlass as he jumped, and when he felt the pistol, whipped straight round and laid hold of me, roaring out an oath; and at that either my courage came again, or I grew so much afraid as came to the same thing; for I gave a shriek and shot him in the midst of the body. He gave the most horrible, ugly groan and fell to the floor. The foot of a second fellow, whose legs were dangling through the skylight, struck me at the same time upon the head; and at that I snatched another pistol and shot this one through the thigh. There was no talk of missing, any more than there was time to aim; I clapped the muzzle to the very place and fired.

I heard Alan shout as if for help, and that brought me to my senses.

One of the seamen, while he was engaged with others, had run in under his guard and caught him about the body. Another had broken in and had his cutlass raised. The door was thronged with their faces. I thought we were lost, and catching up my cutlass, fell on them in flank. But I had not time to be of help. The wrestler dropped at last; and Alan, leaping back to get his distance, ran upon the others like a bull, roaring as he went. They broke before him like water, turning, and running, and falling one against another in their haste. I was still thinking we were lost, when lo! they were all gone, and Alan was driving them along the deck as a sheepdog chases sheep.

Yet he was no sooner out than he was back again, being as cautious as he was brave; and meanwhile the seamen continued running and crying out as if he was still behind them; and we heard them tumble one upon another into the forecastle, and clap-to the hatch upon the top.

He came up to me with open arms. ‘Come to my arms!’ he cried, and embraced and kissed me hard upon both cheek. ‘David,’ said he, ‘I love you like a brother. And O, man,’ he cried in a kind of ecstasy, ‘am I no a bonny fighter?’

Thereupon he turned to the four enemies, passed his sword clean through each of them, and tumbled them out of doors one after the other. All the while, the flush was in his face, and his eyes were as bright as a five-year-old child’s with a new toy.

With the long suspense of the waiting, and the scurry and strain of our two spirts of fighting, and more than all, the horror I had of some of my own share in it, the thing was no sooner over than I was glad to stagger to a seat. There was that tightness on my chest that I could hardly breathe; the thought of the two men I had shot sat upon me like a nightmare; and all upon a sudden, and before I had a guess of what was coming, I began to sob and cry like any child. Alan clapped my shoulder, and said I was a brave lad and wanted nothing but a sleep.

‘I’ll take the first watch,’ said he. ‘Ye’ve done well by me, David, first and last; and I wouldn’t lose you for all Appin[47] – no, nor for Breadalbane.’

So I made up my bed on the floor; and he took the first spell, pistol in hand and sword on knee, three hours by the captain’s watch upon the wall. Then he roused me up, and I took my turn of three hours; before the end of which it was broad day, and a very quiet morning, with a smooth, rolling sea that tossed the ship and made the blood run to and fro on the round-house floor, and a heavy rain that drummed upon the roof. All my watch there was nothing stirring.

It was a mercy the night had fallen so still, for the wind had gone down as soon as the rain began. Even as it was, I judged by the wailing of a great number of gulls that went crying and fishing round the ship, that she must have drifted pretty near the coast or one of the islands of the Hebrides; and at last, looking out of the door of the round-house, I saw the great stone hills of Skye on the right hand, and, a little more astern, the strange isle of Rum.

Alan and I sat down to breakfast about six of the clock. The floor was covered with broken glass and in a horrid mess of blood, which took away my hunger. In all other ways we were in a situation not only agreeable but merry; having ousted the officers from their own cabin, and having at command all the drink in the ship – both wine and spirits – and all the dainty part of what was eatable, such as the pickles and the fine sort of bread. This, of itself, was enough to set us in good humour.

We made good company for each other. Alan, indeed, expressed himself most lovingly; and taking a knife from the table, cut me off one of the silver buttons from his coat.

‘I had them,’ says he, ‘from my father, Duncan Stewart; and now give ye one of them to be a keepsake for last night’s work. And wherever ye go and show that button, the friends of Alan Breck will come around you.’

He said this as if he had been Charlemagne[48], and commanded armies; and indeed, much as I admired his courage, I was always in danger of smiling at his vanity: in danger, I say, for had I not kept my countenance, I would be afraid to think what a quarrel might have followed.

As soon as we were through with our meal he rummaged in the captain’s locker till he found a clothes-brush; and then taking off his coat, began to visit his suit and brush away the stains, with such care and labour as I supposed to have been only usual with women.

He was still so engaged when we were hailed by Mr. Riach from the deck, asking for a parley; and I, climbing through the skylight and sitting on the edge of it, pistol in hand and with a bold front, though inwardly in fear of broken glass, hailed him back again and bade him speak out. Mr. Riach, as I do not think he had been very forward in the battle, had got off with nothing worse than a blow upon the cheek: but he looked out of heart and very weary, having been all night afoot, either standing watch or doctoring the wounded.

‘The captain,’ says he, ‘would like to speak with your friend. They might speak at the window.’

‘And how do we know what treachery he means?’ cried I.

‘He means none, David,’ returned Mr. Riach, ‘and if he did, I’ll tell ye the honest truth, we couldnae get the men to follow.’

‘Is that so?’ said I.

‘I’ll tell ye more than that,’ said he. ‘It’s not only the men; it’s me. I’m frich’ened, Davie.’ And he smiled across at me. ‘No,’ he continued, ‘what we want is to be shut of him.’

Thereupon I consulted with Alan, and the parley was agreed to and parole given upon either side; but this was not the whole of Mr. Riach’s business, and he now begged me for a dram with such instancy and such reminders of his former kindness, that at last I handed him a pannikin with about a gill of brandy.

A little after, the captain came (as was agreed) to one of the windows, and stood there in the rain, with his arm in a sling, and looking stern and pale, and so old that my heart smote me for having fired upon him.

Alan at once held a pistol in his face.

‘Put that thing up!’ said the captain. ‘Have I not passed my word, sir? Or do ye seek to affront me?’

‘Captain,’ says Alan, ‘I doubt your word is a breakable. Last night ye haggled and argle-bargled like an apple-wife; and then passed me your word, and gave me your hand to back it; and ye ken very well what was the upshot. Be damned to your word!’ says he.

‘Well, well, sir,’ said the captain, ‘ye’ll get little good by swearing. But we have other things to speak,’ he continued, bitterly. ‘Ye’ve made a sore hash of my brig; I haven’t hands enough left to work her; and my first officer (whom I could ill spare) has got your sword throughout his vitals, and passed without speech. There is nothing left me, sir, but to put back into the port of Glasgow after hands; and there (by your leave) ye will find them that are better able to talk to you.’

‘No,’ said Alan, ‘that’ll no do. Ye’ll just have to set me ashore as we agreed.’

‘Ay,’ said Hoseason, ‘but my first officer is dead – ye ken best how. There’s none of the rest of us acquaint with this coast, sir; and it’s one very dangerous to ships.’

‘I give ye your choice,’ says Alan. ‘Set me on dry ground in Appin, or Ardgour, or in Morven, or Arisaig, or Morar; or, in brief, where ye please, within thirty miles of my own country; except in a country of the Campbells. That’s a broad target. If ye miss that, ye must be as feckless at the sailoring as I have found ye at the fighting.’

‘But all this will cost money, sir,’ said the captain.

‘Well, sir,’ says Alan, ‘I am nae weathercock. Thirty guineas, if ye land me on the sea-side; and sixty, if ye put me in the Linnhe Loch.’

‘If I had lost less money on this unchancy cruise,’ says he, ‘I would see you in a rope’s end before I risked my brig, sir. But be it as ye will. As soon as I get a slant of wind (and there’s some coming, or I’m the more mistaken) I’ll put it in hand.’

‘Captain,’ says Alan, ‘as I hear you’re a little short of brandy in the fore-part, I’ll offer ye a change: a bottle of brandy against two buckets of water.’

That was the last clause of the treaty, and was duly executed on both sides; so that Alan and I could at last wash out the round-house and be quit of the memorials of those whom we had slain, and the captain and Mr. Riach could be happy again in their own way, the name of which was drink.

Before we had done cleaning out the round-house, a breeze sprang up from a little to the east of north. This blew off the rain and brought out the sun.

Meanwhile, the early part of the day, before the swell came up, was very pleasant. Alan and I sat in the round-house with the doors open on each side, and smoked a pipe or two of the captain’s fine tobacco. It was at this time we heard each other’s stories, which was the more important to me, as I gained some knowledge of that wild Highland country on which I was so soon to land.

It was I that showed the example, telling him all my misfortune; which he heard with great good-nature. Only, when I came to mention that good friend of mine, Mr. Campbell the minister, Alan fired up and cried out that he hated all that were of that name.

‘I know nothing I would help a Campbell to,’ says he, ‘unless it was a leaden bullet.’

‘Why, Alan,’ I cried, ‘what ails ye at the Camp-bells[49]?’

‘Well,’ says he, ‘ye ken very well that I am an Appin Stewart, and the Campbells have long harried and wasted those of my name; ay, and got lands of us by treachery – but never with the sword.’

‘You that are so wasteful of your buttons,’ said I, ‘I can hardly think you would be a good judge of business.’

‘Ah!’ says he, falling again to smiling, ‘I got my wastefulness from the same man I got the buttons from; and that was my poor father, Duncan Stewart, grace be to him! He was the prettiest man of his kindred; and the best swordsman in the Hielands, David, and that is the same as to say, in all the world, I should ken, for it was him that taught me. He was not the man to leave you rich, that’s true, he left me my breeks to cover me, and little besides. And that was how I came to enlist, which was a black spot upon my character. But I deserted to the right side at Preston Pans[50] – and that’s some comfort.’

‘Dear, dear,’ says I, ‘the punishment is death. You that are a condemned rebel, and a deserter, and a man of the French King’s – what tempts ye back into this country? It’s a braving of Providence.’

‘Well, ye see, I weary for my friends and country,’ said he. ‘But the heart of the matter is the business of my chief, Ardshiel[51].’

‘I thought they called your chief Appin,’ said I.

‘Ay, but Ardshiel is the captain of the clan,’ said he, which scarcely cleared my mind. ‘Ye see, David, he that was all his life so great a man, and come of the blood and bearing the name of kings, is now brought down to live in a French town like a poor and private person. This is not only a pain but a disgrace to us of his family and clan. Now, the tenants of Appin have to pay a rent to King George[52]; but their hearts are staunch, they are true to their chief; and what with love and a bit of pressure, and maybe a threat or two, the poor folk scrape up a second rent for Ardshiel. I’m the hand that carries it.’ And he struck the belt about his body, so that the guineas rang.

‘Do they pay both?’ cried I.

‘Ay, David, both,’ says he.

‘I call it noble,’ I cried. ‘I’m a Whig, or little better; but I call it noble.’

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘ye’re a Whig, but ye’re a gentleman; and that’s what does it. If ye were the Red Fox…’ And at that name, his teeth shut together, and he ceased speaking. I have seen many a grim face, but never a grimmer than Alan’s when he had named the Red Fox.

‘And who is the Red Fox?’ I asked, daunted, but still curious.

‘Well, and I’ll tell you that. When the men of the clans were broken at Culloden[53], Ardshiel had to flee like a poor deer upon the mountains. They stripped him of his powers; they stripped him of his lands; they plucked the weapons from the hands of his clansmen, that had borne arms for thirty centuries; ay, and the very clothes off their backs – so that it’s now a sin to wear a tartan plaid, and a man may be cast into a gaol if he has but a kilt about his legs. One thing they couldnae kill. That was the love the clansmen bore their chief. These guineas are the proof of it. And now, in there steps a man, a Campbell, red-headed Colin of Glenure[54] —’

‘Is that him you call the Red Fox?’ said I.

‘Ay, that’s the man. In he steps, and gets papers from King George, to be so-called King’s factor on the lands of Appin. That came to his ears that I have just told you; how the poor commons of Appin, the farmers and the crofters and the boumen, were wringing their very plaids to get a second rent, and send it over-seas for Ardshiel and his poor bairns. The black Campbell blood in Colin Roy ran wild. He sat gnashing his teeth at the wine table. What! should a Stewart get a bite of bread, and him not be able to prevent it?’ (Alan stopped to swallow down his anger.) ‘Well, David, what does he do? He declares all the farms to let. “And”, thinks he, in his black heart, “I’ll soon get other tenants and then,” thinks he, “Ardshiel will have to hold his bonnet on a French roadside.’’’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘what followed?’

‘Ye’ll never guess that! For these same Stewarts, and Maccolls, and Macrobs (that had two rents to pay) offered him a better price than any Campbell in all broad Scotland’

‘Well, Alan,’ said I, ‘that is a strange story, and a fine one, too. And Whig as I may be, I am glad the man was beaten.’

‘Him beaten?’ echoed Alan. ‘It’s little ye ken of Campbells, and less of the Red Fox. Since he couldnae be rid of the loyal commons by fair means, he swore he would be rid of them by foul. Therefore he sent for lawyers, and papers, and red-coats to stand at his back. And the kindly folk of that country must all pack and tramp. And who are to succeed them? Bareleggit beggars! King George is to whistle for his rents; he maun dow[55] with less; he can spread his butter thinner: what cares Red Colin? If he can hurt Ardshiel, he has his wish!’

‘Let me have a word,’ said I. ‘Be sure, if they take less rents, be sure Government has a finger in the pie. It’s not this Campbell’s fault, man – it’s his orders. And if ye killed this Colin tomorrow, what better would ye be? There would be another factor in his shoes, as fast as spur can drive.’

‘Ye’re a good lad in a fight,’ said Alan; ‘but, man! ye have Whig blood in ye!’

He spoke kindly enough, but there was so much anger under his contempt that I thought it was wise to change the conversation. I expressed my wonder how, with the Highlands covered with troops, and guarded like a city in a siege, a man in his situation could come and go without arrest.

‘It’s easier than ye would think,’ said Alan. ‘A bare hillside (ye see) is like all one road; if there’s a sentry at one place, ye just go by another. And everywhere there are friends’ houses and friends’ byres and haystacks. And besides, a soldier covers nae mair of it than his boot-soles’.

‘It’s no sae[56] bad now as it was in forty-six,’ he continued ‘the Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what tenty[57] folk have hidden in their thatch! What I would like to ken, David, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing the poor at home. Or why would Red Colin be riding his horse all over my poor country of Appin, and never a pretty lad to put a bullet in him?’

And with this Alan fell into a muse, and for a long time sate very sad and silent.

I will add the rest of what I have to say about my friend, that he was skilled in all kinds of music, but principally pipe-music; was a well-considered poet in his own tongue; had read several books both in French and English; was a dead shot, a good angler, and an excellent fencer with the small sword as well as with his own particular weapon. For his faults, they were on his face, and I now knew them all. But the worst of them, his childish propensity to take offence and to pick quarrels, he greatly laid aside in my case, out of regard for the battle of the roundhouse. But whether it was because I had done well myself, or because I had been a witness of his own much greater prowess, is more than I can tell. For though he had a great taste for courage in other men, yet he admired it most in Alan Breck.

It was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at that season of the year when Hoseason clapped his head into the round-house door.

‘Here,’ said he, ‘come out and see if ye can pilot.’

‘Is this one of your tricks?’ asked Alan.

‘Do I look like tricks?’ cries the captain. ‘I have other things to think of – my brig’s in danger!’

The sky was clear; it blew hard, and was bitter cold; a great deal of daylight lingered; and the moon, which was nearly full, shone brightly. Altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas in; and I had begun to wonder what it was that sat so heavily upon the captain, when the brig rising suddenly on the top of a high swell, he pointed and cried to us to look. Away on the lee bow, a thing like a fountain rose out of the moonlit sea, and immediately after we heard a low sound of roaring.

‘What do ye call that?’ asked the captain, gloomily.

‘The sea breaking on a reef,’ said Alan. ‘And now ye ken where it is; and what better would ye have?’

‘Ay,’ said Hoseason, ‘if it was the only one.’

And sure enough, just as he spoke there came a second fountain farther to the south.

‘There!’ said Hoseason. ‘Ye see for yourself. If I had kent of these reefs, if I had had a chart, or if Shuan had been spared, it’s not sixty guineas, no, nor six hundred, would have made me risk my brig in sic[58] a stoneyard! But you, sir, that was to pilot us, have ye never a word?’

‘I’m thinking,’ said Alan, ‘these’ll be what they call the Torran Rocks.[59]’

Mr. Riach and the captain looked at each other.

‘There’s a way through them, I suppose?’ said the captain.

‘Doubtless,’ said Alan, ‘but where? But it somehow runs in my mind once more that it is clearer under the land.’

‘So?’ said Hoseason. ‘We’ll have to haul our wind then, Mr. Riach; we’ll have to come as near in about the end of Mull[60] as we can take her, sir; and even then we’ll have the land to kep the wind off us, and that stoneyard on our lee. Well, we’re in for it now, and may as well crack on.’

With that he gave an order to the steersman, and sent Riach to the foretop.

‘The sea to the south is thick,’ he cried; and then, after a while, ‘it does seem clearer in by the land.’

‘Well, sir,’ said Hoseason to Alan, ‘we’ll try your way of it. Pray God you’re right.’

‘Pray God I am!’ says Alan to me. ‘But where did I hear it? Well, well, it will be as it must.’

As we got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be sown here and there on our very path; the brightness of the night showed us these perils as clearly as by day, which was, perhaps, the more alarming. It showed me, too, the face of the captain as he stood by the steersman, listening and looking and as steady as steel. Neither he nor Mr. Riach had shown well in the fighting; but I saw they were brave in their own trade, and admired them all the more because I found Alan very white.

‘What, Alan!’ I cried, ‘you’re not afraid?’

‘No,’ said he, wetting his lips, ‘but you’ll allow, yourself, it’s a cold ending.’

By this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to avoid a reef, we had got round Iona[61] and begun to come alongside Mull. Mr. Riach, announced from the top that he saw clear water ahead.

‘Ye were right,’ said Hoseason to Alan. ‘Ye have saved the brig, sir. I’ll mind that when we come to clear accounts.’ And I believe he not only meant what he said, but would have done it; so high a place did the Covenant hold in his affections.

But this is matter only for conjecture, things having gone otherwise than he forecast.

‘Keep her away a point,’ sings out Mr. Riach. ‘Reef to windward!’ And just at the same time the tide caught the brig, and threw the wind out of her sails. She came round into the wind like a top, and the next moment struck the reef with such a dunch as threw us all flat upon the deck, and came near to shake Mr. Riach from his place upon the mast.

I was on my feet in a minute. I think my head must have been partly turned, for I could scarcely understand the things I saw.

Presently I observed Mr. Riach and the seamen busy round the skiff, and, still in the same blank, ran over to assist them; and as soon as I set my hand to work, my mind came clear again. It was no very easy task, for the skiff lay amidships and was full of hamper, and the breaking of the heavier seas continually forced us to give over and hold on; but we all wrought like horses while we could.

The captain took no part. His brig was like wife and child to him; he seemed to suffer along with her.

I asked Alan, looking across at the shore, what country it was; and he answered, it was the worst possible for him, for it was a land of the Campbells.

Well, we had the boat about ready to be launched, when a man sang out pretty shrill: ‘For God’s sake, hold on!’ We knew by his tone that it was something more than ordinary; and sure enough, there followed a sea so huge that it lifted the brig right up and canted her over on her beam. Whether the cry came too late, or my hold was too weak, I know not; but at the sudden tilting of the ship I was cast clean over the bulwarks into the sea.

I went down, and drank my fill, and then came up, and got a blink of the moon, and then down again. They say a man sinks a third time for good. I cannot be made like other folk, then; for I would not like to write how often I went down, or how often I came up again. Presently, I found I was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and began to come to myself.

I was amazed to see how far I had travelled from the brig, it was plain she was already out of cry. She was still holding together; but whether or not they had yet launched the boat, I was too far off and too low down to see. I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold as well as of drowning.

The shores of Earraid were close in. In about an hour of kicking and splashing, I had got well in between the points of a sandy bay surrounded by low hills. I thought in my heart I had never seen a place so desert and desolate. But it was dry land; I was tired as I never was before that night; and grateful to God as I trust I have been often, though never with more cause.

With my stepping ashore I began the most unhappy part of my adventures. There was no sound of man or cattle; not a cock crew, though it was about the hour of their first waking; only the surf broke outside in the distance, which put me in mind of my perils and those of my friend.

As soon as the day began to break I put on my shoes and climbed a hill – the ruggedest scramble I ever undertook – falling, the whole way, between big blocks of granite, or leaping from one to another. When I got to the top the dawn was come. There was no sign of the brig, which must have lifted from the reef and sunk. The boat, too, was nowhere to be seen. There was never a sail upon the ocean; and in what I could see of the land was neither house nor man.

I set off eastward along the south coast, hoping to find a house where I might warm myself, and perhaps get news of those I had lost.

After a little, my way was stopped by a creek or inlet of the sea, which seemed to run pretty deep into the land; and as I had no means to get across, I must needs change my direction to go about the end of it.

At first the creek kept narrowing as I had looked to see; but presently to my surprise it began to widen out again until at last I came to a rising ground, and it burst upon me all in a moment that I was cast upon a little barren isle, and cut off on every side by the salt seas.

It occurred to me that perhaps the creek was fordable. Back I went to the narrowest point and waded in. But not three yards from shore, I plumped in head over ears; and if ever I was heard of more, it was rather by God’s grace than my own prudence. And now, all at once, the yard came in my head. What had carried me through the roost would surely serve me to cross this little quiet creek in safety. With that I set off, undaunted, across the top of the isle, to fetch and carry it back.

I came to the bay at last, more dead than alive; and at the first glance, I thought the yard was something farther out than when I left it. In I went into the sea. I could wade out till the water was almost to my neck and the little waves splashed into my face. But at that depth my feet began to leave me, and I durst venture in no farther. As for the yard, I saw it bobbing very quietly some twenty feet beyond.

I had borne up well until this last disappointment; but at that I came ashore, and flung myself down upon the sands and wept.

The time I spent upon the island is still so horrible a thought to me, that I must pass it lightly over. I had nothing in my pockets but money and Alan’s silver button; and being inland-bred, I was as much short of knowledge as of means.

I knew indeed that shell-fish were counted good to eat. There were, besides, some of the little shells that we call buckies; I think periwinkle is the English name. Of these two I made my whole diet, devouring them cold and raw as I found them; and so hungry was I, that at first they seemed to me delicious.

I had no sooner eaten my first meal than I was seized with giddiness and retching, and lay for a long time no better than dead. A second trial of the same food (indeed I had no other) did better with me, and revived my strength. But as long as I was on the island, I never knew what to expect when I had eaten.

All day it streamed rain; the island ran like a sop, there was no dry spot to be found; and when I lay down that night, between two boulders that made a kind of roof, my feet were in a bog.

The second day I crossed the island to all sides. The creek, or strait, that cut off the isle from the main-land of the Ross, opened out on the north into a bay, and the bay again opened into the Sound of Iona; and it was the neighbourhood of this place that I chose to be my home.

I had good reasons for my choice. The shell-fish on which I lived grew there in great plenty; when the tide was out I could gather a peck at a time: and this was doubtless a convenience. But the other reason went deeper. I had become in no way used to the horrid solitude of the isle. Now, from a little up the hillside over the bay, I could catch a sight of the great, ancient church and the roofs of the people’s houses in Iona. And on the other hand, over the low country of the Ross, I saw smoke go up, morning and evening, as if from a homestead in a hollow of the land.

Altogether, this sight I had of men’s homes and comfortable lives, although it put a point on my own sufferings, yet it kept hope alive. Indeed it seemed impossible that I should be left to die on the shores of my own country, and within view of a church-tower and the smoke of men’s houses.

It rained for more than twenty-four hours, and did not clear until the afternoon of the third day. This was the day of incidents. In the morning I saw a red deer. A little after, as I was jumping about after my limpets, I was startled by a guinea-piece, which fell upon a rock in front of me and glanced off into the sea. I carried my gold loose in a pocket with a button. I now saw there must be a hole, and clapped my hand to the place in a great hurry. I had left the shore at Queensferry with near on fifty pounds; now I found no more than three pounds and four shillings.

This state of my affairs dashed me still further; and, indeed my plight on that third morning was truly pitiful. And yet the worst was not yet come.

There is a pretty high rock on the northwest of Earraid, which (because it had a flat top and overlooked the Sound) I was much in the habit of frequenting;

As soon as the sun came out, I lay down on the top of that rock to dry myself. Well, all of a sudden, a coble with a brown sail and a pair of fishers aboard of it came flying round that corner of the isle, bound for Iona. I shouted out, and then fell on my knees on the rock and reached up my hands and prayed to them. They were near enough to hear – I could even see the colour of their hair; and there was no doubt but they observed me, for they cried out in the Gaelic tongue, and laughed. But the boat never turned aside, and flew on, right before my eyes, for Iona.

I could not believe such wickedness, and ran along the shore from rock to rock, crying on them piteously. I thought my heart would have burst. All the time of my troubles I wept only twice. Once, when I could not reach the yard, and now, the second time, when these fishers turned a deaf ear to my cries.

The next day (which was the fourth of this horrible life of mine) I found my bodily strength run very low. But the sun shone, the air was sweet, and what I managed to eat of the shell-fish agreed well with me and revived my courage.

I was scarce back on my rock before I observed a boat coming with her head, as I thought, in my direction.

I began at once to hope and fear exceedingly; I could no longer hold myself back, but ran to the seaside and out, from one rock to another, as far as I could go.

As soon as they were come within easy speech, they let down their sail and lay quiet. In spite of my supplications, they drew no nearer in, and what frightened me most of all, the new man tee-hee’d with laughter as he talked and looked at me.

Then he stood up in the boat and addressed me a long while, speaking fast and with many wavings of his hand. I told him I had no Gaelic; and at this he became very angry, and I began to suspect he thought he was talking English. Listening very close, I caught the word ‘whateffer’ several times;

‘Whatever,’ said I, to show him I had caught a word. ‘Yes, yes – yes, yes,’ says he, and then he looked at the other men, as much as to say, ‘I told you I spoke English,’ and began again as hard as ever in the Gaelic.

This time I picked out another word, ‘tide.’ Then I had a flash of hope. I remembered he was always waving his hand towards the mainland of the Ross.

‘Do you mean when the tide is out —?’ I cried, and could not finish.

‘Yes, yes,’ said he. ‘Tide.’

At that I turned tail upon their boat (where my adviser had once more begun to tee-hee with laughter), leaped back the way I had come, from one stone to another, and set off running across the isle as I had never run before. In about half an hour I came out upon the shores of the creek; and, sure enough, it was shrunk into a little trickle of water, through which I dashed, not above my knees, and landed with a shout on the main island.

If I had sat down to think, instead of raging at my fate, must have soon guessed the secret, and got free. It was no wonder the fishers had not understood me. The wonder was rather that they had ever guessed my pitiful illusion, and taken the trouble to come back. I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.

The Ross of Mull, which I had now got upon, was rugged and trackless, like the isle I had just left. There may be roads for them that know that country well; but for my part I had no better guide than my own nose, and no other landmark than Ben More.[62]

I aimed as well as I could for the smoke I had seen so often from the island; and with all my great weariness and the difficulty of the way came upon the house in the bottom of a little hollow about five or six at night. It was low and longish, roofed with turf and built of unmortared stones; and on a mound in front of it, an old gentleman sat smoking his pipe in the sun.

With what little English he had, he gave me to understand that my shipmates had got safe ashore, and had broken bread in that very house on the day after.

‘Was there one,’ I asked, ‘dressed like a gentleman?’

He said they all wore rough great-coats; but to be sure, the first of them, the one that came alone, wore breeches and stockings, while the rest had sailors’ trousers.

This set me smiling, partly because my friend was safe, partly to think of his vanity in dress.

And then the old gentleman clapped his hand to his brow, and cried out that I must be the lad with the silver button.

‘Why, yes!’ said I, in some wonder.

‘Well, then,’ said the old gentleman, ‘I have a word for you, that you are to follow your friend to his country, by Torosay.’

He then asked me how I had fared, and I told him my tale. A south-country man would certainly have laughed; but this old gentleman (I call him so because of his manners, for his clothes were dropping off his back) heard me all through with nothing but gravity and pity. The old gentleman brewed me a strong punch out of their country spirit. All the while I was eating, and after that when I was drinking the punch, I could scarce come to believe in my good fortune; and the house, though it was thick with the peat-smoke and as full of holes as a colander, seemed like a palace.

It was near noon of the next day before I took the road, my throat already easier and my spirits quite restored by good fare and good news. The old gentleman, although I pressed him hard, would take no money, and gave me an old bonnet for my head.

‘If these are the wild Highlanders, I could wish my own folk wilder,’ thought I to myself.

I met plenty of people, grubbing in little miserable fields that would not keep a cat, or herding little kine[63] about the bigness of asses. The Highland dress being forbidden by law since the rebellion, and the people condemned to the Lowland habit, which they much disliked, it was strange to see the variety of their array. Some went bare, only for a hanging cloak or great-coat, and carried their trousers on their backs like a useless burthen; some had made an imitation of the tartan[64] with little parti-coloured stripes patched together like an old wife’s quilt; others, again, still wore the Highland philabeg[65], but by putting a few stitches between the legs transformed it into a pair of trousers like a Dutchman’s. All those makeshifts were condemned and punished, for the law was harshly applied, in hopes to break up the clan spirit; but in that out-of-the-way, sea-bound isle, there were few to make remarks and fewer to tell tales.

They seemed in great poverty; which was no doubt natural, now that rapine was put down, and the chiefs kept no longer an open house; and the roads were infested with beggars. Few had any English, and these few (unless they were of the brotherhood of beggars) not very anxious to place it at my service. I knew Torosay to be my destination, and repeated the name to them and pointed; but instead of simply pointing in reply, they would give me a screed of the Gaelic that set me foolish; so it was small wonder if I went out of my road as often as I stayed in it.

At last, about eight at night, and already very weary, I came to a lone house, where I asked admittance, and was refused, until I held up one of my guineas in my finger and thumb. Thereupon, the man of the house, who had hitherto pretended to have no English, and driven me from his door by signals, suddenly began to speak as clearly as was needful, and agreed for five shillings to give me a night’s lodging and guide me the next day to Torosay.

I slept uneasily that night, fearing I should be robbed; but I might have spared myself the pain; for my host was no robber, only miserably poor and a great cheat. The next morning, we must go five miles about to the house of what he called a rich man to have one of my guineas changed. It took all he had – the whole house was turned upside down, and a neighbour brought under contribution, before he could scrape together twenty shillings in silver. He was very courteous and well-spoken, made us both sit down with his family to dinner, and brewed punch in a fine china bowl, over which my rascal guide grew so merry that he refused to start. So there was nothing for it but to sit and hear Jacobite toasts and Gaelic songs, till all were tipsy and staggered off to the bed or the barn for their night’s rest.

Next day we were up before five upon the clock; but my rascal guide got to the bottle at once, and it was three hours before I had him clear of the house, and then (as you shall hear) only for a worse disappointment.

As long as we went down a heathery valley that lay before Mr. Maclean’s house, all went well. No sooner, however, had we crossed the back of a hill, and got out of sight of the house windows, than he told me Torosay lay right in front, and that a hill-top (which he pointed out) was my best landmark.

‘I care very little for that,’ said I, ‘since you are going with me.’ The impudent cheat answered me in the Gaelic that he had no English.

‘Five shillings mair,’ said he, ‘and hersel[66]’ will bring ye there.’

I reflected awhile and then offered him two, which he accepted greedily.

The two shillings carried him not quite as many miles; at the end of which distance, he sat down upon the wayside and took off his brogues from his feet, like a man about to rest. I was now red-hot.

‘Ha!’ said I, ‘have you no more English?’

He said impudently, ‘No.’

At that I boiled over, and lifted my hand to strike him; and he, drawing a knife from his rags, squatted back and grinned at me like a wildcat. At that, forgetting everything but my anger, I ran in upon him, put aside his knife with my left, and struck him in the mouth with the right. I picked up both that and his brogues, wished him a good morning, and set off upon my way, leaving him barefoot and disarmed. I chuckled to myself as I went, I was done with that rogue.

In about half an hour of walk, I overtook a great, ragged man, moving pretty fast but feeling before him with a staff. He was quite blind, and told me he was a catechist, which should have put me at my ease. But his face went against me; it seemed dark and dangerous and secret; and presently, as we began to go on alongside, I saw the steel butt of a pistol sticking from under the flap of his coat-pocket.

I told him about my guide. At the mention of the five shillings he cried out so loud that I made up my mind I should say nothing of the other two, and was glad he could not see my blushes.

‘I will guide you to Torosay myself for a dram of brandy. And give you the great pleasure of my company (me that is a man of some learning) in the bargain.’

I said I did not see how a blind man could be a guide; but at that he laughed aloud, and said his stick was eyes enough for an eagle.

‘Ha!’ says he, ‘Would ye believe me now, that before the Act[67] came out, and when there were weepons[68] in this country, I could shoot? Ay, could I!’ cries he, and then with a leer: ‘If ye had such a thing as a pistol here to try with, I would show ye how it’s done.’

I told him I had nothing of the sort, and gave him a wider berth. He then began to question me cunningly, where I came from, whether I was rich, whether I could change a five-shilling piece for him, and all the time he kept edging up to me and I avoiding him.

I took a pleasure in this game of blindman’s buff; but the catechist grew angrier and angrier, and at last began to swear in Gaelic and to strike for my legs with his staff.

Then I told him that, sure enough, I had a pistol in my pocket as well as he, and if he did not strike across the hill due south I would even blow his brains out.

He became at once very polite, and after trying to soften me for some time, but quite in vain, he cursed me once more in Gaelic and took himself off.

At Torosay, there was an inn with an innkeeper, who was a Maclean, it appeared, of a very high family; for to keep an inn is thought even more genteel in the Highlands than it is with us, perhaps as partaking of hospitality, or perhaps because the trade is idle and drunken. He spoke good English, and finding me to be something of a scholar, tried me first in French, where he easily beat me, and then in the Latin, in which I don’t know which of us did best. I sat up and drank punch with him (or to be more correct, sat up and watched him drink it), until he was so tipsy that he wept upon my shoulder.

I tried him, as if by accident, with a sight of Alan’s button; but it was plain he had never seen or heard of it. Indeed, he bore some grudge against the family and friends of Ardshiel.

When I told him of my catechist, he shook his head, and said I was lucky to have got clear off. ‘That is a very dangerous man,’ he said; ‘Duncan Mackiegh is his name; he can shoot by the ear at several yards, and has been often accused of highway robberies, and once of murder.’

At last, when my landlord could drink no more, he showed me to a bed, and I lay down in very good spirits; having travelled the greater part of that big and crooked Island of Mull, from Earraid to Torosay, with little fatigue.

There is a regular ferry from Torosay to Kinlochaline on the mainland. The skipper of the boat was called Neil Roy Macrob; and since Macrob was one of the names of Alan’s clansmen, and Alan himself had sent me to that ferry, I was eager to come to private speech of Neil Roy.

In the crowded boat this was of course impossible, and the passage was a very slow affair. With the songs, and the sea-air, and the good-nature and spirit of all concerned, and the bright weather, the passage was a pretty thing to have seen.

But there was one melancholy part. In the mouth of Loch Aline[69] we found a great sea-going ship at anchor. As we got a little nearer, it became plain she was a ship of merchandise; not only her decks, but the sea-beach also, were quite black with people, and skiffs were continually plying to and fro between them. Yet nearer, there began to come to our ears a great sound of mourning, the people on board and those on the shore crying and lamenting one to another so as to pierce the heart.

Then I understood this was an emigrant ship bound for the American colonies.

We put the ferry-boat alongside, and the exiles leaned over the bulwarks, weeping and reaching out their hands to my fellow-passengers, among whom they counted some near friends. The captain of the ship, who seemed near beside himself (and no great wonder) in the midst of this crying and confusion, came to the side and begged us to depart.

At Kinlochaline I got Neil Roy upon one side on the beach, and said I made sure he was one of Appin’s men.

‘And what for no?’ said he.

‘I am seeking somebody,’ said I; ‘and it comes in my mind that you will have news of him. Alan Breck Stewart is his name.’ And very foolishly, instead of showing him the button, I sought to pass a shilling in his hand.

At this he drew back. ‘I am very much affronted,’ he said; ‘and this is not the way that one shentleman[70]should behave to another at all. The man you ask for is in France; but if he was in my sporran[71],’ says he, ‘and your belly full of shillings, I would not hurt a hair upon his body.’

I saw I had gone the wrong way to work, and without wasting time upon apologies, showed him the button lying in the hollow of my palm.

‘Aweel, aweel,’ said Neil; ‘and I think ye might have begun with that end of the stick, whatever! But if ye are the lad with the silver button, all is well, and I have the word to see that ye come safe. But if ye will pardon me to speak plainly,’ says he, ‘there is a name that you should never take into your mouth, and that is the name of Alan Breck; and there is a thing that ye would never do, and that is to offer your dirty money to a Hieland shentleman.’

It was not very easy to apologise; for I could scarce tell him (what was the truth) that I had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman until he told me so. Neil on his part had no wish to prolong his dealings with me, only to fulfil his orders and be done with it; and he made haste to give me my route. This was to lie the night in Kinlochaline in the public inn; to cross Morven[72] the next day to Ardgour, and lie the night in the house of one John of the Claymore, who was warned that I might come; the third day, to be set across one loch at Corran and another at Balachulish, and then ask my way to the house of James of the Glens[73], at Aucharn in Duror of Appin. There was a good deal of ferrying, as you hear; the sea in all this part running deep into the mountains and winding about their roots.

The inn at Kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs were styed[74] in, full of smoke, vermin, and silent Highlanders.

I overtook a little, stout, solemn man, walking very slowly with his toes turned out, sometimes reading in a book and sometimes marking the place with his finger, and dressed decently and plainly in something of a clerical style.

This I found to be another catechist, but of a different order from the blind man of Mull. His name was Henderland; he spoke with the broad south-country tongue; and besides common countryship, we soon found we had a more particular bond of interest. For my good friend, the minister of Essendean, had translated into the Gaelic in his by-time a number of hymns and pious books which Henderland used in his work, and held in great esteem.

We fell in company at once, our ways lying together as far as to Kingairloch. I told him as far in my affairs as I judged wise; as far, that is, as they were none of Alan’s; and gave Balachulish as the place I was travelling to, to meet a friend.

On his part, he told me much of his work and the people he worked among, and many other curiosities of the time and place. He seemed moderate; blaming Parliament in several points, and especially because they had framed the Act more severely against those who wore the dress than against those who carried weapons.

This moderation put it in my mind to question him of the Red Fox and the Appin tenants; questions which, I thought, would seem natural enough in the mouth of one travelling to that country.

He said it was a bad business. ‘It’s wonderful,’ said he, ‘where the tenants find the money, for their life is mere starvation. But these tenants are doubtless partly driven to it. James Stewart in Duror (that’s him they call James of the Glens) is half-brother to Ardshiel, the captain of the clan; and he is a man much looked up to, and drives very hard. And then there’s one they call Alan Breck —’

‘Ah!’ I cried, ‘what of him?’

‘Alan Breck is a bold, desperate customer, and well kent to be James’s right hand. His life is forfeit already; he would boggle at naething; and maybe, if a tenant-body was to hang back he would get a dirk in his wame[75].’

‘You make a poor story of it all, Mr. Henderland,’ said I. ‘If it is all fear upon both sides, I care to hear no more of it.’

‘Na,’ said Mr. Henderland, ‘but there’s love too, and self-denial that should put the like of you and me to shame. There’s something fine about it; no perhaps Christian, but humanly fine. – Ye’ll perhaps think I’ve been too long in the Hielands?’ he added, smiling to me.

I told him not at all; that I had seen much to admire among the Highlanders; and if he came to that, Mr. Campbell himself was a Highlander.

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘that’s true. It’s a fine blood.’

‘And what is the King’s agent about?’ I asked.

‘Colin Campbell?’ says Henderland. ‘Putting his head in a bees’ byke!’

‘He is to turn the tenants out by force, I hear?’ said I.

‘Yes,’ says he, ‘but the business has gone back and forth, as folk say. They tell me the first of the tenants are to flit tomorrow. It’s to begin at Duror under James’s very windows, which doesnae seem wise by my humble way of it.’

‘Do you think they’ll fight?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ says Henderland, ‘they’re disarmed – or supposed to be. But for all that, if I was his lady wife, I wouldnae be well pleased till I got him home again. They’re queer customers, the Appin Stewarts.’

I asked if they were worse than their neighbours.

‘No they,’ said he. ‘And that’s the worst part of it. For if Colin Roy can get his business done in Appin, he has it all to begin again in the next country, which they call Mamore, and which is one of the countries of the Camerons. He’s King’s Factor upon both, and it’s my belief that if he escapes the one lot, he’ll get his death by the other.’

Mr. Henderland after expressing his delight in my company proposed that I should make a short stage, and lie the night in his house a little beyond Kingairloch. To say truth, I was overjoyed; for I had no great desire for John of the Claymore. Accordingly we shook hands upon the bargain, and came in the afternoon to a small house, standing alone by the shore of the Linnhe Loch.

As soon as we had eaten he took a grave face and said he had a duty to perform by Mr. Campbell, and that was to inquire into my state of mind towards God. I was inclined to smile at him but he had not spoken long before he brought the tears into my eyes. There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people; but Mr. Henderland had their very speech upon his tongue. And though I was a good deal puffed up with my adventures and with having come off, as the saying is, with flying colours; yet he soon had me on my knees beside a simple, poor old man, and both proud and glad to be there.

Before we went to bed he offered me sixpence to help me on my way, at which excess of goodness I knew not what to do. But at last he was so earnest with me that I thought it the more mannerly part to let him have his way, and so left him poorer than myself.

The next day Mr. Henderland found for me a man who had a boat of his own and was to cross the Linnhe Loch that afternoon into Appin, fishing. Him he prevailed on to take me, for he was one of his flock; and in this way I saved a long day’s travel and the price of the two public ferries I must otherwise have passed.

It was near noon before we set out. A little after we had started, the sun shone upon a little moving clump of scarlet close in along the water-side to the north. It was much of the same red as soldiers’ coats; every now and then, too, there came little sparks and lightnings, as though the sun had struck upon bright steel.

I asked my boatman what it should be, and he answered he supposed it was some of the red soldiers coming from Fort William into Appin, against the poor tenantry of the country. Well, it was a sad sight to me. At last we came so near the point of land at the entering in of Loch Leven that I begged to be set on shore. My boatman (who was an honest fellow and mindful of his promise to the catechist) would fain have carried me on to Balachulish; but as this was to take me farther from my secret destination, I insisted, and was set on shore at last under the wood of Lettermore in Alan’s country of Appin.

This was a wood of birches, growing on a steep, craggy side of a mountain that overhung the loch. I sat down to eat some oat-bread of Mr. Henderland’s and think upon my situation.

Here I was not only troubled by a cloud of stinging midges, but far more by the doubts of my mind. What I ought to do, why I was going to join myself with an outlaw and a would-be murderer like Alan, whether I should not be acting more like a man of sense to tramp back to the south country direct, by my own guidance and at my own charges.

As I was so sitting and thinking, a sound of men and horses came to me through the wood; and presently after, at a turning of the road, I saw four travellers come into view. The way was in this part so rough and narrow that they came single and led their horses by the reins. The first was a great, redheaded gentleman, of an imperious and flushed face, who carried his hat in his hand and fanned himself, for he was in a breathing heat. The second, by his decent black garb and white wig, I correctly took to be a lawyer. The third was a servant, and wore some part of his clothes in tartan, which showed that his master was of a Highland family, and either an outlaw or else in singular good odour with the Government, since the wearing of tartan was against the Act. If I had been better versed in these things, I would have known the tartan to be of the Argyle (or Campbell) colours. As for the fourth, who brought up the tail, I had seen his like before, and knew him at once to be a sheriff ’s officer.

I had no sooner seen these people coming than I made up my mind (for no reason that I can tell) to go through with my adventure; and when the first came alongside of me, I rose up from the bracken and asked him the way to Aucharn.

He stopped and looked at me, as I thought, a little oddly; and then, turning to the lawyer, ‘Mungo,’ said he, ‘there’s many a man would think this more of a warning than two pyats[76]. Here am I on my road to Duror on the job ye ken; and here is a young lad starts up out of the bracken, and speers if I am on the way to Aucharn.’

‘And what seek ye in Aucharn?’ said Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, him they called the Red Fox; for he it was that I had stopped.

‘The man that lives there,’ said I.

‘James of the Glens,’ says Glenure, musingly; and then to the lawyer: ‘Is he gathering his people, think ye?

‘Anyway,’ says the lawyer, ‘we shall do better to bide where we are, and let the soldiers rally us.’

‘If you are concerned for me,’ said I, ‘I am neither of his people nor yours, but an honest subject of King George, owing no man and fearing no man.’

‘Why, very well said,’ replies the Factor. ‘But if I may make so bold as ask, what does this honest man so far from his country? and why does he come seeking the brother of Ardshiel? I have power here, I must tell you. I am King’s Factor upon several of these estates, and have twelve files of soldiers at my back.’

‘I have heard a waif word in the country,’ said I, a little nettled, ‘that you were a hard man to drive.’

He still kept looking at me, as if in doubt.

‘Well,’ said he, at last, ‘your tongue is bold; but I am no unfriend to plainness. If ye had asked me the way to the door of James Stewart on any other day but this, I would have set ye right and bidden ye God speed. But today – eh, Mungo?’ And he turned again to look at the lawyer.

But just as he turned there came the shot of a firelock from higher up the hill; and with the very sound of it Glenure fell upon the road.

‘O, I am dead!’ he cried, several times over.

The lawyer had caught him up and held him in his arms, the servant standing over and clasping his hands. And now the wounded man looked from one to another with scared eyes, and there was a change in his voice, that went to the heart. He gave a great sigh, his head rolled on his shoulder, and he passed away.

The lawyer said never a word, but his face was as sharp as a pen and as white as the dead man’s; the servant broke out into a great noise of crying and weeping, like a child; and I, on my side, stood staring at them in a kind of horror. The sheriff ’s officer had run back at the first sound of the shot, to hasten the coming of the soldiers.

At last the lawyer laid down the dead man in his blood upon the road. I believe it was his movement that brought me to my senses; for he had no sooner done so than I began to scramble up the hill, crying out, ‘The murderer! the murderer!’

The murderer was still moving away at no great distance. He was a big man, in a black coat, with metal buttons, and carried a long fowling-piece.

‘Here!’ I cried. ‘I see him!’

At that the murderer gave a little, quick look over his shoulder, and began to run. The next moment he was lost in a fringe of birches; and I saw him no more.

All this time I had been running, and had got a good way up, when a voice cried upon me to stand.

The lawyer and the sheriff ’s officer were standing just above the road, crying and waving on me to come back; and on their left, the red-coats, musket in hand, were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower wood.

‘Why should I come back?’ I cried. ‘Come you on!’

‘Ten pounds if ye take that lad!’ cried the lawyer. ‘He’s an accomplice. He was posted here to hold us in talk.’

At that word my heart came in my mouth with quite a new kind of terror. I was all amazed and helpless. The soldiers began to spread, some of them to run, and others to put up their pieces and cover me; and still I stood.

‘Jock[77] in here among the trees,’ said a voice close by.

Indeed, I scarce knew what I was doing, but I obeyed; and as I did so, I heard the firelocks bang and the balls whistle in the birches.

Just inside the shelter of the trees I found Alan Breck standing, with a fishing-rod. He gave me no salutation; indeed it was no time for civilities; only ‘Come!’ says he, and set off running along the side of the mountain towards Balaehulish; and I, like a sheep, to follow him.

The pace was deadly: my heart seemed bursting against my ribs; and I had neither time to think nor breath to speak with. Only I remember seeing with wonder, that Alan every now and then would straighten himself to his full height and look back; and every time he did so, there came a great faraway cheering and crying of the soldiers.

Quarter of an hour later, Alan stopped, clapped down flat in the heather, and turned to me.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘it’s earnest. Do as I do, for your life.’

And at the same speed, but now with infinitely more precaution, we traced back again across the mountain-side by the same way that we had come, only perhaps higher; till at last Alan threw himself down in the upper wood of Lettermore, where I had found him at the first, and lay, with his face in the bracken, panting like a dog. My own sides so ached, my head so swam, my tongue so hung out of my mouth with heat and dryness, that I lay beside him like one dead.

Alan was the first to come round. He rose, went to the border of the wood, peered out a little, and then returned and sat down. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘yon was a hot burst, David.’

I said nothing, nor so much as lifted my face. I had seen murder done; the pity of that sight was still sore within me, and yet that was but a part of my concern. Here was murder done upon the man Alan hated; here was Alan skulking in the trees and running from the troops; and whether his was the hand that fired or only the head that ordered, signified but little. By my way of it, my only friend in that wild country was blood-guilty in the first degree; I would have rather lain alone in the rain on my cold isle, than in that warm wood beside a murderer.

‘I liked you very well, Alan, but your ways are not mine, and they’re not God’s: and the short and the long of it is just that we must twine.’

‘I will hardly twine from ye, David, without some kind of reason for the same,’ said Alan, mighty gravely. ‘If ye ken anything against my reputation, it’s the least thing that ye should do, for old acquaintance’ sake, to let me hear the name of it.’

‘Alan,’ said I, ‘what is the sense of this? Ye ken very well yon Campbell-man lies in his blood upon the road.’

‘I will tell you first of all, Mr. Balfour of Shaws, as one friend to another,’ said Alan, ‘that if I were going to kill a gentleman, it would not be in my own country, to bring trouble on my clan; and I would not go wanting sword and gun, and with a long fishing-rod upon my back.’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘that’s true!’

‘And now,’ continued Alan, taking out his dirk and laying his hand upon it in a certain manner, ‘I swear upon the Holy Iron I had neither art nor part, act nor thought in it.’

‘I thank God for that!’ cried I, and offered him my hand.

He did not appear to see it.

‘And here is a great deal of work about a Campbell!’ said he. ‘They are not so scarce, that I ken!’

‘At least,’ said I, ‘you cannot justly blame me, for you know very well what you told me in the brig. But the temptation and the act are different, I thank God again for that. We may all be tempted; but to take a life in cold blood, Alan!’ And I could say no more for the moment. ‘And do you know who did it?’ I added.

‘Do you know that man in the black coat? Can you swear that you don’t know him, Alan?’ I cried.

‘Not yet,’ says he; ‘but I’ve a grand memory for forgetting, David.’

‘And yet there was one thing I saw clearly,’ said I;

‘and that was, that you exposed yourself and me to draw the soldiers.’

‘It’s very likely,’ said Alan; ‘and so would any gentleman. You and me were innocent of that transaction.

The innocent have aye[78] a chance to get assoiled in court; but for the lad that shot the bullet, I think the best place for him will be the heather. I think we would be a good deal obliged to him oursel’s if he would draw the soldiers.’

When it came to this, I gave Alan up. Alan’s morals were all tail-first; but he was ready to give his life for them, such as they were.

‘Alan,’ said I, ‘I’ll not say it’s the good Christianity as I understand it, but it’s good enough. And here I offer ye my hand for the second time.’

Whereupon he gave me both of his, saying surely I had cast a spell upon him, for he could forgive me anything. Then he grew very grave, and said we had not much time to throw away, but must both flee that country.

‘O!’ says I, willing to give him a little lesson, ‘I have no fear of the justice of my country.’

‘Man, I whiles wonder at ye,’ said Alan. ‘This is a Campbell that’s been killed. Well, it’ll be tried in Inveraray[79], the Campbells’ head place; with fifteen Campbells in the jury-box and the biggest Campbell of all (and that’s the Duke) sitting cocking on the bench. Justice, David? The same justice, by all the world, as Glenure found awhile ago at the roadside. We’re in the Hielands, David; and when I tell ye to run, take my word and run. Nae doubt it’s a hard thing to skulk and starve in the Heather, but it’s harder yet to lie shackled in a red-coat prison.’

I asked him whither we should flee; and as he told me ‘to the Lowlands,’ I was a little better inclined to go with him; for, indeed, I was growing impatient to get back and have the upper hand of my uncle.

‘I’ll chance it, Alan,’ said I. ‘I’ll go with you.’

‘But mind you,’ said Alan, ‘it’s no small thing. Ye maun lie bare and hard, and brook many an empty belly. Your bed shall be the moorcock’s, and your life shall be like the hunted deer’s, and ye shall sleep with your hand upon your weapons. I tell ye this at the start, for it’s a life that I ken well. But if ye ask what other chance ye have, I answer: Nane. Either take to the heather with me, or else hang.’

‘And that’s a choice very easily made,’ said I; and we shook hands upon it.

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘you and me, David, can sit down and eat a bite, and breathe a bit longer, and take a dram from my bottle. Then we’ll strike for Aucharn, the house of my kinsman, James of the Glens, where I must get my clothes, and my arms, and money to carry us along; and then, David, we’ll cry, “Forth, Fortune!” and take a cast among the heather.’

On the way to Aucharn, each of us narrated his adventures; and I shall here set down so much of Alan’s as seems either curious or needful.

It appears he ran to the bulwarks as soon as the wave was passed; and had one glimpse of me clinging on the yard. It was this that put him in some hope I would maybe get to land after all, and made him leave those clues and messages.

In the meanwhile, those still on the brig had got the skiff launched, and one or two were on board of her already, when there came a second wave greater than the first, and heaved the brig out of her place, and would certainly have sent her to the bottom, had she not struck and caught on some projection of the reef. But now her stern was thrown in the air, and the bows plunged under the sea.

All who were on deck tumbled one after another into the skiff and fell to their oars. They were not two hundred yards away, when there came a third great sea; and at that the brig lifted clean over the reef; her canvas filled for a moment, and she seemed to sail in chase of them, but settling all the while; and presently she drew down and down, as if a hand was drawing her; and the sea closed over the Covenant of Dysart.

Never a word they spoke as they pulled ashore; but they had scarce set foot upon the beach when Hoseason woke up, as if out of a muse, and bade them lay hands upon Alan. The sailors began to spread out and come behind him.

‘And then,’ said Alan, ‘the little man with the red head – I havenae mind of the name that he is called.’

‘Riach,’ said I.

‘Ay,’ said Alan, ‘Riach! Well, it was him that took up the clubs for me, asked the men if they werenae feared of a judgment, and, says he “Dod, I’ll put my back to the Hielandman’s mysel’.’ That’s none such an entirely bad little man, yon little man with the red head,’ said Alan. ‘He has some spunks of decency. The little man cried to me to run, and indeed I thought it was a good observe, and ran. Ye see there’s a strip of Campbells in that end of Mull, which is no good company for a gentleman like me. If it hadnae been for that I would have waited and looked for ye mysel’, let alone giving a hand to the little man.’

Night fell as we were walking, and the clouds, which had broken up in the afternoon, settled in and thickened, so that it fell extremely dark. The way we went was over rough mountain-sides; and though Alan pushed on with an assured manner, I could by no means see how he directed himself.

At last, about half-past ten of the clock, we came to the top of a brae, and saw lights below us. It seemed a house door stood open and let out a beam of fire and candle-light; and all round the house and steading five or six persons were moving hurriedly about, each carrying a lighted brand.

Hereupon he whistled three times, in a particular manner. It was strange to see how, at the first sound of it, all the moving torches came to a stand, as if the bearers were affrighted; and how, at the third, the bustle began again as before.

We came down the brae, and were met at the yard gate by a tall, handsome man of more than fifty, who cried out to Alan in the Gaelic.

‘James Stewart,’ said Alan, ‘I will ask ye to speak in Scotch, for here is a young gentleman with me that has nane of the other. This is him, but I am thinking it will be the better for his health if we give his name the go-by.’

James of the Glens turned to me for a moment, and greeted me courteously enough; the next he had turned to Alan. ‘This has been a dreadful accident,’ he cried. ‘It will bring trouble on the country.’ And he wrung his hands.

‘Hoots!’ said Alan, ‘ye must take the sour with the sweet, man. Colin Roy is dead, and be thankful for that!’

‘Ay,’ said James, ‘and by my troth[80], I wish he was alive again! It’s all very fine to blow and boast beforehand; but now it’s done, Alan; and who’s to bear the wyte[81] of it? The accident fell out in Appin – mind ye that, Alan; it’s Appin that must pay; and I am a man that has a family.’

While this was going on I looked about me at the servants. Some were on ladders, digging in the thatch of the house or the farm buildings, from which they brought out guns, swords, and different weapons of war; others carried them away; and by the sound of mattock blows from somewhere farther down the brae, I suppose they buried them.

Though they were all so busy, there prevailed no kind of order in their efforts. James was continually turning about from his talk with Alan, to cry out orders which were apparently never understood.

Then Alan retired into the barn to shift himself, recommending me in the meanwhile to his kinsman. James carried me accordingly into the kitchen, and sat down with me at table, smiling and talking at first in a very hospitable manner. But presently the gloom returned upon him; he sat frowning and biting his fingers; only remembered me from time to time.

His wife sat by the fire and wept, with her face in her hands; his eldest son was crouched upon the floor, running over a great mass of papers and now and again setting one alight and burning it to the bitter end.

At last James could keep his seat no longer, and begged my permission to be so unmannerly as walk about. ‘I am but poor company altogether, sir,’ says he, ‘but I can think of nothing but this dreadful accident, and the trouble it is like to bring upon quite innocent persons.’

I was right glad when Alan returned, looking like himself in his fine French clothes. I was then taken out in my turn by another of the sons, and given that change of clothing of which I had stood so long in need, and a pair of Highland brogues made of deer-leather, rather strange at first, but after a little practice very easy to the feet.

By the time I came back Alan must have told his story; for it seemed understood that I was to fly with him, and they were all busy upon our equipment. They gave us each a sword and pistols, some ammunition, a bag of oatmeal, an iron pan, and a bottle of right French brandy, we were ready for the heather.

‘Ye must find a safe bit somewhere nearby,’ said James, ‘and get word sent to me. Ye see, ye’ll have to get this business prettily off, Alan. They’re sure to get wind of ye, sure to seek ye, and by my way of it, sure to lay on ye the wyte of this day’s accident. If it falls on you, it falls on me that am your near kinsman and harboured ye while ye were in the country. And if it comes on me —’ he paused, and bit his fingers, with a white face. ‘It would be a painful thing for our friends if I was to hang,’ said he.

‘It would be an ill day for Appin,’ says Alan.

‘But see here,’ said James, returning to his former manner, ‘if they lay me by the heels, Alan, I’ll have to get a paper out against ye mysel’; have to offer a reward for ye; ay, will I! It’s a sore thing to do between such near friends; but if I get the dirdum[82] of this dreadful accident, I’ll have to fend for myself, man. Do ye see that?’

He spoke with a pleading earnestness, taking Alan by the breast of the coat.

‘Ay,’ said Alan, ‘I see that.’

‘And ye’ll have to be clear of the country, Alan – ay, and clear of Scotland – you and your friend from the Lowlands, too. For I’ll have to paper your friend from the Lowlands. Ye see that, Alan – say that ye see that!’

I thought Alan flushed a bit. ‘It’s like making me a traitor!’

‘Now, Alan, man!’ cried James. ‘Look things in the face! He’ll be papered anyway; Mungo Campbell’ll be sure to paper him; what matters if I paper him too? And then, Alan, I am a man that has a family.’ And then, after a little pause on both sides, ‘And, Alan, it’ll be a jury of Campbells,’ said he.

‘Well, sir,’ says Alan, turning to me, ‘what say ye to, that? Ye are here under the safeguard of my honour; and it’s my part to see nothing done but what shall please you.’

‘I have but one word to say,’ said I; ‘for to all this dispute I am a perfect stranger. But the plain common sense is to set the blame where it belongs, and that is on the man who fired the shot. Paper him, as ye call it, set the hunt on him; and let honest, innocent folk show their faces in safety.’ But at this both Alan and James cried out in horror; bidding me hold my tongue with such innocent earnestness, that my hands dropped at my side and I despaired of argument.

‘Very well, then,’ said I, ‘paper me, if you please, paper Alan, paper King George! We’re all three innocent, and that seems to be what’s wanted. But at least, sir,’ said I to James, recovering from my little fit of annoyance, ‘I am Alan’s friend, and if I can be helpful to friends of his, I will not stumble at the risk.’

I thought it best to put a fair face on my consent, for I saw Alan troubled; and, besides (thinks I to myself), as soon as my back is turned, they will paper me, as they call it, whether I consent or not. But in this I saw I was wrong; for I had no sooner said the words, than Mrs. Stewart leaped out of her chair, came running over to us, and wept first upon my neck and then on Alan’s, blessing God for our goodness to her family.

‘Hoot, hoot,’ said Alan. ‘The day comes unco[83] soon in this month of July; and to-morrow there’ll be a fine to-do in Appin, a fine riding of dragoons, and running of red-coats; and it behoves you and me to the sooner be gone.’

Thereupon we said farewell, and set out again, bending somewhat eastwards, in a fine mild dark night, and over much the same broken country as before.

Sometimes we walked, sometimes ran; and as it drew on to morning, walked ever the less and ran the more. Though, upon its face, that country appeared to be a desert, yet there were huts and houses of the people.

For all our hurry, day began to come in while we were still far from any shelter. It found us in a prodigious valley, strewn with rocks and where ran a foaming river. The first peep of morning, showed us this horrible place, and I could see Alan knit his brow. ‘This is no fit place for you and me,’ he said. ‘This is a place they’re bound to watch.’

And with that he ran harder than ever down to the waterside, in a part where the river was split in two among three rocks. It went through with a horrid thundering that made my belly quake; and there hung over the lynn a little mist of spray. Alan looked neither to the right nor to the left, but jumped clean upon the middle rock and fell there on his hands and knees to check himself, for that rock was small and he might have pitched over on the far side. I had scarce time to measure the distance or to understand the peril before I had followed him, and he had caught and stopped me.

So there we stood, side by side upon a small rock slippery with spray, a far broader leap in front of us, and the river dinning upon all sides. When I saw where I was, there came on me a deadly sickness of fear, and I put my hand over my eyes. Alan took me and shook me; I saw he was speaking, but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of my mind prevented me from hearing; only I saw his face was red with anger, and that he stamped upon the rock. I covered my eyes again and shuddered.

The next minute Alan had set the brandy bottle to my lips, and forced me to drink about a gill, which sent the blood into my head again. Then, putting his hands to his mouth, and his mouth to my ear, he shouted, ‘Hang or drown!’ and turning his back upon me, leaped over the farther branch of the stream, and landed safe.

I was now alone upon the rock, which gave me the more room; the brandy was singing in my ears; I had this good example fresh before me, and just wit enough to see that if I did not leap at once, I should never leap at all. I bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with that kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me instead of courage. Sure enough, it was but my hands that reached the full length; these slipped, caught again, slipped again; and I was sliddering back into the lynn, when Alan seized me, first by the hair, then by the collar, and with a great strain dragged me into safety.

Never a word he said, but set off running again for his life, and I must stagger to my feet and run after him. At last Alan paused under a great rock that stood there among a number of others.

A great rock I have said; but by rights it was two rocks leaning together at the top, both some twenty feet high, and at the first sight inaccessible. Even Alan (though you may say he had as good as four hands) failed twice in an attempt to climb them; and it was only at the third trial, and then by standing on my shoulders and leaping up with such force as I thought must have broken my collar-bone, that he secured a lodgment. Once there, he let down his leathern girdle; and with the aid of that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock, I scrambled up beside him.

Then I saw why we had come there; for the two rocks, being both somewhat hollow on the top and sloping one to the other, made a kind of dish or saucer, where as many as three or four men might have lain hidden.

All this while Alan had not said a word, and had run and climbed with such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I knew that he was in mortal fear of some miscarriage.

At last Alan smiled. ‘Ay,’ said he, ‘now we have a chance;’ and then looking at me with some amusement. ‘Ye’re no very gleg[84] at the jumping.’

At this I suppose I coloured with mortification, for he added at once, ‘Hoots! small blame to ye! To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man. And then there was water there, and water’s a thing that dauntons even me. No, no,’ said Alan, ‘it’s no you that’s to blame, it’s me.’

I asked him why.

‘Why,’ said he, ‘I have proved myself a gomeral this night. For first of all I take a wrong road, and that in my own country of Appin; so that the day has caught us where we should never have been; and thanks to that, we lie here in some danger and mair discomfort. And next I have come wanting a water-bottle, and here we lie for a long summer’s day with naething but neat spirit. Ye may think that a small matter; but before it comes night, David, ye’ll give me news of it.’

I was anxious to redeem my character, and offered, if he would pour out the brandy, to run down and fill the bottle at the river.

‘I wouldnae waste the good spirit either,’ says he. ‘It’s been a good friend to you this night. And what’s mair,’ says he, ‘ye may have observed that Alan Breck Stewart was perhaps walking quicker than his ordinary. And now here is enough said; gang you to your sleep, lad, and I’ll watch.’

I dare say it would be nine in the morning when I was roughly awakened, and found Alan’s hand pressed upon my mouth.

‘Wheesht[85]!’ he whispered. ‘Ye were snoring.’

‘Well,’ said I, surprised at his anxious and dark face, ‘and why not?’

He peered over the edge of the rock, and signed to me to do the like.

About half a mile up the water was a camp of redcoats; a big fire blazed in their midst, at which some were cooking; and nearby, on the top of a rock about as high as ours, there stood a sentry, with the sun sparkling on his arms. All the way down along the river-side were posted other sentries.

I took but one look at them, and ducked again into my place.

‘Ye see,’ said Alan, ‘this was what I was afraid of, Davie: that they would watch the burn-side. They began to come in about two hours ago, and, man! but ye’re a grand hand at the sleeping! We’re in a narrow place. If they get up the sides of the hill, they could easy spy us with a glass; but if they’ll only keep in the foot of the valley, we’ll do yet. The posts are thinner down the water; and, come night, we’ll try our hand at getting by them.’

‘And what are we to do till night?’ I asked.

‘Lie here,’ says he.

You are to remember that we lay on the bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon us cruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch of it; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was only large enough for one at a time. We took turn about to lie on the naked rock, which was indeed like the position of that saint that was martyred on a gridiron.

All the while we had no water, only raw brandy for a drink, which was worse than nothing; but we kept the bottle as cool as we could, burying it in the earth, and got some relief by bathing our breasts and temples.

The soldiers kept stirring all day in the bottom of the valley, now changing guard, now in patrolling parties hunting among the rocks. We could see the soldiers pike their bayonets among the heather, which sent a cold thrill into my vitals; and they would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarce dared to breathe.

The tediousness and pain of these hours upon the rock grew only the greater as the day went on.

At last, about two, it was beyond men’s bearing, and there was now temptation to resist, as well as pain to thole. For the sun being now got a little into the west, there came a patch of shade on the east side of our rock, which was the side sheltered from the soldiers.

‘As well one death as another,’ said Alan, and slipped over the edge and dropped on the ground on the shadowy side.

I followed him at once, and instantly fell all my length, so weak was I and so giddy with that long exposure.

Presently we began again to get a little strength; and as the soldiers were now lying closer along the river-side, Alan proposed that we should try a start. I was by this time afraid of but one thing in the world; and that was to be set back upon the rock; anything else was welcome to me; so we got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slip from rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our bellies in the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth.

By sundown we had made some distance, even by our slow rate of progress, though to be sure the sentry on the rock was still plainly in our view. But now we came on something that put all fears out of season; and that was a deep rushing burn, that tore down, in that part, to join the glen river. At the sight of this we cast ourselves on the ground and plunged head and shoulders in the water; and I cannot tell which was the more pleasant, the great shock as the cool stream went over us, or the greed with which we drank of it. At last, being wonderfully renewed, we got out the meal-bag and made drammach[86] in the iron pan.

As soon as the shadow of the night had fallen, we set forth again, at first with the same caution, but presently with more boldness, standing our full height and stepping out at a good pace of walking.

The moon shone out and showed me many dark heads of mountains, and was reflected far underneath us on the narrow arm of a sea-loch. At this sight we both paused: I struck with wonder to find myself so high and walking (as it seemed to me) upon clouds; Alan to make sure of his direction.

Seemingly he was well pleased, and he must certainly have judged us out of ear-shot of all our enemies; for throughout the rest of our night-march he beguiled the way with whistling of many tunes.

Early as day comes in the beginning of July, it was still dark when we reached our destination, a cleft in the head of a great mountain, with a water running through the midst, and upon the one hand a shallow cave in a rock.

The name of the cleft was the Heugh of Corry-nakiegh; and although from its height and being so near upon the sea, it was often beset with clouds, yet it was on the whole a pleasant place, and the five days we lived in it went happily.

We slept in the cave, making our bed of heather bushes which we cut for that purpose, and covering ourselves with Alan’s great-coat. There was a low concealed place, in a turning of the glen, where we were so bold as to make fire: so that we could warm ourselves when the clouds set in, and cook hot porridge, and grill the little trouts that we caught. This was indeed our chief pleasure and business; and not only to save our meal against worse times, but with a rivalry that much amused us, we spent a great part of our days at the water-side, stripped to the waist and groping about or (as they say) guddling for these fish. They were of good flesh and flavour, and when broiled upon the coals, lacked only a little salt to be delicious.

In any by-time Alan must teach me to use my sword, for my ignorance had much distressed him.

In the meanwhile, you are not to suppose that we neglected our chief business, which was to get away.

‘It will be many a long day,’ Alan said to me on our first morning, ‘before the red-coats think upon seeking Corrynakiegh; so now we must get word sent to James, and he must find the siller for us.’

‘And how shall we send that word?’ says I.

He looked at me a little shyly.

‘Could ye lend me my button?’ says he. ‘It seems a strange thing to ask a gift again, but I own I am laith[87] to cut another.’

I gave him the button; whereupon he strung it on a strip of his great-coat which he had used to bind the cross; and tying in a little sprig of birch and another of fir, he looked upon his work with satisfaction.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘there is a little clachan’ (what is called a hamlet in the English) ‘not very far from Corrynakiegh, and it has the name of Koalisnacoan. So when it comes dark again, I will steal down into that clachan, and set this that I have been making in the window of a good friend of mine, John Breck Maccoll, a bouman[88] of Appin’s.’

‘With all my heart,’ says I; ‘and if he finds it, what is he to think?’

‘Well,’ says Alan, ‘I wish he was a man of more penetration, for by my troth I am afraid he will make little enough of it! But this is what I have in my mind. This cross is something in the nature of the crosstarrie, or fiery cross, which is the signal of gathering in our clans; yet he will know well enough the clan is not to rise, for there it is standing in his window, and no word with it. So he will say to himsel’, THE CLAN IS NOT TO RISE, BUT THERE IS SOMETHING. Then he will see my button, and that was Duncan Stewart’s. And then he will say to himsel’, THE SON OF DUNCAN IS IN THE HEATHER, AND HAS NEED OF ME. Then John Breck will see the sprig of birch and the sprig of pine; and he will say to himsel’ (if he is a man of any penetration at all, which I misdoubt), ALAN WILL BE LYING IN A WOOD WHICH IS BOTH OF PINES AND BIRCHES. Then he will think to himsel’, THAT IS NOT SO VERY RIFE HEREABOUT; and then he will come and give us a look up in Corrynakiegh.’

So that night Alan carried down his fiery cross and set it in the bouman’s window.

About noon a man was to be spied, straggling up the open side of the mountain in the sun, and looking round him as he came, from under his hand. He was a ragged, wild, bearded man, about forty, grossly disfigured with the smallpox, and looked both dull and savage.

Alan would have had him carry a message to James; but the bouman would hear of no message.

‘She was forget it,’ he said in his screaming voice; and would either have a letter or wash his hands of us.

I thought Alan would be gravelled at that, for we lacked the means of writing in that desert. But he was a man of more resources than I knew; he found the quill of a cushat-dove; made himself a kind of ink with gunpowder from his horn; and tearing a corner from his French military commission (which he carried in his pocket, like a talisman to keep him from the gallows), he sat down and wrote as follows:

This he intrusted to the bouman, who promised to make what manner of speed he best could, and carried it off with him down the hill.

He was three full days gone, but about five in the evening of the third, we heard a whistling in the wood, which Alan answered; and presently the bouman came up the water-side, looking for us, right and left.

He gave us the news of the country; that it was alive with red-coats; that James and some of his servants were already clapped in prison at Fort William, under strong suspicion of complicity. It seemed it was noised on all sides that Alan Breck had fired the shot; and there was a bill issued for both him and me, with one hundred pounds reward.

This was all as bad as could be; and the little note the bouman had carried us from Mrs. Stewart was of a miserable sadness. In it she besought Alan not to let himself be captured, assuring him, if he fell in the hands of the troops, both he and James were no better than dead men. The money she had sent was all that she could beg or borrow, and she prayed heaven we could be doing with it. Lastly, she said, she enclosed us one of the bills in which we were described.

This we looked upon with great curiosity and not a little fear. Alan was advertised as ‘a small, pockmarked, active man of thirty-five or thereby, dressed in a feathered hat, a French side-coat of blue with silver buttons, and lace a great deal tarnished, a red waistcoat and breeches of black shag;’ and I as ‘a tall strong lad of about eighteen, wearing an old blue coat, very ragged, an old Highland bonnet, a long homespun waistcoat, blue breeches; his legs bare, low-country shoes, wanting the toes; speaks like a Lowlander, and has no beard.’

‘Alan,’ said I, ‘you should change your clothes.’

‘Na, troth!’ said Alan, ‘I have nae others. A fine sight I would be, if I went back to France in a bonnet!’

This put a reflection in my mind: that if I were to separate from Alan and his tell-tale clothes I should be safe against arrest, and might go openly about my business. I thought of it all the more, too, when the bouman brought out a green purse with four guineas in gold, and the best part of another in small change. True, it was more than I had. But then Alan, with less than five guineas, had to get as far as France; I, with my less than two, not beyond Queensferry; so that taking things in their proportion, Alan’s society was not only a peril to my life, but a burden on my purse.

But there was no thought of the sort in the honest head of my companion. He believed he was serving, helping, and protecting me. And what could I do but hold my peace, and chafe, and take my chance of it?

‘It’s little enough,’ said Alan, putting the purse in his pocket, ‘but it’ll do my business. And now, John Breck, if ye will hand me over my button, this gentleman and me will be for taking the road.’

He found that button and handed it to Alan.

‘Well, and it is a good thing for the honour of the Maccolls,’ said Alan, and then to me, ‘Here is my button back again, and I thank you for parting with it, which is of a piece with all your friendships to me.’ Then he took the warmest parting of the bouman. ‘Ye have done very well by me, and set your neck at a venture, and I will always give you the name of a good man.’

Lastly, the bouman took himself off by one way; and Alan and I (getting our chattels together) struck into another to resume our flight.

Some seven hours’ incessant, hard travelling brought us early in the morning to the end of a range of mountains. In front of us there lay a piece of low, broken, desert land, which we must now cross. The sun was not long up, and shone straight in our eyes; a little, thin mist went up from the face of the moorland like a smoke; so that (as Alan said) there might have been twenty squadron of dragoons there and we none the wiser.

We sat down, therefore, in a howe of the hill-side till the mist should have risen, and made ourselves a dish of drammach, and held a council of war.

‘This is how we stand: Appin’s fair death to us. To the south it’s all Campbells, and no to be thought of. To the north; well, there’s no muckle to be gained by going north; neither for you, that wants to get to Queensferry, nor yet for me, that wants to get to France. Well, then, we’ll can strike east.’

‘East be it!’ says I, quite cheerily.

‘Well, then, east, ye see, we have the muirs,’ said Alan. ‘Once there, David, it’s mere pitch-and-toss. Out on yon bald, naked, flat place, where can a body turn to? Let the red-coats come over a hill, they can spy you miles away; and the sorrow’s in their horses’ heels, they would soon ride you down. It’s no good place, David; and I’m free to say, it’s worse by daylight than by dark.’

‘Alan,’ said I, ‘I give my word to go ahead until we drop.’

Alan was delighted. ‘There come whiles when ye show yoursel’ a mettle spark; and it’s then, David, that I love ye like a brother.’

The mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; much of it was red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools. A wearier-looking desert man never saw; but at least it was clear of troops, which was our point.

We went down accordingly into the waste, and began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge. There were the tops of mountains all round (you are to remember) from whence we might be spied at any moment; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor, and when these turned aside from our direction to move upon its naked face with infinite care. If I had guessed what it would be to crawl half the time upon my belly and to walk much of the rest stooping nearly to the knees, I should certainly have held back from such a killing enterprise.

About noon we lay down in a thick bush of heather to sleep. Alan took the first watch; and it seemed to me I had scarce closed my eyes before I was shaken up to take the second. I was by this time so weary that I could have slept twelve hours at a stretch; hot smell of the heather, and the drone of the wild bees, were like possets to me; and every now and again I would give a jump and find I had been dozing.

The last time I woke I seemed to come back from farther away, and thought the sun had taken a great start in the heavens. I saw I had betrayed my trust. My head was nearly turned with fear and shame; and at what I saw, when I looked out around me on the moor, my heart was like dying in my body. For sure enough, a body of horse-soldiers had come down during my sleep, and were drawing near to us from the south-east, spread out in the shape of a fan and riding their horses to and fro in the deep parts of the heather.

When I waked Alan, he glanced first at the soldiers, then at the position of the sun, and knitted his brows with a sudden, quick look, both ugly and anxious, which was all the reproach I had of him.

‘What are we to do now?’ I asked.

‘We’ll have to play at being hares,’ said he. ‘Do ye see yon mountain?’ pointing to one on the northeastern sky.

‘Ay,’ said I.

‘Well, then,’ says he, ‘let us strike for that. Its name is Ben Alder[89]. It is a wild, desert mountain full of hills and hollows, and if we can win to it before the morn, we may do yet. So now, David man, be brisk!’ With that he began to run forward on his hands and knees with an incredible quickness, as though it were his natural way of going. All the time, too, he kept winding in and out in the lower parts of the moorland where we were the best concealed. Some of these had been burned or at least scathed with fire; and there rose in our faces (which were close to the ground) a blinding, choking dust as fine as smoke. Now and then, indeed, where was a big bush of heather, we lay awhile, and panted, and putting aside the leaves, looked back at the dragoons.

The aching and faintness of my body, the labouring of my heart, the soreness of my hands, and the smarting of my throat and eyes in the continual smoke of dust and ashes, had soon grown to be so unbearable that I would gladly have given up. Nothing but the fear of Alan lent me enough of a false kind of courage to continue. As for himself he had first turned crimson, but as time went on the redness began to be mingled with patches of white; his breath cried and whistled as it came; and his voice, when he whispered his observations in my ear during our halts, sounded like nothing human. Yet he seemed in no way dashed in spirits, nor did he at all abate in his activity, so that I was driven, to marvel at the man’s endurance.

At length, in the first gloaming of the night, we heard a trumpet sound, and looking back from among the heather, saw the troop beginning to collect. A little after, they had built a fire and camped for the night, about the middle of the waste.

At this I begged and besought that we might lie down and sleep.

‘There shall be no sleep the night!’ said Alan. And off he set again at his top speed.

It grew cooler and even a little darker. Heavy dew fell and drenched the moor like rain; and this refreshed me for a while.

I had no care of my life, neither past nor future. I did not think of myself, but just of each fresh step which I was sure would be my last, with despair – and of Alan, who was the cause of it, with hatred.

Day began to come in, after years, I thought; and by that time we were past the greatest danger, and could walk upon our feet like men, instead of crawling like brutes. But, dear heart, have mercy! What a pair we must have made, going double like old grandfathers, stumbling like babes, and as white as dead folk.

We were going down a heathery brae, Alan leading and I following a pace or two behind, like a fiddler and his wife; when upon a sudden the heather gave a rustle, three or four ragged men leaped out, and the next moment we were lying on our backs, each with a dirk at his throat.

I don’t think I cared. I was too glad to have stopped walking to mind about a dirk. I lay looking up in the face of the man that held me, but I was not afraid of him. I heard Alan and another whispering in the Gaelic; and what they said was all one to me.

Then the dirks were put up, our weapons were taken away, and we were set face to face, sitting in the heather.

‘They are Cluny’s men,’ said Alan. ‘We couldnae have fallen better. We’re just to bide here with these, which are his out-sentries, till they can get word to the chief of my arrival.’

Now Cluny Macpherson[90], the chief of the clan Vourich, had been one of the leaders of the great rebellion six years before; there was a price on his life; and I had supposed him long ago in France, with the rest of the heads of that desperate party.

‘What,’ I cried, ‘is Cluny still here?’

‘Ay, is he so!’ said Alan. ‘Still in his own country and kept by his own clan. King George can do no more.’

The messenger returned; it appeared that Cluny would be glad to receive us, we must get once more upon our feet and set forward. Alan was in excellent good spirits, very hungry, and looking pleasantly forward to a dram and a dish of hot collops, of which, it seems, the messenger had brought him word. For my part, it made me sick to hear of eating. I had been dead-heavy before, and now I felt a kind of dreadful lightness, which would not suffer me to walk. I drifted like a gossamer; the ground seemed to me a cloud, the hills a feather-weight, the air to have a current, like a running burn, which carried me to and fro. With all that, a sort of horror of despair sat on my mind, so that I could have wept at my own helplessness.

I saw Alan knitting his brows at me, and supposed it was in anger. But my good companion had nothing in his mind but kindness; and the next moment, two of the gillies had me by the arms, and I began to be carried forward with great swiftness through a labyrinth of dreary glens and hollows and into the heart of that dismal mountain of Ben Alder.

We came at last to the foot of an exceeding steep wood, which scrambled up a craggy hillside, and was crowned by a naked precipice.

Quite at the top, and just before the rocky face of the cliff sprang above the foliage, we found that strange house which was known in the country as ‘Cluny’s Cage.’ The trunks of several trees had been wattled across, the intervals strengthened with stakes, and the ground behind this barricade levelled up with earth to make the floor. A tree, which grew out from the hillside, was the living centre-beam of the roof. The walls were of wattle and covered with moss. The whole house had something of an egg shape; and it half-hung, half-stood in that steep, hill-side thicket, like a wasp’s nest in a green hawthorn.

Within, it was large enough to shelter five or six persons with some comfort. A projection of the cliff had been cunningly employed to be the fireplace; and the smoke rising against the face of the rock, and being not dissimilar in colour, readily escaped notice from below.

This was but one of Cluny’s hiding-places; he had caves, besides, and underground chambers in several parts of his country; and following the reports of his scouts, he moved from one to another as the soldiers drew near or moved away.

When we came to the door he was seated by his rock chimney, watching a gillie about some cookery. He was mighty plainly habited, with a knitted nightcap drawn over his ears, and smoked a foul cutty pipe. For all that he had the manners of a king, and it was quite a sight to see him rise out of his place to welcome us.

‘Well, Mr. Stewart, come awa[91]’, sir!’ said he, ‘and bring in your friend that as yet I dinna ken the name of.’

‘And how is yourself, Cluny?’ said Alan. ‘I hope ye do brawly, sir. And I am proud to see ye, and to present to ye my friend the Laird of Shaws, Mr. David Balfour.’

‘Step in by, the both of ye, gentlemen,’ says Cluny. ‘I make ye welcome to my house. We’ll take a dram for luck, and as soon as this handless man of mine has the collops ready, we’ll dine and take a hand at the cartes as gentlemen should. And so here’s a toast to ye: The Restoration!’

Thereupon we all touched glasses and drank. No sooner had I taken out the drain than I felt hugely better, and could look on and listen, still a little mistily perhaps, but no longer with the same groundless horror and distress of mind.

On that first day, as soon as the collops were ready, Cluny gave them with his own hand a squeeze of a lemon (for he was well supplied with luxuries) and bade us draw in to our meal.

I do not know if the collops were truly very good, but my heart rose against the sight of them, and I could eat but little. All the while Cluny entertained us with stories of Prince Charlie’s[92] stay in the Cage, giving us the very words of the speakers, and rising from his place to show us where they stood.

We were no sooner done eating than Cluny brought out an old, thumbed, greasy pack of cards, such as you may find in a mean inn; and his eyes brightened in his face as he proposed that we should fall to playing.

Now this was one of the things I had been brought up to eschew like disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a Christian nor yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood and fish for that of others, on the cast of painted pasteboard. To be sure, I might have pleaded my fatigue, which was excuse enough; but I thought it behoved that I should bear a testimony. I must have got very red in the face, but I spoke steadily, and told them I had no call to be a judge of others, but for my own part, it was a matter in which I had no clearness.

Cluny stopped mingling the cards. ‘What in deil’s name is this?’ says he. ‘What kind of Whiggish, canting talk is this, for the house of Cluny Macpherson?’

‘I will put my hand in the fire for Mr. Balfour,’ says Alan. ‘He is an honest and a mettle gentleman. But the gentleman is tired, and should sleep; if he has no mind to the cartes, it will never hinder you and me. And I’m fit and willing, sir, to play ye any game that ye can name.’

‘Sir,’ says Cluny, ‘in this poor house of mine I would have you to ken that any gentleman may follow his pleasure. And if either he, or you, or any other man, is not preceesely satisfied, I will be proud to step outside with him.’

I had no will that these two friends should cut their throats for my sake.

‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I am very wearied, as Alan says; and what’s more, as you are a man that likely has sons of your own, I may tell you it was a promise to my father.’

‘Say nae mair, say nae mair,’ said Cluny, and pointed me to a bed of heather in a corner of the Cage. For all that he was displeased enough, looked at me askance, and grumbled when he looked.

What with the brandy and the venison, a strange heaviness had come over me; and I had scarce lain down upon the bed before I fell into a kind of trance, in which I continued almost the whole time of our stay in the Cage. Sometimes I was broad awake and understood what passed; sometimes I only heard voices, or men snoring, like the voice of a silly river; I was conscious of no particular nightmare, only of a general, black, abiding horror – a horror of the place I was in, and the bed I lay in, and the plaids on the wall, and the voices, and the fire, and myself.

The barber-gillie, who was a doctor too, was called in to prescribe for me; but as he spoke in the Gaelic, I understood not a word of his opinion, and was too sick even to ask for a translation. I knew well enough I was ill, and that was all I cared about.

I paid little heed while I lay in this poor pass. But Alan and Cluny were most of the time at the cards, and I am clear that Alan must have begun by winning; for I remember sitting up, and seeing them hard at it, and a great glittering pile of as much as sixty or a hundred guineas on the table.

The luck, it seems, changed on the second day. About noon I was wakened as usual for dinner, and as usual refused to eat, and was given a dram with some bitter infusion which the barber had prescribed. Cluny sat at the table, biting the pack of cards. Alan had stooped over the bed, and had his face close to my eyes; to which, troubled as they were with the fever, it seemed of the most shocking bigness.

He asked me for a loan of my money.

‘What for?’ said I.

‘O, just for a loan,’ said he.

‘But why?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t see.’

‘Hut, David!’ said Alan, ‘ye wouldnae grudge me a loan?’

All I thought of then was to get his face away, and I handed him my money.

On the morning of the third day, I awoke with a great relief of spirits, very weak and weary indeed, but seeing things of the right size and with their honest, everyday appearance. I had a mind to eat, moreover, rose from bed of my own movement, and as soon as we had breakfasted, stepped to the entry of the Cage and sat down outside in the top of the wood. It was a grey day with a cool, mild air: and I sat in a dream all morning, only disturbed by the passing by of Cluny’s scouts and servants.

When I returned, he and Alan had laid the cards aside, and were questioning a gillie; and the chief turned about and spoke to me.

‘My scout reports all clear in the south, and the question is, have ye the strength to go?’

I saw cards on the table, but no gold; only a heap of little written papers, and these all on Cluny’s side. Alan, besides, had an odd look, like a man not very well content; and I began to have a strong misgiving.

‘I do not know if I am as well as I should be,’ said I, looking at Alan; ‘but the little money we have has a long way to carry us.’

Alan took his under-lip into his mouth, and looked upon the ground.

‘David,’ says he at last, ‘I’ve lost it; there’s the naked truth.’

‘My money too?’ said I.

‘Your money too,’ says Alan, with a groan. ‘Ye shouldnae have given it me. I’m daft when I get to the cartes.’

‘Hoot-toot! hoot-toot!’ said Cluny. ‘It was all dafing; it’s all nonsense. Of course you’ll have your money back again, and the double of it, if ye’ll make so free with me!’ cries he, and began to pull gold out of his pocket with a mighty red face.

Alan said nothing, only looked on the ground.

‘Will you step to the door with me, sir?’ said I.

Cluny said he would be very glad, and followed me readily enough, but he looked flustered and put out.

‘And now, sir,’ says I, ‘I must first acknowledge your generosity.’

‘Where’s the generosity? This is just a most unfortunate affair; but what would ye have me do – boxed up in this beeskep of a cage of mine – but just set my friends to the cartes, when I can get them? And if they lose, of course, it’s not to be supposed —’

And here he came to a pause.

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘if they lose, you give them back their money; and if they win, they carry away yours in their pouches! I have said before that I grant your generosity; but to me, sir, it’s a very painful thing to be placed in this position.’

‘I am a young man,’ said I, ‘and I ask your advice. Advise me as you would your son. My friend fairly lost his money, after having fairly gained a far greater sum of yours; can I accept it back again? Would that be the right part for me to play?’

‘It’s rather hard on me, too, Mr. Balfour,’ said Cluny, ‘and ye give me very much the look of a man that has entrapped poor people to their hurt. I wouldnae have my friends come to any house of mine to accept aff ronts; no,’ he cried, with a sudden heat of anger, ‘nor yet to give them!’

‘And so you see, sir,’ said I, ‘there is something to be said upon my side; and this gambling is a very poor employ for gentlefolks. But I am still waiting your opinion.’

I am sure if ever Cluny hated any man it was David Balfour. But either my youth disarmed him, or perhaps his own sense of justice. Certainly it was a mortifying matter for all concerned, and not least Cluny; the more credit that he took it as he did.

‘Mr. Balfour,’ said he, ‘I think you are too nice and covenanting, but for all that you have the spirit of a very pretty gentleman. Upon my honest word, ye may take this money – it’s what I would tell my son – and here’s my hand along with it!’

Alan and I were put across Loch Errocht under cloud of night, and went down its eastern shore to another hiding-place near the head of Loch Rannoch, whither we were led by one of the gillies from the Cage. This fellow carried all our luggage and Alan’s great-coat in the bargain, trotting along under the burthen.

Doubtless it was a great relief to walk disencumbered; and perhaps without that relief, and the consequent sense of liberty and lightness, I could not have walked at all. I was but new risen from a bed of sickness.

For long, we said nothing; marching alongside or one behind the other, each with a set countenance: I, angry and proud, and drawing what strength I had from these two violent and sinful feelings; Alan angry and ashamed, ashamed that he had lost my money, angry that I should take it so ill.

The thought of a separation ran always the stronger in my mind; and the more I approved of it, the more ashamed I grew of my approval.

And yet Alan had behaved like a child, and (what is worse) a treacherous child. Wheedling my money from me while I lay half-conscious was scarce better than theft; and yet here he was trudging by my side, without a penny to his name, and by what I could see, quite blithe to sponge upon the money he had driven me to beg. True, I was ready to share it with him; but it made me rage to see him count upon my readiness.

So I said nothing, nor so much as looked once at my companion, save with the tail of my eye.

At last he could bear it no longer, and came close to me.

‘David,’ says he, ‘this is no way for two friends to take a small accident. I have to say that I’m sorry; and so that’s said. And now if you have anything, ye’d better say it.’

‘O,’ says I, ‘I have nothing.’

He seemed disconcerted; at which I was meanly pleased.

‘No,’ said he, with rather a trembling voice, ‘but when I say I was to blame?’

‘Why, of course, ye were to blame,’ said I, coolly; ‘and you will bear me out that I have never reproached you.’

‘Never,’ says he; ‘but ye ken very well that ye’ve done worse. Are we to part? Ye said so once before. Are ye to say it again? There’s hills and heather enough between here and the two seas, David; and I will own I’m no very keen to stay where I’m no wanted.’

This pierced me like a sword, and seemed to lay bare my private disloyalty.

‘Alan Breck!’ I cried; and then: ‘Do you think I am one to turn my back on you in your chief need? You dursn’t say it to my face. My whole conduct’s there to give the lie to it. It’s true, I fell asleep upon the muir; but that was from weariness, and you do wrong to cast it up to me —’

‘Which is what I never did,’ said Alan.

‘But aside from that,’ I continued, ‘what have I done that you should even me to dogs by such a supposition?’

‘I will only say this to ye, David,’ said Alan, very quietly, ‘that I have long been owing ye my life, and now I owe ye money. Ye should try to make that burden light for me.’

This ought to have touched me, and in a manner it did, but the wrong manner. I felt I was behaving badly; and was now not only angry with Alan, but angry with myself in the bargain; and it made me the more cruel.

‘You asked me to speak,’ said I. ‘Well, then, I will. You own yourself that you have done me a disservice; I have had to swallow an aff ront: I have never reproached you, I never named the thing till you did. And now you blame me,’ cried I. ‘The next thing will be that I’m to go down upon my knees and thank you for it! Ye should think more of others, Alan Breck. If ye thought more of others, ye would perhaps speak less about yourself; and when a friend that likes you very well has passed over an offence without a word, you would be blithe to let it lie, instead of making it a stick to break his back with. By your own way of it, it was you that was to blame; then it shouldnae be you to seek the quarrel.’

‘Aweel,’ said Alan, ‘say nae mair.’

And we fell back into our former silence; and came to our journey’s end, and supped, and lay down to sleep, without another word.

The gillie put us across Loch Rannoch in the dusk of the next day, and gave us his opinion as to our best route. Alan was little pleased with a route which led us through the country of his blood-foes, the Glenorchy Campbells. But the gillie, who was indeed the chief man of Cluny’s scouts, had good reasons to give him on all hands, naming the force of troops in every district, and alleging finally (as well as I could understand) that we should nowhere be so little troubled as in a country of the Campbells.

Alan gave way at last, but with only half a heart. ‘It’s one of the dowiest countries in Scotland,’ said he. ‘But I see that ye’re a man of some penetration; and be it as ye please!’

We set forth accordingly by this itinerary. By day, we lay and slept in the drenching heather; by night, incessantly clambered upon break-neck hills and among rude crags.

This was a dreadful time, rendered the more dreadful by the gloom of the weather and the country. I was never warm; my teeth chattered in my head; I was troubled with a very sore throat; I had a painful stitch in my side, which never left me; and when I slept in my wet bed, with the rain beating above and the mud oozing below me, it was to live over again in fancy the worst part of my adventures – to see the tower of Shaws lit by lightning, Ransome carried below on the men’s backs, Shuan dying on the round-house floor, or Colin Campbell grasping at the bosom of his coat. From such broken slumbers, I would be aroused in the gloaming, to sit up in the same puddle where I had slept, and sup cold drammach; the rain driving sharp in my face or running down my back in icy trickles; the mist enfolding us like as in a gloomy chamber – or, perhaps, if the wind blew, falling suddenly apart and showing us the gulf of some dark valley where the streams were crying aloud.

The sound of an infinite number of rivers came up from all round. In this steady rain the springs of the mountain were broken up; every glen gushed water like a cistern. During our night tramps, it was solemn to hear the voice of them below in the valleys, now booming like thunder, now with an angry cry.

During all these horrid wanderings we had no familiarity, scarcely even that of speech. The truth is that I was sickening for my grave, which is my best excuse. But besides that I was of an unforgiving disposition from my birth, slow to take offence, slower to forget it, and now incensed both against my companion and myself. For the best part of two days he was unweariedly kind; silent, indeed, but always ready to help, and always hoping (as I could very well see) that my displeasure would blow by. For the same length of time I stayed in myself, nursing my anger, roughly refusing his services, and passing him over with my eyes as if he had been a bush or a stone.

The second night, or rather the peep of the third day, found us upon a very open hill, so that we could not follow our usual plan and lie down immediately to eat and sleep. Alan, looking in my face, showed some marks of concern.

‘Ye had better let me take your pack,’ said he, for perhaps the ninth time since we had parted from the scout beside Loch Rannoch.

‘I do very well, I thank you,’ said I, as cold as ice.

Alan flushed darkly. ‘I’ll not offer it again,’ he said. ‘I’m not a patient man, David.’

‘I never said you were,’ said I, which was exactly the rude, silly speech of a boy of ten.

Alan made no answer at the time, but his conduct answered for him. Henceforth, it is to be thought, he quite forgave himself for the affair at Cluny’s; cocked his hat again, walked jauntily, whistled airs, and looked at me upon one side with a provoking smile.

The third night we were to pass through the western end of the country of Balquhidder. It came clear and cold, with a touch in the air like frost, and a northerly wind that blew the clouds away and made the stars bright. I observed that Alan was in high good spirits. As for me, the change of weather came too late. I was dead weary, deadly sick and full of pains and shiverings; the chill of the wind went through me, and the sound of it confused my ears. In this poor state I had to bear from my companion something in the nature of a persecution. He spoke a good deal, and never without a taunt. ‘Whig’ was the best name he had to give me. ‘Here,’ he would say, ‘here’s a dub for ye to jump, my Whiggie! I ken you’re a fine jumper!’ And so on; all the time with a gibing voice and face.

I knew it was my own doing, and no one else’s; but I was too miserable to repent. I felt I could drag myself but little farther; pretty soon, I must lie down and die on these wet mountains like a sheep or a fox, and my bones must whiten there like the bones of a beast. Alan would repent then, I thought; he would remember, when I was dead, how much he owed me, and the remembrance would be torture.

All the while, I was growing worse and worse. Once I had fallen, my leg simply doubling under me, and this had struck Alan for the moment; but I was afoot so briskly, and set off again with such a natural manner, that he soon forgot the incident. Flushes of heat went over me, and then spasms of shuddering. The stitch in my side was hardly bearable. At last I began to feel that I could trail myself no farther: and with that, there came on me all at once the wish to have it out with Alan, let my anger blaze, and be done with my life in a more sudden manner. He had just called me ‘Whig.’ I stopped.

‘Mr. Stewart,’ said I, in a voice that quivered like a fiddle-string, ‘you are older than I am, and should know your manners. Do you think it either very wise or very witty to cast my politics in my teeth? I thought, where folk differed, it was the part of gentlemen to differ civilly; and if I did not, I may tell you I could find a better taunt than some of yours.’

Alan had stopped opposite to me, his hat cocked, his hands in his breeches pockets, his head a little on one side. He listened, smiling evilly, as I could see by the starlight.

‘It’s time these manners ceased,’ I continued; ‘and I mean you shall henceforth speak civilly of my King and my good friends the Campbells.’

‘I am a Stewart —’ began Alan.

‘O!’ says I, ‘I ken ye bear a king’s name. But you are to remember, since I have been in the Highlands, I have seen a good many of those that bear it; and the best I can say of them is this, that they would be none the worse of washing.’

‘Do you know that you insult me?’ said Alan, very low.

‘I am sorry for that,’ said I, ‘for I am not done. Both the Campbells and the Whigs have beaten you; you have run before them like a hare. It behoves you to speak of them as of your betters.’

Alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him in the wind.

‘This is a pity,’ he said at last. ‘There are things said that cannot be passed over.’

‘I never asked you to,’ said I. ‘I am as ready as yourself.’

‘Ready?’ said he.

‘Ready,’ I repeated. ‘I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name. Come on!’ And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself had taught me.

‘David!’ he cried. ‘Are ye daft? I cannae draw upon ye, David. It’s fair murder.’

‘That was your look-out when you insulted me,’ said I.

‘It’s the truth!’ cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. He drew his sword but before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. ‘Na, na,’ he kept saying, ‘na, na – I cannae, I cannae.’

At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it? I minded me of all Alan’s kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost for ever that doughty friend. At the same time, the sickness that hung upon me seemed to redouble, and the pang in my side was like a sword for sharpness. I thought I must have swooned where I stood.

This it was that gave me a thought. Where an apology was vain, a mere cry for help might bring Alan back to my side. I put my pride away from me.

‘Alan!’ I said; ‘if ye cannae help me, I must just die here.’

He started up sitting, and looked at me.

‘It’s true,’ said I. ‘I’m by with it. O, let me get into the bield of a house – I’ll can die there easier.’ I had no need to pretend; whether I chose or not, I spoke in a weeping voice that would have melted a heart of stone.

‘Can ye walk?’ asked Alan.

‘No,’ said I, ‘not without help. This last hour my legs have been fainting under me; If I die, ye’ll can forgive me, Alan? In my heart, I liked ye fine – even when I was the angriest.’

‘Wheesht, wheesht!’ cried Alan. ‘Dinna say that! Let me get my arm about ye,’ he continued; ‘that’s the way! Now lean upon me hard. Gude kens where there’s a house! Do ye gang easier so, Davie?’

‘Ay,’ said I, ‘I can be doing this way;’ and I pressed his arm with my hand.

He came near sobbing. ‘Davie,’ said he, ‘I’m no a right man at all; I have neither sense nor kindness; I could nae remember ye were just a bairn, I couldnae see ye were dying on your feet; Davie, ye’ll have to try and forgive me.’

‘O man, let’s say no more about it!’ said I. ‘We’re neither one of us to mend the other – that’s the truth! We must just bear and forbear, man Alan. O, but my stitch is sore! Is there nae house?’

‘I’ll find a house to ye, David,’ he said, stoutly. ‘We’ll follow down the burn, where there’s bound to be houses. My poor man, will ye no be better on my back?’

‘O Alan,’ says I, ‘and me a good twelve inches taller?’

‘Ye’re no such a thing,’ cried Alan, with a start. ‘There may be a trifling matter of an inch or two,’ he added, his voice tailing off in a laughable manner, ‘now when I come to think of it, I dare say ye’ll be just about right. Ay, it’ll be a foot, or near hand; or may be even mair!’

It was sweet and laughable to hear Alan eat his words up in the fear of some fresh quarrel. I could have laughed, had not my stitch caught me so hard.

‘Alan,’ cried I, ‘what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?’

‘Deed, and I don’t, know,’ said Alan. ‘For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled: – and now I like ye better!’

At the door of the first house we came to, Alan knocked, which was of no very safe enterprise in such a part of the Highlands as the Braes of Balquhidder. No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call ‘chiefless folk,’ driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith by the advance of the Campbells.

Chance served us very well; for it was a household of Maclarens that we found, where Alan was not only welcome for his name’s sake but known by reputation. Here then I was got to bed without delay, and a doctor fetched, who found me in a sorry plight. But whether because he was a very good doctor, or I a very young, strong man, I lay bedridden for no more than a week, and before a month I was able to take the road again with a good heart.

All this time Alan would not leave me though I often pressed him. He hid by day in a hole of the braes under a little wood; and at night, when the coast was clear, would come into the house to visit me. I need not say if I was pleased to see him; Mrs. Maclaren, our hostess, thought nothing good enough for such a guest; and as Duncan Dhu (which was the name of our host) had a pair of pipes in his house, and was much of a lover of music, this time of my recovery was quite a festival, and we commonly turned night into day.

The soldiers let us be. What was much more astonishing, no magistrate came near me, and there was no question put of whence I came or whither I was going. Yet my presence was known before I left to all the people in Balquhidder and the adjacent parts; many coming about the house on visits and these (after the custom of the country) spreading the news among their neighbours. The bills, too, had now been printed. Duncan Dhu and the rest that knew that I had come there in Alan’s company, could have entertained no doubt of who I was; and many others must have had their guess. For though I had changed my clothes, I could not change my age or person. Other folk keep a secret among two or three near friends, and somehow it leaks out; but among these clansmen, it is told to a whole countryside, and they will keep it for a century.

There was but one thing happened worth narrating; and that is the visit I had of Robin Oig. He was sought upon all sides on a charge of carrying a young woman from Balfron and marrying her (as was alleged) by force; yet he stepped about Balquhidder like a gentleman in his own walled policy.

Duncan had time to pass me word of who it was; and we looked at one another in concern. You should understand, it was then close upon the time of Alan’s coming; the two were little likely to agree; and yet if we sent word or sought to make a signal, it was sure to arouse suspicion.

He came in with a great show of civility, but like a man among inferiors; took off his bonnet to Mrs. Maclaren, but clapped it on his head again to speak to Duncan; and leaving thus set himself (as he would have thought) in a proper light, came to my bedside and bowed.

‘I am given to know, sir,’ says he, ‘that your name is Balfour.’

‘They call me David Balfour,’ said I, ‘at your service.’

‘What I am come to say, sir,’ he went on, ‘is this. In the year ’45, my brother raised a part of the “Gregara” and marched six companies to strike a stroke for the good side; and the surgeon that marched with our clan and cured my brother’s leg when it was broken in the brush at Preston Pans, was a gentleman of the same name precisely as yourself. He was brother to Balfour of Baith; and if you are in any reasonable degree of nearness one of that gentleman’s kin, I have come to put myself and my people at your command.’

You are to remember that I knew no more of my descent than any cadger’s dog; my uncle, to be sure, had prated of some of our high connections, but nothing to the present purpose; and there was nothing left me but that bitter disgrace of owning that I could not tell.

Robin told me shortly he was sorry he had put himself about, turned his back upon me without a sign of salutation, and as he went towards the door, I could hear him telling Duncan that I was ‘only some kinless loon that didn’t know his own father.’ Angry as I was at these words, and ashamed of my own ignorance, I could scarce keep from smiling that a man who was under the lash of the law (and was indeed hanged some three years later) should be so nice as to the descent of his acquaintances.

Just in the door, he met Alan coming in; and the two drew back and looked at each other like strange dogs.

‘Mr. Stewart, I am thinking,’ says Robin.

‘Troth, Mr. Macgregor, it’s not a name to be ashamed of,’ answered Alan.

‘I did not know ye were in my country, sir,’ says Robin.

‘It sticks in my mind that I am in the country of my friends the Maclarens,’ says Alan.

‘That’s a kittle point,’ returned the other. ‘There may be two words to say to that. But I think I will have heard that you are a man of your sword?’

‘Unless ye were born deaf, Mr. Macgregor, ye will have heard a good deal more than that,’ says Alan. ‘I am not the only man that can draw steel in Appin; and when my kinsman and captain, Ardshiel, had a talk with a gentleman of your name, not so many years back, I could never hear that the Macgregor had the best of it.’

‘Do ye mean my father, sir?’ says Robin.

‘Well, I wouldnae wonder,’ said Alan. ‘The gentleman I have in my mind had the ill-taste to clap Campbell to his name.’

‘My father was an old man,’ returned Robin. ‘The match was unequal. You and me would make a better pair, sir.’

‘I was thinking that,’ said Alan.

I was half out of bed, and Duncan had been hanging at the elbow of these fighting cocks, ready to intervene upon the least occasion. But when that word was uttered, it was a case of now or never; and Duncan, with something of a white face to be sure, thrust himself between.

‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘I will have been thinking of a very different matter, whateffer. Here are my pipes, and here are you two gentlemen who are baith acclaimed pipers. It’s an auld dispute which one of ye’s the best. Here will be a braw chance to settle it.’

‘Why, sir,’ says Alan, ‘I think I will have heard some sough[93] of the sort. Have ye music, as folk say? Are ye a bit of a piper?’

‘I can pipe like a Macrimmon[94]!’ cries Robin.

‘It is easy to try that,’ says Alan.

Duncan Dhu made haste to bring out the pair of pipes that was his principal possession, and to set before his guests a mutton-ham and a bottle of that drink which they call Athole brose, and which is made of old whiskey, strained honey and sweet cream, slowly beaten together in the right order and proportion. The two enemies were still on the very breach of a quarrel; but down they sat, one upon each side of the peat fire, with a mighty show of politeness.

Each ate a small portion of the ham and drank a glass of the brose to Mrs. Maclaren; and then after a great number of civilities, Robin took the pipes and played a little spring in a very ranting manner.

‘Ay, ye can, blow,’ said Alan; and taking the instrument from his rival, he first played the same spring in a manner identical with Robin’s; and then wandered into variations, which, as he went on, he decorated with a perfect flight of grace-notes, such as pipers love, and call the ‘warblers.’

I had been pleased with Robin’s playing, Alan’s ravished me.

‘That’s no very bad, Mr. Stewart,’ said the rival, ‘but ye show a poor device in your warblers.’

‘Me!’ cried Alan, the blood starting to his face. ‘I give ye the lie.’

‘Do ye own yourself beaten at the pipes, then,’ said Robin, ‘that ye seek to change them for the sword?’

‘I take back the lie. I appeal to Duncan.’

‘Indeed, ye need appeal to naebody,’ said Robin. ‘Ye’re a far better judge: for it’s a God’s truth that you’re a very creditable piper for a Stewart. Hand me the pipes.’

Alan did as he asked; and Robin proceeded to imitate and correct some part of Alan’s variations, which it seemed that he remembered perfectly.

‘Ay, ye have music,’ said Alan, gloomily.

‘And now be the judge yourself, Mr. Stewart,’ said Robin; and taking up the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that I was amazed to hear him.

As for Alan, his face grew dark and hot, and he sat and gnawed his fingers, like a man under some deep aff ront. ‘Enough!’ he cried. ‘Ye can blow the pipes – make the most of that.’ And he made as if to rise.

But Robin only held out his hand as if to ask for silence, and struck into the slow measure of a pibroch. It was a fine piece of music in itself, and nobly played; but it seems, besides, it was a piece peculiar to the Appin Stewarts and a chief favourite with Alan. The first notes were scarce out, before there came a change in his face; when the time quickened, he seemed to grow restless in his seat; and long before that piece was at an end, the last signs of his anger died from him, and he had no thought but for the music.

‘Robin Oig,’ he said, when it was done, ‘ye are a great piper. Ye have mair music in your sporran than I have in my head! And though it still sticks in my mind that I could maybe show ye another of it with the cold steel, I warn ye beforehand – it’ll no be fair! It would go against my heart to haggle a man that can blow the pipes as you can!’

Thereupon that quarrel was made up; all night long the brose was going and the pipes changing hands; and the day had come pretty bright, and the three men were none the better for what they had been taking, before Robin as much as thought upon the road.

The month, as I have said, was not yet out, but it was already far through August, and beautiful warm weather, with every sign of an early and great harvest, when I was pronounced able for my journey. Our money was now run to so low an ebb that we must think first of all on speed; for if we came not soon to Mr. Rankeillor’s, or if when we came there he should fail to help me, we must surely starve. In Alan’s view, besides, the hunt must have now greatly slackened; and the line of the Forth and even Stirling Bridge, which is the main pass over that river, would be watched with little interest.

The first night, accordingly, we pushed to the house of a friend of Duncan’s, where we slept the twenty-first of the month, and whence we set forth again about the fall of night to make another easy stage. The twenty-second we struck Allan Water, and followed it down; and coming to the edge of the hills saw the whole Carse of Stirling underfoot, as flat as a pancake, with the town and castle on a hill in the midst of it, and the moon shining on the Links of Forth.

‘Now,’ said Alan, ‘I kenna if ye care, but ye’re in your own land again. We passed the Hieland Line in the first hour; and now if we could but pass yon crooked water, we might cast our bonnets in the air.’

In Allan Water, near by where it falls into the Forth, we found a little sandy islet, overgrown with burdock, butter-bur and the like low plants, that would just cover us if we lay flat. Here it was we made our camp, within plain view of Stirling Castle, whence we could hear the drums beat as some part of the garrison paraded.

As soon as the dusk began to fall, we waded ashore and struck for the Bridge of Stirling, keeping to the fields and under the field fences.

The bridge is close under the castle hill, an old, high, narrow bridge with pinnacles along the parapet; and you may conceive with how much interest I looked upon it, not only as a place famous in history, but as the very doors of salvation to Alan and myself. It was all mighty still, and there seemed to be no guard upon the passage.

I was for pushing straight across; but Alan was more wary. ‘It looks unco’ quiet,’ said he; ‘but for all that we’ll lie down here cannily behind a dyke, and make sure.’

So we lay for about a quarter of an hour, whiles whispering, whiles lying still and hearing nothing earthly but the washing of the water on the piers. At last there came by an old, hobbling woman with a crutch stick. The woman was so little, and the night still so dark, that we soon lost sight of her; only heard the sound of her steps, and her stick, and a cough that she had by fits, draw slowly farther away.

And just then – ‘Who goes?’ cried a voice, and we heard the butt of a musket rattle on the stones. I must suppose the sentry had been sleeping, so that had we tried, we might have passed unseen; but he was awake now, and the chance forfeited.

‘This’ll never do,’ said Alan. ‘This’ll never, never do for us, David.’

And without another word, he began to crawl away through the fields; and a little after, being well out of eyeshot, got to his feet again, and struck along a road that led to the eastward.

‘Well?’ said I.

‘Well,’ said Alan, ‘what would ye have? They’re none such fools as I took them for. We have still the Forth to pass, Davie – weary fall the rains that fed and the hillsides that guided it!’

‘And why go east?’ said I.

‘Ou, just upon the chance!’ said he. ‘If we cannae pass the river, we’ll have to see what we can do for the firth.’

‘There are fords upon the river, and none upon the firth,’ said I.

‘To be sure there are fords, and a bridge forbye,’ quoth Alan; ‘and of what service, when they are watched?’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘but a river can be swum.’

‘By them that have the skill of it,’ returned he; ‘but for my own part, I swim like a stone. But there’s such a thing as a boat.’

‘Ay, and such a thing as money,’ says I. ‘But for us that have neither one nor other, they might just as well not have been invented.’

‘David,’ says he, ‘ye’re a man of small invention and less faith. But let me set my wits upon the hone, and if I cannae beg, borrow, nor yet steal a boat, I’ll make one! So deave me with no more of your nonsense, but walk (for that’s what you’ve got to do) – and let Alan think for ye.’

All night, then, we walked through the north side of the Carse under the high line of the Ochil mountains; and by Alloa and Clackmannan and Culross, all of which we avoided: and about ten in the morning, mighty hungry and tired, came to the little clachan of Limekilns. This is a place that sits near in by the water-side, and looks across the Hope to the town of the Queensferry. Smoke went up from both of these, and from other villages and farms upon all hands. The fields were being reaped; two ships lay anchored, and boats were coming and going on the Hope. It was altogether a right pleasant sight to me; and I could not take my fill of gazing at these comfortable, green, cultivated hills and the busy people both of the field and sea.

For all that, there was Mr. Rankeillor’s house on the south shore, where I had no doubt wealth awaited me; and here was I upon the north, clad in poor enough attire of an outlandish fashion, with three silver shillings left to me of all my fortune, a price set upon my head, and an outlawed man for my sole company.

In Limekilns we entered a small change-house, which we only knew to be a public by the wand over the door, and bought some bread and cheese from a good-looking lass[95] that was the servant. This we carried with us in a bundle, meaning to sit and eat it in a bush of wood on the sea-shore, that we saw some third part of a mile in front. As we went, I kept looking across the water and sighing to myself; and though I took no heed of it, Alan had fallen into a muse. At last he stopped in the way.

‘Did ye take heed of the lass we bought this of?’ says he, tapping on the bread and cheese.

‘To be sure,’ said I, ‘and a bonny lass she was.’

‘Ye thought that?’ cries he. ‘Man, David, that’s good news.’

‘In the name of all that’s wonderful, why so?’ says I. ‘What good can that do?’

‘Well,’ said Alan, with one of his droll looks, ‘I was rather in hopes it would maybe get us that boat.’

‘If it were the other way about, it would be liker it,’ said I.

‘That’s all that you ken, ye see,’ said Alan. ‘I don’t want the lass to fall in love with ye, I want her to be sorry for ye, David; to which end there is no manner of need that she should take you for a beauty. Let me see’ (looking me curiously over). ‘I wish ye were a wee thing paler; but apart from that ye’ll do fine for my purpose – ye have a fine, hang-dog, ragand-tatter, clappermaclaw kind of a look to ye, as if ye had stolen the coat from a potato-bogle. Come; right about, and back to the change-house for that boat of ours.’

I followed him, laughing.

‘David Balfour,’ said he, ‘ye’re a very funny gentleman by your way of it, and this is a very funny employ for ye, no doubt. For all that, if ye have any affection for my neck, ye will perhaps be kind enough to take this matter responsibly.

‘Well, well,’ said I, ‘have it as you will.’

As we got near the clachan, he made me take his arm and hang upon it like one almost helpless with weariness; and by the time he pushed open the change-house door, he seemed to be half-carrying me. The maid appeared surprised (as well she might be) at our speedy return; but Alan had no words to spare for her in explanation, helped me to a chair, called for a tass of brandy with which he fed me in little sips, and then breaking up the bread and cheese helped me to eat it like a nursery-lass. It was small wonder if the maid were taken with the picture we presented, of a poor, sick, overwrought lad and his most tender comrade. She drew quite near, and stood leaning with her back on the next table.

‘What’s like wrong with him?’ said she at last.

Alan turned upon her, to my great wonder, with a kind of fury. ‘Wrong?’ cries he. ‘He’s walked more hundreds of miles than he has hairs upon his chin, and slept oftener in wet heather than dry sheets. Wrong enough, I would think,’ and he kept grumbling to himself as he fed me, like a man ill-pleased.

‘He’s young for the like of that,’ said the maid.

‘Over young,’ said Alan, with his back to her.

‘He would be better riding,’ says she.

‘And where could I get a horse to him?’ cried Alan, turning on her with the same appearance of fury. ‘Would ye have me steal?’ I thought this roughness would have sent her off in dudgeon, as indeed it closed her mouth for the time. But my companion knew very well what he was doing.

‘Ye neednae tell me,’ she said at last – ‘ye’re gentry.’

‘Well,’ said Alan, softened a little (I believe against his will) by this artless comment, ‘and suppose we were? Did ever you hear that gentrice put money in folk’s pockets?’

She sighed at this, as if she were herself some disinherited great lady. ‘No,’ says she, ‘that’s true indeed.’

Somehow at this I could hold in no longer, and bade Alan let me be, for I was better already. My voice stuck in my throat, for I ever hated to take part in lies; but my very embarrassment helped on the plot, for the lass no doubt set down my husky voice to sickness and fatigue.

‘Has he nae friends?’ said she, in a tearful voice.

‘That has he so!’ cried Alan, ‘if we could but win to them! – friends and rich friends, beds to lie in, food to eat, doctors to see to him – and here he must tramp in the dubs and sleep in the heather like a beggarman.’

‘And why that?’ says the lass.

‘My dear,’ said Alan, ‘I cannae very safely say; but I’ll tell ye what I’ll do instead,’ says he, ‘I’ll whistle ye a bit tune.’ And with that he leaned pretty far over the table, and in a mere breath of a whistle, but with a wonderful pretty sentiment, gave her a few bars of ‘Charlie is my darling[96].’

‘Wheesht,’ says she, and looked over her shoulder to the door.

‘That’s it,’ said Alan.

‘And him so young!’ cries the lass.

‘He’s old enough to —’ and Alan struck his forefinger on the back part of his neck, meaning that I was old enough to lose my head.

‘It would be a black shame,’ she cried, flushing high.

‘It’s what will be, though,’ said Alan, ‘unless we manage the better.’

‘Poor lamb!’ says she, then she touched me on the shoulder with a little friendly touch, as much as to bid me cheer up.

‘I’m thinking ye have rather a long tongue,’ she said at last to Alan.

‘Ay,’ said Alan; ‘but ye see I ken the folk I speak to. I’ll tell ye what ye would do, ye would help.’

‘I couldnae,’ said she, shaking her head. ‘Na, I couldnae.’

‘No,’ said he, ‘but if ye could?’

She answered him nothing.

‘Look here, my lass,’ said Alan, ‘there are boats in the Kingdom of Fife. Now if we could have the use of a boat to pass under cloud of night into Lothian, and some secret, decent kind of a man to bring that boat back again and keep his counsel, there would be two souls saved. If we lack that boat, we have but three shillings left in this wide world; and where to go, and how to do, and what other place there is for us except the chains of a gibbet – I give you my naked word, I kenna! Shall we go wanting, lassie? Are ye to lie in your warm bed and think upon us, when the wind gowls in the chimney and the rain tirls on the roof? Are ye to eat your meat by the cheeks of a red fire, and think upon this poor sick lad of mine, biting his finger ends on a blae muir for cauld and hunger? Sick or sound, he must aye be moving; with the death grapple at his throat he must aye be trailing in the rain on the lang roads; and when he gants his last on a rickle of cauld stanes, there will be nae friends near him but only me and God.’

At this appeal, I could see the lass was in great trouble of mind, being tempted to help us, and yet in some fear she might be helping malefactors; and so now I determined to step in myself and to allay her scruples with a portion of the truth.

‘Did ever you, hear,’ said I, ‘of Mr. Rankeillor of the Ferry?’

‘Rankeillor the writer?’ said she. ‘I daur say that!’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘it’s to his door that I am bound, so you may judge by that if I am an ill-doer; and I will tell you more, that though I am indeed, by a dreadful error, in some peril of my life, King George has no truer friend in all Scotland than myself.’

Her face cleared up mightily at this, although Alan’s darkened.

‘That’s more than I would ask,’ said she. ‘Mr. Ran-keillor is a kennt man.’ And she bade us get clear of the clachan as soon as might be, and lie close in the bit wood on the sea-beach. ‘And ye can trust me,’ says she, ‘I’ll find some means to put you over.’

At this we waited for no more, but shook hands with her upon the bargain and set forth again from Limekilns as far as to the wood. It was a small piece of perhaps a score of elders and hawthorns and a few young ashes, not thick enough to veil us from passersby upon the road or beach. Here we must lie, however, making the best of the brave warm weather and the good hopes we now had of a deliverance, and planing more particularly what remained for us to do.

The day came to an end with the same brightness; the night fell quiet and clear; lights came out in houses and hamlets and then, one after another, began to be put out; but it was past eleven, and we were long since strangely tortured with anxieties, before we heard the grinding of oars upon the rowing-pins. At that, we looked out and saw the lass herself coming rowing to us in a boat. She had trusted no one with our affairs, not even her sweetheart, if she had one; but as soon as her father was asleep, had left the house by a window, stolen a neighbour’s boat, and come to our assistance single-handed.

I was abashed how to find expression for my thanks; but she was no less abashed at the thought of hearing them; begged us to lose no time and to hold our peace, saying (very properly) that the heart of our matter was in haste and silence; and so, what with one thing and another, she had set us on the Lothian shore not far from Carriden, had shaken hands with us, and was out again at sea and rowing for Limekilns, before there was one word said either of her service or our gratitude.

Even after she was gone, we had nothing to say, as indeed nothing was enough for such a kindness. Only Alan stood a great while upon the shore shaking his head.

‘It is a very fine lass,’ he said at last. ‘David, it is a very fine lass.’ For my part, I could say nothing, she was so simple a creature that my heart smote me both with remorse and fear: remorse because we had traded upon her ignorance; and fear lest we should have anyway involved her in the dangers of our situation.

The next day it was agreed that Alan should fend for himself till sunset; but as soon as it began to grow dark, he should lie in the fields by the road-side near to Newhalls, and stir for naught until he heard me whistling.

I was in the long street of Queensferry before the sun was up. As the morning went on, and the fires began to be kindled, and the windows to open, and the people to appear out of the houses, my concern and despondency grew ever the blacker. I saw now that I had no grounds to stand upon; and no clear proof of my rights, nor so much as of my own identity. If it was all a bubble, I was indeed sorely cheated and left in a sore pass. Even if things were as I conceived, it would in all likelihood take time to establish my contentions; and what time had I to spare with less than three shillings in my pocket, and a condemned, hunted man upon my hands to ship out of the country? Truly, if my hope broke with me, it might come to the gallows yet for both of us.

For the life of me I could not muster up the courage to address any of these reputable burghers; I thought shame even to speak with them in such a pickle of rags and dirt. So I went up and down, and through the street, and down to the harbor-side, like a dog that has lost its master, with a strange gnawing in my inwards, and every now and then a movement of despair. It grew to be high day at last; I was worn with these wanderings, and chanced to have stopped in front of a very good house on the landward side, a house with beautiful, clear glass windows and a chase-dog sitting yawning on the step like one that was at home. Well, I was even envying this dumb brute, when the door fell open and there issued forth a shrewd, ruddy, kindly, consequential man in a well-powdered wig and spectacles. I was in such a plight that no one set eyes on me once, but he looked at me again; and this gentleman, as it proved, was so much struck with my poor appearance that he came straight up to me and asked me what I did.

I told him I was come to the Queensferry on business, and taking heart of grace, asked him to direct me to the house of Mr. Rankeillor.

‘Why,’ said he, ‘that is his house that I have just come out of; and for a rather singular chance, I am that very man.’

‘Then, sir,’ said I, ‘I have to beg the favour of an interview.’

‘I do not know your name,’ said he, ‘nor yet your face.’

‘My name is David Balfour,’ said I.

‘David Balfour?’ he repeated, in rather a high tone, like one surprised. ‘And where have you come from, Mr. David Balfour?’ he asked, looking me pretty drily in the face.

‘I have come from a great many strange places, sir,’ said I; ‘but I think it would be as well to tell you where and how in a more private manner.’

He seemed to muse awhile, holding his lip in his hand, and looking now at me and now upon the causeway of the street.

‘Yes,’ says he, ‘that will be the best, no doubt.’ And he led me back with him into his house, cried out to some one whom I could not see that he would be engaged all morning, and brought me into a little dusty chamber full of books and documents. Here he sate down, and bade me be seated; though I thought he looked a little ruefully from his clean chair to my muddy rags. ‘And now,’ says he, ‘if you have any business, pray be brief and come swiftly to the point. Nec gemino bellum Trojanum orditur ab ovo[97] – do you understand that?’ says he, with a keen look.

‘I will even do as Horace says, sir,’ I answered, smiling, ‘and carry you in medias res[98].’ He nodded as if he was well pleased, and indeed his scrap of Latin had been set to test me. For all that, and though I was somewhat encouraged, the blood came in my face when I added: ‘I have reason to believe myself some rights on the estate of Shaws.’

He got a paper book out of a drawer and set it before him open. ‘Well?’ said he.

But I had shot my bolt and sat speechless.

‘Come, come, Mr. Balfour,’ said he, ‘you must continue. Where were you born?’

‘In Essendean, sir,’ said I, ‘the year 1733, the 12th of March.’

He seemed to follow this statement in his paper book; but what that meant I knew not. ‘Your father and mother?’ said he.

‘My father was Alexander Balfour, schoolmaster of that place,’ said I, ‘and my mother Grace Pitarrow; I think her people were from Angus.’

‘Have you any papers proving your identity?’ asked Mr. Rankeillor.

‘No, sir,’ said I, ‘but they are in the hands of Mr. Campbell, the minister, and could be readily produced. Mr. Campbell, too, would give me his word; and for that matter, I do not think my uncle would deny me.’

‘Meaning Mr. Ebenezer Balfour?’ says he.

‘The same,’ said I.

‘Whom you have seen?’ he asked.

‘By whom I was received into his own house,’ I answered.

‘Did you ever meet a man of the name of Hose-ason?’ asked Mr. Rankeillor.

‘I did so, sir, for my sins,’ said I; ‘for it was by his means and the procurement of my uncle, that I was kidnapped within sight of this town, carried to sea, suffered shipwreck and a hundred other hardships, and stand before you today in this poor accoutrement.’

‘You say you were shipwrecked,’ said Rankeillor; ‘where was that?’

‘Off the south end of the Isle of Mull,’ said I. ‘The name of the isle on which I was cast up is the Island Earraid.’

‘Ah!’ says he, smiling, ‘you are deeper than me in the geography. But so far, I may tell you, this agrees pretty exactly with other informations that I hold. But you say you were kidnapped; in what sense?’

‘In the plain meaning of the word, sir,’ said I. ‘I was on my way to your house, when I was trepanned on board the brig, cruelly struck down, thrown below, and knew no more of anything till we were far at sea. I was destined for the plantations; a fate that, in God’s providence, I have escaped.’

‘The brig was lost on June the 27th,’ says he, looking in his book, ‘and we are now at August the 24th. Here is a considerable hiatus, Mr. Balfour, of near upon two months. It has already caused a vast amount of trouble to your friends; and I own I shall not be very well contented until it is set right.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ said I, ‘these months are very easily filled up; but yet before I told my story, I would be glad to know that I was talking to a friend.’

‘This is to argue in a circle,’ said the lawyer. ‘I cannot be convinced till I have heard you.’

‘You are not to forget, sir,’ said I, ‘that I have already suffered by my trustfulness; and was shipped off to be a slave by the very man that (if I rightly understand) is your employer?’

‘No, no,’ said he, ‘it is not so bad as that. I was indeed your uncle’s man of business; but while you were gallivanting in the west, a good deal of water has run under the bridges. On the very day of your sea disaster, Mr. Campbell stalked into my office, demanding you from all the winds. I had never heard of your existence; but I had known your father; and from matters in my competence (to be touched upon hereafter) I was disposed to fear the worst. Mr. Ebenezer admitted having seen you; declared (what seemed improbable) that he had given you considerable sums; and that you had started for the continent of Europe, intending to fulfil your education, which was probable and praiseworthy. Interrogated how you had come to send no word to Mr. Campbell, he deponed that you had expressed a great desire to break with your past life. Further interrogated where you now were, protested ignorance, but believed you were in Leyden. That is a close sum of his replies. I am not exactly sure that any one believed him,’ continued Mr. Rankeillor with a smile; ‘and in particular he so much disrelished me expressions of mine that (in a word) he showed me to the door. We were then at a full stand; for whatever shrewd suspicions we might entertain, we had no shadow of probation. In the very article, comes Captain Hoseason with the story of your drowning; whereupon all fell through; with no consequences but concern to Mr. Campbell, injury to my pocket, and another blot upon your uncle’s character, which could very ill afford it. And now, Mr. Balfour,’ said he, ‘you understand the whole process of these matters, and can judge for yourself to what extent I may be trusted.’

Indeed he was more pedantic than I can represent him, and placed more scraps of Latin in his speech; but it was all uttered with a fine geniality of eye and manner which went far to conquer my distrust.

‘Sir,’ said I, ‘if I tell you my story, I must commit a friend’s life to your discretion. Pass me your word it shall be sacred.’

He passed me his word very seriously. ‘But,’ said he, ‘these are rather alarming prolocutions; and if there are in your story any little jostles to the law, I would beg you to bear in mind that I am a lawyer, and pass lightly.’

Thereupon I told him my story from the first, he listening with his spectacles thrust up and his eyes closed, so that I sometimes feared he was asleep. But no such matter! he heard every word (as I found afterward) with such quickness of hearing and precision of memory as often surprised me. Yet when I called Alan Breck in full, we had an odd scene. The name of Alan had of course rung through Scotland, with the news of the Appin murder and the offer of the reward; and it had no sooner escaped me than the lawyer moved in his seat and opened his eyes.

‘I would name no unnecessary names, Mr. Balfour,’ said he; ‘above all of Highlanders, many of whom are obnoxious to the law.’

‘Well, it might have been better not,’ said I, ‘but since I have let it slip, I may as well continue.’

‘Not at all,’ said Mr. Rankeillor. ‘I am somewhat dull of hearing, as you may have remarked; and I am far from sure I caught the name exactly. We will call your friend, if you please, Mr. Thomson – that there may be no reflections. And in future, I would take some such way with any Highlander that you may have to mention – dead or alive.’

By this, I saw he must have heard the name all too clearly, and had already guessed I might be coming to the murder. If he chose to play this part of ignorance, it was no matter of mine; so I smiled, said it was no very Highland-sounding name, and consented. After all, it was quite in the taste of that age, when there were two parties in the state, and quiet persons, with no very high opinions of their own, sought out every cranny to avoid offence to either.

‘Well, well,’ said the lawyer, when I had quite done, ‘this is a great epic, a great Odyssey of yours. You must tell it, sir, in a sound Latinity when your scholarship is riper; or in English if you please, though for my part I prefer the stronger tongue. You have rolled much; quae regio in terris[99] – what parish in Scotland (to make a homely translation) has not been filled with your wanderings? You have shown, besides, a singular aptitude for getting into false positions; and, yes, upon the whole, for behaving well in them. This Mr. Thomson seems to me a gentleman of some choice qualities, though perhaps a trifle bloody-minded. But you are doubtless quite right to adhere to him; indubitably, he adhered to you. It comes – we may say – he was your true companion; and I think that you are near the end of your troubles.’

As he thus moralised on my adventures, he looked upon me with so much humour and benignity that I could scarce contain my satisfaction. I had been so long wandering with lawless people, and making my bed upon the hills and under the bare sky, that to sit once more in a clean, covered house, and to talk amicably with a gentleman in broadcloth, seemed mighty elevations. Even as I thought so, my eye fell on my unseemly tatters, and I was once more plunged in confusion. But the lawyer saw and understood me. He rose, called over the stair to lay another plate, for Mr. Balfour would stay to dinner, and led me into a bedroom in the upper part of the house. Here he set before me water and soap, and a comb; and laid out some clothes that belonged to his son; and here, with another apposite tag, he left me to my toilet.

I made what change I could in my appearance; and blithe was I to look in the glass and find the beggarman a thing of the past, and David Balfour come to life again. And yet I was ashamed of the change too, and, above all, of the borrowed clothes. When I had done, Mr. Rankeillor caught me on the stair, made me his compliments, and had me again into the cabinet.

‘Sit ye down, Mr. David,’ said he, ‘and now that you are looking a little more like yourself, let me see if I can find you any news. You will be wondering, no doubt, about your father and your uncle? To be sure it is a singular tale; and the explanation is one that I blush to have to offer you. For,’ says he, really with embarrassment, ‘the matter hinges on a love affair.’

‘Truly,’ said I, ‘I cannot very well join that notion with my uncle.’

‘But your uncle, Mr. David, was not always old,’ replied the lawyer, ‘and what may perhaps surprise you more, not always ugly. He had a fine, gallant air; people stood in their doors to look after him, as he went by upon a mettle horse. Nor was that all, but he had a spirit of his own that seemed to promise great things in the future. In 1715, what must he do but run away to join the rebels? It was your father that pursued him, found him in a ditch, and brought him back multum gementem[100]; to the mirth of the whole country. However, majora canamus[101] – the two lads fell in love and that with the same lady. Mr. Ebenezer, who was the admired and the beloved, and the spoiled one, made, no doubt, mighty certain of the victory; and when he found he had deceived himself, screamed like a peacock. The whole country heard of it; now he lay sick at home, with his silly family standing round the bed in tears; now he rode from public-house to public-house, and shouted his sorrows into the lug of Tom, Dick, and Harry. Your father, Mr. David, was a kind gentleman; but he was weak, dolefully weak; took all this folly with a long countenance; and one day – by your leave! – resigned the lady. She was no such fool, however; it’s from her you must inherit your excellent good sense; and she refused to be bandied from one to another. Both got upon their knees to her; and the upshot of the matter for that while was that she showed both of them the door. The scene must have been highly farcical.’

I thought myself it was a silly business, but I could not forget my father had a hand in it. ‘Surely, sir, it had some note of tragedy,’ said I.

‘Why, no, sir, not at all,’ returned the lawyer. ‘This piece of work was all about the petulance of a young ass that had been spoiled, and wanted nothing so much as to be tied up and soundly belted. However, that was not your father’s view; and the end of it was, that from concession to concession on your father’s part, and from one height to another of squalling, sentimental selfishness upon your uncle’s, they came at last to drive a sort of bargain, from whose ill results you have recently been smarting. The one man took the lady, the other the estate. This piece of Quixotry on your father’s part, as it was unjust in itself, has brought forth a monstrous family of injustices. Your father and mother lived and died poor folk; you were poorly reared; and in the meanwhile, what a time it has been for the tenants on the estate of Shaws! And I might add (if it was a matter I cared much about) what a time for Mr. Ebenezer! He could not think that he had played a handsome part. Those who knew the story gave him the cold shoulder; those who knew it not, seeing one brother disappear, and the other succeed in the estate, raised a cry of murder; so that upon all sides he found himself evited. Money was all he got by his bargain; well, he came to think the more of money. He was selfish when he was young, he is selfish now that he is old; and the latter end of all these pretty manners and fine feelings you have seen for yourself.’

‘Well, sir,’ said I, ‘and in all this, what is my position?’

‘The estate is yours beyond a doubt,’ replied the lawyer. ‘It matters nothing what your father signed, you are the heir of entail. But your uncle is a man to fight the indefensible; and it would be likely your identity that he would call in question. A lawsuit is always expensive, and a family lawsuit always scandalous; besides which, if any of your doings with your friend Mr. Thomson were to come out, we might find that we had burned our fingers. The kidnapping, to be sure, would be a court card upon our side, if we could only prove it. But it may be difficult to prove; and my advice (upon the whole) is to make a very easy bargain with your uncle, perhaps even leaving him at Shaws where he has taken root for a quarter of a century, and contenting yourself in the meanwhile with a fair provision.’

I told him I was very willing to be easy, and that to carry family concerns before the public was a step from which I was naturally much averse. In the meantime (thinking to myself) I began to see the outlines of that scheme on which we afterwards acted.

‘Well, sir,’ said I, ‘here is my way of it.’ And I opened my plot to him.

‘But this would seem to involve my meeting the man Thomson?’ says he, when I had done.

‘I think so, indeed, sir,’ said I.

‘Dear doctor!’ cries he, rubbing his brow. ‘Dear doctor! No, Mr. David, I am afraid your scheme is inadmissible.’

But it was clear my plan had taken hold upon his fancy, for he kept musing to himself till we were called to dinner and the company of Mrs. Ran-keillor; and that lady had scarce left us again to ourselves and a bottle of wine, ere he was back harping on my proposal. When and where was I to meet my friend Mr. Thomson; was I sure of Mr. T.’s discretion; supposing we could catch the old fox tripping, would I consent to such and such a term of an agreement – these and the like questions he kept asking at long intervals, while he thoughtfully rolled his wine upon his tongue. When I had answered all of them, seemingly to his contentment, he fell into a still deeper muse, even the claret being now forgotten. Then he got a sheet of paper and a pencil, and set to work writing and weighing every word; and at last touched a bell and had his clerk into the chamber.

‘Torrance,’ said he, ‘I must have this written out fair against to-night; and when it is done, you will be so kind as put on your hat and be ready to come along with this gentleman and me, for you will probably be wanted as a witness.’

‘What, sir,’ cried I, as soon as the clerk was gone, ‘are you to venture it?’

‘Why, so it would appear,’ says he, filling his glass. ‘But let us speak no more of business. The very sight of Torrance brings in my head a little droll matter of some years ago, when I had made a tryst with the poor oaf at the cross of Edinburgh. Each had gone his proper errand; and when it came four o’clock, Torrance had been taking a glass and did not know his master, and I, who had forgot my spectacles, was so blind without them, that I give you my word I did not know my own clerk.’ And thereupon he laughed heartily.

Towards the time I had appointed with Alan, we set out from the house, Mr. Rankeillor and I arm in arm, and Torrance following behind with the deed in his pocket and a covered basket in his hand. All through the town, the lawyer was bowing right and left, and continually being button-holed by gentlemen on matters of burgh or private business; and I could see he was one greatly looked up to in the county. At last we were clear of the houses, and began to go along the side of the haven and towards the Hawes Inn and the Ferry pier, the scene of my misfortune. I came through these hardships and fearful perils without scath. My only thought should have been of gratitude; and yet I could not behold the place without sorrow and a chill of recollected fear.

I was so thinking when, upon a sudden, Mr. Rankeillor cried out, clapped his hand to his pockets, and began to laugh.

‘Why,’ he cries, ‘if this be not a farcical adventure! After all that I said, I have forgot my glasses!’ At that, of course, I understood the purpose of his anecdote, and knew that if he had left his spectacles at home, it had been done on purpose, so that he might have the benefit of Alan’s help without the awkwardness of recognising him.

As soon as we were past the Hawes Mr. Rankeillor changed the order of march, walking behind with Torrance and sending me forward in the manner of a scout. I went up the hill, whistling from time to time my Gaelic air; and at length I had the pleasure to hear it answered and to see Alan rise from behind a bush. He was somewhat dashed in spirits, having passed a long day alone skulking in the county, and made but a poor meal in an alehouse near Dundas. But at the mere sight of my clothes, he began to brighten up; and as soon as I had told him in what a forward state our matters were and the part I looked to him to play in what remained, he sprang into a new man.

‘And that is a very good notion of yours,’ says he; ‘and I dare to say that you could lay your hands upon no better man to put it through than Alan Breck. It is not a thing (mark ye) that any one could do, but takes a gentleman of penetration. But it sticks in my head your lawyer-man will be somewhat wearying to see me,’ says Alan.

Accordingly I cried and waved on Mr. Rankeillor, who came up alone and was presented to my friend, Mr. Thomson.

‘Mr. Thomson, I am pleased to meet you,’ said he. ‘But I have forgotten my glasses; and our friend, Mr. David here’ (clapping me on the shoulder), ‘will tell you that I am little better than blind, and that you must not be surprised if I pass you by tomorrow.’

This he said, thinking that Alan would be pleased; but the Highlandman’s vanity was ready to startle at a less matter than that.

‘Why, sir,’ says he, stiffly, ‘I would say it mattered the less as we are met here for a particular end, to see justice done to Mr. Balfour; and by what I can see, not very likely to have much else in common. But I accept your apology, which was a very proper one to make.’

‘And that is more than I could look for, Mr. Thomson,’ said Rankeillor, heartily. ‘And now as you and I are the chief actors in this enterprise, I think we should come into a nice agreement; to which end, I propose that you should lend me your arm, for (what with the dusk and the want of my glasses) I am not very clear as to the path; and as for you, Mr. David, you will find Torrance a pleasant kind of body to speak with.’

Accordingly these two went on ahead in very close talk, and Torrance and I brought up the rear.

Night was quite come when we came in view of the house of Shaws. As we drew near we saw no glimmer of light in any portion of the building. It seemed my uncle was already in bed, which was indeed the best thing for our arrangements. We made our last whispered consultations some fifty yards away; and then the lawyer and Torrance and I crept quietly up and crouched down beside the corner of the house; and as soon as we were in our places, Alan strode to the door without concealment and began to knock.

For some time Alan volleyed upon the door, and his knocking only roused the echoes of the house and neighbourhood. At last, however, I could hear the noise of a window gently thrust up, and knew that my uncle had come to his observatory. He studied his visitor awhile in silence, and when he spoke his voice had a quaver of misgiving.

‘What’s this?’ says he. ‘This is nae kind of time of night for decent folk; and I hae nae trokings[102] wi’ nighthawks. What brings ye here? I have a blunderbush.’

‘Is that yoursel’, Mr. Balfour?’ returned Alan, stepping back and looking up into the darkness. ‘Have a care of that blunderbuss; they’re nasty things to burst.’

‘What brings ye here? and whae are ye?’ says my uncle, angrily.

‘I have no manner of inclination to rowt out my name to the country-side,’ said Alan; ‘but what brings me here is another story, being more of your affair than mine; and if ye’re sure it’s what ye would like, I’ll set it to a tune and sing it to you.’

‘And what is’t?’ asked my uncle.

‘David,’ says Alan.

‘What was that?’ cried my uncle, in a mighty changed voice.

‘Shall I give ye the rest of the name, then?’ said Alan.

There was a pause; and then, ‘I’m thinking I’ll better let ye in,’ says my uncle, doubtfully.

‘I dare say that,’ said Alan; ‘but the point is, Would I go? Now I will tell you what I am thinking. I am thinking that it is here upon this doorstep that we must confer upon this business; for I would have you to understand that I am as stiff-necked as yoursel’, and a gentleman of better family.’

This change of note disconcerted Ebenezer; he was a little while digesting it, and then says he, ‘Weel, weel, what must be must,’ and shut the window. But it took him a long time to get down-stairs. At last, however, we heard the creak of the hinges, and it seems my uncle slipped gingerly out and (seeing that Alan had stepped back a pace or two) sate him down on the top doorstep with the blunderbuss ready in his hands.

‘And, now,’ says he, ‘mind I have my blunderbush, and if ye take a step nearer ye’re as good as deid.’

‘And a very civil speech,’ says Alan, ‘to be sure.’

‘Na,’ says my uncle, ‘but this is no a very chanty kind of a proceeding, and I’m bound to be prepared. And now that we understand each other, ye’ll can name your business.’

‘Why,’ says Alan, ‘you that are a man of so much understanding, will doubtless have perceived that I am a Hieland gentleman. My name has nae business in my story; but the county of my friends is no very far from the Isle of Mull, of which ye will have heard. It seems there was a ship lost in those parts; and the next day a gentleman of my family was seeking wreck-wood for his fire along the sands, when he came upon a lad that was half-drowned. Well, he brought him to; and he and some other gentleman took and clapped him in an auld, ruined castle, where from that day to this he has been a great expense to my friends. My friends are a wee wild-like, and not so particular about the law as some that I could name; and finding that the lad owned some decent folk, and was your born nephew, Mr. Balfour, they asked me to give ye a bit call and confer upon the matter. And I may tell ye at the off-go, unless we can agree upon some terms, ye are little likely to set eyes upon him. For my friends,’ added Alan, simply, ‘are no very well off.’

‘Na,’ said my uncle, ‘I take nae manner of interest in the lad, and I’ll pay nae ransome, and ye can make a kirk and a mill of him for what I care.’

‘I was thinking that,’ said Alan.

‘And what for why?’ asked Ebenezer.

‘Why, Mr. Balfour,’ replied Alan, ‘by all that I could hear, there were two ways of it: either ye liked David and would pay to get him back; or else ye had very good reasons for not wanting him, and would pay for us to keep him. It seems it’s not the first; well then, it’s the second; and blythe am I to ken it, for it should be a pretty penny in my pocket and the pockets of my friends.’

‘I dinnae follow ye there,’ said my uncle.

‘No?’ said Alan. ‘Well, see here: you dinnae want the lad back; well, what do ye want done with him, and how much will ye pay?’ My uncle made no answer, but shifted uneasily on his seat.

‘Come, sir,’ cried Alan. ‘I would have you to ken that I am a gentleman; I bear a king’s name; I am nae rider to kick my shanks at your hall door. Either give me an answer in civility, and that out of hand; or by the top of Glencoe, I will ram three feet of iron through your vitals.’

‘Eh, man,’ cried my uncle, scrambling to his feet, ‘give me a meenit! What’s like wrong with ye? I’m just a plain man and nae dancing master; and I’m tryin to be as ceevil as it’s morally possible. I’ll do naething to cross ye. Just tell me what like ye’ll be wanting, and ye’ll see that we’ll can agree fine.’

‘Troth, sir,’ said Alan, ‘I ask for nothing but plain dealing. In two words: do ye want the lad killed or kept?’

‘O sirs!’ cried Ebenezer. ‘O sirs, me! that’s no kind of language!’

‘Killed or kept!’ repeated Alan.

‘O, keepit, keepit!’ wailed my uncle. ‘We’ll have nae bloodshed, if you please.’

‘Well,’ says Alan, ‘as ye please; that’ll be the dearer.’

‘The dearer?’ cries Ebenezer. ‘Would ye fyle your hands wi’ crime?’

‘Hoot!’ said Alan, ‘they’re baith crime, whatever! And the killing’s easier, and quicker, and surer. Keeping the lad’ll be a fashious[103] job, a fashious, kittle business.’

‘I’ll have him keepit, though,’ returned my uncle. ‘I never had naething to do with onything morally wrong; and I’m no gaun to begin to pleasure a wild Hielandman.’

‘Ye’re unco scrupulous,’ sneered Alan.

‘I’m a man o’ principle,’ said Ebenezer, simply; ‘and if I have to pay for it, I’ll have to pay for it. And besides,’ says he, ‘ye forget the lad’s my brother’s son.’

‘Well, well,’ said Alan, ‘and now about the price. It’s no very easy for me to set a name upon it; I would first have to ken some small matters. I would have to ken, for instance, what ye gave Hoseason at the first off-go?’

‘Hoseason!’ cries my uncle, struck aback. ‘What for?’

‘For kidnapping David,’ says Alan.

‘It’s a lee, it’s a black lee!’ cried my uncle.

‘That’s no fault of mine nor yet of yours,’ said Alan; ‘nor yet of Hoseason’s, if he’s a man that can be trusted.’

‘What do ye mean?’ cried Ebenezer. ‘Did Ho-season tell ye?’

‘Hoseason and me are partners; we gang shares; so ye can see for yoursel’ what good ye can do leeing. And the point in hand is just this: what did ye pay him?’

‘Weel,’ said my uncle, ‘I dinnae care what he said, the solemn God’s truth is this, that I gave him twenty pound. But I’ll be perfec’ly honest with ye: forby that, he was to have the selling of the lad in Caroliny, whilk would be as muckle mair, but no from my pocket, ye see.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Thomson. That will do excellently well,’ said the lawyer, stepping forward; and then mighty civilly, ‘Good-evening, Mr. Balfour,’ said he.

And, ‘Good-evening, Uncle Ebenezer,’ said I.

And, ‘It’s a braw nicht[104], Mr. Balfour,’ added Torrance.

Never a word said my uncle, neither black nor white; but just sat where he was on the top door-step and stared upon us like a man turned to stone. Alan filched away his blunderbuss; and the lawyer, taking him by the arm, led him into the kitchen, whither we all followed, and set him down in a chair beside the hearth.

‘Come, come, Mr. Ebenezer,’ said the lawyer, ‘you must not be down-hearted, for I promise you we shall make easy terms. In the meanwhile give us the cellar key, and Torrance shall draw us a bottle of your father’s wine in honour of the event.’ Then, turning to me and taking me by the hand, ‘Mr. David,’ says he, ‘I wish you all joy in your good fortune, which I believe to be deserved.’ And then to Alan, with a spice of drollery, ‘Mr. Thomson, I pay you my compliment; it was most artfully conducted.’

We had the fire lighted, and a bottle of wine uncorked; a good supper came out of the basket, to which Torrance and I and Alan set ourselves down; while the lawyer and my uncle passed into the next chamber to consult. They stayed there closeted about an hour; at the end of which period they had come to a good understanding, and my uncle and I set our hands to the agreement in a formal manner. By the terms of this, my uncle bound himself to satisfy Rankeillor as to his intromissions, and to pay me two clear thirds of the yearly income of Shaws.

So the beggar in the ballad had come home; and when I lay down that night on the kitchen chests, I was a man of means and had a name in the country. I lay till dawn, looking at the fire on the roof and planning the future.

So far as I was concerned myself, I had come to port; but I had still Alan, to whom I was so much beholden, on my hands; and I felt besides a heavy charge in the matter of the murder and James of the Glens. On both these heads I unbosomed to Rankeillor the next morning. About my clear duty to my friend, the lawyer had no doubt. I must help him out of the county at whatever risk; but in the case of James, he was of a different mind.

‘Mr. Thomson,’ says he, ‘is one thing, Mr. Thomson’s kinsman quite another. I know little of the facts, but I gather that a great noble (whom we will call, if you like, the D. of A.[105]) has some concern and is even supposed to feel some animosity in the matter. The D. of A. is doubtless an excellent nobleman; but, Mr. David, if you interfere to balk his vengeance, you should remember there is one way to shut your testimony out; and that is to put you in the dock. There, you would be in the same pickle as Mr. Thom-son’s kinsman. You will object that you are innocent; well, but so is he. And to be tried for your life before a Highland jury, on a Highland quarrel and with a Highland Judge upon the bench, would be a brief transition to the gallows.’

‘In that case, sir,’ said I, ‘I would just have to be hanged – would I not?’

‘My dear boy,’ cries he, ‘go in God’s name, and do what you think is right. It is a poor thought that at my time of life I should be advising you to choose the safe and shameful; and I take it back with an apology. Go and do your duty; and be hanged, if you must, like a gentleman. There are worse things in the world than to be hanged.’

‘Not many, sir,’ said I, smiling.

‘Why, yes, sir,’ he cried, ‘very many. And it would be ten times better for your uncle (to go no farther afield) if he were dangling decently upon a gibbet.’

Thereupon he turned into the house (still in a great fervour of mind, so that I saw I had pleased him heartily) and there he wrote me two letters, making his comments on them as he wrote.

‘This,’ says he, ‘is to my bankers, the British Linen Company, placing a credit to your name. Consult Mr. Thomson, he will know of ways; and you, with this credit, can supply the means. Then for his kinsman, there is no better way than that you should seek the Advocate, tell him your tale, and offer testimony. Now, that you may reach the Lord Advocate well-recommended, I give you here a letter to a namesake of your own, the learned Mr. Balfour of Pilrig, a man whom I esteem. It will look better that you should be presented by one of your own name; and the laird of Pilrig is much looked up to in the Faculty and stands well with Lord Advocate Grant. I would not trouble him, if I were you, with any particulars; and (do you know?) I think it would be needless to refer to Mr. Thomson. In all these matters, may the Lord guide you, Mr. David!’

Thereupon he took his farewell, and set out with Torrance for the Ferry, while Alan and I turned our faces for the city of Edinburgh. As we went by the footpath and beside the gateposts and the unfinished lodge, we kept looking back at the house of my fathers. It stood there, bare and great and smokeless, like a place not lived in; only in one of the top windows, there was the peak of a nightcap bobbing up and down and back and forward, like the head of a rabbit from a burrow. I had little welcome when I came and less kindness while I stayed; but at least I was watched as I went away.

Alan and I went slowly forward upon our way, having little heart either to walk or speak. The same thought was uppermost in both, that we were near the time of our parting; and remembrance of all the bygone days sate upon us sorely. We talked indeed of what should be done; and it was resolved that Alan should keep to the county, biding now here, now there, but coming once in the day to a particular place where I might be able to communicate with him, either in my own person or by messenger. In the meanwhile, I was to seek out a lawyer, who was an Appin Stewart, and a man therefore to be wholly trusted; and it should be his part to find a ship and to arrange for Alan’s safe embarkation. No sooner was this business done, than the words seemed to leave us; and though I would seek to jest with Alan under the name of Mr. Thomson, and he with me on my new clothes and my estate, you could feel very well that we were nearer tears than laughter.

We came the by-way over the hill of Corstorphine; and when we got near to the place called Rest-and-be-Thankful, and looked down on Corstorphine bogs and over to the city and the castle on the hill, we both stopped, for we both knew without a word said that we had come to where our ways parted. Here he repeated to me once again what had been agreed upon between us: the address of the lawyer, the daily hour at which Alan might be found, and the signals that were to be made by any that came seeking him. Then I gave what money I had (a guinea or two of Rankeillor’s) so that he should not starve in the meanwhile; and then we stood a space, and looked over at Edinburgh in silence.

‘Well, good-bye,’ said Alan, and held out his left hand.

‘Good-bye,’ said I, and gave the hand a little grasp, and went off down hill.

Neither one of us looked the other in the face, nor so long as he was in my view did I take one back glance at the friend I was leaving. But as I went on my way to the city, I felt so lost and lonesome, that I could have found it in my heart to sit down by the dyke, and cry and weep like any baby.

It was coming near noon when I passed in by the West Kirk and the Grassmarket into the streets of the capital. The huge height of the buildings, running up to ten and fifteen storeys, the narrow arched entries that continually vomited passengers, the wares of the merchants in their windows, the hubbub and endless stir, the foul smells and the fine clothes, and a hundred other particulars too small to mention, struck me into a kind of stupor of surprise, so that I let the crowd carry me to and fro; and yet all the time what I was thinking of was Alan at Rest-and-be-Thankful; and all the time (although you would think I would not choose but be delighted with these braws and novelties) there was a cold gnawing in my inside like a remorse for something wrong.

The hand of Providence brought me in my drifting to the very doors of the British Linen Company’s bank.