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THE WATCHER BY THE THRESHOLD

JOHN BUCHAN




BY JOHN BUCHAN


THE WATCHER BY THE THRESHOLD
PRESTER JOHN
SALUTE TO ADVENTURERS
THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME
GREENMANTLE
THE POWER-HOUSE
THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS


NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




THE WATCHER BY
THE THRESHOLD

BY

JOHN BUCHAN

_Author of "Greenmantle,"
"Salute to Adventurers,"
etc._

[Illustration: Logo]

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


_Copyright, 1918,
By George H. Doran Company_

_Printed in the United States of America_


TO

STAIR AGNEW GILLON


MY DEAR STAIR,

_We have travelled so many roads together, highland and lowland,
pleasant and dreary, that I ask you to accept this book of travellers'
tales. For Scotland is a wide place to travel in for those who believe
that it is not bounded strictly by kirk and market-place, and who have
an ear for old songs and lost romances. It is of the back-world of
Scotland that I write, the land behind the mist and over the seven bens,
a place hard of access for the foot-passenger but easy for the maker of
stories. Meantime, to you, who have chosen the better part, I wish many
bright days by hill and loch in the summers to come._

_R. M. S. Briton, at sea_

_J. B._


"Among idle men there be some who tarry in the outer courts, speeding
the days joyfully with dance and song. But the other sort dwell near the
portals of the House, and are ever anxious and ill at ease that they may
see something of the Shadows which come and go. Wherefore night and day
they are found watching by the threshold, in fearfulness and joy, not
without tears." Extract from the writings of Donisarius of Padua, circa
1310.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                             PAGE
   I NO-MAN'S LAND                    13

  II THE FAR ISLANDS                 100

 III THE WATCHER BY THE THRESHOLD    137

  IV THE OUTGOING OF THE TIDE        204

   V THE RIME OF TRUE THOMAS         238

  VI BASILISSA                       255

 VII DIVUS JOHNSTON                  286

VIII THE KING OF YPRES               301




THE WATCHER BY THE THRESHOLD




I

NO-MAN'S-LAND


I: THE SHIELING OF FARAWA

It was with a light heart and a pleasing consciousness of holiday that I
set out from the inn at Allermuir to tramp my fifteen miles into the
unknown. I walked slowly, for I carried my equipment on my back--my
basket, fly-books and rods, my plaid of Grant tartan (for I boast myself
a distant kinsman of that house), and my great staff, which had tried
ere then the front of the steeper Alps. A small valise with books and
some changes of linen clothing had been sent on ahead in the shepherd's
own hands. It was yet early April, and before me lay four weeks of
freedom--twenty-eight blessed days in which to take fish and smoke the
pipe of idleness. The Lent term had pulled me down, a week of modest
enjoyment thereafter in town had finished the work; and I drank in the
sharp moorish air like a thirsty man who has been forwandered among
deserts.

I am a man of varied tastes and a score of interests. As an
undergraduate I had been filled with the old mania for the complete
life. I distinguished myself in the Schools, rowed in my college eight,
and reached the distinction of practising for three weeks in the Trials.
I had dabbled in a score of learned activities, and when the time came
that I won the inevitable St. Chad's fellowship on my chaotic
acquirements, and I found myself compelled to select if I would pursue a
scholar's life, I had some toil in finding my vocation. In the end I
resolved that the ancient life of the North, of the Celts and the
Northmen and the unknown Pictish tribes, held for me the chief
fascination. I had acquired a smattering of Gaelic, having been brought
up as a boy in Lochaber, and now I set myself to increase my store of
languages. I mastered Erse and Icelandic, and my first book--a monograph
on the probable Celtic elements in the Eddic songs--brought me the
praise of scholars and the deputy-professor's chair of Northern
Antiquities. So much for Oxford. My vacations had been spent mainly in
the North--in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isles, in Scandinavia and
Iceland, once even in the far limits of Finland. I was a keen sportsman
of a sort, an old-experienced fisher, a fair shot with gun and rifle,
and in my hillcraft I might well stand comparison with most men. April
has ever seemed to me the finest season of the year even in our cold
northern altitudes, and the memory of many bright Aprils had brought me
up from the South on the night before to Allerfoot, whence a dogcart had
taken me up Glen Aller to the inn at Allermuir; and now the same desire
had set me on the heather with my face to the cold brown hills.

You are to picture a sort of plateau, benty and rock-strewn, running
ridge-wise above a chain of little peaty lochs and a vast tract of
inexorable bog. In a mile the ridge ceased in a shoulder of hill, and
over this lay the head of another glen, with the same doleful
accompaniment of sunless lochs, mosses, and a shining and resolute
water. East and west and north, in every direction save the south, rose
walls of gashed and serrated hills. It was a grey day with blinks of
sun, and when a ray chanced to fall on one of the great dark faces,
lines of light and colour sprang into being which told of mica and
granite. I was in high spirits, as on the eve of holiday; I had
breakfasted excellently on eggs and salmon-steaks; I had no cares to
speak of, and my prospects were not uninviting. But in spite of myself
the landscape began to take me in thrall and crush me. The silent
vanished peoples of the hills seemed to be stirring; dark primeval faces
seemed to stare at me from behind boulders and jags of rock. The place
was so still, so free from the cheerful clamour of nesting birds, that
it seemed a _temenos_ sacred to some old-world god. At my feet the lochs
lapped ceaselessly; but the waters were so dark that one could not see
bottom a foot from the edge. On my right the links of green told of
snake-like mires waiting to crush the unwary wanderer. It seemed to me
for the moment a land of death, where the tongues of the dead cried
aloud for recognition.

My whole morning's walk was full of such fancies. I lit a pipe to cheer
me, but the things would not be got rid of. I thought of the Gaels who
had held those fastnesses; I thought of the Britons before them, who
yielded to their advent. They were all strong peoples in their day, and
now they had gone the way of the earth. They had left their mark on the
levels of the glens and on the more habitable uplands, both in names and
in actual forts, and graves where men might still dig curios. But the
hills--that black stony amphitheatre before me--it seemed strange that
the hills bore no traces of them. And then with some uneasiness I
reflected on that older and stranger race who were said to have held the
hill-tops. The Picts, the Picti--what in the name of goodness were they?
They had troubled me in all my studies, a sort of blank wall to put an
end to speculation. We knew nothing of them save certain strange names
which men called Pictish, the names of those hills in front of me--the
Muneraw, the Yirnie, the Calmarton. They were the _corpus vile_ for
learned experiment; but Heaven alone knew what dark abyss of savagery
once yawned in the midst of this desert.

And then I remembered the crazy theories of a pupil of mine at St
Chad's, the son of a small landowner on the Aller, a young gentleman who
had spent his substance too freely at Oxford, and was now dreeing his
weird in the Backwoods. He had been no scholar but a certain imagination
marked all his doings, and of a Sunday night he would come and talk to
me of the North. The Picts were his special subject, and his ideas were
mad. "Listen to me," he would say, when I had mixed him toddy and given
him one of my cigars; "I believe there are traces--ay, and more than
traces--of an old culture lurking in those hills and waiting to be
discovered. We never hear of the Picts being driven from the hills. The
Britons drove them from the lowlands, the Gaels from Ireland did the
same for the Britons; but the hills were left unmolested. We hear of no
one going near them except outlaws and tinklers. And in that very place
you have the strangest mythology. Take the story of the Brownie. What is
that but the story of a little swart man of uncommon strength and
cleverness, who does good and ill indiscriminately, and then disappears?
There are many scholars, as you yourself confess, who think that the
origin of the Brownie was in some mad belief in the old race of the
Picts, which still survived somewhere in the hills. And do we not hear
of the Brownie in authentic records right down to the year 1756? After
that, when people grew more incredulous, it is natural that the belief
should have begun to die out; but I do not see why stray traces should
not have survived till late."

"Do you not see what that means?" I had said in mock gravity. "Those
same hills are, if anything, less known now than they were a hundred
years ago. Why should not your Picts or Brownies be living to this day?"

"Why not, indeed?" he had rejoined, in all seriousness.

I laughed, and he went to his rooms and returned with a large
leather-bound book. It was lettered, in the rococo style of a young
man's taste, 'Glimpses of the Unknown,' and some of the said glimpses he
proceeded to impart to me. It was not pleasant reading; indeed, I had
rarely heard anything so well fitted to shatter sensitive nerves. The
early part consisted of folk-tales and folk-sayings, some of them wholly
obscure, some of them with a glint of meaning, but all of them with some
hint of a mystery in the hills. I heard the Brownie story in countless
versions. Now the thing was a friendly little man, who wore grey
breeches and lived on brose; now he was a twisted being, the sight of
which made the ewes miscarry in the lambing-time. But the second part
was the stranger, for it was made up of actual tales, most of them with
date and place appended. It was a most Bedlamite catalogue of horrors,
which, if true, made the wholesome moors a place instinct with tragedy.
Some told of children carried away from villages, even from towns, on
the verge of the uplands. In almost every case they were girls, and the
strange fact was their utter disappearance. Two little girls would be
coming home from school, would be seen last by a neighbour just where
the road crossed a patch of heath or entered a wood and then--no human
eye ever saw them again. Children's cries had startled outlying
shepherds in the night, and when they had rushed to the door they could
hear nothing but the night wind. The instances of such disappearances
were not very common--perhaps once in twenty years--but they were
confined to this one tract of country, and came in a sort of fixed
progression from the middle of last century, when the record began. But
this was only one side of the history. The latter part was all devoted
to a chronicle of crimes which had gone unpunished, seeing that no hand
had ever been traced. The list was fuller in last century;[1] in the
earlier years of the present it had dwindled; then came a revival about
the 'Fifties; and now again in our own time it had sunk low. At the
little cottage of Auchterbrean, on the roadside in Glen Aller, a
labourer's wife had been found pierced to the heart. It was thought to
be a case of a woman's jealousy, and her neighbour was accused,
convicted, and hanged. The woman, to be sure, denied the charge with her
last breath; but circumstantial evidence seemed sufficiently strong
against her. Yet some people in the glen believed her guiltless. In
particular, the carrier who had found the dead woman declared that the
way in which her neighbour received the news was a sufficient proof of
innocence; and the doctor who was first summoned professed himself
unable to tell with what instrument the wound had been given. But this
was all before the days of expert evidence, so the woman had been hanged
without scruple. Then there had been another story of peculiar horror,
telling of the death of an old man at some little lonely shieling called
Carrickfey. But at this point I had risen in protest, and made to drive
the young idiot from my room.

"It was my grandfather who collected most of them," he said. "He had
theories,[2] but people called him mad, so he was wise enough to hold
his tongue. My father declares the whole thing mania; but I rescued the
book, had it bound, and added to the collection. It is a queer hobby;
but, as I say, I have theories, and there are more things in heaven and
earth----"

But at this he heard a friend's voice in the Quad., and dived out,
leaving the banal quotation unfinished.

Strange though it may seem, this madness kept coming back to me as I
crossed the last few miles of moor. I was now on a rough tableland, the
watershed between two lochs, and beyond and above me rose the stony
backs of the hills. The burns fell down in a chaos of granite boulders,
and huge slabs of grey stone lay flat and tumbled in the heather. The
full waters looked prosperously for my fishing, and I began to forget
all fancies in anticipation of sport.

Then suddenly in a hollow of land I came on a ruined cottage. It had
been a very small place, but the walls were still half-erect, and the
little moorland garden was outlined on the turf. A lonely apple tree,
twisted and gnarled with winds, stood in the midst.

From higher up on the hill I heard a loud roar, and I knew my excellent
friend the shepherd of Farawa, who had come thus far to meet me. He
greeted me with the boisterous embarrassment which was his way of
prefacing hospitality. A grave reserved man at other times, on such
occasions he thought it proper to relapse into hilarity. I fell into
step with him, and we set off for his dwelling. But first I had the
curiosity to look back to the tumble-down cottage and ask him its name.

A queer look came into his eyes. "They ca' the place Carrickfey," he
said. "Naebody has daured to bide there this twenty year sin'--but I see
ye ken the story." And, as if glad to leave the subject, he hastened to
discourse on fishing.


II: TELLS OF AN EVENING'S TALK

The shepherd was a masterful man; tall, save for the stoop which belongs
to all moorland folk, and active as a wild goat. He was not a new
importation, nor did he belong to the place; for his people had lived in
the remote Borders, and he had come as a boy to this shieling of Farawa.
He was unmarried, but an elderly sister lived with him and cooked his
meals. He was reputed to be extraordinarily skilful in his trade; I know
for a fact that he was in his way a keen sportsman; and his few
neighbours gave him credit for a sincere piety. Doubtless this last
report was due in part to his silence, for after his first greeting he
was wont to relapse into a singular taciturnity. As we strode across the
heather he gave me a short outline of his year's lambing. "Five pair o'
twins yestreen, twae this morn; that makes thirty-five yowes that hae
lambed since the Sabbath. I'll dae weel if God's willin'." Then, as I
looked towards the hilltops whence the thin mist of morn was trailing,
he followed my gaze. "See," he said with uplifted crook--"see that
sicht. Is that no what is written of in the Bible when it says, 'The
mountains do smoke.'" And with this piece of exegesis he finished his
talk, and in a little we were at the cottage.

It was a small enough dwelling in truth, and yet large for a moorland
house, for it had a garret below the thatch, which was given up to my
sole enjoyment. Below was the wide kitchen with box-beds, and next to it
the inevitable second room, also with its cupboard sleeping-places. The
interior was very clean, and yet I remember to have been struck with the
faint musty smell which is inseparable from moorland dwellings. The
kitchen pleased me best, for there the great rafters were black with
peat-reek, and the uncovered stone floor, on which the fire gleamed
dully, gave an air of primeval simplicity. But the walls spoiled all,
for tawdry things of to-day had penetrated even there. Some grocers'
almanacs--years old--hung in places of honour, and an extraordinary
lithograph of the Royal Family in its youth. And this, mind you, between
crooks and fishing-rods and old guns, and horns of sheep and deer.

The life for the first day or two was regular and placid. I was up
early, breakfasted on porridge (a dish which I detest), and then off to
the lochs and streams. At first my sport prospered mightily. With a
drake-wing I killed a salmon of seventeen pounds, and the next day had a
fine basket of trout from a hill-burn. Then for no earthly reason the
weather changed. A bitter wind came out of the northeast, bringing
showers of snow and stinging hail, and lashing the waters into storm. It
was now farewell to fly-fishing. For a day or two I tried trolling with
the minnow on the lochs, but it was poor sport, for I had no boat, and
the edges were soft and mossy. Then in disgust I gave up the attempt,
went back to the cottage, lit my biggest pipe, and sat down with a book
to await the turn of the weather.

The shepherd was out from morning till night at his work, and when he
came in at last, dog-tired, his face would be set and hard, and his eyes
heavy with sleep. The strangeness of the man grew upon me. He had a
shrewd brain beneath his thatch of hair, for I had tried him once or
twice, and found him abundantly intelligent. He had some smattering of
an education, like all Scottish peasants, and, as I have said, he was
deeply religious. I set him down as a fine type of his class, sober,
serious, keenly critical, free from the bondage of superstition. But I
rarely saw him, and our talk was chiefly in monosyllables--short
interjected accounts of the number of lambs dead or alive on the hill.
Then he would produce a pencil and note-book, and be immersed in some
calculation; and finally he would be revealed sleeping heavily in his
chair, till his sister wakened him, and he stumbled off to bed.

So much for the ordinary course of life; but one day--the second I think
of the bad weather--the extraordinary happened. The storm had passed in
the afternoon into a resolute and blinding snow, and the shepherd,
finding it hopeless on the hill, came home about three o'clock. I could
make out from his way of entering that he was in a great temper. He
kicked his feet savagely against the door-post. Then he swore at his
dogs, a thing I had never heard him do before. "Hell!" he cried, "can ye
no keep out o' my road, ye britts?" Then he came sullenly into the
kitchen, thawed his numbed hands at the fire, and sat down to his meal.

I made some aimless remark about the weather.

"Death to man and beast," he grunted. "I hae got the sheep doun frae the
hill, but the lambs will never thole this. We maun pray that it will no
last."

His sister came in with some dish. "Margit," he cried, "three lambs
away this morning, and three deid wi' the hole in the throat."

The woman's face visibly paled. "Guid help us, Adam; that hasna happened
this three year."

"It has happened noo," he said, surlily. "But, by God! if it happens
again I'll gang mysel' to the Scarts o' the Muneraw."

"O Adam!" the woman cried shrilly, "haud your tongue. Ye kenna wha hears
ye." And with a frightened glance at me she left the room.

I asked no questions, but waited till the shepherd's anger should cool.
But the cloud did not pass so lightly. When he had finished his dinner
he pulled his chair to the fire and sat staring moodily. He made some
sort of apology to me for his conduct. "I'm sore troubled, sir; but I'm
vexed ye should see me like this. Maybe things will be better the morn."
And then, lighting his short black pipe, he resigned himself to his
meditations.

But he could not keep quiet. Some nervous unrest seemed to have
possessed the man. He got up with a start and went to the window, where
the snow was drifting unsteadily past. As he stared out into the storm I
heard him mutter to himself, "Three away, God help me, and three wi'
the hole in the throat."

Then he turned round to me abruptly. I was jotting down notes for an
article I contemplated in the 'Revue Celtique,' so my thoughts were far
away from the present. The man recalled me by demanding fiercely, "Do ye
believe in God?"

I gave him some sort of answer in the affirmative.

"Then do ye believe in the Devil?" he asked.

The reply must have been less satisfactory, for he came forward and
flung himself violently into the chair before me.

"What do ye ken about it?" he cried. "You that bides in a southern toun,
what can ye ken o' the God that works in thae hills and the Devil--ay,
the manifold devils--that He suffers to bide here? I tell ye, man, that
if ye had seen what I have seen ye wad be on your knees at this moment
praying to God to pardon your unbelief. There are devils at the back o'
every stane and hidin' in every cleuch, and it's by the grace o' God
alone that a man is alive upon the earth." His voice had risen high and
shrill, and then suddenly he cast a frightened glance towards the window
and was silent.

I began to think that the man's wits were unhinged, and the thought did
not give me satisfaction. I had no relish for the prospect of being left
alone in this moorland dwelling with the cheerful company of a maniac.
But his next movements reassured me. He was clearly only dead-tired, for
he fell sound asleep in his chair, and by the time his sister brought
tea and wakened him, he seemed to have got the better of his excitement.

When the window was shuttered and the lamp lit, I sat myself again to
the completion of my notes. The shepherd had got out his Bible, and was
solemnly reading with one great finger travelling down the lines. He was
smoking, and whenever some text came home to him with power he would
make pretence to underline it with the end of the stem. Soon I had
finished the work I desired, and, my mind being full of my pet hobby, I
fell into an inquisitive mood, and began to question the solemn man
opposite on the antiquities of the place.

He stared stupidly at me when I asked him concerning monuments or
ancient weapons.

"I kenna," said he. "There's a heap o' queer things in the hills."

"This place should be a centre for such relics. You know that the name
of the hill behind the house, as far as I can make it out, means the
'Place of the Little Men.' It is a good Gaelic word, though there is
some doubt about its exact interpretation. But clearly the Gaelic
peoples did not speak of themselves when they gave the name; they must
have referred to some older and stranger population."

The shepherd looked at me dully, as not understanding.

"It is partly this fact--besides the fishing, of course--which interests
me in this countryside," said I, gaily.

Again he cast the same queer frightened glance towards the window. "If
ye'll tak the advice of an aulder man," he said, slowly, "ye'll let well
alane and no meddle wi' uncanny things."

I laughed pleasantly, for at last I had found out my hard-headed host in
a piece of childishness. "Why, I thought that you of all men would be
free from superstition."

"What do ye call supersteetion?" he asked.

"A belief in old wives' tales," said I, "a trust in the crude
supernatural and the patently impossible."

He looked at me beneath his shaggy brows. "How do ye ken what is
impossible? Mind ye, sir, ye're no in the toun just now, but in the
thick of the wild hills."

"But, hang it all, man," I cried, "you don't mean to say that you
believe in that sort of thing? I am prepared for many things up here,
but not for the Brownie,--though, to be sure, if one could meet him in
the flesh, it would be rather pleasant than otherwise, for he was a
companionable sort of fellow."

"When a thing pits the fear o' death on a man he aye speaks well of it."

It was true--the Eumenides and the Good Folk over again; and I awoke
with interest to the fact that the conversation was getting into strange
channels.

The shepherd moved uneasily in his chair. "I am a man that fears God,
and has nae time for daft stories; but I havena traivelled the hills for
twenty years wi' my een shut. If I say that I could tell ye stories o'
faces seen in the mist, and queer things that have knocked against me in
the snaw, wad ye believe me? I wager ye wadna. Ye wad say I had been
drunk, and yet I am a God-fearing temperate man."

He rose and went to a cupboard, unlocked it, and brought out something
in his hand, which he held out to me. I took it with some curiosity,
and found that it was a flint arrow-head.

Clearly a flint arrow-head, and yet like none that I had ever seen in
any collection. For one thing it was larger, and the barb less clumsily
thick. More, the chipping was new, or comparatively so; this thing had
not stood the wear of fifteen hundred years among the stones of the
hillside. Now there are, I regret to say, institutions which manufacture
primitive relics; but it is not hard for a practised eye to see the
difference. The chipping has either a regularity and a balance which is
unknown in the real thing, or the rudeness has been overdone, and the
result is an implement incapable of harming a mortal creature. But this
was the real thing if it ever existed; and yet--I was prepared to swear
on my reputation that it was not half a century old.

"Where did you get this?" I asked with some nervousness.

"I hae a story about that," said the shepherd. "Outside the door there
ye can see a muckle flat stane aside the buchts. One simmer nicht I was
sitting there smoking till the dark, and I wager there was naething on
the stane then. But that same nicht I awoke wi' a queer thocht, as if
there were folk moving around the hoose--folk that didna mak' muckle
noise. I mind o' lookin' out o' the windy, and I could hae sworn I saw
something black movin' amang the heather and intil the buchts. Now I had
maybe threescore o' lambs there that nicht, for I had to tak' them many
miles off in the early morning. Weel, when I gets up about four o'clock
and gangs out, as I am passing the muckle stane I finds this bit errow.
'That's come here in the nicht,' says I, and I wunnered a wee and put it
in my pouch. But when I came to my faulds what did I see? Five o' my
best hoggs were away, and three mair were lying deid wi' a hole in their
throat."

"Who in the world----?" I began.

"Dinna ask," said he. "If I aince sterted to speir about thae maitters,
I wadna keep my reason."

"Then that was what happened on the hill this morning?"

"Even sae, and it has happened mair than aince sin' that time. It's the
most uncanny slaughter, for sheep-stealing I can understand, but no this
pricking o' the puir beasts' wizands. I kenna how they dae't either, for
it's no wi' a knife or any common tool."

"Have you never tried to follow the thieves?"

"Have I no?" he asked, grimly. "If it had been common sheep-stealers I
wad hae had them by the heels, though I had followed them a hundred
miles. But this is no common. I've tracked them, and it's ill they are
to track; but I never got beyond ae place, and that was the Scarts o'
the Muneraw that ye've heard me speak o'."

"But who in Heaven's name are the people? Tinklers or poachers or what?"

"Ay," said he, drily. "Even so. Tinklers and poachers whae wark wi'
stane errows and kill sheep by a hole in their throat. Lord, I kenna
what they are, unless the Muckle Deil himsel'."

The conversation had passed beyond my comprehension. In this prosaic
hard-headed man I had come on the dead-rock of superstition and blind
fear.

"That is only the story of the Brownie over again, and he is an exploded
myth," I said, laughing.

"Are ye the man that exploded it?" said the shepherd, rudely. "I trow
no, neither you nor ony ither. My bonny man, if ye lived a twal-month in
thae hills, ye wad sing safter about exploded myths, as ye call them."

"I tell you what I would do," said I. "If I lost sheep as you lose
them, I would go up the Scarts of the Muneraw and never rest till I had
settled the question once and for all." I spoke hotly, for I was vexed
by the man's childish fear.

"I daresay ye wad," he said, slowly. "But then I am no you, and maybe I
ken mair o' what is in the Scarts o' the Muneraw. Maybe I ken that
whilk, if ye kenned it, wad send ye back to the South Country wi' your
hert in your mouth. But, as I say, I am no sae brave as you, for I saw
something in the first year o' my herding here which put the terror o'
God on me, and makes me a fearfu' man to this day. Ye ken the story o'
the gudeman o' Carrickfey?"

I nodded.

"Weel, I was the man that fand him. I had seen the deid afore and I've
seen them since. But never have I seen aucht like the look in that man's
een. What he saw at his death I may see the morn, so I walk before the
Lord in fear."

Then he rose and stretched himself. "It's bedding-time, for I maun be up
at three," and with a short good night he left the room.


III: THE SCARTS OF THE MUNERAW

The next morning was fine, for the snow had been intermittent, and had
soon melted except in the high corries. True, it was deceptive weather,
for the wind had gone to the rainy south-west, and the masses of cloud
on that horizon boded ill for the afternoon. But some days' inaction had
made me keen for a chance of sport, so I rose with the shepherd and set
out for the day.

He asked me where I proposed to begin.

I told him the tarn called the Loch o' the Threshes, which lies over the
back of the Muneraw on another watershed. It is on the ground of the
Rhynns Forest, and I had fished it of old from the Forest House. I knew
the merits of the trout, and I knew its virtues in a south-west wind, so
I had resolved to go thus far afield.

The shepherd heard the name in silence. "Your best road will be ower
that rig, and syne on to the water o' Caulds. Keep abune the moss till
ye come to the place they ca' the Nick o' the Threshes. That will take
ye to the very loch-side, but it's a lang road and a sair."

The morning was breaking over the bleak hills. Little clouds drifted
athwart the corries, and wisps of haze fluttered from the peaks. A great
rosy flush lay over one side of the glen, which caught the edge of the
sluggish bog-pools and turned them to fire. Never before had I seen the
mountain-land so clear, for far back into the east and west I saw
mountain-tops set as close as flowers in a border, black crags seamed
with silver lines which I knew for mighty waterfalls, and below at my
feet the lower slopes fresh with the dewy green of spring. A name stuck
in my memory from the last night's talk.

"Where are the Scarts of the Muneraw?" I asked.

The shepherd pointed to the great hill which bears the name, and which
lies, a huge mass, above the watershed.

"D'ye see yon corrie at the east that runs straucht up the side? It
looks a bit scart, but it's sae deep that it's aye derk at the bottom
o't. Weel, at the tap o' the rig it meets anither corrie that runs doun
the ither side, and that one they ca' the Scarts. There is a sort o'
burn in it that flows intil the Dule and sae intil the Aller, and,
indeed, if ye were gaun there it wad be from Aller Glen that your best
road wad lie. But it's an ill bit, and ye'll be sair guidit if ye
try't."

There he left me and went across the glen, while I struck upwards over
the ridge. At the top I halted and looked down on the wide glen of the
Caulds, which there is little better than a bog, but lower down grows
into a green pastoral valley. The great Muneraw still dominated the
landscape, and the black scaur on its side seemed blacker than before.
The place fascinated me, for in that fresh morning air the shepherd's
fears seemed monstrous. "Some day," said I to myself, "I will go and
explore the whole of that mighty hill." Then I descended and struggled
over the moss, found the Nick, and in two hours' time was on the loch's
edge.

I have little in the way of good to report of the fishing. For perhaps
one hour the trout took well; after that they sulked steadily for the
day. The promise, too, of fine weather had been deceptive. By midday the
rain was falling in that soft soaking fashion which gives no hope of
clearing. The mist was down to the edge of the water, and I cast my
flies into a blind sea of white. It was hopeless work, and yet from a
sort of ill-temper I stuck to it long after my better judgment had
warned me of its folly. At last, about three in the afternoon, I struck
my camp, and prepared myself for a long and toilsome retreat.

And long and toilsome it was beyond anything I had ever encountered. Had
I had a vestige of sense I would have followed the burn from the loch
down to the Forest House. The place was shut up, but the keeper would
gladly have given me shelter for the night. But foolish pride was too
strong in me. I had found my road in mist before, and could do it again.

Before I got to the top of the hill I had repented my decision; when I
got there I repented it more. For below me was a dizzy chaos of grey;
there was no landmark visible; and before me I knew was the bog through
which the Caulds Water twined. I had crossed it with some trouble in the
morning, but then I had light to pick my steps. Now I could only stumble
on, and in five minutes I might be in a bog-hole, and in five more in a
better world.

But there was no help to be got from hesitation, so with a rueful
courage I set off. The place was if possible worse than I had feared.
Wading up to the knees with nothing before you but a blank wall of mist
and the cheerful consciousness that your next step may be your
last--such was my state for one weary mile. The stream itself was high,
and rose to my armpits, and once and again I only saved myself by a
violent leap backwards from a pitiless green slough. But at last it was
past, and I was once more on the solid ground of the hillside.

Now, in the thick weather I had crossed the glen much lower down than in
the morning, and the result was that the hill on which I stood was one
of the giants which, with the Muneraw for centre, guard the watershed.
Had I taken the proper way, the Nick o' the Threshes would have led me
to the Caulds, and then once over the bog a little ridge was all that
stood between me and the glen of Farawa. But instead I had come a wild
cross-country road, and was now, though I did not know it, nearly as far
from my destination as at the start.

Well for me that I did not know, for I was wet and dispirited, and had I
not fancied myself all but home, I should scarcely have had the energy
to make this last ascent. But soon I found it was not the little ridge I
had expected. I looked at my watch and saw that it was five o'clock.
When, after the weariest climb, I lay on a piece of level ground which
seemed the top, I was not surprised to find that it was now seven. The
darkening must be at hand, and sure enough the mist seemed to be
deepening into a greyish black. I began to grow desperate. Here was I on
the summit of some infernal mountain, without any certainty where my
road lay. I was lost with a vengeance, and at the thought I began to be
acutely afraid.

I took what seemed to me the way I had come, and began to descend
steeply. Then something made me halt, and the next instant I was lying
on my face trying painfully to retrace my steps. For I had found myself
slipping, and before I could stop, my feet were dangling over a
precipice with Heaven alone knows how many yards of sheer mist between
me and the bottom. Then I tried keeping the ridge, and took that to the
right, which I thought would bring me nearer home. It was no good trying
to think out a direction, for in the fog my brain was running round, and
I seemed to stand on a pin-point of space where the laws of the compass
had ceased to hold.

It was the roughest sort of walking, now stepping warily over acres of
loose stones, now crawling down the face of some battered rock, and now
wading in the long dripping heather. The soft rain had begun to fall
again, which completed my discomfort. I was now seriously tired, and,
like all men who in their day have bent too much over books, I began to
feel it in my back. My spine ached, and my breath came in short broken
pants. It was a pitiable state of affairs for an honest man who had
never encountered much grave discomfort. To ease myself I was compelled
to leave my basket behind me, trusting to return and find it, if I
should ever reach safety and discover on what pathless hill I had been
strayed. My rod I used as a staff, but it was of little use, for my
fingers were getting too numb to hold it.

Suddenly from the blankness I heard a sound as of human speech. At first
I thought it mere craziness--the cry of a weasel or a hill-bird
distorted by my ears. But again it came, thick and faint, as through
acres of mist, and yet clearly the sound of "articulate-speaking men."
In a moment I lost my despair and cried out in answer. This was some
forwandered traveller like myself, and between us we could surely find
some road to safety. So I yelled back at the pitch of my voice and
waited intently.

But the sound ceased, and there was utter silence again. Still I waited,
and then from some place much nearer came the same soft mumbling speech.
I could make nothing of it. Heard in that drear place it made the nerves
tense and the heart timorous. It was the strangest jumble of vowels and
consonants I had ever met.

A dozen solutions flashed through my brain. It was some maniac talking
Jabberwock to himself. It was some belated traveller whose wits had
given out in fear. Perhaps it was only some shepherd who was amusing
himself thus, and whiling the way with nonsense. Once again I cried out
and waited.

Then suddenly in the hollow trough of mist before me, where things could
still be half discerned, there appeared a figure. It was little and
squat and dark; naked, apparently, but so rough with hair that it wore
the appearance of a skin-covered being. It crossed my line of vision,
not staying for a moment, but in its face and eyes there seemed to lurk
an elder world of mystery and barbarism, a troll-like life which was too
horrible for words.

The shepherd's fear came back on me like a thunderclap. For one awful
instant my legs failed me, and I had almost fallen. The next I had
turned and ran shrieking up the hill.

If he who may read this narrative has never felt the force of an
overmastering terror, then let him thank his Maker and pray that he
never may. I am no weak child, but a strong grown man, accredited in
general with sound sense and little suspected of hysterics. And yet I
went up that brae-face with my heart fluttering like a bird and my
throat aching with fear. I screamed in short dry gasps; involuntarily,
for my mind was beyond any purpose. I felt that beast-like clutch at my
throat; those red eyes seemed to be staring at me from the mist; I heard
ever behind and before and on all sides the patter of those inhuman
feet.

Before I knew I was down, slipping over a rock and falling some dozen
feet into a soft marshy hollow. I was conscious of lying still for a
second and whimpering like a child. But as I lay there I awoke to the
silence of the place. There was no sound of pursuit; perhaps they had
lost my track and given up. My courage began to return, and from this it
was an easy step to hope. Perhaps after all it had been merely an
illusion, for folk do not see clearly in the mist, and I was already
done with weariness.

But even as I lay in the green moss and began to hope, the faces of my
pursuers grew up through the mist. I stumbled madly to my feet; but I
was hemmed in, the rock behind and my enemies before. With a cry I
rushed forward, and struck wildly with my rod at the first dark body.
It was as if I had struck an animal, and the next second the thing was
wrenched from my grasp. But still they came no nearer. I stood trembling
there in the centre of those malignant devils, my brain a mere
weathercock and my heart crushed shapeless with horror. At last the end
came, for with the vigour of madness I flung myself on the nearest, and
we rolled on the ground. Then the monstrous things seemed to close over
me, and with a choking cry I passed into unconsciousness.


IV. THE DARKNESS THAT IS UNDER THE EARTH

There is an unconsciousness that is not wholly dead, where a man feels
numbly and the body lives without the brain. I was beyond speech or
thought, and yet I felt the upward or downward motion as the way lay in
hill or glen, and I most assuredly knew when the open air was changed
for the close underground. I could feel dimly that lights were flared in
my face, and that I was laid in some bed on the earth. Then with the
stopping of movement the real sleep of weakness seized me, and for long
I knew nothing of this mad world.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

Morning came over the moors with birdsong and the glory of fine
weather. The streams were still rolling in spate, but the hill-pastures
were alight with dawn, and the little seams of snow were glistening like
white fire. A ray from the sunrise cleft its path somehow into the
abyss, and danced on the wall above my couch. It caught my eye as I
wakened, and for long I lay crazily wondering what it meant. My head was
splitting with pain, and in my heart was the same fluttering nameless
fear. I did not wake to full consciousness; not till the twinkle of sun
from the clean bright out-of-doors caught my senses did I realise that I
lay in a great dark place with a glow of dull firelight in the middle.

In time things rose and moved around me, a few ragged shapes of men,
without clothing, shambling with their huge feet and looking towards me
with curved beast-like glances. I tried to marshal my thoughts, and
slowly, bit by bit, I built up the present. There was no question to my
mind of dreaming; the past hours had scored reality upon my brain. Yet I
cannot say that fear was my chief feeling. The first crazy terror had
subsided, and now I felt mainly a sickened disgust with just a tinge of
curiosity. I found that my knife, watch, flask, and money had gone, but
they had left me a map of the countryside. It seemed strange to look at
the calico, with the name of a London printer stamped on the back, and
lines of railway and highroad running through every shire. Decent and
comfortable civilisation! And here was I a prisoner in this den of
nameless folk, and in the midst of a life which history knew not.

Courage is a virtue which grows with reflection and the absence of the
immediate peril. I thought myself into some sort of resolution, and lo!
when the Folk approached me and bound my feet I was back at once in the
most miserable terror. They tied me, all but my hands, with some strong
cord, and carried me to the centre, where the fire was glowing. Their
soft touch was the acutest torture to my nerves, but I stifled my cries
lest some one should lay his hand on my mouth. Had that happened, I am
convinced my reason would have failed me.

So there I lay in the shine of the fire, with the circle of unknown
things around me. There seemed but three or four, but I took no note of
number. They talked huskily among themselves in a tongue which sounded
all gutturals. Slowly my fear became less an emotion than a habit, and I
had room for the smallest shade of curiosity. I strained my ear to catch
a word, but it was a mere chaos of sound. The thing ran and thundered
in my brain as I stared dumbly into the vacant air. Then I thought that
unless I spoke I should certainly go crazy, for my head was beginning to
swim at the strange cooing noise.

I spoke a word or two in my best Gaelic, and they closed round me
inquiringly. Then I was sorry I had spoken, for my words had brought
them nearer, and I shrank at the thought. But as the faint echoes of my
speech hummed in the rock-chamber, I was struck by a curious kinship of
sound. Mine was sharper, more distinct, and staccato; theirs was
blurred, formless, but still with a certain root-resemblance.

Then from the back there came an older being, who seemed to have heard
my words. He was like some foul grey badger, his red eyes sightless, and
his hands trembling on a stump of bog-oak. The others made way for him
with such deference as they were capable of, and the thing squatted down
by me and spoke.

To my amazement his words were familiar. It was some manner of speech
akin to the Gaelic, but broadened, lengthened, coarsened. I remembered
an old book-tongue, commonly supposed posed to be an impure dialect once
used in Brittany, which I had met in the course of my researches. The
words recalled it, and as far as I could remember the thing, I asked him
who he was and where the place might be.

He answered me in the same speech--still more broadened, lengthened,
coarsened. I lay back with sheer amazement. I had found the key to this
unearthly life.

For a little an insatiable curiosity, the ardour of the scholar,
prevailed. I forgot the horror of the place, and thought only of the
fact that here before me was the greatest find that scholarship had ever
made. I was precipitated into the heart of the past. Here must be the
fountainhead of all legends, the chrysalis of all beliefs. I actually
grew lighthearted. This strange folk around me were now no more
shapeless things of terror, but objects of research and experiment. I
almost came to think them not unfriendly.

For an hour I enjoyed the highest of earthly pleasures. In that strange
conversation I heard--in fragments and suggestions--the history of the
craziest survival the world has ever seen. I heard of the struggles with
invaders, preserved as it were in a sort of shapeless poetry. There were
bitter words against the Gaelic oppressor, bitterer words against the
Saxon stranger, and for a moment ancient hatreds flared into life. Then
there came the tale of the hill-refuge, the morbid hideous existence
preserved for centuries amid a changing world. I heard fragments of old
religions, primeval names of god and goddess, half-understood by the
Folk, but to me the key to a hundred puzzles. Tales which survive to us
in broken disjointed riddles were intact here in living form. I lay on
my elbow and questioned feverishly. At any moment they might become
morose and refuse to speak. Clearly it was my duty to make the most of a
brief good fortune.

And then the tale they told me grew more hideous. I heard of the
circumstances of the life itself and their daily shifts for existence.
It was a murderous chronicle--a history of lust and rapine and
unmentionable deeds in the darkness. One thing they had early
recognised--that the race could not be maintained within itself; so that
ghoulish carrying away of little girls from the lowlands began, which I
had heard of but never credited. Shut up in those dismal holes, the
girls soon died, and when the new race had grown up the plunder had been
repeated. Then there were bestial murders in lonely cottages, done for
God knows what purpose. Sometimes the occupant had seen more than was
safe, sometimes the deed was the mere exuberance of a lust of slaying.
As they gabbled their tales my heart's blood froze, and I lay back in
the agonies of fear. If they had used the others thus, what way of
escape was open for myself? I had been brought to this place, and not
murdered on the spot. Clearly there was torture before death in store
for me, and I confess I quailed at the thought.

But none molested me. The elders continued to jabber out their stories,
while I lay tense and deaf. Then to my amazement food was brought and
placed beside me--almost with respect. Clearly my murder was not a thing
of the immediate future. The meal was some form of mutton--perhaps the
shepherd's lost ewes--and a little smoking was all the cooking it had
got. I strove to eat, but the tasteless morsels choked me. Then they set
drink before me in a curious cup, which I seized on eagerly, for my
mouth was dry with thirst. The vessel was of gold, rudely formed, but of
the pure metal, and a coarse design in circles ran round the middle.
This surprised me enough, but a greater wonder awaited me. The liquor
was not water, as I had guessed, but a sort of sweet ale, a miracle of
flavour. The taste was curious, but somehow familiar; it was like no
wine I had ever drunk, and yet I had known that flavour all my life. I
sniffed at the brim, and there rose a faint fragrance of thyme and
heather honey and the sweet things of the moorland. I almost dropped it
in my surprise; for here in this rude place I had stumbled upon that
lost delicacy of the North, the heather ale.

For a second I was entranced with my discovery, and then the wonder of
the cup claimed my attention. Was it a mere relic of pillage, or had
this folk some hidden mine of the precious metal? Gold had once been
common in these hills. There were the traces of mines on Cairnsmore:
shepherds had found it in the gravel of the Gled Water; and the name of
a house at the head of the Clachlands meant the "Home of Gold."

Once more I began my questions, and they answered them willingly. There
and then I heard that secret for which many had died in old time, the
secret of the heather ale. They told of the gold in the hills, of
corries where the sand gleamed and abysses where the rocks were veined.
All this they told me, freely, without a scruple. And then, like a
clap, came the awful thought that this, too, spelled death. These were
secrets which this race aforetime had guarded with their lives; they
told them generously to me because there was no fear of betrayal. I
should go no more out from this place.

The thought put me into a new sweat of terror--not at death, mind you,
but at the unknown horrors which might precede the final suffering. I
lay silent, and after binding my hands they began to leave me and go off
to other parts of the cave. I dozed in the horrible half-swoon of fear,
conscious only of my shaking limbs, and the great dull glow of the fire
in the centre. Then I became calmer. After all, they had treated me with
tolerable kindness: I had spoken their language, which few of their
victims could have done for many a century; it might be that I had found
favour in their eyes. For a little I comforted myself with this
delusion, till I caught sight of a wooden box in a corner. It was of
modern make, one such as grocers use to pack provisions in. It had some
address nailed on it, and an aimless curiosity compelled me to creep
thither and read it. A torn and weather-stained scrap of paper, with the
nails at the corner rusty with age; but something of the address might
still be made out. Amid the stains my feverish eyes read, "To Mr M----,
Carrickfey, by Allerfoot Station."

The ruined cottage in the hollow of the waste with the single gnarled
apple-tree was before me in a twinkling. I remembered the shepherd's
shrinking from the place and the name, and his wild eyes when he told me
of the thing that had happened there. I seemed to see the old man in his
moorland cottage, thinking no evil; the sudden entry of the nameless
things; and then the eyes glazed in unspeakable terror. I felt my lips
dry and burning. Above me was the vault of rock; in the distance I saw
the fire-glow and the shadows of shapes moving around it. My fright was
too great for inaction, so I crept from the couch, and silently,
stealthily, with tottering steps and bursting heart, I began to
reconnoitre.

But I was still bound, my arms tightly, my legs more loosely, but yet
firm enough to hinder flight. I could not get my hands at my leg-straps,
still less could I undo the manacles. I rolled on the floor, seeking
some sharp edge of rock, but all had been worn smooth by the use of
centuries. Then suddenly an idea came upon me like an inspiration. The
sounds from the fire seemed to have ceased, and I could hear them
repeated from another and more distant part of the cave. The Folk had
left their orgy round the blaze, and at the end of the long tunnel I saw
its glow fall unimpeded upon the floor. Once there, I might burn off my
fetters and be free to turn my thoughts to escape.

I crawled a little way with much labour. Then suddenly I came abreast an
opening in the wall, through which a path went. It was a long straight
rock-cutting, and at the end I saw a gleam of pale light. It must be the
open air; the way of escape was prepared for me; and with a prayer I
made what speed I could towards the fire.

I rolled on the verge, but the fuel was peat, and the warm ashes would
not burn the cords. In desperation I went farther, and my clothes began
to singe, while my face ached beyond endurance. But yet I got no nearer
my object. The strips of hide warped and cracked, but did not burn. Then
in a last effort I thrust my wrists bodily into the glow and held them
there. In an instant I drew them out with a groan of pain, scarred and
sore, but to my joy with the band snapped in one place. Weak as I was,
it was now easy to free myself, and then came the untying of my legs.
My hands trembled, my eyes were dazed with hurry, and I was longer over
the job than need have been. But at length I had loosed my cramped knees
and stood on my feet, a free man once more.

I kicked off my boots, and fled noiselessly down the passage to the
tunnel mouth. Apparently it was close on evening, for the white light
had faded to a pale yellow. But it was daylight, and that was all I
sought, and I ran for it as eagerly as ever runner ran to a goal. I came
out on a rock-shelf, beneath which a moraine of boulders fell away in a
chasm to a dark loch. It was all but night, but I could see the gnarled
and fortressed rocks rise in ramparts above, and below the unknown
screes and cliffs which make the side of the Muneraw a place only for
foxes and the fowls of the air.

The first taste of liberty is an intoxication, and assuredly I was mad
when I leaped down among the boulders. Happily at the top of the gully
the stones were large and stable, else the noise would certainly have
discovered me. Down I went, slipping, praying, my charred wrists aching,
and my stockinged feet wet with blood. Soon I was in the jaws of the
cleft, and a pale star rose before me. I have always been timid in the
face of great rocks, and now, had not an awful terror been dogging my
footsteps, no power on earth could have driven me to that descent. Soon
I left the boulders behind, and came to long spouts of little stones,
which moved with me till the hillside seemed sinking under my feet.
Sometimes I was face downwards, once and again I must have fallen for
yards. Had there been a cliff at the foot, I should have gone over it
without resistance; but by the providence of God the spout ended in a
long curve into the heather of the bog.

When I found my feet once more on soft boggy earth, my strength was
renewed within me. A great hope of escape sprang up in my heart. For a
second I looked back. There was a great line of shingle with the cliffs
beyond, and above all the unknown blackness of the cleft. There lay my
terror, and I set off running across the bog for dear life. My mind was
clear enough to know my road. If I held round the loch in front I should
come to a burn which fed the Farawa stream, on whose banks stood the
shepherd's cottage. The loch could not be far; once at the Farawa I
would have the light of the shieling clear before me.

Suddenly I heard behind me, as if coming from the hillside, the patter
of feet. It was the sound which white hares make in the wintertime on a
noiseless frosty day as they patter over the snow. I have heard the same
soft noise from a herd of deer when they changed their pastures. Strange
that so kindly a sound should put the very fear of death in my heart. I
ran madly, blindly, yet thinking shrewdly. The loch was before me.
Somewhere I had read or heard, I do not know where, that the brutish
aboriginal races of the North could not swim. I myself swam powerfully;
could I but cross the loch I should save two miles of a desperate
country.

There was no time to lose, for the patter was coming nearer, and I was
almost at the loch's edge. I tore off my coat and rushed in. The bottom
was mossy, and I had to struggle far before I found any depth. Something
plashed in the water before me, and then something else a little behind.
The thought that I was a mark for unknown missiles made me crazy with
fright, and I struck fiercely out for the other shore. A gleam of
moonlight was on the water at the burn's exit, and thither I guided
myself. I found the thing difficult enough in itself, for my hands
ached, and I was numb from my bonds. But my fancy raised a thousand
phantoms to vex me. Swimming in that black bog water, pursued by those
nameless things, I seemed to be in a world of horror far removed from
the kindly world of men. My strength seemed inexhaustible from my
terror. Monsters at the bottom of the water seemed to bite at my feet,
and the pain of my wrists made me believe that the loch was boiling hot,
and that I was in some hellish place of torment.

I came out on a spit of gravel above the burn mouth, and set off down
the ravine of the burn. It was a strait place, strewn with rocks; but
now and then the hill turf came in stretches, and eased my wounded feet.
Soon the fall became more abrupt, and I was slipping down a hillside,
with the water on my left making great cascades in the granite. And then
I was out in the wider vale where the Farawa water flowed among links of
moss.

Far in front, a speck in the blue darkness, shone the light of the
cottage. I panted forward, my breath coming in gasps and my back shot
with fiery pains. Happily the land was easier for the feet as long as I
kept on the skirts of the bog. My ears were sharp as a wild beast's with
fear, as I listened for the noise of pursuit. Nothing came but the
rustle of the gentlest hill-wind and the chatter of the falling streams.

Then suddenly the light began to waver and move athwart the window. I
knew what it meant. In a minute or two the household at the cottage
would retire to rest, and the lamp would be put out. True, I might find
the place in the dark, for there was a moon of sorts and the road was
not desperate. But somehow in that hour the lamplight gave a promise of
safety which I clung to despairingly.

And then the last straw was added to my misery. Behind me came the pad
of feet, the pat-patter, soft, eerie, incredibly swift. I choked with
fear, and flung myself forward in a last effort. I give my word it was
sheer mechanical shrinking that drove me on. God knows I would have lain
down to die in the heather, had the things behind me been a common
terror of life.

I ran as man never ran before, leaping hags, scrambling through green
well-heads, straining towards the fast-dying light. A quarter of a mile
and the patter sounded nearer. Soon I was not two hundred yards off, and
the noise seemed almost at my elbow. The light went out, and the black
mass of the cottage loomed in the dark.

Then, before I knew, I was at the door, battering it wearily and yelling
for help. I heard steps within and a hand on the bolt. Then something
shot past me with lightning force and buried itself in the wood. The
dreadful hands were almost at my throat, when the door was opened and I
stumbled in, hearing with a gulp of joy the key turn and the bar fall
behind me.


V: THE TROUBLES OF A CONSCIENCE

My body and senses slept, for I was utterly tired, but my brain all the
night was on fire with horrid fancies. Again I was in that accursed
cave; I was torturing my hands in the fire; I was slipping barefoot
among jagged boulders; and then with bursting heart I was toiling the
last mile with the cottage light--now grown to a great fire in the
heavens--blazing before me.

It was broad daylight when I awoke, and I thanked God for the
comfortable rays of the sun. I had been laid in a box-bed off the inner
room, and my first sight was the shepherd sitting with folded arms in a
chair regarding me solemnly. I rose and began to dress, feeling my legs
and arms still tremble with weariness. The shepherd's sister bound up my
scarred wrists and put an ointment on my burns; and, limping like an old
man, I went into the kitchen.

I could eat little breakfast, for my throat seemed dry and narrow; but
they gave me some brandy-and-milk, which put strength into my body. All
the time the brother and sister sat in silence, regarding me with covert
glances.

"Ye have been delivered from the jaws o' the Pit," said the man at
length. "See that," and he held out to me a thin shaft of flint. "I fand
that in the door this morning."

I took it, let it drop, and stared vacantly at the window. My nerves had
been too much tried to be roused by any new terror. Out of doors it was
fair weather, flying gleams of April sunlight and the soft colours of
spring. I felt dazed, isolated, cut off from my easy past and pleasing
future, a companion of horrors and the sport of nameless things. Then
suddenly my eye fell on my books heaped on a table, and the old distant
civilisation seemed for the moment inexpressibly dear.

"I must go--at once. And you must come too. You cannot stay here. I tell
you it is death. If you knew what I know you would be crying out with
fear. How far is it to Allermuir? Eight, fifteen miles; and then ten
down Glen Aller to Allerfoot, and then the railway. We must go together
while it is daylight, and perhaps we may be untouched. But quick, there
is not a moment to lose." And I was on my shaky feet, and bustling among
my possessions.

"I'll gang wi' ye to the station," said the shepherd, "for ye're clearly
no fit to look after yourself. My sister will bide and keep the house.
If naething has touched us this ten year, naething will touch us the
day."

"But you cannot stay. You are mad," I began; but he cut me short with
the words, "I trust in God."

"In any case let your sister come with us. I dare not think of a woman
alone in this place."

"I'll bide," said she. "I'm no feared as lang as I'm indoors and there's
steeks on the windies."

So I packed my few belongings as best I could, tumbled my books into a
haversack, and, gripping the shepherd's arm nervously, crossed the
threshold. The glen was full of sunlight. There lay the long shining
links of the Farawa burn, the rough hills tumbled beyond, and far over
all the scarred and distant forehead of the Muneraw. I had always
looked on moorland country as the freshest on earth--clean, wholesome,
and homely. But now the fresh uplands seemed like a horrible pit. When I
looked to the hills my breath choked in my throat, and the feel of soft
heather below my feet set my heart trembling.

It was a slow journey to the inn at Allermuir. For one thing, no power
on earth would draw me within sight of the shieling of Carrickfey, so we
had to cross a shoulder of hill and make our way down a difficult glen,
and then over a treacherous moss. The lochs were now gleaming like
fretted silver; but to me, in my dreadful knowledge, they seemed more
eerie than on that grey day when I came. At last my eyes were cheered by
the sight of a meadow and a fence; then we were on a little byroad; and
soon the fir-woods and corn-lands of Allercleuch were plain before us.

The shepherd came no farther, but with brief good-bye turned his solemn
face hillwards. I hired a trap and a man to drive, and down the ten
miles of Glen Aller I struggled to keep my thoughts from the past. I
thought of the kindly South Country, of Oxford, of anything comfortable
and civilised. My driver pointed out the objects of interest as in duty
bound, but his words fell on unheeding ears. At last he said something
which roused me indeed to interest--the interest of the man who hears
the word he fears most in the world. On the left side of the river there
suddenly sprang into view a long gloomy cleft in the hills, with a vista
of dark mountains behind, down which a stream of considerable size
poured its waters.

"That is the Water o' Dule," said the man in a reverent voice. "A graund
water to fish, but dangerous to life, for it's a' linns. Awa' at the
heid they say there's a terrible wild place called the Scarts o'
Muneraw,--that's a shouther o' the muckle hill itsel' that ye see,--but
I've never been there, and I never kent ony man that had either."

At the station, which is a mile from the village of Allerfoot, I found I
had some hours to wait on my train for the south. I dared not trust
myself for one moment alone, so I hung about the goods-shed, talked
vacantly to the porters, and when one went to the village for tea I
accompanied him, and to his wonder entertained him at the inn. When I
returned I found on the platform a stray bagman who was that evening
going to London. If there is one class of men in the world which I
heartily detest it is this; but such was my state that I hailed him as a
brother, and besought his company. I paid the difference for a
first-class fare, and had him in the carriage with me. He must have
thought me an amiable maniac, for I talked in fits and starts, and when
he fell asleep I would wake him up and beseech him to speak to me. At
wayside stations I would pull down the blinds in case of recognition,
for to my unquiet mind the world seemed full of spies sent by that
terrible Folk of the Hills. When the train crossed a stretch of moor I
would lie down on the seat in case of shafts fired from the heather. And
then at last with utter weariness I fell asleep, and woke screaming
about midnight to find myself well down in the cheerful English
midlands, and red blast-furnaces blinking by the railwayside.

In the morning I breakfasted in my rooms at St Chad's with a dawning
sense of safety. I was in a different and calmer world. The lawn-like
quadrangles, the great trees, the cawing of rooks, and the homely
twitter of sparrows--all seemed decent and settled and pleasing. Indoors
the oak-panelled walls, the shelves of books, the pictures, the faint
fragrance of tobacco, were very different from the gimcrack adornments
and the accursed smell of peat and heather in that deplorable cottage.
It was still vacation-time, so most of my friends were down; but I spent
the day hunting out the few cheerful pedants to whom term and vacation
were the same. It delighted me to hear again their precise talk, to hear
them make a boast of their work, and narrate the childish little
accidents of their life. I yearned for the childish once more; I craved
for women's drawing-rooms, and women's chatter, and everything which
makes life an elegant game. God knows I had had enough of the other
thing for a lifetime!

That night I shut myself in my rooms, barred my windows, drew my
curtains, and made a great destruction. All books or pictures which
recalled to me the moorlands were ruthlessly doomed. Novels, poems,
treatises I flung into an old box, for sale to the second-hand
bookseller. Some prints and water-colour sketches I tore to pieces with
my own hands. I ransacked my fishing-book, and condemned all tackle for
moorland waters to the flames. I wrote a letter to my solicitors,
bidding them go no further in the purchase of a place in Lorn I had long
been thinking of. Then, and not till then, did I feel the bondage of the
past a little loosed from my shoulders. I made myself a night-cap of
rum-punch instead of my usual whisky-toddy, that all associations with
that dismal land might be forgotten, and to complete the renunciation I
returned to cigars and flung my pipe into a drawer.

But when I woke in the morning I found that it is hard to get rid of
memories. My feet were still sore and wounded, and when I felt my arms
cramped and reflected on the causes, there was that black memory always
near to vex me.

In a little term began, and my duties--as deputy-professor of Northern
Antiquities--were once more clamorous. I can well believe that my
hearers found my lectures strange, for instead of dealing with my
favourite subjects and matters, which I might modestly say I had made my
own, I confined myself to recondite and distant themes, treating even
these cursorily and dully. For the truth is, my heart was no more in my
subject. I hated--or I thought that I hated--all things Northern with
the virulence of utter fear. My reading was confined to science of the
most recent kind, to abstruse philosophy, and to foreign classics.
Anything which savoured of romance or mystery was abhorrent; I pined
for sharp outlines and the tangibility of a high civilisation.

All the term I threw myself into the most frivolous life of the place.
My Harrow schooldays seemed to have come back to me. I had once been a
fair cricketer, so I played again for my college, and made decent
scores. I coached an indifferent crew on the river. I fell into the
slang of the place, which I had hitherto detested. My former friends
looked on me askance, as if some freakish changeling had possessed me.
Formerly I had been ready for pedantic discussion, I had been absorbed
in my work, men had spoken of me as a rising scholar. Now I fled the
very mention of things I had once delighted in. The Professor of
Northern Antiquities, a scholar of European reputation, meeting me once
in the Parks, embarked on an account of certain novel rings recently
found in Scotland, and to his horror found that, when he had got well
under weigh, I had slipped off unnoticed. I heard afterwards that the
good old man was found by a friend walking disconsolately with bowed
head in the middle of the High Street. Being rescued from among the
horses' feet, he could only murmur, "I am thinking of Graves, poor man!
And a year ago he was as sane as I am!"

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

But a man may not long deceive himself. I kept up the illusion valiantly
for the term; but I felt instinctively that the fresh schoolboy life,
which seemed to me the extreme opposite to the ghoulish North, and as
such the most desirable of things, was eternally cut off from me. No
cunning affectation could ever dispel my real nature or efface the
memory of a week. I realised miserably that sooner or latter I must
fight it out with my conscience. I began to call myself a coward. The
chief thoughts of my mind began to centre themselves more and more round
that unknown life waiting to be explored among the wilds.

One day I met a friend--an official in the British Museum--who was full
of some new theory about primitive habitations. To me it seemed
inconceivably absurd; but he was strong in his confidence, and without
flaw in his evidence. The man irritated me, and I burned to prove him
wrong, but I could think of no argument which was final against his.
Then it flashed upon me that my own experience held the disproof; and
without more words I left him, hot, angry with myself, and tantalised
by the unattainable.

I might relate my _bona-fide_ experience, but would men believe me? I
must bring proofs, I must complete my researches, so as to make them
incapable of disbelief. And there in those deserts was waiting the key.
There lay the greatest discovery of the century--nay, of the millennium.
There, too, lay the road to wealth such as I had never dreamed of. Could
I succeed, I should be famous for ever. I would revolutionise history
and anthropology; I would systematise folk-lore; I would show the world
of men the pit whence they were digged and the rock whence they were
hewn.

And then began a game of battledore between myself and my conscience.

"You are a coward," said my conscience.

"I am sufficiently brave," I would answer. "I have seen things and yet
lived. The terror is more than mortal, and I cannot face it."

"You are a coward," said my conscience.

"I am not bound to go there again. It would be purely for my own
aggrandisement if I went, and not for any matter of duty."

"Nevertheless you are a coward," said my conscience.

"In any case the matter can wait."

"You are a coward."

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

Then came one awful midsummer night, when I lay sleepless and fought the
thing out with myself. I knew that the strife was hopeless, that I
should have no peace in this world again unless I made the attempt. The
dawn was breaking when I came to the final resolution; and when I rose
and looked at my face in a mirror, lo! it was white and lined and drawn
like a man of sixty.


VI: SUMMER ON THE MOORS

The next morning I packed a bag with some changes of clothing and a
collection of notebooks, and went up to town. The first thing I did was
to pay a visit to my solicitors. "I am about to travel," said I, "and I
wish to have all things settled in case any accident should happen to
me." So I arranged for the disposal of my property in case of death, and
added a codicil which puzzled the lawyers. If I did not return within
six months, communications were to be entered into with the shepherd at
the shieling of Farawa--post-town Allerfoot. If he could produce any
papers, they were to be put into the hands of certain friends,
published, and the cost charged to my estate. From my solicitors I went
to a gunmaker's in Regent Street and bought an ordinary six-chambered
revolver, feeling much as a man must feel who proposed to cross the
Atlantic in a skiff and purchased a small life-belt as a precaution.

I took the night express to the North, and, for a marvel, I slept. When
I awoke about four we were on the verge of Westmoreland, and stony hills
blocked the horizon. At first I hailed the mountain-land gladly; sleep
for the moment had caused forgetfulness of my terrors. But soon a turn
of the line brought me in full view of a heathery moor, running far to a
confusion of distant peaks. I remembered my mission and my fate, and if
ever condemned criminal felt a more bitter regret I pity his case. Why
should I alone among the millions of this happy isle be singled out as
the repository of a ghastly secret, and be cursed by a conscience which
would not let it rest?

I came to Allerfoot early in the forenoon, and got a trap to drive me up
the valley. It was a lowering grey day, hot and yet sunless. A sort of
heat-haze cloaked the hills, and every now and then a smurr of rain
would meet us on the road, and in a minute be over. I felt wretchedly
dispirited; and when at last the white-washed kirk of Allermuir came
into sight and the broken-backed bridge of Aller, man's eyes seemed to
have looked on no drearier scene since time began.

I ate what meal I could get, for, fears or no, I was voraciously hungry.
Then I asked the landlord to find me some man who would show me the road
to Farawa. I demanded company, not for protection--for what could two
men do against such brutish strength?--but to keep my mind from its own
thoughts.

The man looked at me anxiously.

"Are ye acquaint wi' the folks, then?" he asked.

I said I was, that I had often stayed in the cottage.

"Ye ken that they've a name for being queer. The man never comes here
forbye once or twice a-year, and he has few dealings wi' other herds.
He's got an ill name, too, for losing sheep. I dinna like the country
ava. Up by yon Muneraw--no that I've ever been there, but I've seen it
afar off--is enough to put a man daft for the rest o' his days. What's
taking ye thereaways? It's no the time for the fishing?"

I told him that I was a botanist going to explore certain hill-crevices
for rare ferns. He shook his head, and then after some delay found me an
ostler who would accompany me to the cottage.

The man was a shock-headed, long-limbed fellow, with fierce red hair and
a humorous eye. He talked sociably about his life, answered my hasty
questions with deftness, and beguiled me for the moment out of myself. I
passed the melancholy lochs, and came in sight of the great stony hills
without the trepidation I had expected. Here at my side was one who
found some humour even in those uplands. But one thing I noted which
brought back the old uneasiness. He took the road which led us farthest
from Carrickfey, and when to try him I proposed the other, he vetoed it
with emphasis.

After this his good spirit departed, and he grew distrustful.

"What mak's ye a freend o' the herd at Farawa?" he demanded a dozen
times.

Finally, I asked him if he knew the man, and had seen him lately.

"I dinna ken him, and I hadna seen him for years till a fortnicht syne,
when a' Allermuir saw him. He cam doun one afternoon to the
public-hoose, and begood to drink. He had aye been kenned for a
terrible godly kind o' a man, so ye may believe folk wondered at this.
But when he had stuck to the drink for twae days, and filled himsel'
blind-fou half-a-dozen o' times, he took a fit o' repentance, and raved
and blethered about siccan a life as he led in the muirs. There was some
said he was speakin' serious, but maist thocht it was juist daftness."

"And what did he speak about?" I asked sharply.

"I canna verra weel tell ye. It was about some kind o' bogle that lived
in the Muneraw--that's the shouthers o't ye see yonder--and it seems
that the bogle killed his sheep and frichted himsel'. He was aye
bletherin', too, about something or somebody ca'd Grave; but oh! the man
wasna wise." And my companion shook a contemptuous head.

And then below us in the valley we saw the shieling, with a thin shaft
of smoke rising into the rainy grey weather. The man left me, sturdily
refusing any fee. "I wantit my legs stretched as weel as you. A walk in
the hills is neither here nor there to a stoot man. When will ye be
back, sir?"

The question was well-timed. "To-morrow fortnight," I said, "and I want
somebody from Allermuir to come out here in the morning and carry some
baggage. Will you see to that?"

He said "Ay," and went off, while I scrambled down the hill to the
cottage. Nervousness possessed me, and though it was broad daylight and
the whole place lay plain before me, I ran pell-mell, and did not stop
till I reached the door.

The place was utterly empty. Unmade beds, unwashed dishes, a hearth
strewn with the ashes of peat, and dust thick on everything, proclaimed
the absence of inmates. I began to be horribly frightened. Had the
shepherd and his sister, also, disappeared? Was I left alone in this
bleak place, with a dozen lonely miles between me and human dwellings? I
could not return alone; better this horrible place than the unknown
perils of the out-of-doors. Hastily I barricaded the door, and to the
best of my power shuttered the windows; and then with dreary forebodings
I sat down to wait on fortune.

In a little I heard a long swinging step outside and the sound of dogs.
Joyfully I opened the latch, and there was the shepherd's grim face
waiting stolidly on what might appear.

At the sight of me he stepped back. "What in the Lord's name are ye
daein' here?" he asked. "Didna ye get enough afor?"

"Come in," I said, sharply. "I want to talk."

In he came with those blessed dogs,--what a comfort it was to look on
their great honest faces! He sat down on the untidy bed and waited.

"I came because I could not stay away. I saw too much to give me any
peace elsewhere. I must go back, even though I risk my life for it. The
cause of scholarship demands it as well as the cause of humanity."

"Is that a' the news ye hae?" he said. "Weel, I've mair to tell ye.
Three weeks syne my sister Margit was lost, and I've never seen her
mair."

My jaw fell, and I could only stare at him.

"I cam hame from the hill at nightfa' and she was gone. I lookit for her
up hill and doun, but I couldna find her. Syne I think I went daft. I
went to the Scarts and huntit them up and doun, but no sign could I see.
The Folk can bide quiet enough when they want. Syne I went to Allermuir
and drank mysel' blind,--me, that's a God-fearing man and a saved soul;
but the Lord help me, I didna ken what I was at. That's my news, and day
and night I wander thae hills, seekin' for what I canna find."

"But, man, are you mad?" I cried. "Surely there are neighbours to help
you. There is a law in the land, and you had only to find the nearest
police-office and compel them to assist you."

"What guid can man dae?" he asked. "An army o' sodgers couldna find that
hidy-hole. Forby, when I went into Allermuir wi' my story the folk
thocht me daft. It was that set me drinking, for--the Lord forgive
me!--I wasna my ain maister. I threepit till I was hairse, but the
bodies just lauch'd." And he lay back on the bed like a man mortally
tired.

Grim though the tidings were, I can only say that my chief feeling was
of comfort. Pity for the new tragedy had swallowed up my fear. I had now
a purpose, and a purpose, too, not of curiosity but of mercy.

"I go to-morrow morning to the Muneraw. But first I want to give you
something to do." And I drew roughly a chart of the place on the back of
a letter. "Go into Allermuir to-morrow, and give this paper to the
landlord at the inn. The letter will tell him what to do. He is to raise
at once all the men he can get, and come to the place on the chart
marked with a cross. Tell him life depends on his hurry."

The shepherd nodded. "D'ye ken the Folk are watching for you? They let
me pass without trouble, for they've nae use for me, but I see fine
they're seeking you. Ye'll no gang half a mile the morn afore they grip
ye."

"So much the better," I said. "That will take me quicker to the place I
want to be at."

"And I'm to gang to Allermuir the morn," he repeated, with the air of a
child conning a lesson. "But what if they'll no believe me?"

"They'll believe the letter."

"Maybe," he said, and relapsed into a doze.

I set myself to put that house in order, to rouse the fire, and prepare
some food. It was dismal work; and meantime outside the night darkened,
and a great wind rose, which howled round the walls and lashed the rain
on the windows.


VII: IN TUAS MANUS, DOMINE!

I had not gone twenty yards from the cottage door ere I knew I was
watched. I had left the shepherd still dozing, in the half-conscious
state of a dazed and broken man. All night the wind had wakened me at
intervals, and now in the half-light of morn the weather seemed more
vicious than ever. The wind cut my ears, the whole firmament was full of
the rendings and thunders of the storm. Rain fell in blinding sheets,
the heath was a marsh, and it was the most I could do to struggle
against the hurricane which stopped my breath. And all the while I knew
I was not alone in the desert.

All men know--in imagination or in experience--the sensation of being
spied on. The nerves tingle, the skin grows hot and prickly, and there
is a queer sinking of the heart. Intensify this common feeling a
hundredfold, and you get a tenth part of what I suffered. I am telling a
plain tale, and record bare physical facts. My lips stood out from my
teeth as I heard, or felt, a rustle in the heather, a scraping among
stones. Some subtle magnetic link seemed established between my body and
the mysterious world around. I became sick--acutely sick--with the
ceaseless apprehension.

My fright became so complete that when I turned a corner of rock, or
stepped in deep heather, I seemed to feel a body rub against mine. This
continued all the way up the Farawa water, and then up its feeder to the
little lonely loch. It kept me from looking forward; but it likewise
kept me in such a sweat of fright that I was ready to faint. Then the
motion came upon me to test this fancy of mine. If I was tracked thus
closely, clearly the trackers would bar my way if I turned back. So I
wheeled round and walked a dozen paces down the glen.

Nothing stopped me. I was about to turn again, when something made me
take six more paces. At the fourth something rustled in the heather, and
my neck was gripped as in a vice. I had already made up my mind on what
I would do. I would be perfectly still, I would conquer my fear, and let
them do as they pleased with me so long as they took me to their
dwelling. But at the touch of the hands my resolutions fled. I struggled
and screamed. Then something was clapped on my mouth, speech and
strength went from me, and once more I was back in the maudlin childhood
of terror.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

In the cave it was always a dusky twilight. I seemed to be lying in the
same place, with the same dull glare of firelight far off, and the same
close stupefying smell. One of the creatures was standing silently at my
side, and I asked him some trivial question. He turned and shambled down
the passage, leaving me alone.

Then he returned with another, and they talked their guttural talk to
me. I scarcely listened till I remembered that in a sense I was here of
my own accord, and on a definite mission. The purport of their speech
seemed to be that, now I had returned, I must beware of a second flight.
Once I had been spared; a second time I should be killed without mercy.

I assented gladly. The Folk then, had some use for me. I felt my errand
prospering.

Then the old creature which I had seen before crept out of some corner
and squatted beside me. He put a claw on my shoulder, a horrible,
corrugated, skeleton thing, hairy to the finger-tips and nailless. He
grinned, too, with toothless gums, and his hideous old voice was like a
file on sandstone.

I asked questions, but he would only grin and jabber, looking now and
then furtively over his shoulder towards the fire.

I coaxed and humoured him, till he launched into a narrative of which I
could make nothing. It seemed a mere string of names, with certain words
repeated at fixed intervals. Then it flashed on me that this might be a
religious incantation. I had discovered remnants of a ritual and a
mythology among them. It was possible that these were sacred days, and
that I had stumbled upon some rude celebration.

I caught a word or two and repeated them. He looked at me curiously.
Then I asked him some leading question, and he replied with clearness.
My guess was right. The midsummer week was the holy season of the year,
when sacrifices were offered to the gods.

The notion of sacrifices disquieted me, and I would fain have asked
further. But the creature would speak no more. He hobbled off, and left
me alone in the rock-chamber to listen to a strange sound which hung
ceaselessly about me. It must be the storm without, like a park of
artillery rattling among the crags. A storm of storms surely, for the
place echoed and hummed, and to my unquiet eye the very rock of the roof
seemed to shake!

Apparently my existence was forgotten, for I lay long before any one
returned. Then it was merely one who brought food, the same strange meal
as before, and left hastily. When I had eaten I rose and stretched
myself. My hands and knees still quivered nervously; but I was strong
and perfectly well in body. The empty, desolate, tomb-like place was
eerie enough to scare any one; but its emptiness was comfort when I
thought of its inmates. Then I wandered down the passage towards the
fire which was burning in loneliness. Where had the Folk gone? I
puzzled over their disappearance.

Suddenly sounds began to break on my ear, coming from some inner chamber
at the end of that in which the fire burned. I could scarcely see for
the smoke; but I began to make my way towards the noise, feeling along
the sides of rock. Then a second gleam of light seemed to rise before
me, and I came to an aperture in the wall which gave entrance to another
room.

This in turn was full of smoke and glow--a murky orange glow, as if from
some strange flame of roots. There were the squat moving figures,
running in wild antics round the fire. I crouched in the entrance,
terrified and yet curious, till I saw something beyond the blaze which
held me dumb. Apart from the others and tied to some stake in the wall
was a woman's figure, and the face was the face of the shepherd's
sister.

My first impulse was flight. I must get away and think,--plan, achieve
some desperate way of escape. I sped back to the silent chamber as if
the gang were at my heels. It was still empty, and I stood helplessly in
the centre, looking at the impassable walls of rock as a wearied beast
may look at the walls of its cage. I bethought me of the way I had
escaped before and rushed thither, only to find it blocked by a huge
contrivance of stone. Yards and yards of solid rock were between me and
the upper air, and yet through it all came the crash and whistle of the
storm. If I were at my wits' end in this inner darkness, there was also
high commotion among the powers of the air in that upper world.

As I stood I heard the soft steps of my tormentors. They seemed to think
I was meditating escape, for they flung themselves on me and bore me to
the ground. I did not struggle, and when they saw me quiet, they
squatted round and began to speak. They told me of the holy season and
its sacrifices. At first I could not follow them; then when I caught
familiar words I found some clue, and they became intelligible. They
spoke of a woman, and I asked, "What woman?" With all frankness they
told me of the custom which prevailed--how every twentieth summer a
woman was sacrificed to some devilish god, and by the hand of one of the
stranger race. I said nothing, but my whitening face must have told them
a tale, though I strove hard to keep my composure. I asked if they had
found the victims. "She is in this place," they said; "and as for the
man, thou art he." And with this they left me.

I had still some hours; so much I gathered from their talk, for the
sacrifice was at sunset. Escape was cut off for ever. I have always been
something of a fatalist, and at the prospect of the irrevocable end my
cheerfulness returned. I had my pistol, for they had taken nothing from
me. I took out the little weapon and fingered it lovingly. Hope of the
lost, refuge of the vanquished, ease to the coward,--blessed be he who
first conceived it!

The time dragged on, the minutes grew to hours, and still I was left
solitary. Only the mad violence of the storm broke the quiet. It had
increased in fury, for the stones at the mouth of the exit by which I
had formerly escaped seemed to rock with some external pressure, and
cutting shafts of wind slipped past and cleft the heat of the passage.
What a sight the ravine outside must be, I thought, set in the forehead
of a great hill, and swept clean by every breeze! Then came a crashing,
and the long hollow echo of a fall. The rocks are splitting, said I; the
road down the corrie will be impassable now and for evermore.

I began to grow weak with the nervousness of the waiting, and by-and-by
I lay down and fell into a sort of doze. When I next knew consciousness
I was being roused by two of the Folk, and bidden get ready. I stumbled
to my feet, felt for the pistol in the hollow of my sleeve, and prepared
to follow.

When we came out into the wider chamber the noise of the storm was
deafening. The roof rang like a shield which has been struck. I noticed,
perturbed as I was, that my guards cast anxious eyes around them,
alarmed, like myself, at the murderous din. Nor was the world quieter
when we entered the last chamber, where the fire burned and the remnant
of the Folk waited. Wind had found an entrance from somewhere or other,
and the flames blew here and there, and the smoke gyrated in odd
circles. At the back, and apart from the rest, I saw the dazed eyes and
the white old drawn face of the woman.

They led me up beside her to a place where there was a rude flat stone,
hollowed in the centre, and on it a rusty iron knife, which seemed once
to have formed part of a scythe-blade. Then I saw the ceremonial which
was marked out for me. It was the very rite which I had dimly figured as
current among a rude people, and even in that moment of horror I had
something of the scholar's satisfaction.

The oldest of the Folk, who seemed to be a sort of priest, came to my
side and mumbled a form of words. His fetid breath sickened me; his dull
eyes, glassy like a brute's with age, brought my knees together. He put
the knife in my hands, dragged the terror-stricken woman forward to the
altar, and bade me begin.

I began by sawing her bonds through. When she felt herself free she
would have fled back, but stopped when I bade her. At that moment there
came a noise of rending and crashing as if the hills were falling, and
for one second the eyes of the Folk were averted from the frustrated
sacrifice.

Only for a moment. The next they saw what I had done, and with one
impulse rushed towards me. Then began the last scene in the play. I sent
a bullet through the right eye of the first thing that came on. The
second shot went wide; but the third shattered the hand of an elderly
ruffian with a club. Never for an instant did they stop, and now they
were clutching at me. I pushed the woman behind, and fired three rapid
shots in blind panic, and then, clutching the scythe, I struck right and
left like a madman.

Suddenly I saw the foreground sink before my eyes. The roof sloped down,
and with a sickening hiss a mountain of rock and earth seemed to
precipitate itself on the foremost of my assailants. One, nipped in the
middle by a rock, caught my eye by his hideous writhings. Two only
remained in what was now a little suffocating chamber, with embers from
the fire still smoking on the floor.

The woman caught me by the hand and drew me with her, while the two
seemed mute with fear. "There's a road at the back," she screamed. "I
ken it. I fand it out." And she pulled me up a narrow hole in the rock.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

How long we climbed I do not know. We were both fighting for air, with
the tightness of throat and chest, and the craziness of limb which mean
suffocation. I cannot tell when we first came to the surface, but I
remember the woman, who seemed to have the strength of extreme terror,
pulling me from the edge of a crevasse and laying me on a flat rock. It
seemed to be the depth of winter, with sheer-falling rain and a wind
that shook the hills.

Then I was once more myself and could look about me. From my feet yawned
a sheer abyss, where once had been a hill-shoulder. Some great mass of
rock on the brow of the mountain had been loosened by the storm, and in
its fall had caught the lips of the ravine and blocked the upper outlet
from the nest of dwellings. For a moment, I feared that all had been
destroyed.

My feeling--Heaven help me!--was not thankfulness for God's mercy and my
escape, but a bitter mad regret. I rushed frantically to the edge, and
when I saw only the blackness of darkness I wept weak tears. All the
time the storm was tearing at my body, and I had to grip hard by hand
and foot to keep my place.

Suddenly on the brink of the ravine I saw a third figure. We two were
not the only fugitives. One of the Folk had escaped.

I ran to it, and to my surprise the thing as soon as it saw me rushed to
meet me. At first I thought it was with some instinct of
self-preservation, but when I saw its eyes I knew the purpose of fight.
Clearly one or other should go no more from the place.

We were some ten yards from the brink when I grappled with it. Dimly I
heard the woman scream with fright, and saw her scramble across the
hillside. Then we were tugging in a death-throe, the hideous smell of
the thing in my face, its red eyes burning into mine, and its hoarse
voice muttering. Its strength seemed incredible; but I, too, am no
weakling. We tugged and strained, its nails biting into my flesh, while
I choked its throat unsparingly. Every second I dreaded lest we should
plunge together over the ledge, for it was thither my adversary tried to
draw me. I caught my heel in a nick of rock, and pulled madly against
it.

And then, while I was beginning to glory with the pride of conquest, my
hope was dashed in pieces. The thing seemed to break from my arms, and,
as if in despair, cast itself headlong into the impenetrable darkness. I
stumbled blindly after it, saved myself on the brink, and fell back,
sick and ill, into a merciful swoon.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *


VIII: NOTE IN CONCLUSION BY THE EDITOR

At this point the narrative of my unfortunate friend, Mr Graves of St
Chad's, breaks off abruptly. He wrote it shortly before his death, and
was prevented from completing it by the attack of heart failure which
carried him off. In accordance with the instructions in his will, I have
prepared it for publication, and now in much fear and hesitation, give
it to the world. First, however, I must supplement it by such facts as
fall within my knowledge.

The shepherd seems to have gone to Allermuir and by the help of the
letter convinced the inhabitants. A body of men was collected under the
landlord, and during the afternoon set out for the hills. But
unfortunately the great midsummer storm--the most terrible of recent
climatic disturbances--had filled the mosses and streams, and they found
themselves unable to proceed by any direct road. Ultimately late in the
evening they arrived at the cottage of Farawa, only to find there a
raving woman, the shepherd's sister, who seemed crazy with brain-fever.
She told some rambling story about her escape, but her narrative said
nothing of Mr Graves. So they treated her with what skill they
possessed, and sheltered for the night in and around the cottage. The
next morning the storm had abated a little, and the woman had recovered
something of her wits. From her they learned that Mr Graves was lying in
a ravine on the side of the Muneraw in imminent danger of his life. A
body set out to find him; but so immense was the landslip, and so
dangerous the whole mountain, that it was nearly evening when they
recovered him from the ledge of rock. He was alive, but unconscious, and
on bringing him back to the cottage it was clear that he was, indeed,
very ill. There he lay for three months, while the best skill that could
be got was procured for him. By dint of an uncommon toughness of
constitution he survived; but it was an old and feeble man who returned
to Oxford in the early winter.

The shepherd and his sister immediately left the countryside, and were
never more heard of, unless they are the pair of unfortunates who are at
present in a Scottish pauper asylum, incapable of remembering even their
names. The people who last spoke with them declared that their minds
seemed weakened by a great shock, and that it was hopeless to try to get
any connected or rational statement.

The career of my poor friend from that hour was little short of a
tragedy. He awoke from his illness to find the world incredulous; even
the country-folk of Allermuir set down the story to the shepherd's
craziness and my friend's credulity. In Oxford, his argument was
received with polite scorn. An account of his experiences which he drew
up for the 'Times' was refused by the editor; and an article on
"Primitive Peoples of the North," embodying what he believed to be the
result of his discoveries, was unanimously rejected by every responsible
journal in Europe. At first, he bore the treatment bravely. Reflection
convinced him that the colony had not been destroyed. Proofs were still
awaiting his hand, and with courage and caution he might yet triumph
over his enemies. But unfortunately, though the ardour of the scholar
burned more fiercely than ever and all fear seemed to have been purged
from his soul, the last adventure had grievously sapped his bodily
strength. In the spring following his accident he made an effort to
reach the spot--alone, for no one could be persuaded to follow him in
what was regarded as a childish madness. He slept at the now deserted
cottage of Farawa, but in the morning found himself unable to continue,
and with difficulty struggled back to the shepherd's cottage at
Allercleuch, where he was confined to bed for a fortnight. Then it
became necessary for him to seek health abroad, and it was not till the
following autumn that he attempted the journey again. He fell sick a
second time at the inn of Allermuir, and during his convalescence had
himself carried to a knoll in the inn garden, whence a glimpse can be
obtained of the shoulder of the Muneraw. There he would sit for hours
with his eyes fixed on the horizon, and at times he would be found
weeping with weakness and vexation. The last attempt was made but two
months before his last illness. On this occasion he got no farther than
Carlisle, where he was taken ill with what proved to be a premonition of
death. After that he shut his lips tightly, as though recognising the
futility of his hopes. Whether he had been soured by the treatment he
received, or whether his brain had already been weakened, he had become
a morose silent man, and for the two years before his death had few
friends and no society. From the obituary notice in the 'Times' I take
the following paragraph, which shows in what light the world had come to
look upon him:--

"At the outset of his career he was regarded as a rising scholar in one
department of archæology, and his Taffert lectures were a real
contribution to an obscure subject. But in afterlife he was led into
fantastic speculations; and when he found himself unable to convince his
colleagues, he gradually retired into himself, and lived practically a
hermit's life till his death. His career, thus broken short, is a sad
instance of the fascination which the recondite and the quack can
exercise even over men of approved ability."

And now his own narrative is published, and the world can judge as it
pleases about the amazing romance. The view which will doubtless find
general acceptance is that the whole is a figment of the brain, begotten
of some harmless moorland adventure and the company of such religious
maniacs as the shepherd and his sister. But some who knew the former
sobriety and calmness of my friend's mind may be disposed timorously and
with deep hesitation to another verdict. They may accept the narrative,
and believe that somewhere in those moorlands he met with a horrible
primitive survival, passed through the strangest adventure, and had his
fingers on an epoch-making discovery. In this case they will be inclined
to sympathise with the loneliness and misunderstanding of his latter
days. It is not for me to decide the question. Though a
fellow-historian, the Picts are outside my period, and I dare not
advance an opinion on a matter with which I am not fully familiar. But I
would point out that the means of settling the question are still
extant, and I would call upon some young archæologist, with a reputation
to make, to seize upon the chance of the century. Most of the expresses
for the North stop at Allerfoot; a ten-miles' drive will bring him to
Allermuir; and then with a fifteen-miles' walk he is at Farawa and on
the threshold of discovery. Let him follow the burn and cross the ridge
and ascend the Scarts of the Muneraw, and, if he return at all, it may
be with a more charitable judgment of my unfortunate friend.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The narrative of Mr. Graves was written in the year 1898.

[2] In the light of subsequent events I have jotted down the materials
to which I refer. The last authentic record of the Brownie is in the
narrative of the shepherd of Clachlands, taken down towards the close of
last century by the Reverend Mr. Gillespie, minister of Allerkirk, and
included by him in his 'Songs and Legends of Glen Aller.' The
authorities on the strange carrying-away of children are to be found in
a series of articles in a local paper, the 'Allerfoot Advertiser,'
September and October 1878, and a curious book published anonymously at
Edinburgh in 1848, entitled 'The Weathergaw.' The records of the
unexplained murders in the same neighbourhood are all contained in Mr.
Fordoun's 'Theory of Expert Evidence,' and an attack on the book in the
'Law Review' for June 1881. The Carrickfey case has a pamphlet to
itself--now extremely rare--a copy of which was recently obtained in a
bookseller's shop in Dumfries by a well-known antiquary, and presented
to the library of the Supreme Court in Edinburgh.




II

THE FAR ISLANDS


     "Lady Alice, Lady Louise,
     Between the wash of the tumbling seas----"


I

When Bran the Blessed, as the story goes, followed the white bird on the
Last Questing, knowing that return was not for him, he gave gifts to his
followers. To Heliodorus he gave the gift of winning speech, and
straightway the man went south to the Italian seas, and, becoming a
scholar, left many descendants who sat in the high places of the Church.
To Raymond he gave his steel battle-axe, and bade him go out to the
warrior's path and hew his way to a throne; which the man forthwith
accomplished, and became an ancestor in the fourth degree of the first
king of Scots. But to Colin, the youngest and the dearest, he gave no
gift, whispering only a word in his ear and lying a finger on his
eyelids. Yet Colin was satisfied, and he alone of the three, after
their master's going, remained on that coast of rock and heather.

In the third generation from Colin, as our elders counted years, came
one Colin the Red, who built his keep on the cliffs of Acharra and was a
mighty sea-rover in his day. Five times he sailed to the rich parts of
France, and a good score of times he carried his flag of three stars
against the easterly vikings. A mere name in story, but a sounding piece
of nomenclature well garnished with tales. A master-mind by all
accounts, but cursed with a habit of fantasy; for hearing in his old age
of a land to the westward, he forthwith sailed into the sunset, and
three days later was washed up, a twisted body, on one of the outer
isles.

So far it is but legend, but with his grandson, Colin the Red, we fall
into the safer hands of the chroniclers. To him God gave the unnumbered
sorrows of story-telling, for he was a bard, cursed with a bard's
fervours, and none the less a mighty warrior among his own folk. He it
was who wrote the lament called 'The White Waters of Usna,' and the
exquisite chain of romances, 'Glede-red Gold and Grey Silver.' His tales
were told by many fires, down to our grandfathers' time, and you will
find them still pounded at by the folk-lorists. But his airs--they are
eternal. On harp and pipe they have lived through the centuries; twisted
and tortured, they survive in many song-books; and I declare that the
other day I heard the most beautiful of them all murdered by a band at a
German watering-place. This Colin led the wanderer's life, for he
disappeared at middle-age, no one knew whither, and his return was long
looked for by his people. Some thought that he became a Christian monk,
the holy man living in the sea-girt isle of Cuna, who was found dead in
extreme old age, kneeling on the beach, with his arms, contrary to the
fashion of the Church, stretched to the westward.

As history narrowed into bonds and forms the descendants of Colin took
Raden for their surname, and settled more firmly on their lands in the
long peninsula of crag and inlets which runs west to the Atlantic. Under
Donald of the Isles they harried the Kings of Scots, or, on their own
authority, made war on Macleans and Macranalds, till their flag of the
three stars, their badge of the grey-goose feather, and their on-cry of
"Cuna" were feared from Lochalsh to Cantire. Later they made a truce
with the King, and entered into the royal councils. For years they
warded the western coast, and as king's lieutenants smoked out the
inferior pirates of Eigg and Toronsay. A Raden was made a Lord of Sleat,
another was given lands in the low country and the name Baron of
Strathyre, but their honours were transitory and short as their lives.
Rarely one of the house saw middle age. A bold, handsome, and stirring
race, it was their fate to be cut off in the rude warfare of the times,
or, if peace had them in its clutches, to man vessel and set off once
more on those mad western voyages which were the weird of the family.
Three of the name were found drowned on the far shore of Cuna; more than
one sailed straight out of the ken of mortals. One rode with the Good
Lord James on the pilgrimage of the Heart of Bruce, and died by his
leader's side in the Saracen battle. Long afterwards a Raden led the
western men against the Cheshire archers at Flodden, and was slain
himself in the steel circle around the king.

But the years brought peace and a greater wealth, and soon the cold
stone tower was left solitary on the headland, and the new house of
Kinlochuna rose by the green links of the stream. The family changed its
faith, and an Episcopal chaplain took the place of the old mass-priest
in the tutoring of the sons. Radens were in the '15 and the '45. They
rose with Bute to power, and they long disputed the pride of Dundas in
the northern capital. They intermarried with great English houses till
the sons of the family were Scots only in name, living much abroad or in
London, many of them English landowners by virtue of a mother's blood.
Soon the race was of the common over-civilised type, graceful,
well-mannered, with abundant good looks, but only once in a generation
reverting to the rugged northern strength. Eton and Oxford had in turn
displaced the family chaplain, and the house by the windy headland grew
emptier and emptier save when grouse and deer brought home its fickle
masters.


II

A childish illness brought Colin to Kinlochuna when he had reached the
mature age of five, and delicate health kept him there for the greater
part of the next six years. During the winter he lived in London, but
from the late northern spring, through all the long bright summers, he
lived in the great tenantless place without company--for he was an only
child. A French nurse had the charge of his doings, and when he had
passed through the formality of lessons there were the long pinewoods at
his disposal, the rough moor, the wonderful black holes with the rich
black mud in them, and best of all the bay of Acharra, below the
headland, with Cuna lying in the waves a mile to the west. At such times
his father was busy elsewhere; his mother was dead; the family had few
near relatives; so he passed a solitary childhood in the company of
seagulls and the birds of the moor.

His time for the beach was the afternoon. On the left as you go down
through the woods from the house there runs out the great headland of
Acharra, red and grey with mosses, and with a nimbus always of screaming
seafowl. To the right runs a low beach of sand, passing into rough
limestone boulders and then into the heather of the wood. This in turn
is bounded by a reef of low rocks falling by gentle breaks to the
water's edge. It is crowned with a tangle of heath and fern, bright at
most seasons with flowers, and dwarf pine-trees straggle on its crest
till one sees the meaning of its Gaelic name, "The Ragged Cock's-Comb."
This place was Colin's playground in fine weather. When it blew rain or
snow from the north he dwelt indoors among dogs and books, puzzling his
way through great volumes from his father's shelves. But when the mild
west-wind weather fell on the sea, then he would lie on the hot
sand--Amèlie the nurse reading a novel on the nearest rock--and kick his
small heels as he followed his fancy. He built great sand castles to the
shape of Acharra old tower, and peopled them with preposterous knights
and ladies; he drew great moats and rivers for the tide to fill; he
fought battles innumerable with crackling seaweed, till Amèlie, with her
sharp cry of "Colín, Colín," would carry him houseward for tea.

Two fancies remained in his mind through those boyish years. One was
about the mysterious shining sea before him. In certain weathers it
seemed to him a solid pathway. Cuna, the little ragged isle, ceased to
block the horizon, and his own white road ran away down into the west,
till suddenly it stopped and he saw no farther. He knew he ought to see
more, but always at one place, just when his thoughts were pacing the
white road most gallantly, there came a baffling mist to his sight, and
he found himself looking at a commonplace sea with Cuna lying very real
and palpable in the offing. It was a vexatious limitation, for all his
dreams were about this pathway. One day in June, when the waters slept
in a deep heat, he came down the sands barefoot, and lo! there was his
pathway. For one moment things seemed clear, the mist had not gathered
on the road, and with a cry he ran down to the tide's edge and waded in.
The touch of water dispelled the illusion, and almost in tears he saw
the cruel back of Cuna blotting out his own magic way.

The other fancy was about the low ridge of rocks which bounded the bay
on the right. His walks had never extended beyond it, either on the
sands or inland, for that way lay a steep hillside and a perilous bog.
But often on the sands he had come to its foot and wondered what country
lay beyond. He made many efforts to explore it, difficult efforts, for
the vigilant Amèlie had first to be avoided. Once he was almost at the
top when some seaweed to which he clung gave way, and he rolled back
again to the soft warm sand. By-and-by he found that he knew what was
beyond. A clear picture had built itself up in his brain of a mile of
reefs, with sand in bars between them, and beyond all a sea-wood of
alders slipping from the hill's skirts to the water's edge. This was not
what he wanted in his explorations, so he stopped, till one day it
struck him that the westward view might reveal something beyond the
hogbacked Cuna. One day, pioneering alone, he scaled the steepest
heights of the sea-weed and pulled his chin over the crest of the ridge.
There, sure enough, was his picture--a mile of reefs and the tattered
sea-wood. He turned eagerly seawards. Cuna still lay humped on the
waters, but beyond it he seemed to see his shining pathway running far
to a speck which might be an island. Crazy with pleasure he stared at
the vision, till slowly it melted into the waves, and Cuna the
inexorable once more blocked the skyline. He climbed down, his heart in
a doubt between despondency and hope.

It was the last day of such fancies, for on the morrow he had to face
the new world of school.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

At Cecil's Colin found a new life and a thousand new interests. His
early delicacy had been driven away by the sea-winds of Acharra, and he
was rapidly growing up a tall, strong child, straight of limb like all
his house, but sinewy and alert beyond his years. He learned new games
with astonishing facility, became a fast bowler with a genius for
twists, and a Rugby three-quarters full of pluck and cunning. He soon
attained to the modified popularity of a private school, and, being
essentially clean, strong, and healthy, found himself a mark for his
juniors' worship and a favourite with masters. The homage did not spoil
him, for no boy was ever less self-possessed. On the cricket-ground and
the football-field he was a leader, but in private he had the nervous,
sensitive manners of the would-be recluse. No one ever accused him of
"side"--his polite, halting address was the same to junior and senior;
and the result was that wild affection which simplicity in the great is
wont to inspire. He spoke with a pure accent, in which lurked no
northern trace; in a little he had forgotten all about his birthplace
and his origin. His name had at first acquired for him the sobriquet of
"Scottie," but the title was soon dropped from its manifest inaptness.

In his second year at Cecil's he caught a prevalent fever, and for days
lay very near the brink of death. At his worst he was wildly delirious,
crying ceaselessly for Acharra and the beach at Kinlochuna. But as he
grew convalescent the absorption remained, and for the moment he seemed
to have forgotten his southern life. He found himself playing on the
sands, always with the boundary ridge before him, and the hump of Cuna
rising in the sea. When dragged back to his environment by the inquiries
of Bellew, his special friend, who came to sit with him, he was so
abstracted and forgetful that the good Bellew was seriously grieved.
"The chap's a bit cracked, you know," he announced in hall. "Didn't know
me. Asked me what 'footer' meant when I told him about the Bayswick
match, and talked about nothing but a lot of heathen Scotch names."

One dream haunted Colin throughout the days of his recovery. He was
tormented with a furious thirst, poorly assuaged at long intervals by
watered milk. So when he crossed the borders of dreamland his first
search was always for a well. He tried the brushwood inland from the
beach, but it was dry as stone. Then he climbed with difficulty the
boundary ridge, and found little pools of salt water, while far on the
other side gleamed the dark black bog-holes. Here was not what he
sought, and he was in deep despair, till suddenly over the sea he caught
a glimpse of his old path running beyond Cuna to a bank of mist. He
rushed down to the tide's edge, and to his amazement found solid ground.
Now was the chance for which he had long looked, and he ran happily
westwards, till of a sudden the solid earth seemed to sink with him,
and he was in the waters struggling. But two curious things he noted.
One was that the far bank of mist seemed to open for a pin-point of
time, and he had a gleam of land. He saw nothing distinctly, only a line
which was not mist and was not water. The second was that the water was
fresh, and as he was drinking from this curious new fresh sea he awoke.
The dream was repeated three times before he left the sick-room. Always
he wakened at the same place, always he quenched his thirst in the fresh
sea, but never again did the mist open for him and show him the strange
country.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

From Cecil's he went to the famous school which was the tradition in his
family. The Head spoke to his house-master of his coming. "We are to
have another Raden here," he said, "and I am glad of it, if the young
one turns out to be anything like the others. There's a good deal of
dry-rot among the boys just now. They are all too old for their years
and too wise in the wrong way. They haven't anything like the enthusiasm
in games they had twenty years ago when I first came here. I hope this
young Raden will stir them up." The house-master agreed, and when he
first caught sight of Colin's slim, well-knit figure, looked into the
handsome kindly eyes, and heard his curiously diffident speech, his
doubts vanished. "We have got the right stuff now," he told himself, and
the senior for whom the new boy fagged made the same comment.

From the anomalous insignificance of fagdom Colin climbed up the School,
leaving everywhere a record of honest good-nature. He was allowed to
forget his cricket and football, but in return he was initiated into the
mysteries of the river. Water had always been his delight, so he went
through the dreary preliminaries of being coached in a tub-pair till he
learned to swing steadily and get his arms quickly forward. Then came
the stages of scratch fours and scratch eights, till after a long
apprenticeship he was promoted to the dignity of a thwart in the Eight
itself. In his last year he was Captain of Boats, a position which joins
the responsibility of a Cabinet Minister to the rapturous popular
applause of a successful warrior. Nor was he the least distinguished of
a great band. With Colin at seven the School won the Ladies' after the
closest race on record.

The Head's prophecy fell true, for Colin was a born leader. For all his
good-humour and diffidence of speech, he had a trick of shutting his
teeth which all respected. As captain he was the idol of the school, and
he ruled it well and justly. For the rest, he was a curious boy with
none of the ordinary young enthusiasms, reserved for all his kindliness.
At house "shouters" his was not the voice which led the stirring strains
of "Stroke out all you know," though his position demanded it. He cared
little about work, and the School-house scholar, who fancied him from
his manner a devotee of things intellectual, found in Colin but an
affected interest. He read a certain amount of modern poetry with
considerable boredom; fiction he never opened. The truth was that he had
a romance in his own brain which, willy nilly, would play itself out,
and which left him small relish for the pale second-hand inanities of
art. Often, when with others he would lie in the deep meadows by the
river on some hot summer's day, his fancies would take a curious colour.
He adored the soft English landscape, the lush grasses, the slow
streams, the ancient secular trees. But as he looked into the hazy green
distance a colder air would blow on his cheek, a pungent smell of salt
and pines would be for a moment in his nostrils, and he would be gazing
at a line of waves on a beach, a ridge of low rocks, and a shining
sea-path running out to--ah, that he could not tell! The envious Cuna
would suddenly block all the vistas. He had constantly the vision before
his eyes, and he strove to strain into the distance before Cuna should
intervene. Once or twice he seemed almost to achieve it. He found that
by keeping on the top of the low rock-ridge he could cheat Cuna by a
second or two, and get a glimpse of a misty something out in the west.
The vision took odd times for recurring,--once or twice in lecture, once
on the cricket-ground, many times in the fields of a Sunday, and once
while he paddled down to the start in a Trials race. It gave him a keen
pleasure: it was his private domain, where at any moment he might make
some enchanting discovery.

At this time he began to spend his vacations at Kinlochuna. His father,
an elderly ex-diplomat, had permanently taken up his abode there, and
was rapidly settling into the easy life of the Scots laird. Colin
returned to his native place without enthusiasm. His childhood there had
been full of lonely hours, and he had come to like the warm south
country. He found the house full of people, for his father entertained
hugely, and the talk was of sport and sport alone. As a rule, your very
great athlete is bored by Scots shooting. Long hours of tramping and
crouching among heather cramp without fully exercising the body; and
unless he has the love of the thing ingrained in him, the odds are that
he will wish himself home. The father, in his new-found admiration for
his lot, was content to face all weathers; the son found it an effort to
keep pace with such vigour. He thought upon the sunlit fields and reedy
watercourses with regret, and saw little in the hills but a rough waste
scarred with rock and sour with mosses.

He read widely throughout these days, for his father had a taste for
modern letters, and new books lay littered about the rooms. He read
queer Celtic tales which he thought "sickening rot," and mild Celtic
poetry which he failed to understand. Among the guests was a noted
manufacturer of fiction, whom the elder Raden had met somewhere and
bidden to Kinlochuna. He had heard the tale of Colin's ancestors and the
sea headland of Acharra, and one day he asked the boy to show him the
place, as he wished to make a story of it. Colin assented unwillingly,
for he had been slow to visit this place of memories, and he did not
care to make his first experiment in such company. But the gentleman
would not be gainsaid, so the two scrambled through the sea-wood and
climbed the low ridge which looked over the bay. The weather was mist
and drizzle; Cuna had wholly hidden herself, and the bluff Acharra
loomed hazy and far. Colin was oddly disappointed: this reality was a
poor place compared with his fancies. His companion stroked his peaked
beard, talked nonsense about Colin the Red and rhetoric about "the
spirit of the misty grey weather having entered into the old tale."
"Think," he cried; "to those old warriors beyond that bank of mist was
the whole desire of life, the Golden City, the Far Islands, whatever you
care to call it." Colin shivered, as if his holy places had been
profaned, set down the man in his mind most unjustly as an "awful little
cad," and hurried him back to the house.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

Oxford received the boy with open arms, for his reputation had long
preceded him. To the majority of men he was the one freshman of his
year, and gossip was busy with his prospects. Nor was gossip
disappointed. In his first year he rowed seven in the Eight. The next
year he was captain of his college boats, and a year later the O.U.B.C.
made him its president. For three years he rowed in the winning Eight,
and old coaches agreed that in him the perfect seven had been found. It
was he who in the famous race of 18-- caught up in the last three
hundred yards the quickened stroke which gave Oxford victory. As he grew
to his full strength he became a splendid figure of a man--tall, supple,
deep-chested for all his elegance. His quick dark eyes and his kindly
hesitating manners made people think his face extraordinarily handsome,
when really it was in no way above the common. But his whole figure, as
he stood in his shorts and sweater on the raft at Putney, was so full of
youth and strength that people involuntarily smiled when they saw him--a
smile of pleasure in so proper a piece of manhood.

Colin enjoyed life hugely at Oxford, for to one so frank and well
equipped the place gave of its best. He was the most distinguished
personage of his day there, but, save to school friends and the men he
met officially on the river, he was little known. His diffidence and his
very real exclusiveness kept him from being the centre of a host of
friends. His own countrymen in the place were utterly nonplussed by him.
They claimed him eagerly as a fellow, but he had none of the ordinary
characteristics of the race. There were Scots of every description
around him--pale-faced Scots who worked incessantly, metaphysical Scots
who talked in the Union, robustious Scots who played football. They were
all men of hearty manners and many enthusiasms,--who quoted Burns and
dined to the immortal bard's honour every 25th of January; who told
interminable Scotch stories, and fell into fervours over national
sports, dishes, drinks, and religions. To the poor Colin it was all
inexplicable. At the remote house of Kinlochuna he had never heard of a
Free Kirk or a haggis. He had never read a line of Burns, Scott bored
him exceedingly, and in all honesty he thought Scots games inferior to
southern sports. He had no great love for the bleak country, he cared
nothing for the traditions of his house, so he was promptly set down by
his compatriots as "denationalised and degenerate."

He was idle, too, during these years as far as his "schools" were
concerned, but he was always very intent upon his own private business.
Whenever he sat down to read, when he sprawled on the grass at river
picnics, in chapel, in lecture--in short, at any moment when his body
was at rest and his mind at leisure--his fancies were off on the same
old path. Things had changed, however, in that country. The boyish
device of a hard road running over the waters had gone, and now it was
invariably a boat which he saw beached on the shingle. It differed in
shape. At first it was an ugly salmon-coble, such as the fishermen used
for the nets at Kinlochuna. Then it passed, by rapid transitions,
through a canvas skiff which it took good watermanship to sit, a whiff,
an ordinary dinghey, till at last it settled itself into a long rough
boat, pointed at both ends, with oar-holes in the sides instead of
row-locks. It was the devil's own business to launch it, and launch it
anew he was compelled to for every journey; for though he left it bound
in a little rock hollow below the ridge after landing, yet when he
returned, lo! there was the clumsy thing high and dry upon the beach.

The odd point about the new venture was that Cuna had ceased to trouble
him. As soon as he had pulled his first stroke the island disappeared,
and nothing lay before him but the sea-fog. Yet, try as he might, he
could come little nearer. The shores behind him might sink and lessen,
but the impenetrable mist was still miles to the westward. Sometimes he
rowed so far that the shore was a thin line upon the horizon, but when
he turned the boat it seemed to ground in a second on the beach. The
long laboured journey out and the instantaneous return puzzled him at
first, but soon he became used to them. His one grief was the mist,
which seemed to grow denser as he neared it. The sudden glimpse of land
which he had got from the ridge of rock in the old boyish days was now
denied him, and with the denial came a keener exultation in the quest.
Somewhere in the west, he knew, must be land, and in this land a well of
sweet water--for so he had interpreted his feverish dream. Sometimes,
when the wind blew against him, he caught scents from it--generally the
scent of pines, as on the little ridge on the shore behind him.

One day on his college barge, while he was waiting for a picnic party to
start, he seemed to get nearer than before. Out on that western sea, as
he saw it, it was fresh, blowing weather, with a clear hot sky above. It
was hard work rowing, for the wind was against him, and the sun scorched
his forehead. The air seemed full of scents--and sounds, too, sounds of
far-away surf and wind in trees. He rested for a moment on his oars and
turned his head. His heart beat quickly, for there was a rift in the
mist, and far through a line of sand ringed with snow-white foam.

Somebody shook him roughly,--"Come on, Colin, old man. They're all
waiting for you. Do you know you've been half asleep?"

Colin rose and followed silently, with drowsy eyes. His mind was
curiously excited. He had looked inside the veil of mist. Now he knew
what was the land he sought.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

He made the voyage often, now that the spell was broken. It was short
work to launch the boat, and, whereas it had been a long pull formerly,
now it needed only a few strokes to bring him to the Rim of the Mist.
There was no chance of getting farther, and he scarcely tried. He was
content to rest there, in a world of curious scents and sounds, till the
mist drew down and he was driven back to shore.

The change in his environment troubled him little. For a man who has
been an idol at the University to fall suddenly into the comparative
insignificance of Town is often a bitter experience; but Colin, whose
thoughts were not ambitious, scarcely noticed it. He found that he was
less his own master than before, but he humbled himself to his new
duties without complaint. Many of his old friends were about him; he had
plenty of acquaintances; and, being "sufficient unto himself," he was
unaccustomed to ennui. Invitations showered upon him thick and fast.
Match-making mothers, knowing his birth and his father's income, and
reflecting that he was the only child of his house, desired him as a
son-in-law. He was bidden welcome everywhere, and the young girls, for
whose sake he was thus courted, found in him an attractive mystery. The
tall good-looking athlete, with the kind eyes and the preposterously
nervous manner, wakened their maidenly sympathies. As they danced with
him or sat next to him at dinner, they talked fervently of Oxford, of
the north, of the army, of his friends. "Stupid, but nice, my dear," was
Lady Afflint's comment; and Miss Clara Etheridge, the beauty of the
year, declared to her friends that he was a "dear boy, but so awkward."
He was always forgetful, and ever apologetic; and when he forgot the
Shandwicks' theatre-party, the Herapaths' dance, and at least a dozen
minor matters, he began to acquire the reputation of a cynic and a
recluse.

"You're a queer chap, Col," Lieutenant Bellew said in expostulation.

Colin shrugged his shoulders; he was used to the description.

"Do you know that Clara Etheridge was trying all she knew to please you
this afternoon, and you looked as if you weren't listening? Most men
would have given their ears to be in your place."

"I'm awfully sorry, but I thought I was very polite to her."

"And why weren't you at the Marshams' show?"

"Oh, I went to polo with Collinson and another man. And, I say, old
chap, I'm not coming to the Logans to-morrow. I've got a fence on with
Adair at the school."

Little Bellew, who was a tremendous mirror of fashion and chevalier in
general, looked up curiously at his tall friend.

"Why don't you like the women, Col, when they're so fond of you?"

"They aren't," said Colin hotly, "and I don't dislike 'em. But, Lord!
they bore me. I might be doing twenty things when I talk nonsense to one
of 'em for an hour. I come back as stupid as an owl, and besides there's
heaps of things better sport."

The truth was that, while among men he was a leader and at his ease,
among women his psychic balance was so oddly upset that he grew nervous
and returned unhappy. The boat on the beach, ready in general to appear
at the slightest call, would delay long after such experiences, and its
place would be taken by some woman's face for which he cared not a
straw. For the boat, on the other hand, he cared a very great deal. In
all his frank wholesome existence there was this enchanting background,
this pleasure-garden which he cherished more than anything in life. He
had come of late to look at it with somewhat different eyes. The eager
desire to search behind the mist was ever with him, but now he had also
some curiosity about the details of the picture. As he pulled out to the
Rim of the Mist sounds seemed to shape themselves on his lips, which
by-and-by grew into actual words in his memory. He wrote them down in
scraps, and after some sorting they seemed to him a kind of Latin. He
remembered a college friend of his, one Medway, now reading for the Bar,
who had been the foremost scholar of his acquaintance; so with the scrap
of paper in his pocket he climbed one evening to Medway's rooms in the
Temple.

The man read the words curiously, and puzzled for a bit. "What's made
you take to Latin comps so late in life, Colin? It's baddish, you know,
even for you. I thought they'd have licked more into you at Eton."

Colin grinned with amusement. "I'll tell you about it later," he said.
"Can you make out what it means?"

"It seems to be a kind of dog-Latin or monkish Latin or something of the
sort," said Medway. "It reads like this: '_Soles occidere solent_'
(that's cribbed from Catullus, and besides it's the regular monkish pun)
... _qua_ ... then _blandula_ something. Then there's a lot of Choctaw,
and then _illæ insulæ dilectcæ in quas festinant somnia animulæ gaudia_.
That's pretty fair rot. Hullo, by George! here's something
better--_Insula pomorum insula vitæ_. That's Geoffrey of Monmouth."

He made a dive to a bookcase and pulled out a battered little calf-bound
duodecimo. "Here's all about your Isle of Apple-trees. Listen. 'Situate
far out in the Western ocean, beyond the Utmost Islands, beyond even the
little Isle of Sheep where the cairns of dead men are, lies the Island
of Apple-trees where the heroes and princes of the nations live their
second life.'" He closed the book and put it back. "It's the old
ancient story, the Greek Hesperides, the British Avilion, and this
Apple-tree Island is the northern equivalent."

Colin sat entranced, his memory busy with a problem. Could he
distinguish the scents of apple-trees among the perfumes of the Rim of
the Mist. For the moment he thought he could. He was roused by Medway's
voice asking the story of the writing.

"Oh, it's just some nonsense that was running in my head, so I wrote it
down to see what it was."

"But you must have been reading. A new exercise for you, Colin!"

"No, I wasn't reading. Look here. You know the sort of pictures you make
for yourself of places you like."

"Rather! Mine is a Yorkshire moor with a little red shooting-box in the
heart of it."

"Well, mine is different. Mine is a sort of beach with a sea and a lot
of islands somewhere far out. It is a jolly place, fresh, you know, and
blowing, and smells good. 'Pon my word, now I think of it, there's
always been a scent of apples."

"Sort of cider-press? Well, I must be off. You'd better come round to
the club and see the telegrams about the war. _You_ should be keen
about it."

One evening, a week later, Medway met a friend called Tillotson at the
club, and, being lonely, they dined together. Tillotson was a man of
some note in science, a dabbler in psychology, an amateur historian, a
ripe genealogist. They talked of politics and the war, of a new book, of
Mrs Runnymede, and finally of their hobbies.

"I am writing an article," said Tillotson. "Craikes asked me to do it
for the 'Monthly.' It's on a nice point in psychics. I call it 'The
Transmission of Fallacies,' but I do not mean the logical kind. The
question is, Can a particular form of hallucination run in a family for
generations? The proof must, of course, come from my genealogical
studies. I maintain it can. I instance the Douglas-Ernotts, not one of
whom can see straight with the left eye. That is one side. In another
class of examples I take the Drapiers, who hate salt water and never go
on board ship if they can help it. Then you remember the Durwards? Old
Lady Balcrynie used to tell me that no one of the lot could ever stand
the sight of a green frock. There's a chance for the romancer. The
Manor-waters have the same madness, only their colour is red."

A vague remembrance haunted Medway's brain.

"I know a man who might give you points from his own case. Did you ever
meet a chap Raden--Colin Raden?"

Tillotson nodded. "Long chap--in the Guards? 'Varsity oar, and used to
be a crack bowler? No, I don't know him. I know him well by sight, and I
should like to meet him tremendously--as a genealogist, of course."

"Why?" asked Medway.

"Why? Because the man's family is unique. You never hear much about them
nowadays, but away up in that north-west corner of Scotland they have
ruled since the days of Noah. Why, man, they were aristocrats when our
Howards and Nevilles were greengrocers. I wish you would get this Raden
to meet me some night."

"I am afraid there's no chance of it just at present," said Medway,
taking up an evening paper. "I see that his regiment has gone to the
front. But remind me when he comes back, and I'll be delighted."


III

And now there began for Colin a curious divided life,--without, a
constant shifting of scene, days of heat and bustle and toil,--within, a
slow, tantalising, yet exquisite adventure. The Rim of the Mist was now
no more the goal of his journeys, but the starting-point. Lying there,
amid cool, fragrant sea-winds, his fanciful ear was subtly alert for the
sounds of the dim land before him. Sleeping and waking the quest haunted
him. As he flung himself on his bed the kerosene-filled air would change
to an ocean freshness, the old boat would rock beneath him, and with
clear eye and a boyish hope he would be waiting and watching. And then
suddenly he would be back on shore, Cuna and the Acharra headland
shining grey in the morning light, and with gritty mouth and sand-filled
eyes he would awaken to the heat of the desert camp.

He was kept busy, for his good-humour and energy made him a willing
slave, and he was ready enough for volunteer work when others were weak
with heat and despair. A thirty-mile ride left him untired; more, he
followed the campaign with a sharp intelligence and found a new
enthusiasm for his profession. Discomforts there might be, but the days
were happy; and then--the cool land, the bright land, which was his for
the thinking of it.

Soon they gave him reconnoitring work to do, and his wits were put to
the trial. He came well out of the thing, and earned golden praise from
the silent colonel in command. He enjoyed it as he had enjoyed a hard
race on the river or a good cricket match, and when his worried
companions marvelled at his zeal he stammered and grew uncomfortable.

"How the deuce do you keep it up, Colin?" the major asked him. "I'm an
old hand at the job, and yet I've got a temper like devilled bones. You
seem as chirpy as if you were going out to fish a chalk-stream on a June
morning."

"Well, the fact is----" and Colin pulled himself up short, knowing that
he could never explain. He felt miserably that he had an unfair
advantage of the others. Poor Bellew, who groaned and swore in the heat
at his side, knew nothing of the Rim of the Mist. It was really rough
luck on the poor beggars, and who but himself was the fortunate man?

As the days passed a curious thing happened. He found fragments of the
Other world straying into his common life. The barriers of the two
domains were falling, and more than once he caught himself looking at a
steel-blue sea when his eyes should have found a mustard-coloured
desert. One day, on a reconnoitring expedition, they stopped for a
little on a hillock above a jungle of scrub, and, being hot and tired,
scanned listlessly the endless yellow distances.

"I suppose yon hill is about ten miles off," said Bellew with dry lips.

Colin looked vaguely. "I should say five."

"And what's that below it--the black patch? Stones or scrub?"

Colin was in a day-dream. "Why do you call it black? It's blue, quite
blue."

"Rot," said the other. "It's grey-black."

"No, it's water with the sun shining on it. It's blue, but just at the
edges it's very near sea-green."

Bellew rose excitedly. "Hullo, Col, you're seeing the mirage! And you
the fittest of the lot of us! You've got the sun in your head, old man!"

"Mirage!" Colin cried in contempt. He was awake now, but the thought of
confusing his own bright western sea with a mirage gave him a curious
pain. For a moment he felt the gulf of separation between his two
worlds, but only for a moment. As the party remounted he gave his
fancies the rein, and ere he reached camp he had felt the oars in his
hand and sniffed the apple-tree blossom from the distant beaches.

The major came to him after supper.

"Bellew told me you were a bit odd to-day, Colin," he said. "I expect
your eyes are getting baddish. Better get your sand-spectacles out."

Colin laughed. "Thanks. It's awfully good of you to bother, but I think
Bellew took me up wrong. I never was fitter in my life."

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

By-and-by the turn came for pride to be humbled. A low desert fever took
him, and though he went through the day as usual, it was with dreary
lassitude; and at night, with hot hands clasped above his damp hair, he
found sleep a hard goddess to conquer.

It was the normal condition of the others, so he had small cause to
complain, but it worked havoc with his fancies. He had never been ill
since his childish days, and this little fever meant much to one whose
nature was poised on a needle-point. He found himself confronted with a
hard bare world, with the gilt rubbed from its corners. The Rim of the
Mist seemed a place of vague horrors; when he reached it his soul was
consumed with terror; he struggled impotently to advance; behind him
Cuna and the Acharra coast seemed a place of evil dreams. Again, as in
his old fever, he was tormented with a devouring thirst, but the sea
beside him was not fresh, but brackish as a rock-pool. He yearned for
the apple-tree beaches in front; there, he knew, were cold springs of
water; the fresh smell of it was blown towards him in his nightmare.

But as the days passed and the misery for all grew more intense, an odd
hope began to rise in his mind. It could not last, coolness and health
were waiting near, and his reason for the hope came from the odd events
at the Rim of Mist. The haze was clearing from the foreground, the
surf-lined coast seemed nearer, and though all was obscure save the
milk-white sand and the foam, yet here was earnest enough for him. Once
more he became cheerful; weak and light-headed he rode out again; and
the major, who was recovering from sunstroke, found envy take the place
of pity in his soul.

The hope was near fulfilment. One evening when the heat was changing
into the cooler twilight, Colin and Bellew were sent with a small picked
body to scour the foot-hills above the river in case of a flank attack
during the night-march. It was work they had done regularly for weeks,
and it is possible that precautions were relaxed. At any rate, as they
turned a corner of hill, in a sandy pass where barren rocks looked down
on more barren thorn thickets, a couple of rifle-shots rang out from the
scarp, and above them appeared a line of dark faces and white steel. A
mere handful, taken at a disadvantage, they could not hope to disperse
numbers, so Colin gave the word to wheel about and return. Again shots
rang out, and little Bellew had only time to catch at his friend's arm
to save him from falling from the saddle.

The word of command had scarcely left Colin's mouth when a sharp pain
went through his chest, and his breath seemed to catch and stop. He felt
as in a condensed moment of time the heat, the desert smell, the dust in
his eyes and throat, while he leaned helplessly forward on his horse's
mane. Then the world vanished for him.... The boat was rocking under
him, the oars in his hand. He pulled and it moved, straight, arrow-like
towards the forbidden shore. As if under a great wind the mist furled up
and fled. Scents of pines, of apple-trees, of great fields of thyme and
heather, hung about him; the sound of wind in a forest, of cool waters
falling in showers, of old moorland music, came thin and faint with an
exquisite clearness. A second and the boat was among the surf, its
gunwale ringed with white foam, as it leaped to the still waters beyond.
Clear and deep and still the water lay, and then the white beaches
shelved downward, and the boat grated on the sand. He turned, every limb
alert with a strange new life, crying out words which had shaped
themselves on his lips and which an echo seemed to catch and answer.
There was the green forest before him, the hills of peace, the cold
white waters. With a passionate joy he leaped on the beach, his arms
outstretched to this new earth, this light of the world, this old desire
of the heart--youth, rapture, immortality.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

Bellew brought the body back to camp, himself half-dead with fatigue and
whimpering like a child. He almost fell from his horse, and when others
took his burden from him and laid it reverently in his tent, he stood
beside it, rubbing sand and sweat from his poor purblind eyes, his teeth
chattering with fever. He was given something to drink, but he swallowed
barely a mouthful.

"It was some d-d-damned sharpshooter," he said. "Right through the
breast, and he never spoke to me again. My poor old Col! He was the best
chap God ever created, and I do-don't care a dash what becomes of me
now. I was at school with him, you know, you men."

"Was he killed outright?" asked the major hoarsely.

"N-no. He lived for about five minutes. But I think the sun had got into
his head or he was mad with pain, for he d-d-didn't know where he was.
He kept crying out about the smell of pine-trees and heather and a lot
of pure nonsense about water."

"_Et dulces reminiscitur Argos_," somebody quoted mournfully, as they
went out to the desert evening.




III

THE WATCHER BY THE THRESHOLD

I: THE HOUSE OF MORE


1

I have told this story to many audiences with diverse results, and once
again I take my reputation in my hands and brave the perils. To the
common circle of my friends it was a romance for a winter's fire, and I,
the most prosaic of men, was credited with a fancy. Once I repeated it
to an acquaintance, who, scenting mystery, transcribed it in a
note-book, and, with feigned names, it figured in the publications of a
Learned Society. One man only heard me with true appreciation; but he
was a wandering spirit with an ear open to marvels, and I hesitate to
advance his security. He received it simply, saying that God was great,
and I cannot improve upon his comment.

A chill evening in the early October of the year 189- found me driving
in a dog-cart through the belts of antique woodland which form the
lowland limits of the hilly parish of More. The Highland express, which
brought me from the north, took me no farther than Perth. Thence it had
been a slow journey in a disjointed local train, till I emerged on the
platform at Morefoot, with a bleak prospect of pit-stalks, coal-heaps,
certain sour corn-lands, and far to the west a line of moor where the
sun was setting. A neat groom and a respectable trap took the edge off
my discomfort, and soon I had forgotten my sacrifice and found eyes for
the darkening landscape. We were driving through a land of thick woods,
cut at rare intervals by old long-frequented highways. The More, which
at Morefoot is an open sewer, became a sullen woodland stream, where the
brown leaves of the season drifted. At times we would pass an ancient
lodge, and through a gap in the trees would come a glimpse of a chipped
crow-step gable. The names of such houses, as told me by my companion,
were all famous. This one had been the home of a drunken Jacobite laird,
and a kind of north-country Medmenham. Unholy revels had waked the old
halls, and the Devil had been toasted at many a hell-fire dinner. The
next was the property of a great Scots law family, and there the old
Lord of Session who built the place, in his frowsy wig and carpet
slippers, had laid down the canons of Taste for his day and society. The
whole country had the air of faded and bygone gentility. The mossy
roadside walls had stood for two hundred years, the few wayside houses
were toll-bars or defunct hostelries. The names, too, were great--Scots
baronial with a smack of France--Chatelray and Reiverslaw, Black Holm
and Champertoun. The place had a cunning charm, mystery dwelt in every
cranny, and yet it did not please me. The earth smelt heavy and raw, the
roads were red underfoot, all was old, sorrowful, and uncanny. Compared
with the fresh Highland glen I had left, where wind and sun and flying
showers were never absent, all was chilly and dull and dead. Even when
the sun sent a shiver of crimson over the crests of certain firs, I felt
no delight in the prospect. I admitted shamefacedly to myself that I was
in a very bad temper.

I had been staying at Glenaicill with the Clanroydens, and for a week
had found the proper pleasure in life. You know the house with its old
rooms and gardens, and the miles of heather which defend it from the
world. The shooting had been extraordinary for a wild place far on in
the season, for there are few partridges and the woodcock are
notoriously late. I had done respectably in my stalking, more than
respectably on the river, and creditably on the moors. Moreover, there
were pleasant people in the house--and there were the Clanroydens. I had
had a hard year's work, sustained to the last moment of term, and a
fortnight in Norway had been disastrous. It was therefore with real
comfort that I had settled myself down for another ten days in
Glenaicill, when all my plans were shattered by Sybil's letter. Sybil is
my cousin and my very good friend, and in old days when I was briefless
I had fallen in love with her many times. But she very sensibly chose
otherwise, and married a man Ladlaw--Robert John Ladlaw--who had been at
school with me. He was a cheery, good-humoured fellow, a great
sportsman, a justice of the peace and deputy-lieutenant for his county,
and something of an antiquary in a mild way. He had a box in
Leicestershire to which he went in the hunting season; but from February
till October he lived in his moorland home. The place was called the
House of More, and I had shot there once or twice in recent years. I
remembered its loneliness and its comfort, the charming diffident Sybil
and Ladlaw's genial welcome. And my recollections set me puzzling again
over the letter which that morning had broken into my comfort. "You
promised us a visit this autumn," Sybil had written, "and I wish you
would come as soon as you can." So far common politeness. But she had
gone on to reveal the fact that Ladlaw was ill, she did not know how
exactly, but something, she thought, about his heart. Then she had
signed herself my affectionate cousin, and then had come a short violent
postscript, in which, as it were, the fences of convention had been laid
low. "For Heaven's sake come and see us!" she scrawled below. "Bob is
terribly ill, and I am crazy. Come at once." And then she finished with
an afterthought, "Don't bother about bringing doctors. It is not their
business."

She had assumed that I would come, and dutifully I set out. I could not
regret my decision, but I took leave to upbraid my luck. The thought of
Glenaicill with the woodcock beginning to arrive, and the Clanroydens
imploring me to stay, saddened my journey in the morning, and the murky,
coally midland country of the afternoon completed my depression. The
drive through the woodlands of More failed to raise my spirits. I was
anxious about Sybil and Ladlaw, and the accursed country had always
given me a certain eeriness on my first approaching it. You may call it
silly; but I have no nerves, and am little susceptible to vague
sentiment. It was sheer physical dislike of the rich deep soil, the
woody and antique smells, the melancholy roads and trees, and the
flavour of old mystery. I am aggressively healthy and wholly Philistine.
I love clear outlines and strong colours, and More, with its half-tints
and hazy distances, depressed me miserably. Even when the road crept
uphill and the trees ended, I found nothing to hearten me in the
moorland which succeeded. It was genuine moorland, close on 800 feet
above the sea, and through it ran this old grass-grown coach-road. Low
hills rose to the left, and to the right after some miles of peat flared
the chimneys of pits and oil-works. Straight in front the moor ran out
into the horizon, and there in the centre was the last dying spark of
the sun. The place was as still as the grave save for the crunch of our
wheels on the grassy road; but the flaring lights to the north seemed to
endow it with life. I have rarely felt so keenly the feeling of movement
in the inanimate world. It was an unquiet place, and I shivered
nervously. Little gleams of loch came from the hollows, the burns were
brown with peat, and every now and then there rose in the moor jags of
sickening red stone. I remembered that Ladlaw had talked about the place
as the old Manann, the holy land of the ancient races. I had paid little
attention at the time, but now it struck me that the old peoples had
been wise in their choice. There was something uncanny in this soil and
air. Framed in dank mysterious woods, and a country of coal and
ironstone, no great distance, too, from the capital city, it was a
sullen relic of a lost barbarism. Over the low hills lay a green
pastoral country with bright streams and valleys, but here in this peaty
desert there were few sheep and little cultivation. The House of More
was the only dwelling, and, save for the ragged village, the wilderness
was given over to the wild things of the hills. The shooting was good;
but the best shooting on earth would not persuade me to make my abode in
such a place. Ladlaw was ill; well, I did not wonder. You can have
uplands without air, moors that are not health-giving, and a country
life which is more arduous than a townsman's. I shivered again, for I
seemed to have passed in a few hours from the open noon to a kind of
dank twilight.

We passed the village and entered the lodge-gates. Here there were trees
again, little innocent new-planted firs, which flourished badly. Some
large plane-trees grew near the house, and there were thickets upon
thickets of the ugly elder. Even in the half-darkness I could see that
the lawns were trim and the flower-beds respectable for the season;
doubtless Sybil looked after the gardeners. The oblong whitewashed
house, more like a barrack than ever, opened suddenly on my sight, and I
experienced my first sense of comfort since I left Glenaicill. Here I
should find warmth and company, and, sure enough, the hall-door was wide
open, and in the great flood of light which poured from it Sybil stood
to welcome me.

She ran down the steps as I dismounted, and, with a word to the groom,
caught my arm and drew me into the shadow. "Oh, Henry, it was so good of
you to come. You mustn't let Bob think that you know he is ill. We don't
talk about it. I'll tell you afterwards. I want you to cheer him up. Now
we must go in, for he is in the hall expecting you."

While I stood blinking in the light, Ladlaw came forward with
outstretched hand and his usual cheery greeting. I looked at him and saw
nothing unnatural in his appearance: a little drawn at the lips,
perhaps, and heavy below the eyes, but still fresh-coloured and healthy.
It was Sybil who showed change. She was very pale, her pretty eyes were
deplorably mournful, and in place of her delightful shyness there was
the self-confidence and composure of pain. I was honestly shocked, and
as I dressed my heart was full of hard thoughts about Ladlaw. What could
his illness mean? He seemed well and cheerful, while Sybil was pale, and
yet it was Sybil who had written the postscript. As I warmed myself by
the fire, I resolved that this particular family difficulty was my
proper business.


2

The Ladlaws were waiting for me in the drawing-room. I noticed something
new and strange in Sybil's demeanour. She looked to her husband with a
motherly protective air, while Ladlaw, who had been the extreme of
masculine independence, seemed to cling to his wife with a curious
appealing fidelity. In conversation he did little more than echo her
words. Till dinner was announced he spoke of the weather, the shooting,
and Mabel Clanroyden. Then he did a queer thing, for, when I was about
to offer my arm to Sybil, he forestalled me, and, clutching her right
arm with his left hand, led the way to the dining-room, leaving me to
follow in some bewilderment.

I have rarely taken part in a more dismal meal. The House of More has a
pretty Georgian panelling through most of the rooms; but in the
dining-room the walls are level, and painted a dull stone colour.
Abraham offered up Isaac in a ghastly picture in front of me. Some
photographs of the Quorn hung over the mantelpiece, and five or six drab
ancestors filled up the remaining space. But one thing was new and
startling. A great marble bust, a genuine antique, frowned on me from a
pedestal. The head was in the late Roman style, clearly of some emperor,
and in its commonplace environment the great brows, the massive neck,
and the mysterious, solemn lips had a surprising effect. I nodded
towards the thing, and asked what it represented.

Ladlaw grunted something which I took for "Justinian," but he never
raised his eyes from his plate. By accident I caught Sybil's glance.
She looked towards the bust, and laid a finger on her lips.

The meal grew more doleful as it advanced. Sybil scarcely touched a
dish, but her husband ate ravenously of everything. He was a strong,
thick-set man, with a square, kindly face, burned brown by the sun. Now
he seemed to have suddenly coarsened. He gobbled with undignified haste,
and his eye was extraordinarily vacant. A question made him start, and
he would turn on me a face so strange and inert that I repented the
interruption.

I asked him about the autumn's sport, and he collected his wits with
difficulty. He thought it had been good on the whole, but he had shot
badly. He had not been quite so fit as usual. No, he had had nobody
staying with him--Sybil had wanted to be alone. He was afraid the moor
might have been under-shot, but he would make a big day with keepers and
farmers before the winter.

"Bob has done pretty well," Sybil said. "He hasn't been out often, for
the weather has been very bad here. You can have no idea, Henry, how
horrible this moorland place of ours can be when it tries. It is one
great sponge sometimes, with ugly red burns, and mud to the ankles."

"I don't think it's healthy," said I.

Ladlaw lifted his face. "Nor do I: I think it's intolerable; but I am so
busy, I can't get away."

Once again I caught Sybil's warning eye as I was about to question him
on his business.

Clearly the man's brain had received a shock, and he was beginning to
suffer from hallucinations. This could be the only explanation, for he
had always led a temperate life. The _distrait_ wandering manner was the
only sign of his malady, for otherwise he seemed normal and mediocre as
ever. My heart grieved for Sybil, alone with him in this wilderness.

Then he broke the silence. He lifted his head and looked nervously
around till his eye fell on the Roman bust.

"Do you know that this countryside is the old Manann?" he said.

It was an odd turn to the conversation, but I was glad of a sign of
intelligence. I answered that I had heard so.

"It's a queer name," he said oracularly; "but the thing it stood for was
queerer. Manann, Manaw," he repeated, rolling the words on his tongue.
As he spoke, he glanced sharply, and, as it seemed to me, fearfully, at
his left side.

The movement of his body made his napkin slip from his left knee and
fall on the floor. It leaned against his leg, and he started from its
touch as if he had been stung by a snake. I have never seen a more sheer
and transparent terror on a man's face. He got to his feet, his strong
frame shaking like a rush. Sybil ran round to his side, picked up the
napkin, and flung it on a sideboard. Then she stroked his hair as one
would stroke a frightened horse. She called him by his old boy's name of
Robin, and at her touch and voice he became quiet. But the particular
course then in progress was removed untasted.

In a few minutes he seemed to have forgotten his behaviour, for he took
up the former conversation. For a time he spoke well and briskly.

"You lawyers," he said, "understand only the dry framework of the past.
You cannot conceive the rapture, which only the antiquary can feel, of
constructing in every detail an old culture. Take this Manann. If I
could explore the secret of these moors, I would write the world's
greatest book. I would write of that prehistoric life when man was knit
close to nature. I would describe the people who were brothers of the
red earth and the red rock and the red streams of the hills. Oh, it
would be horrible, but superb, tremendous! It would be more than a piece
of history; it would be a new gospel, a new theory of life. It would
kill materialism once and for all. Why, man, all the poets who have
deified and personified nature would not do an eighth part of my work. I
would show you the unknown, the hideous, shrieking mystery at the back
of this simple nature. Men would see the profundity of the old crude
faiths which they affect to despise. I would make a picture of our
shaggy, sombre-eyed forefather, who heard strange things in the
hill-silences. I would show him brutal and terror-stricken, but wise,
wise, God alone knows how wise! The Romans knew it, and they learned
what they could from him, but he did not tell them much. But we have
some of his blood in us, and we may go deeper. Manann! A queer land
nowadays! I sometimes love it and sometimes hate it, but I always fear
it. It is like that statue, inscrutable."

I would have told him that he was talking mystical nonsense; but I had
looked towards the bust, and my rudeness was checked on my lips. The
moor might be a common piece of ugly waste land, but the statue was
inscrutable--of that there was no doubt. I hate your cruel,
heavy-mouthed Roman busts; to me they have none of the beauty of life,
and little of the interest of art. But my eyes were fastened on this as
they had never before looked on marble. The oppression of the heavy
woodlands, the mystery of the silent moor seemed to be caught and held
in this face. It was the intangible mystery of culture on the verge of
savagery, a cruel, lustful wisdom, and yet a kind of bitter austerity
which laughed at the game of life and stood aloof. There was no weakness
in the heavy-veined brow and slumbrous eyelids. It was the face of one
who had conquered the world and found it dust and ashes, one who had
eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and scorned human
wisdom. And at the same time it was the face of one who knew uncanny
things, a man who was the intimate of the half-world and the dim
background of life. Why on earth I should connect the Roman grandee[3]
with the moorland parish of More, I cannot say; but the fact remains,
that there was that in the face which I knew had haunted me through the
woodlands and bogs of the place, a sleepless, dismal, incoherent
melancholy.

"I bought that at Colenzo's," Ladlaw said, "because it took my fancy. It
matches well with this place."

I thought it matched very ill with his drab walls and Quorn photographs,
but I held my peace.

"Do you know who it is?" he asked. "It is the head of the greatest man
the world has ever seen. You are a lawyer and know your Justinian."

The Pandects are scarcely part of the daily work of a common-law
barrister. I had not looked into them since I left college.

"I know that he married an actress," I said, "and was a sort of
all-round genius. He made law and fought battles and had rows with the
Church. A curious man! And wasn't there some story about his selling his
soul to the Devil and getting law in exchange? Rather a poor bargain!"

I chattered away sillily enough, to dispel the gloom of that
dinner-table. The result of my words was unhappy. Ladlaw gasped, and
caught at his left side as if in pain. Sybil, with tragic eyes, had been
making signs to me to hold my peace. Now she ran round to her husband's
side and comforted him like a child. As she passed me she managed to
whisper in my ear to talk to her only and let her husband alone.

For the rest of dinner I obeyed my orders to the letter. Ladlaw ate his
food in gloomy silence, while I spoke to Sybil of our relatives and
friends, of London, Glenaicill, and any random subject. The poor girl
was dismally forgetful, and her eye would wander to her husband with
wifely anxiety. I remember being suddenly overcome by the comic aspect
of it all. Here were we three fools alone in this dank upland, one of us
sick and nervous, talking out-of-the-way nonsense about Manann and
Justinian, gobbling his food and getting scared at his napkin, another
gravely anxious, and myself at my wits' end for a solution. It was a Mad
Tea-party with a vengeance, Sybil the melancholy little Dormouse, and
Ladlaw the incomprehensible Hatter. I laughed aloud, but checked myself
when I caught my cousin's eye. It was really no case for finding
humour. Ladlaw was very ill, and Sybil's face was getting deplorably
thin.

I welcomed the end of that meal with unmannerly joy, for I wanted to
speak seriously with my host. Sybil told the butler to have the lamps
lit in the library. Then she leaned over to me and spoke low and
rapidly: "I want you to talk with Bob. I'm sure you can do him good.
You'll have to be very patient with him and very gentle. Oh please try
and find out what is wrong with him. He won't tell me, and I can only
guess."

The butler returned with word that the library was ready to receive us,
and Sybil rose to go. Ladlaw half rose, protesting, making the most
curious, feeble clutches at his side. His wife quieted him. "Henry will
look after you, dear," she said. "You are going into the library to
smoke." Then she slipped from the room, and we were left alone.

He caught my arm fiercely with his left hand, and his grip nearly made
me cry out. As we walked down the hall I could feel his arm twitching
from the elbow to the shoulder. Clearly he was in pain, and I set it
down to some form of cardiac affection, which might possibly issue in
paralysis.

I settled him in the biggest arm-chair, and took one of his cigars. The
library is the pleasantest room in the house, and at night, when a
peat-fire burned on the old hearth and the great red curtains were
drawn, it used to be the place for comfort and good talk. Now I noticed
changes. Ladlaw's book-shelves had been filled with the proceedings of
antiquarian societies and many light-hearted works in _belles-lettres_.
But now the Badminton Library had been cleared out of a shelf where it
stood most convenient to the hand, and its place taken by an old Leyden
reprint of Justinian. There were books on Byzantine subjects of which I
never dreamed he had heard the names. There were volumes of history and
speculation, all of a slightly bizarre kind; and to crown everything,
there were several bulky medical works with gaudily coloured plates. The
old atmosphere of sport and travel had gone from the room, with the
medley of rods, whips, and gun-cases which used to cumber the tables.
Now the place was moderately tidy and slightly learned--and I did not
like it.

Ladlaw refused to smoke, and sat for a little while in silence. Then of
his own accord he broke the tension,--

"It was devilish good of you to come, Harry. This is a lonely place for
a man who is a bit seedy."

"I thought you might be alone," I said, "so I looked you up on my way
down from Glenaicill. I'm sorry to find you looking ill."

"Do you notice it?" he asked sharply.

"It's tolerably patent," I said. "Have you seen a doctor?"

He said something uncomplimentary about doctors, and kept looking at me
with his curious dull eyes.

I remarked the strange posture in which he sat--his head screwed round
to his right shoulder, and his whole body a protest against something at
his left hand.

"It looks like your heart," I said. "You seem to have pains in your left
side."

Again a spasm of fear. I went over to him and stood at the back of his
chair.

"Now, for goodness' sake, my dear fellow, tell me what is wrong? You're
scaring Sybil to death. It's lonely work for the poor girl, and I wish
you would let me help you."

He was lying back in his chair now, with his eyes half shut, and
shivering like a frightened colt. The extraordinary change in one who
had been the strongest of the strong kept me from realising its
gravity. I put a hand on his shoulder, but he flung it off.

"For God's sake sit down!" he said hoarsely. "I'm going to tell you; but
I'll never make you understand."

I sat down promptly opposite him.

"It's the Devil," he said very solemnly. I am afraid that I was rude
enough to laugh. He took no notice, but sat with the same tense,
miserable air, staring over my head.

"Right," said I. "Then it is the Devil. It's a new complaint, so it's as
well I did not bring a doctor. How does it affect you?" He made the old
impotent clutch at the air with his left hand. I had the sense to become
grave at once. Clearly this was some mental affection, some
hallucination born of physical pain.

Then he began to talk in a low voice, very rapidly, with his head bent
forward like a hunted animal's. I am not going to set down what he told
me in his own words, for they were incoherent often, and there was much
repetition. But I am going to write the gist of the odd story which took
my sleep away on that autumn night, with such explanations and additions
as I think needful. The fire died down, the wind arose, the hour grew
late, and still he went on in his mumbling recitative. I forgot to
smoke, forgot my comfort,--everything but the odd figure of my friend
and his inconceivable romance. And the night before I had been in
cheerful Glenaicill!

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

He had returned to the House of More, he said, in the latter part of
May, and shortly after he fell ill. It was a trifling
sickness--influenza or something--but he had never quite recovered. The
rainy weather of June depressed him, and the extreme heat of July made
him listless and weary. A kind of insistent sleepiness hung over him,
and he suffered much from nightmare. Towards the end of July his former
health returned; but he was haunted with a curious oppression. He seemed
to himself to have lost the art of being alone. There was a perpetual
sound in his left ear, a kind of moving and rustling at his left side,
which never left him by night or day. In addition he had become the prey
of nerves and an insensate dread of the unknown.

Ladlaw, as I have explained, was a commonplace man, with fair talents, a
mediocre culture, honest instincts, and the beliefs and incredulities of
his class. On abstract grounds I should have declared him an unlikely
man to be the victim of a hallucination. He had a kind of dull,
bourgeois rationalism, which used to find reasons for all things in
heaven and earth. At first he controlled his dread with proverbs. He
told himself it was the sequel of his illness, or the light-headedness
of summer heat on the moors. But it soon outgrew his comfort. It became
a living second presence, an _alter ego_ which dogged his footsteps. He
became acutely afraid of it. He dared not be alone for a moment, and
clung to Sybil's company despairingly. She went off for a week's visit
in the beginning of August, and be endured for seven days the tortures
of the lost. His malady advanced upon him with swift steps. The presence
became more real daily. In the early dawning, in the twilight, and in
the first hours of the morning it seemed at times to take a visible
bodily form. A kind of amorphous featureless shadow would run from his
side into the darkness, and he would sit palsied with terror. Sometimes
in lonely places his footsteps sounded double, and something would brush
elbows with him. Human society alone exorcised it. With Sybil at his
side he was happy; but as soon as she left him the thing came slinking
back from the unknown to watch by him. Company might have saved him,
but joined to his affliction was a crazy dread of his fellows. He would
not leave his moorland home, but must bear his burden alone among the
wild streams and mosses of that dismal place.

The Twelfth came, and he shot wretchedly, for his nerve had gone to
pieces. He stood exhaustion badly, and became a dweller about the doors.
But with this bodily inertness came an extraordinary intellectual
revival. He read widely in a blundering way, and he speculated
unceasingly. It was characteristic of the man that, as soon as he left
the paths of the prosaic, he should seek his supernatural in a very
concrete form. He assumed that he was haunted by the Devil--the visible,
personal Devil in whom our fathers believed. He waited hourly for the
shape at his side to speak, but no words came. The Accuser of the
Brethren in all but tangible form was his ever-present companion. He
felt, he declared, the spirit of old evil entering subtly into his
blood. He sold his soul many times over, and yet there was no
possibility of resistance. It was a Visitation more undeserved than
Job's, and a thousandfold more awful.

For a week or more he was tortured with a kind of religious mania. When
a man of a healthy, secular mind finds himself adrift on the terrible
ocean of religious troubles, he is peculiarly helpless, for he has not
the most rudimentary knowledge of the winds and tides. It was useless to
call up his old carelessness; he had suddenly dropped into a new world
where old proverbs did not apply. And all the while, mind you, there was
the shrieking terror of it--an intellect all alive to the torture and
the most unceasing physical fear. For a little he was on the near edge
of idiocy.

Then by accident it took a new form. While sitting with Sybil one day in
the library, he began listlessly to turn over the leaves of an old book.
He read a few pages, and found the hint of a story like his own. It was
some French life of Justinian, one of the unscholarly productions of
last century, made up of stories from Procopius and tags of Roman law.
Here was his own case written down in black and white; and the man had
been a king of kings! This was a new comfort, and for a little--strange
though it may seem--he took a sort of pride in his affliction. He
worshipped the great emperor and read every scrap he could find on him,
not excepting the Pandects and the Digest. He sent for the bust in the
dining-room, paying a fabulous price. Then he settled himself to study
his imperial prototype, and the study became an idolatry. As I have
said, Ladlaw was a man of ordinary talents and certainly of meagre
imaginative power. And yet from the lies of the 'Secret History' and the
crudities of German legalists he had constructed a marvellous portrait
of a man. Sitting there in the half-lit room, he drew the picture,--the
quiet, cold king with his inheritance of Dacian mysticism, holding the
great world in fee, giving it law and religion, fighting its wars,
building its churches, and yet all the while intent upon his own private
work of making his peace with his soul. The churchman and warrior whom
all the world worshipped, and yet one going through life with his lip
quivering, the Watcher by the Threshold ever at his left side. Sometimes
at night in the great Brazen Palace, warders heard the emperor walking
in the dark corridors, alone and yet not alone; for once, when a servant
entered with a lamp, he saw his master with a face as of another world,
and something beside him which had no face or shape, but which he knew
to be that hoary Evil which is older than the stars. Crazy nonsense! I
had to rub my eyes to assure myself that I was not sleeping. No! There
was my friend with his suffering face, and it was the library of More.

And then he spoke of Theodora--actress, harlot, _dévote_, empress. For
him the lady was but another part of the uttermost horror, a form of the
shapeless thing at his side. I felt myself falling under the
fascination. I have no nerves and little imagination, but in a flash I
seemed to realise something of that awful featureless face, crouching
ever at a man's hand, till darkness and loneliness comes and it rises to
its mastery. I shivered as I looked at the man in the chair before me.
Those dull eyes of his were looking upon things I could not see, and I
saw their terror. I realised that it was grim earnest for him. Nonsense
or no, some devilish fancy had usurped the place of sanity, and he was
being slowly broken upon the wheel. And then, when his left hand
twitched, I almost cried out. I had thought it comic before; now it
seemed the last proof of tragedy.

He stopped, and I got up with loose knees and went to the window. Better
the black night than the intangible horror within. I flung up the sash
and looked out across the moor. There was no light, nothing but an inky
darkness and the uncanny rustle of elder-bushes. The sound chilled me,
and I closed the window.

"The land is the old Manann," Ladlaw was saying. "We are beyond the pale
here. Do you hear the wind?"

I forced myself back into sanity and looked at my watch. It was nearly
one o'clock.

"What ghastly idiots we are!" I said. "I am off to bed."

Ladlaw looked at me helplessly. "For God's sake don't leave me alone!"
he moaned. "Get Sybil."

We went together back to the hall, while he kept the same feverish grip
on my arm. Some one was sleeping in a chair by the hall-fire, and to my
distress I recognised my hostess. The poor child must have been sadly
wearied. She came forward with her anxious face.

"I'm afraid Bob has kept you very late, Henry," she said. "I hope you
will sleep well. Breakfast at nine, you know." And then I left them.

Over my bed there was a little picture, a reproduction of some Italian
work of Christ and the Demoniac. Some impulse made me hold my candle up
to it. The madman's face was torn with passion and suffering, and his
eye had the pained furtive look which I had come to know. And by his
left side there was a dim shape crouching.

I got into bed hastily, but not to sleep. I felt that my reason must be
going. I had been pitchforked from our clear and cheerful modern life
into the mists of old superstition. Old tragic stories of my Calvinist
upbringing returned to haunt me. The man dwelt in by a devil was no new
fancy; but I believed that Science had docketed and analysed and
explained the Devil out of the world. I remembered my dabblings in the
occult before I settled down to law--the story of Donisarius, the monk
of Padua, the unholy legend of the Face of Proserpina, the tales of
_succubi_ and _incubi_, the Leannain Sith and the Hidden Presence. But
here was something stranger still. I had stumbled upon that very
possession which fifteen hundred years ago had made the monks of New
Rome tremble and cross themselves. Some devilish occult force, lingering
through the ages, had come to life after a long sleep. God knows what
earthly connection there was between the splendid Emperor of the World
and my prosaic friend, or between the glittering shores of the Bosphorus
and this moorland parish! But the land was the old Manann! The spirit
may have lingered in the earth and air, a deadly legacy from Pict and
Roman. I had felt the uncanniness of the place; I had augured ill of it
from the first. And then in sheer disgust I rose and splashed my face
with cold water.

I lay down again, laughing miserably at my credulity. That I, the sober
and rational, should believe in this crazy fable, was too palpably
absurd. I would steel my mind resolutely against such harebrained
theories. It was a mere bodily ailment,--liver out of order, weak heart,
bad circulation, or something of that sort. At the worst it might be
some affection of the brain to be treated by a specialist. I vowed to
myself that next morning the best doctor in Edinburgh should be brought
to More.

The worst of it was that my duty compelled me to stand my ground. I
foresaw the few remaining weeks of my holiday blighted. I should be tied
to this moorland prison, a sort of keeper and nurse in one, tormented by
silly fancies. It was a charming prospect, and the thought of Glenaicill
and the woodcock made me bitter against Ladlaw. But there was no way out
of it. I might do Ladlaw good, and I could not have Sybil worn to death
by his vagaries.

My ill-nature comforted me, and I forgot the horror of the thing in its
vexation. After that, I think I fell asleep and dozed uneasily till
morning. When I awoke I was in a better frame of mind. The early sun had
worked wonders with the moorland. The low hills stood out fresh-coloured
and clear against the pale October sky, the elders sparkled with frost,
the raw film of morn was rising from the little loch in tiny clouds. It
was a cold rousing day, and I dressed in good spirits and went down to
breakfast.

I found Ladlaw looking ruddy and well, very different from the broken
man I remembered of the night before. We were alone, for Sybil was
breakfasting in bed. I remarked on his ravenous appetite, and he smiled
cheerily. He made two jokes during the meal, he laughed often, and I
began to forget the events of the previous day. It seemed to me that I
might still flee from More with a clear conscience. He had forgotten
about his illness. When I touched distantly upon the matter he showed a
blank face.

It might be that the affection had passed: on the other hand, it might
return to him at the darkening--I had no means to decide. His manner was
still a trifle _distrait_ and peculiar, and I did not like the dulness
in his eye. At any rate, I should spend the day in his company, and the
evening would decide the question.

I proposed shooting, which he promptly vetoed. He was no good at
walking, he said, and the birds were wild. This seriously limited the
possible occupations. Fishing there was none, and hill-climbing was out
of the question. He proposed a game at billiards, and I pointed to the
glory of the morning. It would have been sacrilege to waste such
sunshine in knocking balls about. Finally we agreed to drive somewhere
and have lunch, and he ordered the dog-cart.

In spite of all forebodings I enjoyed the day. We drove in the opposite
direction from the woodland parts, right away across the moor to the
coal-country beyond. We lunched at the little mining town of Borrowmuir,
in a small and noisy public-house. The roads made bad going, the country
was far from pretty, and yet the drive did not bore me. Ladlaw talked
incessantly, talked as I had never heard man talk before. There was
something indescribable in all he said,--a different point of view, a
lost groove of thought, a kind of innocence and archaic shrewdness in
one. I can only give you a hint of it by saying that it was like the
mind of an early ancestor placed suddenly among modern surroundings. It
was wise with a remote wisdom, and silly (now and then) with a quite
antique and distant silliness.

I will give you instances of both. He provided me with a theory of
certain early fortifications, which must be true, which commends itself
to the mind with overwhelming conviction, and yet which is so out of the
way of common speculation that no man could have guessed it. I do not
propose to set down the details, for I am working at it on my own
account. Again, he told me the story of an old marriage custom, which
till recently survived in this district,--told it with full
circumstantial detail and constant allusions to other customs which he
could not possibly have known of. Now for the other side. He explained
why well-water is in winter warmer than a running stream, and this was
his explanation. At the Antipodes our winter is summer; consequently the
water of a well which comes through from the other side of the earth
must be warm in winter and cold in summer, since in our summer it is
winter there. You perceive what this is. It is no mere silliness, but a
genuine effort of an early mind which had just grasped the fact of the
Antipodes, to use it in explanation.

Gradually I was forced to the belief that it was not Ladlaw who was
talking to me, but something speaking through him, something at once
wiser and simpler. My old fear of the Devil began to depart. This
spirit, this exhalation, whatever it was, was ingenuous in its way, at
least in its daylight aspect. For a moment I had an idea that it was a
real reflex of Byzantine thought, and that by cross-examining I might
make marvellous discoveries. The ardour of the scholar began to rise in
me, and I asked a question about that much-debated point, the legal
status of the _apocrisiarii_. To my vexation he gave no response.
Clearly the intelligence of this familiar had its limits.

It was about three in the afternoon, and we had gone half of our
homeward journey, when signs of the old terror began to appear. I was
driving, and Ladlaw sat on my left. I noticed him growing nervous and
silent shivering at the flick of the whip, and turning half-way round
towards me. Then he asked me to change places, and I had the unpleasant
work of driving from the wrong side. After that I do not think he spoke
once till we arrived at More, but sat huddled together with the
driving-rug almost up to his chin--an eccentric figure of a man.

I foresaw another such night as the last, and I confess my heart sank. I
had no stomach for more mysteries, and somehow with the approach of
twilight the confidence of the day departed. The thing appeared in
darker colours, and I could have found it in my mind to turn coward.
Sybil alone deterred me. I could not bear to think of her alone with
this demented being. I remembered her shy timidity, her innocence. It
was monstrous that the poor thing should be called on thus to fight
alone with phantoms. So I braced myself for another evening.

When we came to the House it was almost sunset. Ladlaw got out very
carefully on the right side, and for a second stood by the horse. The
sun was making our shadows long, and as I stood beyond him, it seemed
for a moment that his shadow was double. It may have been mere fancy,
for I had not time to look twice. He was standing, as I have said, with
his left side next the horse. Suddenly the harmless elderly cob fell
into a very panic of fright, reared upright, and all but succeeded in
killing its master. I was in time to pluck Ladlaw from under its feet,
but the beast had become perfectly unmanageable, and we left a groom
struggling to quiet it.

In the hall the butler gave me a telegram. It was from my clerk,
summoning me back at once to an important consultation.


II: THE MINISTER INTERVENES

Here was a prompt removal of my scruples! There could be no question of
my remaining, for the case was one of the first importance, which I had
feared might break up my holiday. The consultation fell in vacation-time
to meet the convenience of certain people who were going abroad, and
there was the most instant demand for my presence. I must go and at
once; and, as I hunted in the time-table, I found that in five hours'
time a night-train for the South would pass Borrowmuir, which might be
stopped by special wire. This would give me time for dinner and a
comfortable departure.

But I had no pleasure in my freedom, for I was in despair about Sybil. I
must return to More--that was clear; and I must find some one to look
after Ladlaw. I found my cousin in the drawing-room alone and told her
my plans.

She was very pale and fragile, and she seemed to shiver as the prospect
of solitude returned to her. I spoke with all the carelessness I could
muster. "I am coming back," I said. "Don't think you have got rid of me
so easily. It is most unpleasant to have to travel eight hundred miles
in thirty-six hours, but there is no help for it. I ought to be back
again by Friday morning. And you know Bob is much better. He was quite
like his old self driving to-day."

My words comforted the poor child, and I went away with the novel
feeling of a good conscience. Frankly, I hate the sordid and unpleasant.
I am honestly a sun-worshipper; I have small taste for arduous duty, and
the quixotic is my abhorrence. My professional success is an accident,
for Lord knows I had no impulse to contend and little ambition. But
somewhere or other I have the rudiments of an austere conscience. It
gives me no peace, and as I love a quiet life, I do its bidding with a
grumble. Now I grumbled fiercely in spirit, but outwardly I was a model
of virtuous cheerfulness.

But to find somebody to keep Ladlaw company--there was the rub. I racked
my brains to think of a substitute. It must be a man of some education
and not a mere servant, and it must be somebody in the parish of More;
the conjunction seemed for the moment impossible. Then a brilliant idea
struck me. There was the minister of Morebrig, the ugly village by the
roadside. I remembered him on previous visits. He was a burly young man,
with a high complexion and a drooping blonde moustache, who smoked cheap
cigarettes incessantly, and spat. He had been what they call a
"brilliant student," and he was reported to be something of an orator,
eagerly sought after by city congregations, but at present hiding his
light under the bushel of Morebrig to allow him time to prepare some
great theological work. Ladlaw had liked him in a half-amused and
tolerant way, and he used to come sometimes to dine. His name was Bruce
Oliphant, and he inhabited a dark manse at the outskirts of the village.

I had an hour before dinner, and I set out for Mr Oliphant's dwelling. I
remember the curious dull village street, without colour or life, drab
women looking out of dingy doorways, and a solitary child playing in the
red mud. The manse stood at the back of the usual elder thicket, a
little place with small windows and a weather-stained front door. A
gaunt old servant ushered me into Mr Oliphant's study, where I found
that young man smoking and reading a weekly paper. It was a room well
stocked with books in the popular religious vein, and the Poets in gilt
editions adorned his shelves. Mr Oliphant greeted me with the nervous
ease of one who would fain cultivate a good manner. The first sight of
him sent my hopes down. He had a large calf-like face, mildly arrogant
eyes, and a chin which fell sharply away beneath the eaves of his
moustache. This was not one to do Ladlaw much good; indeed I questioned
if I could ever make him understand, for the man before me had an
impenetrable air of omniscience.

"I have come to ask you a great favour on behalf of the Ladlaws," said
I. "You are the only other gentleman in the parish of More, and it is
your duty to help your neighbours."

He bowed, with pleased eyes. "Anything," he said. "I'll be very glad."

"I am staying there just now, you know, and as it happens I must go back
to town by the night-train. I'll only be gone a day, but you know that
Ladlaw is a melancholy beggar and gets low-spirited. Now I want you to
go up and stay at the House for a couple of nights while I am away."

It was an odd request, and he stared at me. "Why, what's wrong with Mr
Ladlaw?" he asked. "I should never have called him melancholy. Now, his
lady is different. She always looks a little pale. Did she send you to
ask me?" Mr Oliphant was a stickler for the usages of polite society.

I sat down in a chair and took one of his cigarettes. "Now, look here,
Oliphant," I said. "You are a man of education and common-sense, and I
am going to do you the honour to tell you a story which I would not tell
to a stupid man. A stupid man would laugh at me. I hope you will see the
gravity of the thing."

I told him briefly the points in Ladlaw's case. His eyes grew very round
as I went on, and when I finished he laughed nervously. He was clearly
impressed; but he was too ignorant and unimaginative to understand
fully, and he had his credit as a representative of modern thought to
support. "Oh, come now! You don't mean all that; I never heard the like
of it. You can't expect me as a Christian man to believe in a Pagan
spirit. I might as well believe in ghosts at once. What has the familiar
of a heathen emperor to do with this parish?"

"Justinian was a Christian," I said.

He looked puzzled. "It's all preposterous. Meaning no disrespect to you,
I must decline to believe it. My profession compels me to discourage
such nonsense."

"So does mine," I said wearily. "Good Lord! man, do you think I came
here to tell you a fairy tale? It's the most terrible earnest. Now I
want you to give me an answer, for I have very little time."

He was still incredulous and inclined to argue. "Do you know if Mr
Ladlaw has been--eh--a strictly temperate man?" he asked.

With this my patience departed. I got up to go, with rude thoughts on
the stupidity of the clergy. But Mr Oliphant was far from a refusal. He
had no objection to exchange the barren comfort of the manse for the
comparative luxury of the House, and he had no distrust of his power to
enliven. As he accompanied me to the door he explained his position.
"You see, if they really want me I will come. Tell Mrs Ladlaw that I
shall be delighted. Mrs Ladlaw is a lady for whom I have a great
respect."

"So have I," I said crossly. "Very well. A trap shall be sent for you
after dinner. Good evening, Mr Oliphant. It is a pleasure to have met
you."

When I reached the House, I told Sybil of my arrangement. For the first
time since my arrival she smiled. "It's very kind of him, but I am
afraid he won't do much good. Bob will frighten him away."

"I fancy he won't. The man is strong in his self-confidence and
remarkably dense. He'll probably exasperate Bob into sanity. In any case
I'll be back by Friday morning."

As I drove away the trap arrived at the door, bringing Mr Oliphant and
his portmanteau.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

The events of the next twenty-four hours, during which I was travelling
in the Scotch express or transacting dreary business in my chambers, are
known only from the narrative of the minister. He wrote it out some
weeks after at my request, for I wished to have all the links in the
tale. I propose to give the gist of it, as he wrote it, stripped of
certain reflections on human life and an inscrutable Providence, with
which he had garnished it.


_Narrative of the Reverend Mr Oliphant_

I arrived at the House of More at a quarter-past eight on the Wednesday
evening. The family had dined early, as Mr Grey was leaving for London,
and when I arrived I was taken to the library, where I found Mr Ladlaw.
I had not seen him for some time, and thought him looking pale and a
little haggard. He seemed glad to see me, and made me sit down in a
chair on his left and draw it up close to him. I wondered at his manner,
for though we had always been on good terms he had never admitted me to
any close intimacy. But now he was more than amiable. He made me ring
for toddy, and though he refused to taste it himself, he pressed the
beverage on me. Then he gave me a large cigar, at which I trembled, and
finally he said that we should play at picquet. I declined resolutely,
for it is part of my conscience to refuse to join in any card games; but
he made no trouble, and indeed in a moment seemed to have forgotten his
proposition.

The next thing he did startled my composure. For he asked abruptly, "Do
you believe in a living personal Devil, Oliphant?"

I was taken aback, but answered that to the best of my light I did not.

"And why not?" he asked sharply,

I explained that it was an old, false, anthropomorphic fiction, and that
the modern belief was infinitely more impressive. I quoted the words of
Dr Rintoul, one of our Church leaders. I am sorry to say that Mr
Ladlaw's words were, "Dr Rintoul be d--d!"

"Who the deuce are you to change the belief of centuries?" he cried.
"Our forefathers believed in him. They saw him at evening slinking about
the folds and peat-stacks, or wrapped up in a black gown standing in the
pulpits of the Kirk. Are we wiser men than they?"

I answered that culture had undoubtedly advanced in our day.

Mr Ladlaw replied with blasphemous words on modern culture. I had
imagined him to be a gentleman of considerable refinement, and I knew he
had taken a good degree at college. Consequently, I was disagreeably
surprised at his new manner.

"You are nothing better than an ignorant parson,"--these were his
words,--"and you haven't even the merits of your stupid profession. The
old Scots ministers were Calvinists to the backbone, and they were
strong men--strong men, do you hear?--and they left their mark upon the
nation. But your new tea-meeting kind of parson, who has nothing but a
smattering of bad German to commend him, is a nuisance to God and man.
And they don't believe in the Devil! Well, he'll get them safe enough
some day."

I implored him to remember my cloth, and curb his bad language.

"I say the Devil will get you all safe enough some day," he repeated.

I rose to retire in as dignified a manner as possible, but he was before
me and closed the door. I began to be genuinely frightened.

"For God's sake, don't go!" he cried. "Don't leave me alone. Do sit
down, Oliphant, like a good chap, and I promise to hold my tongue. You
don't know how horrible it is to be left alone."

I sat down again, though my composure was shaken. I remembered Mr Grey's
words about the strange sickness.

Then Mr Ladlaw fell into an extraordinary moodiness. He sat huddled up
in his chair, his face turned away from me, and for some time neither of
us spoke a word. I thought that I had seriously offended him, and
prepared to apologise, so I touched his left shoulder to attract his
attention. Instantly he jumped to his feet, screaming, and turned on me
a face of utter terror. I could do nothing but stare at him, and in a
second he quieted down and returned to his seat.

Then he became partially sane, and murmured a sort of excuse. I thought
that I would discover what truth lay in Mr Grey's singular hypothesis. I
did not ask him bluntly, as an ordinary man would have done, what was
his malady, but tactfully, as I thought then, I led the conversation to
demoniacal possession in the olden time, and quoted Pellinger's theory
on the Scriptural cases. He answered with extraordinary vehemence,
showing a childish credulity I little expected from an educated man.

"I see that you hold to the old interpretation," I said pleasantly.
"Nowadays, we tend to find the solution in natural causes."

"Heavens, man!" he cried. "What do you mean by natural? You haven't the
most rudimentary knowledge of nature. Listen to me, and I will tell you
something."

And with this he began a long rambling account of something which I
could not understand. He talked much about a name which sounded like
Canaan, and then he wandered to another subject and talked about
Proserpina, whom I remembered from Mr Matthew Arnold's poem. I would
have thought him trying to ridicule me, if I had not seen his face,
which was white and drawn with pain; and, again, I would have thought
him drunk, but for his well-known temperate habits. By-and-by even my
nerves, which are very strong, began to suffer. I understood fragments
of his talk, and the understanding did not reassure me. It was poisonous
nonsense, but it had a terrible air of realism. He had a queer habit of
catching at his heart like a man with the heart disease, and his eyes
were like a mad dog's I once saw, the pupil drawn to a pin-point with
fear. I could not bear it, so I tried to break the spell. I offered,
against my conscience, to play a card game, but his face showed that he
did not understand me. I began to feel a sort of languor of terror. I
could hardly rise from my chair, and when at last I got up the whole
room seemed haunted. I rushed to the bell and rang it violently, and
then tried to open the door. But he was before me again, and gripped my
arm so fiercely that I cried out between the pain and my dread of him.

"Come back!" he cried hoarsely. "Don't leave me alone. For God's sake,
Oliphant!"

Just then the man-servant opened the door, and found the two of us
standing like lunatics. I had the sense to save the situation, and I
asked him to bring more coals for the fire. Then as soon as he turned to
go, I stepped out of the open door before Mr Ladlaw could prevent me.

The hall seemed empty, but to my surprise I found Mrs Ladlaw sleeping
in a chair by the fire. I did not like to waken her, but I was at my
wits' end with fright. If I had known the way to the kitchen, I should
have sought the servants' company. I ran down a passage, but it seemed
to end in a blind wall, and in a great fear I turned and ran upstairs.
But the upper lobbies seemed to be unlit, and I was turning back when I
heard Ladlaw's voice behind me. It was muffled and queer, and the sound
drove me into the darkness. When I turned a corner, to my relief I saw a
lamp burning on a table and recognised my bedroom door. Here was
sanctuary at last, and I ran in and shut it behind me.

My nerves were so shaken by the evening's performances that I found it
impossible to get to sleep. I sat up the better part of the night by the
fire, and smoked several cigarettes, which in ordinary circumstances I
should never have dared to do in a strange bedroom. About four o'clock,
I think, I dozed off in my chair, and awoke about nine, very stiff and
cold, to find Ladlaw laughing at me in the doorway.

I was at first so confused that I did not remember what had scared me
the night before. Then, as it came back to me, I was amazed at my
host's appearance. He looked fresh and well, and in excellent spirits.
He laughed immoderately when he found I had not gone to bed.

"You do look cheap," he said. "Breakfast's in half an hour. You will
feel better when you have had a tub."

I bathed reluctantly, feeling ill and bitterly cold; but I was comforted
by a good breakfast. Then I had an opportunity of talking to Mrs Ladlaw.
As I remembered her, she had been full of gaiety, and even, I thought, a
little frivolous; but now she was so pale and silent that I pitied her
sincerely. I began to feel an intense dislike of her husband, partly for
the fright he had given me the night before, and partly for the effect
his silliness seemed to be having on his wife. The day was a fine one,
but after breakfast he showed no intention of going out. I expected to
be asked to shoot, a sport which I sometimes try; but he never spoke of
it, and insisted on my coming to the billiard-room. As we were leaving
the table Mrs Ladlaw touched my arm, and asked me in a low tone if I
would promise to stay all day with her husband. "I want to go down to
Morefoot," she said, "and you know he cannot be left alone." I promised
willingly, for in the daylight Mr Ladlaw had no terrors for me. I
thought that Mrs Ladlaw looked relieved. Poor thing! she badly needed a
respite.

We hung aimlessly about the place till lunch, playing a few games of
billiards, and in the intervals looking at stables and harness-rooms and
the now barren gardens. At lunch Mrs Ladlaw appeared, but immediately
after I heard wheels on the gravel and knew that she had gone to
Morefoot. Then I began to feel nervous again. I was the only responsible
person left in the place, and Mr Ladlaw might at any moment relapse into
craziness. I watched his moods anxiously, and talked all the nonsense I
knew to keep him in good humour. I told him stories, I talked wildly of
sport, I made ridiculous jokes at which I felt myself blushing. At first
he seemed amused, but soon I felt that my words were falling on deaf
ears. He himself began to talk, violently, incessantly, and, I may say,
brilliantly. If my memory had been better and my balance less upset, I
might have made my reputation, though it would have been a reputation,
perhaps, that a minister of the Gospel might well look askance at. I
could have written a terrible romance from that man's babbling. Nay, I
could have done more: I could have composed a new philosophy which would
have cast Nietzsche in the shade for ever. I do not wish to exaggerate,
but I have never been so impressed with a sense of a crazy intellectual
acumen. This Mr Ladlaw, whom I had known as a good landlord and a
respectable country gentleman, now appeared as a kind of horrible
genius, a brilliant and malignant satyr. I was shocked and confounded,
and at the same time filled with admiration. I remember that we passed
through the dining-room, where there was a great marble bust of a Roman
emperor, an old discoloured thing, but wonderful in its way. Mr Ladlaw
stopped before it and pointed out its merits. The thing seemed simple
enough, and yet after the description I fled from it as if it had been a
devil. He followed me, still talking, and we found ourselves in the
library.

I remember that I suggested tea, but he scarcely heeded me. The darkness
was falling, Mrs Ladlaw had not returned, and I felt horribly
uncomfortable. I tried to draw him away from the room which I feared,
but he made no sign of understanding. I perceived that the malady of the
last night was returning. I hated that library, with its low fire, its
ghastly white books, and its dreary outlook. I picked up one volume,
and it was lettered on the back 'Sancti Adelberti Certamina.' I dropped
it, only to feel Mr Ladlaw clutching my right arm and dragging me to one
of those horrible arm-chairs.

"The night is coming on, the old Nox Atra that the monks dreaded.
Promise me that you won't go away."

I promised feebly, and prayed for Mrs Ladlaw's return. I suggested that
the lamps should be lit. He rose and tried to light the hanging central
one, and I noticed how his hands trembled. His awkwardness upset the
thing, and it fell with a crash on the floor. He jumped back with a
curious scream like an animal.

I was so miserably scared that I had not the heart to do the work for
him, so we sat on in the darkness. Any sound from the out-of-doors would
have comforted me, but the whole world was as silent as death. I felt
that a little more would drive me mad, and the thought roused me to make
a final effort after safety. In spite of all my promises I must get
away. A man's first duty was to himself, and the hour had come for me. I
thought with longing of my little bare manse and my solemn housekeeper.
And yet how was I to escape, for this man was the stronger, and he
would never let me go.

I begged him to come into the hall, but he refused. Then I became very
cunning. I suggested that we should go to the door and receive Mrs
Ladlaw. He did not know that she had gone, and the news made him so
nervous that he accepted my proposal. He caught my arm as before, and,
leaning heavily upon me, went into the hall. There was no one about, and
the fire had died down; but at the far end there was a pale glimmer from
the glass door. We opened it and stood on the top step, looking over the
dark lawns. Now was the time for an effort for freedom. If I could only
get rid of his hand I might escape across the fields. I believed him to
be too weak on his legs to follow me, and in any case I was a
respectable runner. Out of doors he seemed less formidable: it was only
in that haunted room that I shuddered.

I took the only way of escape which presented itself. There was a
flowering-shrub in a pot on the top of the parapet. I caught this with
my elbow and knocked it over, so that it broke with a clatter on the
stone. As I expected, he screamed and jumped aside, letting go my arm
for one instant. The next I was down the steps and running hard across
the lawns to the park beyond.

For a little I heard him stumbling after me, breathing heavily and with
little short cries. I ran with the speed of fear, for till I was within
my own doors I could feel no security. Once I turned and there he was, a
field behind me, running with his head down like a blind dog. I skirted
the village, broke through the little fir plantation, and came out on
the highway. I saw the light from Jean's little window, and it was like
a beacon of hope. In a few minutes I was at the door, and my servant
stared as I rushed in, without hat or overcoat, and wet with
perspiration. I insisted on barring the doors, and bolting and
shuttering every window. Then I had the unusual luxury of a fire in my
bedroom, and there I supped, and sat till I fell asleep.

_End of Mr Oliphant's Statement_


III: EVENTS ON THE UPLANDS

I returned from town by the night express, which landed me at Borrowmuir
about seven on the Friday morning. To my surprise there was no dog-cart
to meet me, as had been arranged, and I was compelled to hire from the
inn. The omission filled me with forebodings. Things must have gone
badly at More in my absence, or the careful Sybil would never have
forgotten. I grudged the time occupied in that weary drive. The horse
seemed intolerably slow, the roads unaccountably steep. It was a sharp
morning, with haze on the fields and promise of bright sunshine at
midday; but, tired as I was with my two days' journey, I was in the
humour to see little good in my case. I was thankful when we drew up at
the house-door, and, cold and stiff, I hobbled up the steps.

The door was open, and I entered. The hall was empty, there was no sign
of any servant, and all the doors were wide to the wall. I tried one
room after another without success. Then I made my voice heard in that
place. I shouted for Ladlaw, and then I shouted for Sybil. There came no
answer, and in despair I rushed to the kitchen wing. There I found a
cluster of frightened maids, and by dint of much questioning learned the
truth.

Ladlaw, it seemed, had disappeared from the house about a quarter-past
six on the previous night. The minister had decamped and found sanctuary
in the manse; but there was no trace of the other. Sybil had gone to
Morefoot in the afternoon, and, returning about half-past six, found
her husband gone. She had been distracted with anxiety, had gone to the
manse, where she found Mr Oliphant in a state of nervous collapse and
quite unable to make any coherent statement, and had then roused some of
the neighbouring shepherds and organised a search-party. They had
searched all night, but so far no word had come of the result.
Meanwhile, Sybil, utterly wearied and a little hysterical, was in bed,
sleeping, for her anxiety of the past week had culminated in a sort of
deep languor, which in the circumstances was the best thing that could
have happened. There was no question of wakening her; but, as I snatched
a hurried breakfast, it seemed to me that I must at once follow the
search. They were to meet in the morning at a farm called Mossrigging,
beneath a hill of the same name, and if I went there I might get word of
them. In the meantime I must interview Mr Oliphant.

I found him in bed, unshaven, and very hollow about the eyes. He told me
a lame story, and indeed his fright was so palpable that I had not the
heart to blame him. But I insisted that he should get up and come with
me, for every man would be needed to search those mossy uplands. I was
dog-tired, sleepy, and irritable, and yet I must go: why should not
this man, who had had his night's rest?

He made some feeble objection; but he had a conscience of his own and
rose obediently. We set out to the nearest part of the moor, he in his
clergyman's garb, and I in a dark suit and a bowler; and I remember
thinking how oddly unsuited was our dress for this stalking-game. I was
wretchedly anxious, for I liked Ladlaw, and God alone knew where he
might have got to in the night. There were deep bogs and ugly old
pit-shafts on the moor, and there were ravines with sheer red sides. At
any moment we might find tragedy, and I dreaded the report of the
searchers at Mossrigging. When we left the road, we followed an old
cart-track up a shallow glen, where stood some curious old stone
chimneys, which had been built by a speculator who hoped to make a
fortune from peat. The sun was beginning to break through the haze, and
miles of low moorland were disclosed to left and right. But the hills in
front were still cloudy, and we were close on the cottage before we knew
its whereabouts. It stood high in a crinkle of hill, with a wide
prospect north and east to the sea, and as I turned I saw Morebrig
smoking clear in the autumn light, and the chimneys of the House above
the fir-trees. Out on the waters three ships were sailing like
toy-boats, a reminder of the bustling modern life beyond this antique
place of horrors.

The house was full of men, devouring their morning porridge. They were
shepherds of the neighbourhood, and two boys from the village, as well
as John Ker, the head-keeper from More. One man, Robert Tod by name,
answered my unspoken question. "We havena gotten him, but we've gotten
his whereabouts. We got a glisk o' him about six this mornin' on the
backside o' the Lowe Moss. I kent him fine by the way he ran. Lord, but
he was souple! Nane o' us could come within a hunner yairds o' him.
We'll hae to wyse him gently, sir, and some o' us'll hae to tak a lang
cast round the hill."

I had no ambition to "tak a lang cast round the hill"; but these men had
been abroad all night, and I and the minister must undertake the duty.
Tod agreed to come with us, and the shaggy silent men of the party
expounded the plan of campaign. The Lowe Moss was impassable on one
side, on another bounded by a steep hill-shoulder, and on the others by
two narrow glens. They would watch the glens; we three should make a
circuit and come back over the hill, driving the fugitive before us.
Once enclosed between the moss and our three parties, he should be an
easy capture. I implored them to go to work gently, for I feared that he
might be driven into the bog. They shook their heads and laughed: it was
all a kind of crazy sport to them, and their one idea was to carry out
their orders.

I confess I was desperately tired before we had forded the upper waters
of the More, crossed the Redscaurhead, and looked over the green
pasture-lands to the south. It was a most curious sight; for whereas one
side of the range was rough and mossy and hideous with red scaurs, the
other was a gentle slope with sweet hill-grass and bright shallow
waters. It was a new country where the old curse could not reign, and an
idea took possession of me that if once Ladlaw came into the place he
would be healed of his malady. The air seemed clearer, the sky softer,
the whole world simple and clean. We fetched a circuit down one of the
little streams till we came to the back of the hill which on its face is
called Mossrigging. I was abominably tired, but in better spirits. As
for the minister, he groaned occasionally, but never spoke a word.

At the foot we separated to the distance of half a mile, and began the
ascent. So far there was no sign of our man. Tod was on the far east, I
was in the centre, and Mr Oliphant took the west. I cannot profess to
remember exactly all the incidents of that climb. I was too stupid with
sleep and exertion, and the little distant figures of my companions
danced in a kind of haze. The ascent was simple,--short grass, varied by
short heather, with at wide intervals a patch of shingle. The shepherd
walked with an easy swing, the minister stumbled and groaned, while I,
in sheer bravado and irritation at my weakness, kept up a kind of
despairing trot. The Devil and Ladlaw combined might confront me, but I
was too tired to care. Indeed, in a little I had forgotten all about the
purpose of our quest.

Then, quite suddenly, almost at the summit, in a little hollow of the
ridge, I saw our man. He was sitting on the ground, directly in the
minister's line, and his head was sunk on his breast. I remember being
taken with a horrid thought that he was dead, and quickened my trot to a
run. Meanwhile the minister was approaching very near, but apparently
quite unconscious of his presence. His eyes were in the ends of the
earth, and he ambled along with no purpose in the world.

What happened rests mainly on my authority; but Robert Tod, shepherd in
Nether Mossrigging, is ready to swear to the essentials. Mr Oliphant
stumbled on into the hollow till he was within ten yards of the sitting
figure. Ladlaw never moved; but the subtle influence which tells of
human presence came suddenly upon the minister's senses, for he lifted
his eyes and started. The man was still scared to death, and he
naturally turned to run away, when something happened which I cannot
well explain. Ladlaw was still sitting with his head on his breast, and
yet it was clear to my mind that Ladlaw had somehow risen and was
struggling with the minister. I could see the man's wrists strained and
twisted as if in a death-grapple, and his white face reddening with
exertion. He seemed to be held round the middle, for his feet tottered
several times, and once he lurched to the left side, so that I thought
he was thrown. And yet he was only battling with the air, for there was
Ladlaw sitting quietly some yards from him.

And then suddenly the contest seemed to cease. Mr Oliphant ran straight
past the sitting man and over the brow of the hill. Surprise had held
Tod and myself motionless. Now the spell was broken, and from our
several places we ran towards Ladlaw. I heard the shepherd's loud voice
crying, "Look at Oliphant! Oliphant's no wise!" and I thought I heard a
note of sardonic mirth. In any case, it was the minister he was after,
for a moment later he disappeared down the further slope.

Mr Oliphant might go where he pleased, but my business was with my
friend. I caught Ladlaw by the shoulder and shook him fiercely. Then I
pulled him to his feet, let him go, and he rolled over. The sight was so
comic that I went into a fit of nervous laughter; but the shock seemed
to have restored his wits, for he opened sleepy eyes and regarded me
solemnly. I do not propose to analyse my reasons, but I was conscious
that it was the old Ladlaw who was looking at me. I knew he was healed
of his malady, but how I knew it I do not know. He stuck both fists into
his eyes like a sleepy child. Then he yawned, and looked down ruefully
at soaked, soiled, and ragged clothing. Then he looked reproachfully at
me.

"What's up?" he asked. "Stop that hideous row and tell me what has
happened. Have I had an accident?"

Then I spoke cunningly. "Nothing much. A little bit of a fall, but
you'll be all right soon. Why, you look better already." And again I
went into a fit of laughter.

He grew wholesomely cross. "Oh, don't be a confounded jackass!" he
cried. "I feel as if I hadn't slept for a week, and I'm hungry and
thirsty."

He swallowed the contents of my flask, and wolfed my sandwiches in a
disgusting way. Then he proposed that we should go home. "I'm tired, and
I'm sick of shooting for the day. By the bye, where's my gun?"

"Broken," I said, "broken in the fall. The keeper is going to look after
it." And with the aid of my arm he began with feeble steps his homeward
journey.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

The minister--this is the tale of Robert Tod and his colleagues--ran
down the precipitous part of Mossrigging like a thing inspired. Tod,
labouring heavily in his wake, declared that he went down the hillside
like a loose stone, slipping, stumbling, yet never altogether losing his
feet, and clearing dangers solely by the grace of God. As he went, said
the men, he made clutches at the air, and his face was the face of one
distraught. They ran together from their different places to intercept
him on the edge of the bog, for at first they thought he was Ladlaw.
When they saw their mistake they did not stop, for Tod was making
frantic signals for pursuit. John Ker, the More keeper, was nearest, and
he declared afterwards that he never approached a business so
unwillingly. "I wad hae grippit a wild stot or a daft staig suner nor
yon man," he said. But the business was too public for sheer cowardice.
John assaulted him on the left flank while the other attacked in front,
and John was bowled over like a ninepin. It was not the minister, he
said, but something else, something with an arm two yards long, which
flew out like a steam-hammer. But the others were more fortunate. One
caught Mr Oliphant's right arm, another hung on to the flaps of his
coat, while a third tripped him up gallantly, till the whole body of
them rolled on the ground. Then ensued an indescribable fray. Tod got a
black eye from some unknown source, and one of the boys lost several
front teeth. Howls of rage filled the moorland air, and all the while,
they declared, the minister was praying with an unction which was never
heard in the kirk. "Lord, give me peace!" he cried. "Lord, take the
thing away!" and then again, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"

The end came very suddenly, for the company rolled into the bog. The
minister, being lowest, saved the others, but he floundered in the green
slime up to his middle. The accident seemed to inspire sobriety. He
ceased his prayers, his face lost its horror, and took on a common human
fear. Then Tod and his friends laboured heroically to rescue him, and
all the while, they declared, something was pommelling them and bruising
them, and they showed four long black marks on their bodies. Slowly they
raised Mr Oliphant from the slough, and on a bridge of coats he crept
back to solid land. And then something happened which was the crowning
marvel of the business. It was a still sharp day; but suddenly there
came a wind, hot and harsh, and like nothing they had ever known. It
stung them like nettles, played for a moment in their midst, and then in
a kind of visible cloud passed away from them over the bog in the
direction of the Red Loch. And with the wind went the Thing which had so
long played havoc in the place; and the men were left with an unkempt
figure, coated with slime and shivering with fright, but once more the
sane and prosaic Mr Oliphant, the minister of the parish of More.

       *       *       *       *       *      *       *

We got Ladlaw and the minister back to the house with much trouble, for
both were weak on their legs, and one was still in a pitiable fright.
The two kept eyeing each other, one with a sort of disgusted amusement,
the other with a wondering fear. The shepherds were mystified; but they
were matter-of-fact beings, who, having fulfilled their orders, gave no
more thought to the business. The wounded nursed their bruises and swore
cheerfully, and the boy with the broken teeth whistled his complaints. A
good dinner restored them to humour, and the last I saw was Ker and Tod
going over the Odyssey of their adventures to a circle of critical
spectators.

When Ladlaw and the minister had washed and fed, and sat smoking in the
library, I went to talk to Sybil. I have often wondered how much she
understood. At any rate she took my word that the trouble had passed,
and in a fit of tears thanked me for my labours. Then she said she would
go to her husband, and I led her to the library, where the two heroes
were smoking the pipe of peace.

Ladlaw greeted her cheerily as if nothing had happened. "I feel a bit
shaken," he said, "but I'll be all right after a night's rest. You
needn't be nervous, Sib. By the bye, Harry, where's that gun?"

Then he wandered round the room, casting an unfriendly eye on his new
acquisitions. "Look here! Somebody has been playing the fool in this
place. I can't see a single Badminton, and where did this stuff come
from?" And he tapped a row of books in old vellum. "I never remember the
things before. St Adelbert! Who on earth was he? Why, any one who came
in suddenly and did not know me might think I was a minor poet. I wish
you'd tell Harrison to clear all this truck away."

The minister sat by the fire and said nothing. The marvellous had
intruded upon his easy life and spoiled the balance. I was sorry for the
man as I thanked him in a low tone and asked how he felt.

The words came from between chattering teeth.

"I am getting b-better," he said, "but I have had a terrible
sh-shock.--I am a Christian man and I have been tempted. I thought we
lived in a progressive age, but now I know that we d-d-don't. And I am
going to write to Dr Rintoul."

FOOTNOTE:

[3] I have identified the bust, which, when seen under other
circumstances, had little power to affect me. It was a copy of the head
of Justinian in the Tesci Museum at Venice, and several duplicates
exist, dating apparently from the seventh century, and showing traces of
Byzantine decadence in the scrollwork on the hair. It is engraved in M.
Delacroix's 'Byzantium,' and, I think, in Windscheid's
'Pandektenlehrbuch.'




IV

THE OUTGOING OF THE TIDE[4]


     "Between the hours of twelve and one, even at the turning of the
     tide."


Men come from distant parts to admire the tides of Solloway, which race
in at flood and retreat at ebb with a greater speed than a horse can
follow. But nowhere are there queerer waters than in our own parish of
Caulds at the place called the Sker Bay, where between two horns of land
a shallow estuary receives the stream of the Sker. I never daunder by
its shores, and see the waters hurrying like messengers from the great
deep, without solemn thoughts and a memory of Scripture words on the
terror of the sea. The vast Atlantic may be fearful in its wrath, but
with us it is no clean open rage, but the deceit of the creature, the
unholy ways of quicksands when the waters are gone, and their stealthy
return like a thief in the night-watches. But in the times of which I
write there were more awful fears than any from the violence of nature.
It was before the day of my ministry in Caulds, for then I was a bit
callant in short clothes in my native parish of Lesmahagow; but the
worthy Doctor Chrystal, who had charge of spiritual things, has told me
often of the power of Satan and his emissaries in that lonely place. It
was the day of warlocks and apparitions, now happily driven out by the
zeal of the General Assembly. Witches pursued their wanchancy calling,
bairns were spirited away, young lassies selled their souls to the evil
one, and the accuser of the brethren in the shape of a black tyke was
seen about cottage-doors in the gloaming. Many and earnest were the
prayers of good Doctor Chrystal, but the evil thing, in spite of his
wrestling, grew and flourished in his midst. The parish stank of
idolatry, abominable rites were practised in secret, and in all the
bounds there was no one had a more evil name for this black traffic than
one Alison Sempill, who bode at the Skerburnfoot.

The cottage stood nigh the burn in a little garden with lilyoaks and
grosart-bushes lining the pathway. The Sker ran by in a linn among
hollins, and the noise of its waters was ever about the place. The
highroad on the other side was frequented by few, for a nearer-hand way
to the west had been made through the Lowe Moss. Sometimes a herd from
the hills would pass by with sheep, sometimes a tinkler or a wandering
merchant, and once in a long while the laird of Heriotside on his grey
horse riding to Gledsmuir. And they who passed would see Alison Hirpling
in her garden, speaking to herself like the ill wife she was, or sitting
on a cuttystool by the doorside with her eyes on other than mortal
sights. Where she came from no man could tell. There were some said she
was no woman, but a ghost haunting some mortal tenement. Others would
threep she was gentrice, come of a persecuting family in the west, that
had been ruined in the Revolution wars. She never seemed to want for
siller; the house was as bright as a new preen, the yaird better delved
than the manse garden; and there was routh of fowls and doos about the
small steading, forbye a wheen sheep and milk-kye in the fields. No man
ever saw Alison at any market in the countryside, and yet the
Skerburnfoot was plenished yearly in all proper order. One man only
worked on the place, a doited lad who had long been a charge to the
parish, and who had not the sense to fear danger or the wit to
understand it. Upon all other the sight of Alison, were it but for a
moment, cast a cold grue, not to be remembered without terror. It seems
she was not ordinarily ill-faured, as men use the word. She was maybe
sixty years in age, small and trig, with her grey hair folded neatly
under her mutch. But the sight of her eyes was not a thing to forget.
John Dodds said they were the een of a deer with the devil ahint them,
and indeed they would so appal an onlooker that a sudden unreasoning
terror came into his heart, while his feet would impel him to flight.
Once John, being overtaken in drink on the roadside by the cottage, and
dreaming that he was burning in hell, woke, and saw the old wife
hobbling towards him. Thereupon he fled soberly to the hills, and from
that day became a quiet-living humble-minded Christian. She moved about
the country like a wraith, gathering herbs in dark loanings, lingering
in kirkyairds, and casting a blight on innocent bairns. Once Robert
Smillie found her in a ruinous kirk on the Lang Muir where of old the
idolatrous rites of Rome were practised. It was a hot day, and in the
quiet place the flies buzzed in crowds, and he noted that she sat
clothed in them as with a garment, yet suffering no discomfort. Then he,
having mind of Beelzebub, the god of flies, fled without a halt
homewards; but, falling in the Coo's Loan, broke two ribs and a
collar-bone, the whilk misfortune was much blessed to his soul. And
there were darker tales in the countryside, of weans stolen, of lassies
misguided, of innocent beasts cruelly tortured, and in one and all there
came in the name of the wife of the Skerburnfoot. It was noted by them
that kenned best that her cantrips were at their worst when the tides in
the Sker Bay ebbed between the hours of twelve and one. At this season
of the night the tides of mortality run lowest, and when the outgoing of
these unco waters fell in with the setting of the current of life, then
indeed was the hour for unholy revels. While honest men slept in their
beds, the auld rudas carlines took their pleasure. That there is a
delight in sin no man denies, but to most it is but a broken glint in
the pauses of their conscience. But what must be the hellish joy of
those lost beings who have forsworn God and trysted with the Prince of
Darkness, it is not for a Christian to say. Certain it is that it must
be great, though their master waits at the end of the road to claim the
wizened things they call their souls. Serious men, notably Gidden Scott
in the Back of the Hill and Simon Wauch in the Sheiling of Chasehope,
have seen Alison wandering on the wet sands, dancing to no earthly
music, while the heavens, they said, were full of lights and sounds
which betokened the presence of the prince of the powers of the air. It
was a season of heart-searching for God's saints in Caulds, and the
dispensation was blessed to not a few.

It will seem strange that in all this time the presbytery was idle, and
no effort was made to rid the place of so fell an influence. But there
was a reason, and the reason, as in most like cases, was a lassie.
Forbye Alison there lived at the Skerburnfoot a young maid, Ailie
Sempill, who by all accounts was as good and bonnie as the other was
evil. She passed for a daughter of Alison's, whether born in wedlock or
not I cannot tell; but there were some said she was no kin to the auld
witch-wife, but some bairn spirited away from honest parents. She was
young and blithe, with a face like an April morning and a voice in her
that put the laverocks to shame. When she sang in the kirk folk have
told me that they had a foretaste of the music of the New Jerusalem,
and when she came in by the village of Caulds old men stottered to their
doors to look at her. Moreover from her earliest days the bairn had some
glimmerings of grace. Though no minister would visit the Skerburnfoot,
or if he went, departed quicker than he came, the girl Ailie attended
regular at the catechising at the Mains of Sker. It may be that Alison
thought she would be a better offering for the devil if she were given
the chance of forswearing God, or it may be that she was so occupied in
her own dark business that she had no care of the bairn. Meanwhile the
lass grew up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I have heard
Doctor Chrystal say that he never had a communicant more full of the
things of the Spirit. From the day when she first declared her wish to
come forward to the hour when she broke bread at the table, she walked
like one in a dream. The lads of the parish might cast admiring eyes on
her bright cheeks and yellow hair as she sat in her white gown in the
kirk, but well they knew she was not for them. To be the bride of Christ
was the thought that filled her heart; and when at the fencing of the
tables Doctor Chrystal preached from Matthew nine and fifteen, "Can the
children of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with
them?" it was remarked by sundry that Ailie's face was liker the
countenance of an angel than of a mortal lass.

It is with the day of her first communion that this narrative of mine
begins. As she walked home after the morning table she communed in
secret and her heart sank within her. She had mind of God's mercies in
the past, how He had kept her feet from the snares of evil-doers which
had been spread around her youth. She had been told unholy charms like
the seven south streams and the nine rowan berries, and it was noted
when she went first to the catechising that she prayed "Our Father which
wert in heaven," the prayer which the ill wife Alison had taught her,
meaning by it Lucifer who had been in heaven and had been cast out
therefrom. But when she had come to years of discretion she had freely
chosen the better part, and evil had ever been repelled from her soul
like Gled water from the stones of Gled brig. Now she was in a rapture
of holy content. The drucken bell--for the ungodly fashion lingered in
Caulds--was ringing in her ears as she left the village, but to her it
was but a kirk-bell and a goodly sound. As she went through the woods
where the primroses and the whitethorn were blossoming, the place
seemed as the land of Elam, wherein there were twelve wells and
threescore and ten palm-trees. And then, as it might be, another thought
came into her head, for it is ordained that frail mortality cannot long
continue in holy joy. In the kirk she had been only the bride of Christ;
but as she came through the wood, with the birds lilting and the winds
of the world blowing, she had mind of another lover. For this lass,
though so cold to men, had not escaped the common fate. It seemed that
the young Heriotside, riding by one day, stopped to speir something or
other, and got a glisk of Ailie's face, which caught his fancy. He
passed the road again many times, and then he would meet her in the
gloaming or of a morning in the field as she went to fetch the kye.
"Blue are the hills that are far away" is an owercome in the
countryside, and while at first on his side it may have been but a young
man's fancy, to her he was like the god Apollo descending from the
skies. He was good to look on, brawly dressed, and with a tongue in his
head that would have wiled the bird from the tree. Moreover, he was of
gentle kin, and she was a poor lass biding in a cot-house with an
ill-reputed mother. It seems that in time the young man, who had begun
the affair with no good intentions, fell honestly in love, while she
went singing about the doors as innocent as a bairn, thinking of him
when her thoughts were not on higher things. So it came about that long
ere Ailie reached home it was on young Heriotside that her mind dwelt,
and it was the love of him that made her eyes glow and her cheeks
redden.

Now it chanced that at that very hour her master had been with Alison,
and the pair of them were preparing a deadly pit. Let no man say that
the devil is not a cruel tyrant. He may give his folk some scrapings of
unhallowed pleasure; but he will exact tithes, yea of anise and cummin,
in return, and there is aye the reckoning to pay at the hinder end. It
seems that now he was driving Alison hard. She had been remiss of late,
fewer souls sent to hell, less zeal in quenching the Spirit, and above
all the crowning offence that her bairn had communicated in Christ's
kirk. She had waited overlong, and now it was like that Ailie would
escape her toils. I have no skill of fancy to tell of that dark
collogue, but the upshot was that Alison swore by her lost soul and the
pride of sin to bring the lass into thrall to her master. The fiend had
bare departed when Ailie came over the threshold to find the auld
carline glunching by the fire.

It was plain she was in the worst of tempers. She flyted on the lass
till the poor thing's cheek paled. "There you gang," she cried, "troking
wi' thae wearifu' Pharisees o' Caulds, whae daurna darken your mither's
door. A bonnie dutiful child, quotha! Wumman, ha ye nae pride?--no even
the mense o' a tinkler-lass?" And then she changed her voice, and would
be as soft as honey. "My puir wee Ailie! was I thrawn till ye? Never
mind, my bonnie. You and me are a' that's left, and we maunna be ill to
ither." And then the two had their dinner, and all the while the auld
wife was crooning over the lass. "We maun 'gree weel," she says, "for
we're like to be our lee-lane for the rest o' our days. They tell me
Heriotside is seeking Joan o' the Croft, and they're sune to be cried in
Gledsmuir kirk."

It was the first the lass had heard of it, and you may fancy she was
struck dumb. And so with one thing and other the auld witch raised the
fiends of jealousy in that innocent heart. She would cry out that
Heriotside was an ill-doing wastrel, and had no business to come and
flatter honest lasses. And then she would speak of his gentle birth and
his leddy mother, and say it was indeed presumption to hope that so
great a gentleman could mean all that he said. Before long Ailie was
silent and white, while her mother rhymed on about men and their ways.
And then she could thole it no longer, but must go out and walk by the
burn to cool her hot brow and calm her thoughts, while the witch indoors
laughed to herself at her devices.

For days Ailie had an absent eye and a sad face, and it so fell out that
in all that time young Heriotside, who had scarce missed a day, was laid
up with a broken arm and never came near her. So in a week's time she
was beginning to hearken to her mother when she spoke of incantations
and charms for restoring love. She kenned it was sin; but though not
seven days syne she had sat at the Lord's table, so strong is love in a
young heart that she was on the very brink of it. But the grace of God
was stronger than her weak will. She would have none of her mother's
runes and philters, though her soul cried out for them. Always when she
was most disposed to listen some merciful power stayed her consent.
Alison grew thrawner as the hours passed. She kenned of Heriotside's
broken arm, and she feared that any day he might recover and put her
stratagems to shame. And then it seems that she collogued with her
master and heard word of a subtler device. For it was approaching that
uncanny time of year, the festival of Beltane, when the auld pagans were
wont to sacrifice to their god Baal. In this season warlocks and
carlines have a special dispensation to do evil, and Alison waited on
its coming with graceless joy. As it happened, the tides in the Sker Bay
ebbed at this time between the hours of twelve and one, and, as I have
said, this was the hour above all others when the powers of darkness
were most potent. Would the lass but consent to go abroad in the
unhallowed place at this awful season and hour of the night, she was as
firmly handfasted to the devil as if she had signed a bond with her own
blood. For there, it seemed, the forces of good fled far away, the world
for one hour was given over to its ancient prince, and the man or woman
who willingly sought the spot was his bond-servant for ever. There are
deadly sins from which God's people may recover. A man may even
communicate unworthily, and yet, so be it he sin not against the Holy
Ghost, he may find forgiveness. But it seems that for this Beltane sin
there could be no pardon, and I can testify from my own knowledge that
they who once committed it became lost souls from that day. James
Deuchar, once a promising professor, fell thus out of sinful bravery and
died blaspheming; and of Kate Mallison, who went the same road, no man
can tell. Here, indeed, was the witch-wife's chance, and she was the
more keen, for her master had warned her that this was her last chance.
Either Ailie's soul would be his, or her auld wrinkled body and black
heart would be flung from this pleasant world to their apportioned
place.

Some days later it happened that young Heriotside was stepping home over
the Lang Muir about ten at night--it being his first jaunt from home
since his arm had mended. He had been to the supper of the Forest Club
at the Cross Keys in Gledsmuir, a clamjamfry of wild young blades who
passed the wine and played at cartes once a-fortnight. It seems he had
drunk well, so that the world ran round about and he was in the best of
tempers. The moon came down and bowed to him, and he took off his hat to
it. For every step he travelled miles, so that in a little he was beyond
Scotland altogether and pacing the Arabian desert. He thought he was the
Pope of Rome, so he held out his foot to be kissed, and rolled twenty
yards to the bottom of a small brae. Syne he was the King of France,
and fought hard with a whinbush till he had banged it to pieces. After
that nothing would content him but he must be a bogle, for he found his
head dunting on the stars and his legs were knocking the hills together.
He thought of the mischief he was doing to the auld earth, and sat down
and cried at his wickedness. Then he went on, and maybe the steep road
to the Moss Rig helped him, for he began to get soberer and ken his
whereabouts.

On a sudden he was aware of a man linking along at his side. He cried "A
fine night," and the man replied. Syne, being merry from his cups, he
tried to slap him on the back. The next he kenned he was rolling on the
grass, for his hand had gone clean through the body and found nothing
but air.

His head was so thick with wine that he found nothing droll in this.
"Faith, friend," he says, "that was a nasty fall for a fellow that has
supped weel. Where might your road be gaun to?"

"To the World's End," said the man; "but I stop at the Skerburnfoot."

"Bide the night at Heriotside," says he. "It's a thought out of your
way, but it's a comfortable bit."

"There's mair comfort at the Skerburnfoot," said the dark man.

Now the mention of the Skerburnfoot brought back to him only the thought
of Ailie and not of the witch-wife, her mother. So he jaloused no ill,
for at the best he was slow in the uptake.

The two of them went on together for a while, Heriotside's fool head
filled with the thought of the lass. Then the dark man broke silence.
"Ye're thinkin' o' the maid Ailie Sempill," says he.

"How ken ye that?" asked Heriotside.

"It is my business to read the herts o' men," said the other.

"And who may ye be?" said Heriotside, growing eerie.

"Just an auld packman," said he--"nae name ye wad ken, but kin to mony
gentle houses."

"And what about Ailie, you that ken sae muckle?" asked the young man.

"Naething," was the answer--"naething that concerns you, for ye'll never
get the lass."

"By God, and I will!" says Heriotside, for he was a profane swearer.

"That's the wrong name to seek her in, any way," said the man.

At this the young laird struck a great blow at him with his stick, but
found nothing to resist him but the hill-wind.

When they had gone on a bit the dark man spoke again. "The lassie is
thirled to holy things," says he. "She has nae care for flesh and blood,
only for devout contemplation."

"She loves me," says Heriotside.

"Not you," says the other, "but a shadow in your stead."

At this the young man's heart began to tremble, for it seemed that there
was truth in what his companion said, and he was ower drunk to think
gravely.

"I kenna whatna man ye are," he says, "but ye have the skill of lassies'
hearts. Tell me truly, is there no way to win her to common love?"

"One way there is," said the man, "and for our friendship's sake I will
tell it you. If ye can ever tryst wi' her on Beltane's Eve on the Sker
sands, at the green link o' the burn where the sands begin, on the ebb
o' the tide when the midnight is bye but afore cockcrow, she'll be
yours, body and soul, for this world and for ever."

And then it appeared to the young man that he was walking his lone up
the grass walk of Heriotside with the house close by him. He thought no
more of the stranger he had met, but the word stuck in his heart.

It seems that about this very time Alison was telling the same tale to
poor Ailie. She cast up to her every idle gossip she could think of.
"It's Joan o' the Croft," was aye her owercome, and she would threep
that they were to be cried in kirk on the first Sabbath of May. And then
she would rhyme on about the black cruelty of it, and cry down curses on
the lover, so that her daughter's heart grew cauld with fear. It is
terrible to think of the power of the world even in a redeemed soul.
Here was a maid who had drunk of the well of grace and tasted of God's
mercies, and yet there were moments when she was ready to renounce her
hope. At those awful seasons God seemed far off and the world very nigh,
and to sell her soul for love looked a fair bargain. At other times she
would resist the devil and comfort herself with prayer; but aye when she
woke there was the sore heart, and when she went to sleep there were the
weary eyes. There was no comfort in the goodliness of spring or the
bright sunshine weather, and she who had been wont to go about the
doors lightfoot and blithe was now as dowie as a widow woman.

And then one afternoon in the hinder end of April came young Heriotside
riding to the Skerburnfoot. His arm was healed, he had got him a fine
new suit of green, and his horse was a mettle beast that well set off
his figure. Ailie was standing by the doorstep as he came down the road,
and her heart stood still with joy. But a second thought gave her
anguish. This man, so gallant and braw, would never be for her;
doubtless the fine suit and the capering horse were for Joan o' the
Croft's pleasure. And he in turn, when he remarked her wan cheek and
dowie eyes, had mind of what the dark man said on the muir, and saw in
her a maid sworn to no mortal love. Yet the passion for her had grown
fiercer than ever, and he swore to himself that he would win her back
from her phantasies. She, one may believe, was ready enough to listen.
As she walked with him by the Sker water his words were like music to
her ears, and Alison within-doors laughed to herself and saw her devices
prosper.

He spoke to her of love and his own heart, and the girl hearkened
gladly. Syne he rebuked her coldness and cast scorn upon her piety, and
so far was she beguiled that she had no answer. Then from one thing and
another he spoke of some true token of their love. He said he was
jealous, and craved something to ease his care. "It's but a small thing
I ask," says he; "but it will make me a happy man, and nothing ever
shall come atween us. Tryst wi' me for Beltane's Eve on the Sker sands,
at the green link o' the burn where the sands begin, on the ebb o' the
tide when midnight is bye but afore cockcrow. For," said he, "that was
our forebears' tryst for true lovers, and wherefore no for you and me?"

The lassie had grace given her to refuse, but with a woful heart, and
Heriotside rode off in black discontent, leaving poor Ailie to sigh her
lone. He came back the next day and the next, but aye he got the same
answer. A season of great doubt fell upon her soul. She had no clearness
in her hope, nor any sense of God's promises. The Scriptures were an
idle tale to her, prayer brought her no refreshment, and she was
convicted in her conscience of the unpardonable sin. Had she been less
full of pride she would have taken her troubles to good Doctor Chrystal
and got comfort; but her grief made her silent and timorous, and she
found no help anywhere. Her mother was ever at her side, seeking with
coaxings and evil advice to drive her to the irrevocable step. And all
the while there was her love for the man riving in her bosom and giving
her no ease by night or day. She believed she had driven him away and
repented her denial. Only her pride held her back from going to
Heriotside and seeking him herself. She watched the road hourly for a
sight of his face, and when the darkness came she would sit in a corner
brooding over her sorrows.

At last he came, speiring the old question. He sought the same tryst,
but now he had a further tale. It seemed he was eager to get her away
from the Skerburnside and auld Alison. His aunt, the Lady Balcrynie,
would receive her gladly at his request till the day of their marriage.
Let her but tryst with him at the hour and place he named, and he would
carry her straight to Balcrynie, where she would be safe and happy. He
named that hour, he said, to escape men's observation for the sake of
her own good name. He named that place, for it was near her dwelling,
and on the road between Balcrynie and Heriotside, which fords the Sker
Burn. The temptation was more than mortal heart could resist. She gave
him the promise he sought, stifling the voice of conscience; and as she
clung to his neck it seemed to her that heaven was a poor thing compared
with a man's love.

Three days remained till Beltane's Eve, and throughout the time it was
noted that Heriotside behaved like one possessed. It may be that his
conscience pricked him, or that he had a glimpse of his sin and its
coming punishment. Certain it is that, if he had been daft before, he
now ran wild in his pranks, and an evil report of him was in every
mouth. He drank deep at the Cross Keys, and fought two battles with
young lads that had angered him. One he led off with a touch on the
shoulder, the other goes lame to this day from a wound he got in the
groin. There was word of the procurator-fiscal taking note of his
doings, and troth, if they had continued long he must have fled the
country. For a wager he rode his horse down the Dow Craig, wherefore the
name of the place is the Horseman's Craig to this day. He laid a hundred
guineas with the laird of Slipperfield that he would drive four horses
through the Slipperfield loch, and in the prank he had his bit chariot
dung to pieces and a good mare killed. And all men observed that his
eyes were wild and his face grey and thin, and that his hand would
twitch as he held the glass, like one with the palsy.

The eve of Beltane was lown and hot in the low country, with fire
hanging in the clouds and thunder grumbling about the heavens. It seems
that up in the hills it had been an awesome deluge of rain, but on the
coast it was still dry and lowering. It is a long road from Heriotside
to the Skerburnfoot. First you go down the Heriot Water, and syne over
the Lang Muir to the edge of Mucklewhan. When you pass the steadings of
Mirehope and Cockmalane you turn to the right and ford the Mire Burn.
That brings you on to the turnpike road, which you will ride till it
bends inland, while you keep on straight over the Whinny Knowes to the
Sker Bay. There, if you are in luck, you will find the tide out and the
place fordable dryshod for a man on a horse. But if the tide runs, you
will do well to sit down on the sands and content yourself till it turn,
or it will be the solans and scarts of the Solloway that will be seeing
the next of you. On this Beltane's Eve the young man, after supping with
some wild young blades, bade his horse be saddled about ten o'clock. The
company were eager to ken his errand, but he waved them back. "Bide
here," he says, "and birl the wine till I return. This is a ploy of my
own on which no man follows me." And there was that in his face as he
spoke which chilled the wildest, and left them well content to keep to
the good claret and the soft seat and let the daft laird go his own
ways.

Well and on, he rode down the bridle-path in the wood, along the top of
the Heriot glen, and as he rode he was aware of a great noise beneath
him. It was not wind, for there was none, and it was not the sound of
thunder, and aye as he speired at himself what it was it grew the louder
till he came to a break in the trees. And then he saw the cause, for
Heriot was coming down in a furious flood, sixty yards wide, tearing at
the roots of the aiks, and flinging red waves against the drystone
dykes. It was a sight and sound to solemnise a man's mind, deep calling
unto deep, the great waters of the hills running to meet with the great
waters of the sea. But Heriotside recked nothing of it, for his heart
had but one thought and the eye of his fancy one figure. Never had he
been so filled with love of the lass, and yet it was not happiness but a
deadly secret fear.

As he came to the Lang Muir it was geyan dark, though there was a moon
somewhere behind the clouds. It was little he could see of the road,
and ere long he had tried many moss-pools and sloughs, as his braw new
coat bare witness. Aye in front of him was the great hill of Mucklewhan,
where the road turned down by the Mire. The noise of the Heriot had not
long fallen behind him ere another began, the same eerie sound of burns
crying to ither in the darkness. It seemed that the whole earth was
overrun with waters. Every little runnel in the bog was astir, and yet
the land around him was as dry as flax, and no drop of rain had fallen.
As he rode on the din grew louder, and as he came over the top of
Mirehope he kenned by the mighty rushing noise that something uncommon
was happening with the Mire Burn. The light from Mirehope sheiling
twinkled on his left, and had the man not been dozened with his fancies
he might have observed that the steading was deserted and men were
crying below in the fields. But he rode on, thinking of but one thing,
till he came to the cot-house of Cockmalane, which is nigh the fords of
the Mire.

John Dodds, the herd who bode in the place, was standing at the door,
and he looked to see who was on the road so late.

"Stop," says he, "stop, Laird Heriotside. I kenna what your errand is,
but it is to no holy purpose that ye're out on Beltane Eve. D'ye no hear
the warning o' the waters?"

And then in the still night came the sound of Mire like the clash of
armies.

"I must win over the ford," says the laird quietly, thinking of another
thing.

"Ford!" cried John in scorn. "There'll be nae ford for you the nicht
unless it be the ford o' the river Jordan. The burns are up, and bigger
than man ever saw them. It'll be a Beltane's Eve that a' folk will
remember. They tell me that Gled valley is like a loch, and that there's
an awesome folk drooned in the hills. Gin ye were ower the Mire, what
about crossin' the Caulds and the Sker?" says he, for he jaloused he was
going to Gledsmuir.

And then it seemed that that word brought the laird to his senses. He
looked the airt the rain was coming from, and he saw it was the airt the
Sker flowed. In a second, he has told me, the works of the devil were
revealed to him. He saw himself a tool in Satan's hands, he saw his
tryst a device for the destruction of the body, as it was assuredly
meant for the destruction of the soul, and there came on his mind the
picture of an innocent lass borne down by the waters with no place for
repentance. His heart grew cold in his breast. He had but one thought, a
sinful and reckless one--to get to her side, that the two might go
together to their account. He heard the roar of the Mire as in a dream,
and when John Dodds laid hands on his bridle he felled him to the earth.
And the next seen of it was the laird riding the floods like a man
possessed.

The horse was the grey stallion he aye rode, the very beast he had
ridden for many a wager with the wild lads of the Cross Keys. No man but
himself durst back it, and it had lamed many a hostler lad and broke two
necks in its day. But it seemed it had the mettle for any flood, and
took the Mire with little spurring. The herds on the hillside looked to
see man and steed swept into eternity; but though the red waves were
breaking about his shoulders and he was swept far down, he aye held on
for the shore. The next thing the watchers saw was the laird struggling
up the far bank, and casting his coat from him, so that he rode in his
sark. And then he set off like a wildfire across the muir towards the
turnpike road. Two men saw him on the road and have recorded their
experience. One was a gangrel, by name M'Nab, who was travelling from
Gledsmuir to Allerkirk with a heavy pack on his back and a bowed head.
He heard a sound like wind afore him, and, looking up, saw coming down
the road a grey horse stretched out to a wild gallop and a man on its
back with a face like a soul in torment. He kenned not whether it was
devil or mortal, but flung himself on the roadside, and lay like a corp
for an hour or more till the rain aroused him. The other was one Sim
Doolittle, the fish-hawker from Allerfoot, jogging home in his fish-cart
from Gledsmuir fair. He had drunk more than was fit for him, and he was
singing some light song, when he saw approaching, as he said, the pale
horse mentioned in the Revelations, with Death seated as the rider.
Thoughts of his sins came on him like a thunder-clap, fear loosened his
knees, he leaped from the cart to the road, and from the road to the
back of a dyke. Thence he flew to the hills, and was found the next
morning far up among the Mire Craigs, while his horse and cart were
gotten on the Aller sands, the horse lamed and the cart without the
wheels.

At the tollhouse the road turns inland to Gledsmuir, and he who goes to
Sker Bay must leave it and cross the wild land called the Whinny
Knowes, a place rough with bracken and foxes' holes and old stone
cairns. The tollman, John Gilzean, was opening his window to get a
breath of air in the lown night when he heard or saw the approaching
horse. He kenned the beast for Heriotside's, and, being a friend of the
laird's, he ran down in all haste to open the yett, wondering to himself
about the laird's errand on this night. A voice came down the road to
him bidding him hurry; but John's old fingers were slow with the keys,
and so it happened that the horse had to stop, and John had time to look
up at the gash and woful face.

"Where away the nicht sae late, laird?" says John.

"I go to save a soul from hell," was the answer.

And then it seems that through the open door there came the chapping of
a clock.

"Whatna hour is that?" asks Heriotside.

"Midnicht," says John, trembling, for he did not like the look of
things.

There was no answer but a groan, and horse and man went racing down the
dark hollows of the Whinny Knowes.

How he escaped a broken neck in that dreadful place no human being will
ever tell. The sweat, he has told me, stood in cold drops upon his
forehead; he scarcely was aware of the saddle in which he sat; and his
eyes were stelled in his head, so that he saw nothing but the sky ayont
him. The night was growing colder, and there was a small sharp wind
stirring from the east. But, hot or cold, it was all one to him, who was
already cold as death. He heard not the sound of the sea nor the
peesweeps startled by his horse, for the sound that ran in his ears was
the roaring Sker Water and a girl's cry. The thought kept goading him,
and he spurred the grey till the creature was madder than himself. It
leaped the hole which they call the Devil's Mull as I would step over a
thistle, and the next he kenned he was on the edge of the Sker Bay.

It lay before him white and ghastly, with mist blowing in wafts across
it and a slow swaying of the tides. It was the better part of a mile
wide, but save for some fathoms in the middle where the Sker current
ran, it was no deeper even at flood than a horse's fetlocks. It looks
eerie at bright midday when the sun is shining and whaups are crying
among the seaweeds; but think what it was on that awesome night with the
powers of darkness brooding over it like a cloud. The rider's heart
quailed for a moment in natural fear. He stepped his beast a few feet
in, still staring afore him like a daft man. And then something in the
sound or the feel of the waters made him look down, and he perceived
that the ebb had begun and the tide was flowing out to sea.

He kenned that all was lost, and the knowledge drove him to stark
despair. His sins came in his face like birds of night, and his heart
shrank like a pea. He knew himself for a lost soul, and all that he
loved in the world was out in the tides. There, at any rate, he could go
too, and give back that gift of life he had so blackly misused. He cried
small and soft like a bairn, and drove the grey out into the waters. And
aye as he spurred it the foam should have been flying as high as his
head; but in that uncanny hour there was no foam, only the waves running
sleek like oil. It was not long ere he had come to the Sker channel,
where the red moss-waters were roaring to the sea, an ill place to ford
in midsummer heat, and certain death, as folks reputed it, at the
smallest spate. The grey was swimming, but it seemed the Lord had other
purposes for him than death, for neither man nor horse could drown. He
tried to leave the saddle, but he could not; he flung the bridle from
him, but the grey held on, as if some strong hand were guiding. He cried
out upon the devil to help his own, he renounced his Maker and his God;
but whatever his punishment, he was not to be drowned. And then he was
silent, for something was coming down the tide.

It came down as quiet as a sleeping bairn, straight for him as he sat
with his horse breasting the waters, and as it came the moon crept out
of a cloud and he saw a glint of yellow hair. And then his madness died
away and he was himself again, a weary and stricken man. He hung down
over the tides and caught the body in his arms, and then let the grey
make for the shallows. He cared no more for the devil and all his
myrmidons, for he kenned brawly he was damned. It seemed to him that his
soul had gone from him and he was as toom as a hazel-shell. His breath
rattled in his throat, the tears were dried up in his head, his body had
lost its strength, and yet he clung to the drowned maid as to a hope of
salvation. And then he noted something at which he marvelled dumbly. Her
hair was drookit back from her clay-cold brow, her eyes were shut, but
in her face there was the peace of a child. It seemed even that her lips
were smiling. Here, certes, was no lost soul, but one who had gone
joyfully to meet her Lord. It may be in that dark hour at the burn-foot,
before the spate caught her, she had been given grace to resist her
adversary and flung herself upon God's mercy.

And it would seem that it had been granted, for when he came to the
Skerburnfoot there in the corner sat the weird-wife Alison dead as a
stone and shrivelled like a heatherbirn.

For days Heriotside wandered the country or sat in his own house with
vacant eye and trembling hands. Conviction of sin held him like a vice:
he saw the lassie's death laid at his door, her face haunted him by day
and night, and the word of the Lord dirled in his ears telling of wrath
and punishment. The greatness of his anguish wore him to a shadow, and
at last he was stretched on his bed and like to perish. In his extremity
worthy Doctor Chrystal went to him unasked and strove to comfort him.
Long, long the good man wrestled, but it seemed as if his ministrations
were to be of no avail. The fever left his body, and he rose to stotter
about the doors; but he was still in his torments, and the mercy-seat
was far from him. At last in the back-end of the year came Mungo
Muirhead to Caulds to the autumn communion, and nothing would serve him
but he must try his hand at this storm-tossed soul. He spoke with power
and unction, and a blessing came with his words, the black cloud lifted
and showed a glimpse of grace, and in a little the man had some
assurance of salvation. He became a pillar of Christ's Kirk, prompt to
check abominations, notably the sin of witchcraft, foremost in good
works; but with it all a humble man, who walked contritely till his
death. When I came first to Caulds I sought to prevail upon him to
accept the eldership, but he aye put me by, and when I heard his tale I
saw that he had done wisely. I mind him well as he sat in his chair or
daundered through Caulds, a kind word for every one and sage counsel in
time of distress, but withal a severe man to himself and a crucifier of
the body. It seems that this severity weakened his frame, for three
years syne come Martinmas he was taken ill with a fever, and after a
week's sickness he went to his account, where I trust he is accepted.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] From the unpublished remains of the Reverend John Dennistoun,
sometime minister of the Gospel in the parish of Caulds, and author of
'Satan's Artifices against the Elect.'




V

THE RIME OF TRUE THOMAS


     _The Tale of the Respectable Whaup and the Great Godly Man_


This is a story that I heard from the King of the Numidians, who with
his tattered retinue encamps behind the peat-ricks. If you ask me where
and when it happened I fear that I am scarce ready with an answer. But I
will vouch my honour for its truth; and if any one seek further proof,
let him go east the town and west the town and over the fields of
Nomansland to the Long Muir, and if he find not the King there among the
peat-ricks, and get not a courteous answer to his question, then times
have changed in that part of the country, and he must continue the quest
to his Majesty's castle in Spain.

Once upon a time, says the tale, there was a Great Godly Man, a shepherd
to trade, who lived in a cottage among heather. If you looked east in
the morning, you saw miles of moor running wide to the flames of
sunrise, and if you turned your eyes west in the evening, you saw a
great confusion of dim peaks with the dying eye of the sun set in a
crevice. If you looked north, too, in the afternoon, when the life of
the day is near its end and the world grows wise, you might have seen a
country of low hills and haughlands with many waters running sweet among
meadows. But if you looked south in the dusty forenoon or at hot midday,
you saw the far-off glimmer of a white road, the roofs of the ugly
little clachan of Kilmaclavers, and the rigging of the fine new kirk of
Threepdaidle.

It was a Sabbath afternoon in the hot weather, and the man had been to
kirk all the morning. He had heard a grand sermon from the minister (or
it may have been the priest, for I am not sure of the date and the King
told the story quickly)--a fine discourse with fifteen heads and three
parentheses. He held all the parentheses and fourteen of the heads in
his memory, but he had forgotten the fifteenth; so for the purpose of
recollecting it, and also for the sake of a walk, he went forth in the
afternoon into the open heather.

The whaups were crying everywhere, making the air hum like the twanging
of a bow. _Poo-eelie, Poo-eelie_, they cried, _Kirlew, Kirlew_, _Whaup,
Wha- -up_. Sometimes they came low, all but brushing him, till they
drove settled thoughts from his head. Often had he been on the moors,
but never had he seen such a stramash among the feathered clan. The
wailing iteration vexed him, and he _shoo'd_ the birds away with his
arms. But they seemed to mock him and whistle in his very face, and at
the flaff of their wings his heart grew sore. He waved his great stick;
he picked up bits of loose moor-rock and flung them wildly; but the
godless crew paid never a grain of heed. The morning's sermon was still
in his head, and the grave words of the minister still rattled in his
ear, but he could get no comfort for this intolerable piping. At last
his patience failed him and he swore unchristian words. "Deil rax the
birds' thrapples," he cried.

At this all the noise was hushed and in a twinkling the moor was empty.
Only one bird was left, standing on tall legs before him with its head
bowed upon its breast, and its beak touching the heather.

Then the man repented his words and stared at the thing in the moss.
"What bird are ye?" he asked thrawnly.

"I am a Respectable Whaup," said the bird, "and I kenna why ye have
broken in on our family gathering. Once in a hundred years we foregather
for decent conversation, and here we are interrupted by a muckle,
sweerin' man."

Now the shepherd was a fellow of great sagacity, yet he never thought it
a queer thing that he should be having talk in the mid-moss with a bird.

"What for were ye making siccan a din, then?" he asked. "D'ye no ken ye
were disturbing the afternoon of the holy Sabbath?"

The bird lifted its eyes and regarded him solemnly. "The Sabbath is a
day of rest and gladness," it said, "and is it no reasonable that we
should enjoy the like?"

The shepherd shook his head, for the presumption staggered him. "Ye
little ken what ye speak of," he said. "The Sabbath is for them that
have the chance of salvation, and it has been decreed that salvation is
for Adam's race and no for the beasts that perish."

The whaup gave a whistle of scorn. "I have heard all that long ago. In
my great-grandmother's time, which 'ill be a thousand years and mair
syne, there came a people from the south with bright brass things on
their heads and breasts and terrible swords at their thighs. And with
them were some lang-gowned men who kenned the stars and would come out
o' nights to talk to the deer and the corbies in their ain tongue. And
one, I mind, foregathered with my great-grandmother and told her that
the souls o' men flitted in the end to braw meadows where the gods bide
or gaed down to the black pit which they ca' Hell. But the souls o'
birds, he said, die wi' their bodies, and that's the end o' them.
Likewise in my mother's time, when there was a great abbey down yonder
by the Threepdaidle Burn which they called the House of Kilmaclavers,
the auld monks would walk out in the evening to pick herbs for their
distillings, and some were wise and kenned the ways of bird and beast.
They would crack often o'nights with my ain family, and tell them that
Christ had saved the souls o' men, but that birds and beasts were
perishable as the dew o' heaven. And now ye have a black-gowned man in
Threepdaidle who threeps on the same owercome. Ye may a' ken something
o' your ain kitchen-midden, but certes! ye ken little o' the warld
beyond it."

Now this angered the man, and he rebuked the bird. "These are great
mysteries," he said, "which are no to be mentioned in the ears of an
unsanctified creature. What can a thing like you wi' a lang neb and twae
legs like stilts ken about the next warld?"

"Weel, weel," said the whaup, "we'll let the matter be. Everything to
its ain trade, and I will not dispute with ye on metapheesics. But if ye
ken something about the next warld, ye ken terrible little about this."

Now this angered the man still more, for he was a shepherd reputed to
have great skill in sheep and esteemed the nicest judge of hogg and
wether in all the countryside. "What ken ye about that?" he asked. "Ye
may gang east to Yetholm and west to Kells, and no find a better herd."

"If sheep were a'," said the bird, "ye micht be right; but what o' the
wide warld and the folk in it? Ye are Simon Etterick o' the Lowe Moss.
Do ye ken aucht o' your forebears?"

"My father was a God-fearing man at the Kennelhead, and my grandfather
and great-grandfather afore him. One o' our name, folk say, was shot at
a dykeback by the Black Westeraw."

"If that's a'," said the bird, "ye ken little. Have ye never heard o'
the little man, the fourth back from yoursel', who killed the Miller o'
Bewcastle at the Lammas Fair? That was in my ain time, and from my
mother I have heard o' the Covenanter who got a bullet in his wame
hunkering behind the divot-dyke and praying to his Maker. There were
others o' your name rode in the Hermitage forays and burned Naworth and
Warkworth and Castle Gay. I have heard o' an Etterick, Sim o' the
Redcleuch, who cut the throat o' Jock Johnstone in his ain house by the
Annan side. And my grandmother had tales o' auld Ettericks who rade wi'
Douglas and the Bruce and the ancient Kings o' Scots; and she used to
tell o' others in her mother's time, terrible shock-headed men, hunting
the deer and rinnin' on the high moors, and bidin' in the broken stane
biggings on the hill-taps."

The shepherd stared, and he, too, saw the picture. He smelled the air of
battle and lust and foray, and forgot the Sabbath.

"And you yoursel'," said the bird, "are sair fallen off from the auld
stock. Now ye sit and spell in books, and talk about what ye little
understand, when your fathers were roaming the warld. But little cause
have I to speak, for I too am a downcome. My bill is two inches shorter
than my mother's, and my grandmother was taller on her feet. The warld
is getting weaklier things to dwell in it, even since I mind mysel'."

"Ye have the gift o' speech, bird," said the man, "and I would hear
mair." You will perceive that he had no mind of the Sabbath day or the
fifteenth head of the forenoon's discourse.

"What things have I to tell ye when ye dinna ken the very horn-book o'
knowledge? Besides, I am no clatter-vengeance to tell stories in the
middle o' the muir, where there are ears open high and low. There's
others than me wi' mair experience and a better skill at the telling.
Our clan was well acquaint wi' the reivers and lifters o' the muirs, and
could crack fine o' wars and the taking of cattle. But the blue hawk
that lives in the corrie o' the Dreichil can speak o' kelpies and the
dwarfs that bide in the hill. The heron, the lang solemn fellow, kens o'
the greenwood fairies and the wood elfins, and the wild geese that
squatter on the tap o' the Muneraw will croak to ye of the merrymaidens
and the girls o' the pool. The wren--him that hops in the grass below
the birks--has the story of the _Lost Ladies of the Land_, which is ower
auld and sad for any but the wisest to hear; and there is a wee bird
bides in the heather--hill-lintie men call him--who sings the _Lay of
the West Wind_, and the _Glee of the Rowan Berries_. But what am I
talking of? What are these things to you, if ye have not first heard
True Thomas's Rime, which is the beginning and end o' all things?"

"I have heard no rime," said the man, "save the sacred psalms o' God's
Kirk."

"Bonny rimes," said the bird. "Once I flew by the hinder end o' the Kirk
and I keekit in. A wheen auld wives wi' mutches and a wheen solemn men
wi' hoasts! Be sure the Rime is no like yon."

"Can ye sing it, bird?" said the man, "for I am keen to hear it."

"Me sing," cried the bird, "me that has a voice like a craw! Na, na, I
canna sing it, but maybe I can take ye where ye may hear it. When I was
young an auld bogblitter did the same to me, and sae began my education.
But are ye willing and brawly willing?--for if ye get but a sough of it
ye will never mair have an ear for other music."

"I am willing and brawly willing," said the man.

"Then meet me at the Gled's Cleuch Head at the sun's setting," said the
bird, and it flew away.


Now it seemed to the man that in a twinkling it was sunset, and he found
himself at the Gled's Cleuch Head with the bird flapping in the heather
before him. The place was a long rift in the hill, made green with
juniper and hazel, where it was said True Thomas came to drink the
water.

"Turn ye to the west," said the whaup, "and let the sun fall on your
face; then turn ye five times round about and say after me the Rune of
the Heather and the Dew." And before he knew, the man did as he was
told, and found himself speaking strange words, while his head hummed
and danced as if in a fever.

"Now lay ye down and put your ear to the earth," said the bird; and the
man did so. Instantly a cloud came over his brain, and he did not feel
the ground on which he lay or the keen hill-air which blew about him. He
felt himself falling deep into an abysm of space, then suddenly caught
up and set among the stars of heaven. Then slowly from the stillness
there welled forth music, drop by drop like the clear falling of rain,
and the man shuddered, for he knew that he heard the beginning of the
Rime.

High rose the air, and trembled among the tallest pines and the summits
of great hills. And in it were the sting of rain and the blatter of
hail, the soft crush of snow and the rattle of thunder among crags. Then
it quieted to the low sultry croon which told of blazing midday when the
streams are parched and the bent crackles like dry tinder. Anon it was
evening, and the melody dwelled among the high soft notes which mean the
coming of dark and the green light of sunset. Then the whole changed to
a great pæan which rang like an organ through the earth. There were
trumpet notes in it and flute notes and the plaint of pipes. "Come
forth," it cried; "the sky is wide and it is a far cry to the world's
end. The fire crackles fine o' nights below the firs, and the smell of
roasting meat and wood smoke is dear to the heart of man. Fine, too, is
the sting of salt and the risp of the north wind in the sheets. Come
forth, one and all, to the great lands oversea, and the strange tongues
and the fremit peoples. Learn before you die to follow the Piper's Son,
and though your old bones bleach among grey rocks, what matter, if you
have had your bellyful of life and come to your heart's desire?" And the
tune fell low and witching, bringing tears to the eyes and joy to the
heart; and the man knew (though no one told him) that this was the first
part of the Rime, the _Song of the Open Road_, the _Lilt of the
Adventurer_, which shall be now and ever and to the end of days.

Then the melody changed to a fiercer and sadder note. He saw his
forefathers, gaunt men and terrible, run stark among woody hills. He
heard the talk of the bronze-clad invader, and the jar and clangour as
stone met steel. Then rose the last coronach of his own people, hiding
in wild glens, starving in corries, or going hopelessly to the death. He
heard the cry of Border foray, the shouts of the famished Scots as they
harried Cumberland, and he himself rode in the midst of them. Then the
tune fell more mournful and slow, and Flodden lay before him. He saw the
flower of the Scots gentry around their King, gashed to the breast-bone,
still fronting the lines of the south, though the paleness of death sat
on each forehead. "The flowers of the Forest are gone," cried the lilt,
and through the long years he heard the cry of the lost, the desperate,
fighting for kings over the water and princes in the heather. "Who
cares?" cried the air. "Man must die, and how can he die better than in
the stress of fight with his heart high and alien blood on his sword?
Heigh-ho! One against twenty, a child against a host, this is the
romance of life." And the man's heart swelled, for he knew (though no
one told him) that this was the _Song of Lost Battles_ which only the
great can sing before they die.

But the tune was changing, and at the change the man shivered, for the
air ran up to the high notes and then down to the deeps with an eldrich
cry, like a hawk's scream at night, or a witch's song in the gloaming.
It told of those who seek and never find, the quest that knows no
fulfilment. "There is a road," it cried, "which leads to the Moon and
the Great Waters. No change-house cheers it, and it has no end; but it
is a find road, a braw road--who will follow it?" And the man knew
(though no one told him) that this was the _Ballad of Grey Weather_,
which makes him who hears it sick all the days of his life for something
which he cannot name. It is the song which the birds sing on the moor in
the autumn nights, and the old crow on the treetop hears and flaps his
wing. It is the lilt which men and women hear in the darkening of their
days, and sigh for the unforgettable; and lovesick girls get catches of
it and play pranks with their lovers. It is a song so old that Adam
heard it in the Garden before Eve came to comfort him, so young that
from it still flows the whole joy and sorrow of earth.

Then it ceased, and all of a sudden the man was rubbing his eyes on the
hillside, and watching the falling dusk. "I have heard the Rime," he
said to himself, and he walked home in a daze. The whaups were crying,
but none came near him, though he looked hard for the bird that had
spoken with him. It may be that it was there and he did not know it, or
it may be that the whole thing was only a dream; but of this I cannot
say.


The next morning the man rose and went to the manse.

"I am glad to see you, Simon," said the minister, "for it will soon be
the Communion Season, and it is your duty to go round with the tokens."

"True," said the man, "but it was another thing I came to talk about,"
and he told him the whole tale.

"There are but two ways of it, Simon," said the minister. "Either ye are
the victim of witchcraft, or ye are a self-deluded man. If the former
(whilk I am loth to believe), then it behoves ye to watch and pray lest
ye enter into temptation. If the latter, then ye maun put a strict watch
over a vagrom fancy, and ye'll be quit o' siccan whigmaleeries."

Now Simon was not listening, but staring out of the window. "There was
another thing I had it in my mind to say," said he. "I have come to lift
my lines, for I am thinking of leaving the place."

"And where would ye go?" asked the minister, aghast.

"I was thinking of going to Carlisle and trying my luck as a dealer, or
maybe pushing on with droves to the South."

"But that's a cauld country where there are no faithfu' ministrations,"
said the minister.

"Maybe so, but I am not caring very muckle about ministrations," said
the man, and the other looked after him in horror.

When he left the manse he went to a Wise Woman, who lived on the left
side of the kirk-yard above Threepdaidle burn-foot. She was very old,
and sat by the ingle day and night, waiting upon death. To her he told
the same tale.

She listened gravely, nodding with her head. "Ach," she said, "I have
heard a like story before. And where will you be going?"

"I am going south to Carlisle to try the dealing and droving," said the
man, "for I have some skill of sheep."

"And will ye bide there?" she asked.

"Maybe aye, and maybe no," he said. "I had half a mind to push on to the
big toun or even to the abroad. A man must try his fortune."

"That's the way of men," said the old wife. "I, too, have heard the
Rime, and many women who now sit decently spinning in Kilmaclavers have
heard it. But a woman may hear it and lay it up in her soul and bide at
hame, while a man, if he get but a glisk of it in his fool's heart, must
needs up and awa' to the warld's end on some daft-like ploy. But gang
your ways and fare-ye-weel. My cousin Francie heard it, and he went
north wi' a white cockade in his bonnet and a sword at his side, singing
'Charlie's come hame.' And Tam Crichtoun o' the Bourhopehead got a sough
o' it one simmer's morning, and the last we heard o' Tam he was fechting
like a deil among the Frenchmen. Once I heard a tinkler play a sprig of
it on the pipes, and a' the lads were wud to follow him. Gang your
ways, for I am near the end o' mine." And the old wife shook with her
coughing.

So the man put up his belongings in a pack on his back and went
whistling down the Great South Road.


Whether or not this tale have a moral it is not for me to say. The King
(who told it me) said that it had, and quoted a scrap of Latin, for he
had been at Oxford in his youth before he fell heir to his kingdom. One
may hear tunes from the Rime, said he, in the thick of a storm on the
scarp of a rough hill, in the soft June weather, or in the sunset
silence of a winter's night. But let none, he added, pray to have the
full music; for it will make him who hears it a footsore traveller in
the ways o' the world and a masterless man till death.




VI

BASILISSA


I

When Vernon was a very little boy he was the sleepiest of mortals, but
in the spring he had seasons of bad dreams, and breakfast became an idle
meal. Mrs Ganthony, greatly concerned, sent for Dr Moreton from Axby,
and homely remedies were prescribed.

"It is the spring fever," said the old man. "It gives the gout to me and
nightmares to this baby; it brings lads and lasses together, and
scatters young men about the world. An antique complaint, Mrs Ganthony.
But it will right itself, never fear. _Ver non semper viret._" Chuckling
at his ancient joke, the doctor mounted his horse, leaving the nurse
only half comforted. "What fidgets me," she told the housekeeper, "is
the way his lordship holds his tongue. For usual he'll shout as lusty as
a whelp. But now I finds him in the morning with his eyes like moons
and his skin white and shiny, and never a cheep has he given the whole
blessed night, with me laying next door, and it open, and a light
sleeper at all times, Mrs Wace, ma'am."

Every year the dreams came, generally--for his springs were spent at
Severns--in the big new night-nursery at the top of the west wing, which
his parents had built not long before their death. It had three windows
looking over the moorish flats which run up to the Lancashire fells, and
from one window, by craning your neck, you could catch a glimpse of the
sea. It was all hung, too, with a Chinese paper whereon pink and green
parrots squatted in wonderful blue trees, and there seemed generally to
be a wood fire burning. Vernon's recollections of his childish nightmare
are hazy. He always found himself in a room different from the nursery
and bigger, but with the same smell of wood smoke. People came and went,
such as his nurse, the butler, Simon the head-keeper, Uncle Appleby his
guardian, Cousin Jennifer, the old woman who sold oranges in Axby, and a
host of others. Nobody hindered them from going away, and they seemed to
be pleading with him to come too. There was danger in the place;
something was going to happen in that big room, and if by that time he
was not gone there would be mischief. But it was quite clear to him that
he could not go. He must stop there, with the wood smoke in his
nostrils, and await the advent of a terrible Something. But he was never
quite sure of the nature of the compulsion. He had a notion that if he
made a rush for the door at Uncle Appleby's heels he would be allowed to
escape, but that somehow he would be behaving badly. Anyhow, the place
put him into a sweat of fright, and Mrs Ganthony looked darkly at him in
the morning.


Vernon was nine before this odd spring dream began to take definite
shape--at least he thinks he must have been about that age. The
dream-stage was emptying. There was nobody in the room now but himself,
and he saw its details a little more clearly. It was not any apartment
in the modern magnificence of Severns. Rather it looked like one of the
big old panelled chambers which the boy remembered from visits to
Midland country houses, where he had arrived after dark and had been put
to sleep in a great bed in a place lit with dancing firelight. In the
morning it had looked only an ordinary big room, but at that hour of the
evening it had seemed an enchanted citadel. The dreamroom was not
unlike these, for there was the scent of a wood fire and there were
dancing shadows, but he could not see clearly the walls or the ceiling,
and there was no bed. In one corner was a door which led to the outer
world, and through this he knew that he might on no account pass.
Another door faced him, and he knew that he had only to turn the handle
and enter it. But he did not want to, for he understood quite clearly
what was beyond. There was another room like the first one, but he knew
nothing about it, except that opposite the entrance another door led out
of it. Beyond was a third chamber, and so on interminably. There seemed
to the boy no end to this fantastic suite. He thought of it as a great
snake of masonry, winding up hill and down dale away to the fells or the
sea. Yes, but there was an end. Somewhere far away in one of the rooms
was a terror waiting on him, or, as he feared, coming towards him. Even
now it might be flitting from room to room, every minute bringing its
soft tread nearer to the chamber of the wood fire.

About this time of life the dream was an unmitigated horror. Once it
came while he was ill with a childish fever, and it sent his
temperature up to a point which brought Dr Moreton galloping from Axby.
In his waking hours he did not, as a rule, remember it clearly; but
during the fever, asleep and awake, that sinuous building, one room
thick, with each room opening from the other, was never away from his
thoughts. It fretted him to think that outside were the cheerful moors
where he hunted for plovers' eggs, and that only a thin wall of stone
kept him from pleasant homely things. The thought used to comfort him
for a moment when he was awake, but in the dream it never came near him.
Asleep, the whole world seemed one suite of rooms, and he, a forlorn
little prisoner, doomed to wait grimly on the slow coming through the
many doors of a Fear which transcended word and thought.

He was a silent, self-absorbed boy, and though the fact of his
nightmares was patent to the little household, the details remained
locked in his heart. Not even to Uncle Appleby would he tell them when
that gentleman, hurriedly kind, came down to visit his convalescent
ward. His illness made Vernon grow, and he shot up into a lanky, leggy
boy--weakly, too, till the hills tautened his sinews again. His Greek
blood--his grandmother had been a Karolides--had given him a face
curiously like the young Byron, with a finely-cut brow and nostrils, and
hauteur in the full lips. But Vernon had no Byronic pallor, for his
upland home kept him sunburnt and weather-beaten, and below his straight
Greek brows shone a pair of grey and steadfast and very English eyes.

He was about fifteen--so he thinks--when he made the great discovery.
The dream had become almost a custom now. It came in April at Severns
during the Easter holidays--a night's discomfort (it was now scarcely
more) in the rush and glory of the spring fishing. There was a moment of
the old wild heart-fluttering; but a boy's fancy is quickly dulled, and
the endless corridors were now more of a prison than a witch's
ante-chamber. By this time, with the help of his diary, he had fixed the
date of the dream: it came regularly on the night of the first Monday of
April. Now the year I speak of he had been on a long expedition into the
hills, and had stridden homewards at a steady four miles an hour among
the gleams and shadows of an April twilight. He was alone at Severns, so
he had his supper in the big library, where afterwards he sat watching
the leaping flames in the open stone hearth. He was very weary, and
sleep fell upon him in his chair. He found himself in the wood-smoke
chamber, and before him the door leading to the unknown. But it was no
indefinite fear that lay beyond. He knew clearly--though how he knew he
could not tell--that each year the Something came one room nearer, and
was even now but ten rooms off. In ten years his own door would open,
and then----

He woke in the small hours, chilled and mazed, but with a curious new
assurance in his heart. Hitherto the nightmare had left him in gross
terror, unable to endure the prospect of its recurrence, till the kindly
forgetfulness of youth had soothed him. But now, though his nerves were
tense with fright, he perceived that there was a limit to the mystery.
Some day it must declare itself, and fight on equal terms. As he thought
over the matter in the next few days he had the sense of being
forewarned and prepared for some great test of courage. The notion
exhilarated as much as it frightened him. Late at night, or on soft
dripping days, or at any moment of lessened vitality, he would bitterly
wish that he had been born an ordinary mortal. But on a keen morning of
frost, when he rubbed himself warm after a cold tub, or at high noon of
summer, the adventure of the dream almost pleased him. Unconsciously he
braced himself to a harder discipline. His fitness, moral and physical,
became his chief interest, for reasons which would have been
unintelligible to his friends and more so to his masters. He passed
through school an aloof and splendid figure, magnificently athletic,
with a brain as well as a perfect body--a good fellow in everybody's
opinion, but a grave one. He had no intimates, and never shared the
secret of the spring dream. For some reason which he could not tell, he
would have burned his hand off rather than breathe a hint of it. Pure
terror absolves from all conventions and demands a confidant, so terror,
I think, must have largely departed from the nightmare as he grew older.
Fear, indeed, remained, and awe and disquiet, but these are human
things, whereas terror is of hell.

Had he told any one, he would no doubt have become self-conscious and
felt acutely his difference from other people. As it was, he was an
ordinary schoolboy, much beloved, and, except at odd moments, unaware of
any brooding destiny. As he grew up and his ambition awoke, the moments
when he remembered the dream were apt to be disagreeable, for a boy's
ambitions are strictly conventional and his soul revolts at the
abnormal. By the time he was ready for the University he wanted above
all things to run the mile a second faster than any one else, and had
vague hopes of exploring wild countries. For most of the year he lived
with these hopes and was happy; then came April, and for a short season
he was groping in dark places. Before and after each dream he was in a
mood of exasperation; but when it came he plunged into a different
atmosphere, and felt the quiver of fear and the quick thrill of
expectation. One year, in the unsettled moods of nineteen, he made an
attempt to avoid it. He and three others were on a walking tour in
Brittany in gusty spring weather, and came late one evening to an inn by
an estuary where seagulls clattered about the windows. Youth-like they
ordered a great and foolish feast, and sat all night round a bowl of
punch, while school songs and "John Peel" contended with the dirling of
the gale. At daylight they took the road again, without having closed an
eye, and Vernon told himself that he was rid of his incubus. He wondered
at the time why he was not more cheerful. Next April he was at Severns,
reading hard, and on the first Monday of the month he went to bed with
scarcely a thought of what that night used to mean. The dream did not
fail him. Once more he was in the chamber with the wood fire; once again
he was peering at the door and wondering with tremulous heart what lay
beyond. For the Something had come nearer by two rooms, and was now only
five doors away. He wrote in his diary at that time some lines from
Keats' 'Indian Maid's Song':--


             "I would deceive her,
             And so leave her,
     But ah! she is so constant and so kind."


And there is a mark of exclamation against the "she," as if he found
some irony in it.

From that day the boy in him died. The dream would not suffer itself to
be forgotten. It moulded his character and determined his plans like the
vow of the young Hannibal at the altar. He had forgotten now either to
fear or to hope; the thing was part of him, like his vigorous young
body, his slow kindliness, his patient courage. He left Oxford at
twenty-two with a prodigious reputation which his remarkable athletic
record by no means explained. All men liked him, but no one knew him; he
had a thousand acquaintances and a hundred friends, but no comrade.
There was a sense of brooding power about him which attracted and
repelled his little world. No one forecast any special career for him;
indeed, it seemed almost disrespectful to condescend upon such details.
It was not what Vernon would do that fired the imagination of his
fellows, but what they dimly conceived that he already was. I remember
my first sight of him about that time, a tall young man in the corner of
a club smoking-room, with a head like Apollo's and eyes which received
much but gave nothing. I guessed at once that he had foreign blood in
him, not from any oddness of colouring or feature but from his silken
reserve. We of the North are angular in our silences; we have not
learned the art of gracious reticence.

His twenty-third April was spent in a hut on the Line, somewhere between
the sources of the Congo and the Nile, in the trans-African expedition
when Waldemar found the new variety of okapi. The following April I was
in his company in a tent far up on the shoulder of a Kashmir mountain.
On the first Monday of the month we had had a heavy day after ovis, and
that night I was asleep almost before my weary limbs were tucked into my
kaross. I knew nothing of Vernon's dream, but next morning I remember
that I remarked a certain heaviness of eye, and wondered idly if the
frame of this Greek divinity was as tough as it was shapely.


II

Next year Vernon left England early in March. He had resolved to visit
again his grandmother's country and to indulge his passion for cruising
in new waters.

His 20-ton yawl was sent as deck cargo to Patras, while he followed by
way of Venice. He brought one man with him from Wyvenhoe, a lean gipsy
lad called Martell, and for his other hand he found an Epirote at Corfu,
who bore a string of names that began with Constantine. From Patras with
a west wind they made good sailing up the Gulf of Corinth, and, passing
through the Canal, came in the last days of March to the Piræus. In that
place of polyglot speech, whistling engines, and the odour of gasworks,
they delayed only for water and supplies, and presently had rounded
Sunium, and were beating up the Euripus with the Attic hills rising
sharp and clear in the spring sunlight. Vernon had no plans. It was a
joy to him to be alone with the racing seas and the dancing winds, to
scud past little headlands, pink and white with blossom, or to lie of a
night in some hidden bay beneath the thymy crags. It was his habit on
his journeys to discard the clothes of civilisation. In a blue jersey
and old corduroy trousers, bareheaded and barefooted, he steered his
craft and waited on the passing of the hours. Like an acolyte before the
temple gate, he believed himself to be on the threshold of a new life.

Trouble began under the snows of Pelion as they turned the north end of
Euboea. On the morning of the first Monday in April the light west winds
died away, and sirocco blew harshly from the south. By midday it was
half a gale, and in those yeasty shallow seas with an iron coast on the
port the prospect looked doubtful. The nearest harbour was twenty miles
distant, and as no one of the crew had been there before it was a
question if they could make it by nightfall. With the evening the gale
increased, and Constantine advised a retreat from the maze of rocky
islands to the safer deeps of the Ægean. It was a hard night for the
three, and there was no chance of sleep. More by luck than skill they
escaped the butt of Skiathos, and the first light found them far to the
east among the long seas of the North Ægean, well on the way to Lemnos.
By eight o'clock the gale had blown itself out, and three soaked and
chilly mortals relaxed their vigil. Soon bacon was frizzling on the
cuddy-stove, and hot coffee and dry clothes restored them to comfort.

The sky cleared, and in bright sunlight, with the dregs of the gale
behind him, Vernon stood in for the mainland, where the white crest of
Olympus hung in the northern heavens. In the late afternoon they came
into a little bay carved from the side of a high mountain. The slopes
were gay with flowers, yellow and white and scarlet, and the young green
of crops showed in the clearings. Among the thyme a flock of goats was
browsing, shepherded by a little girl in a saffron skirt, who sang
shrilly in snatches. Midway in the bay and just above the anchorage rose
a great white building, which showed to seaward a blank white wall
pierced with a few narrow windows. At first sight Vernon took it for a
monastery, but a look through the glasses convinced him that its purpose
was not religious. Once it had been fortified, and even now a broad
causeway ran between it and the sea, which looked as if it had once held
guns. The architecture was a jumble, showing here the enriched Gothic of
Venice and there the straight lines and round arches of the East. It had
once, he conjectured, been the hold of some Venetian sea-king, then the
palace of a Turkish conqueror, and now was, perhaps, the homely
manor-house of this pleasant domain.

A fishing-boat was putting out from the shore. He hailed its occupant
and asked who owned the castle.

The man crossed himself and spat overboard. "Basilissa," he said, and
turned his eyes seaward.

Vernon called Constantine from the bows and asked him what the word
might mean. The Epirote crossed himself also before he spoke. "It is the
Lady of the Land," he said, in a hushed voice. "It is the great witch
who is the Devil's bride. In old days in spring they made sacrifice to
her, but they say her power is dying now. In my country we do not speak
her name, but elsewhere they call her 'Queen.'" The man's bluff sailorly
assurance had disappeared, and as Vernon stared at him in bewilderment
he stammered and averted his eyes.

By supper-time he had recovered himself, and the weather-beaten three
made such a meal as befits those who have faced danger together.
Afterwards Vernon, as was his custom, sat alone in the stern, smoking
and thinking his thoughts. He wrote up his diary with a ship's lantern
beside him, while overhead the starless velvet sky seemed to hang low
and soft like an awning. Little fires burned on the shore at which folk
were cooking food--he could hear their voices, and from the keep one
single lit window made an eye in the night.

He had leisure now for the thought which had all day been at the back of
his mind. The night had passed and there had been no dream. The
adventure for which he had prepared himself had vanished into the Ægean
tides. He told himself that it was a relief, that an old folly was over,
but he knew in his heart that he was bitterly disappointed. The fates
had prepared the stage and rung up the curtain without providing the
play. He had been fooled, and somehow the zest and savour of life had
gone from him. No man can be strung high and then find his preparation
idle without suffering a cruel recoil.

As he scribbled idly in his diary he found some trouble about dates.
Down in his bunk was a sheaf of Greek papers bought at the Piræus and
still unlooked at. He fetched them up and turned them over with a
growing mystification. There was something very odd about the business.
One gets hazy about dates at sea, but he could have sworn that he had
made no mistake. Yet here it was down in black and white, for there was
no question about the number of days since he left the Piræus. The day
was not Tuesday, as he had believed, but Monday, the first Monday of
April.

He stood up with a beating heart and that sense of unseen hands which
comes to all men once or twice in their lives. The night was yet to
come, and with it the end of the dream. Suddenly he was glad, absurdly
glad; he could almost have wept with the joy of it. And then he was
conscious for the first time of the strangeness of the place in which he
had anchored. The night was dark over him like a shell, enclosing the
half-moon of bay and its one lit dwelling. The great hills, unseen but
felt, ran up to snows, warding it off from a profane world. His nerves
tingled with a joyful anticipation. Something, some wonderful thing, was
coming to him out of the darkness.

Under an impulse for which he could give no reason, he called
Constantine and gave his orders. Let him be ready to sail at any
moment--a possible thing, for there was a light breeze off shore. Also
let the yacht's dinghy be ready in case he wanted it. Then Vernon sat
himself down again in the stern beside the lantern, and waited....


He was dreaming, and did not hear the sound of oars or the grating of a
boat alongside. Suddenly he found a face looking at him in the ring of
lamplight--an old bearded face curiously wrinkled. The eyes, which were
grave and penetrating, scanned him for a second or two, and then a voice
spoke,--

"Will the Signor come with me? There is work for him to do this night."

Vernon rose obediently. He had waited for this call these many years,
and he was there to answer it. He went below and put a loaded revolver
in his trouser-pocket, and then dropped over the yacht's side into a
cockleshell of a boat. The messenger took the oars and rowed for the
point of light on shore.

A middle-aged woman stood on a rock above the tide, holding a small
lantern. In its thin flicker he made out a person with the air and dress
of a French maid. She cast one glance at Vernon, and then turned wearily
to the other. "Fool, Mitri!" she said. "You have brought a peasant."

"Nay," said the old man, "he is no peasant. He is a Signor, and as I
judge, a man of his hands."

The woman passed the light of her lantern over Vernon's form and face.
"His dress is a peasant's, but such clothes may be a nobleman's whim. I
have heard it of the English."

"I am English," said Vernon in French.

She turned on him with a quick movement of relief.

"You are English and a gentleman? But I know nothing of you, only that
you have come out of the sea. Up in the House we women are alone, and my
mistress has death to face, or a worse than death. We have no claim on
you, and if you give us your service it means danger--oh, what danger!
The boat is waiting. You have time to go back and go away and forget
that you have seen this accursed place. But, O Monsieur, if you hope for
Heaven and have pity on a defenceless angel, you will not leave us."

"I am ready," said Vernon.

"God's mercy," she sighed, and, seizing his arm, drew him up the steep
causeway, while the old man went ahead with the lantern. Now and then
she cast anxious glances to the right where the little fires of the
fishers twinkled along the shore. Then came a point when the three
entered a narrow uphill road, where rocky steps had been cut in a
tamarisk thicket. She spoke low in French to Vernon's ear,--

"My mistress is the last of her line, you figure; a girl with a wild
estate and a father long dead. She is good and gracious, as I who have
tended her can witness, but she is young and cannot govern the wolves
who are the men of these parts. They have a long hatred of her house,
and now they have it rumoured that she is a witch and blights the crops
and slays the children. No one will look at her; the priest--for they
are all in the plot--signs himself and crosses the road; the little ones
run screaming to their mothers. Once, twice, they have cursed our
threshold and made the blood mark on the door. For two years we have
been prisoners in the House, and only Mitri is true. They name her
Basilissa, meaning the Queen of Hell, whom the ancients called
Proserpine. There is no babe but will faint with fright if it casts eyes
on her, and she as mild and innocent as Mother Mary...."

The woman stopped at a little door in a high wall of masonry. "Nay, wait
and hear me out. It is better that you hear the tale from me than from
her. Mitri has the gossip of the place through his daughter's husband,
and the word has gone round to burn the witch out. The winter in the
hills has been cruel, and they blame their sorrow on her. The dark of
the moon in April is the time fixed, for they say that a witch has power
only in moonlight. This is the night, and down on the shore the fishers
are gathered. The men from the hills are in the higher woods."

"Have they a leader?" Vernon asked.

"A leader?" her voice echoed shrilly. "But that is the worst of our
terrors. There is one Vlastos, a lord in the mountains, who saw my
mistress a year ago as she looked from the balcony at the
Swallow-singing, and was filled with a passion for her. He has
persecuted her since with his desires. He is a king among these savages,
being himself a very wolf in man's flesh. We have denied him, but he
persists, and this night he announces that he comes for an answer. He
offers to save her if she will trust him, but what is the honour of his
kind? He is like a brute out of a cave. It were better for my lady to go
to God in the fire than to meet all Hell in his arms. But this night we
must choose, unless you prove a saviour."

"Did you see my boat anchor in the bay?" Vernon asked, though he
already knew the answer.

"But no," she said. "We live only on the landward side of the House. My
lady told me that God would send a man to our aid. And I bade Mitri
fetch him."

The door was unlocked and the three climbed a staircase which seemed to
follow the wall of a round tower. Presently they came into a stone hall
with curious hangings like the old banners in a church. From the open
flame of the lantern another was kindled, and the light showed a
desolate place with crumbling mosaics on the floor and plaster dropping
from the cornices. Through another corridor they went, where the air
blew warmer and there was that indefinable scent which comes from human
habitation. Then came a door which the woman held open for Vernon to
enter. "Wait there, Monsieur," she said, "My mistress will come to you."

It was his own room, where annually he had waited with a fluttering
heart since he was a child at Severns. A fire of wood--some resinous
thing like juniper--burned on the hearth, and spirals of blue smoke
escaped the stone chimney and filled the air with their pungent
fragrance. On a Spanish cabinet stood an antique silver lamp, and there
was a great blue Chinese vase filled with spring flowers. Soft Turcoman
rugs covered the wooden floor--Vernon noted every detail, for never
before had he been able to see his room clearly. A woman had lived here,
for an embroidery frame lay on a table and there were silken cushions on
the low divans. And facing him in the other wall there was a door.

In the old days he had regarded it with vague terror in his soul. Now he
looked at it with the hungry gladness with which a traveller sees again
the familiar objects of home. The hour of his destiny had struck. The
thing for which he had trained himself in body and spirit was about to
reveal itself in that doorway....

It opened, and a girl entered. She was tall and very slim, and moved
with the free grace of a boy. She trod the floor like one walking in
spring meadows. Her little head on the flower-like neck was bent
sideways as if she were listening, and her eyes had the strange
disquieting innocence of a child's. Yet she was a grown woman, nobly
made, and lithe and supple as Artemis herself when she ranged with her
maidens through the moonlit glades. Her face had the delicate pallor of
pure health, and above it the masses of dark hair were bound with a
thin gold circlet. She wore a gown of some soft white stuff, and had
thrown over it a cloak of russet furs.

For a second--or so it seemed to Vernon--she looked at him as he stood
tense and expectant like a runner at the start. Then the hesitation fled
from her face. She ran to him with the confidence of a child who has
waited long for the coming of a friend and has grown lonely and fearful.
She gave him both her hands and in her tall pride looked him full in the
eyes. "You have come," she sighed happily. "I did not doubt it. They
told me there was no help, but, you see, they did not know about you.
That was my own secret. The Monster had nearly gobbled me, Perseus, but
of course you could not come quicker. And now you will take me away with
you? See, I am ready. And Elise will come too, and old Mitri, for they
could not live without me. We must hurry, for the Monster is very near."

In that high moment of romance, when young love had burst upon him like
spring, Vernon retained his odd discipline of soul. The adventure of the
dream could not be satisfied by flight, even though his companion was a
goddess.

"We will go, Andromeda, but not yet. I have something to say to the
Monster."

She broke into a ripple of laughter. "Yes, that is the better way. Mitri
will admit him alone, and he will think to find us women. But you will
be here and you will speak to him." Then her eyes grew solemn. "He is
very cruel, Perseus, and he is full of evil. He may devour us both. Let
us be gone before he comes."

It was Vernon's turn to laugh. At the moment no enterprise seemed too
formidable, and a price must be paid for this far-away princess. And
even as he laughed the noise of a great bell clanged through the house.

Mitri stole in with a scared face, and it was from Vernon that he took
his orders. "Speak them fair, but let one man enter and no more. Bring
him here, and see that the gate is barred behind him. After that make
ready for the road." Then to the girl: "Take off your cloak and wait
here as if you were expecting him. I will stand behind the screen. Have
no fear, for I will have him covered, and I will shoot him like a dog if
he lays a finger on you."

From the shelter of the screen Vernon saw the door open and a man enter.
He was a big fellow of the common mountain type, gorgeously dressed in
a uniform of white and crimson, with boots of yellow untanned leather,
and a beltful of weapons. He was handsome in a coarse way, but his
slanting eyes and the heavy lips scarcely hidden by the curling
moustaches were ugly and sinister. He smiled, showing his white teeth,
and spoke hurriedly in the guttural Greek of the north. The girl
shivered at the sound of his voice, and to the watcher it seemed like
Pan pursuing one of Dian's nymphs.

"You have no choice, my Queen," he was saying. "I have a hundred men at
the gate who will do my bidding, and protect you against those fools of
villagers till you are safe with me at Louko. But if you refuse me I
cannot hold the people. They will burn the place over your head, and by
to-morrow's morn these walls will be smouldering ashes with your fair
body in the midst of them."

Then his wooing became rougher. The satyr awoke in his passionate eyes.
"Nay, you are mine, whether you will it or not. I and my folk will carry
you off when the trouble begins. Take your choice, my girl, whether you
will go with a good grace, or trussed up behind a servant. We have rough
ways in the hills with ungracious wenches."

"I am going away," she whispered, "but not with you!"

The man laughed. "Have you fetched down friend Michael and his angels to
help you? By Saint John the Hunter, I would I had a rival. I would carve
him prettily for the sake of your sweet flesh."

Vernon kicked aside the screen. "You will have your chance," he said. "I
am ready."

Vlastos stepped back with his hand at his belt. "Who in the devil's name
are you?" he asked.

"One who would dispute the lady with you," said Vernon.

The man had recovered his confidence. "I know nothing of you or whence
you come, but to-night I am merciful. I give you ten seconds to
disappear. If not, I will spit you, my fine cock, and you will roast in
this oven."

"Nevertheless the lady goes with me," said Vernon, smiling.

Vlastos plucked a whistle from his belt, but before it reached his mouth
he was looking into the barrel of Vernon's revolver. "Pitch that thing
on the floor," came the command. "Not there! Behind me! Off with that
belt and give it to the lady. Quick, my friend."

The dancing grey eyes dominated the sombre black ones. Vlastos flung
down the whistle, and slowly removed the belt with its silver-mounted
pistols and its brace of knives.

"Put up your weapon," he muttered, "and fight me for her, as a man
should."

"I ask nothing better," said Vernon, and he laid his revolver in the
girl's lap.

He had expected a fight with fists, and was not prepared for what
followed. Vlastos sprang at him like a wild beast and clasped him round
the waist. He was swung off his feet in a grip that seemed more than
human. For a second or two he swayed to and fro, recovered himself, and
by a back-heel stroke forced his assailant to relax a little. Then,
locked together in the middle of the room, the struggle began. Dimly out
of a corner of his eye he saw the girl pick up the silver lamp and stand
by the door holding it high.

Vernon had learned the rudiments of wrestling among the dalesmen of the
North, but now he was dealing with one who followed no ordinary methods.
It was a contest of sheer physical power. Vlastos was a stone or two
heavier, and had an uncommon length of arm; but he was clumsily made,
and flabby from gross living. Vernon was spare and hard and clean, but
he lacked one advantage--he had never striven with a man save in
friendly games, and the other was bred to kill. For a minute or two they
swayed and stumbled, while Vernon strove for the old Westmorland "inside
click." Every second brought him nearer to it, while the other's face
was pressed close to his shoulder.

Suddenly he felt a sharp pain. Teeth met in his flesh, and there was the
jar and shiver of a torn muscle. The thing sickened him, and his grip
slackened. In a moment Vlastos had swung him over in a strangle-hold,
and had his neck bent almost to breaking.

On the sickness followed a revulsion of fierce anger. He was contending
not with a man, but with some shaggy beast from the thicket. The passion
brought out the extra power which is dormant in us all against the last
extremity. Two years before he had been mauled by a leopard on the
Congo, and had clutched its throat with his hand and torn the life out.
Such and no other was his antagonist. He was fighting with one who knew
no code, and would gouge his eyes if he got the chance. The fear which
had sickened him was driven out by fury. This wolf should go the way of
other wolves who dared to strive with man.

By a mighty effort he got his right arm free, and though his own neck
was in torture, he forced Vlastos' chin upward. It was a struggle of
sheer endurance, till with a snarl the other slackened his pressure.
Vernon slipped from his grasp, gave back a step, and then leaped for the
under-grip. He seemed possessed with unholy strength, for the barrel of
the man gave in his embrace. A rib cracked, and as they swayed to the
breast-stroke, he felt the breath of his opponent coming in harsh gasps.
It was the end, for with a twist which unlocked his arms he swung him
high, and hurled him towards the fireplace. The head crashed on the
stone hearth, and the man lay stunned among the blue jets of wood-smoke.

Vernon turned dizzily to the girl. She stood, statue-like, with the lamp
in her hand, and beside her huddled Mitri and Elise.

"Bring ropes," he cried to the servants. "We will truss up this beast.
The other wolves will find him and learn a lesson." He bound his legs
and arms and laid him on a divan.

The fire of battle was still in his eyes, but it faded when they fell
upon the pale girl. A great pity and tenderness filled him. She swayed
to his arms, and her head dropped on his shoulder. He picked her up
like a child, and followed the servants to the sea-stair.

But first he found Vlastos' whistle, and blew it shrilly. The answer was
a furious hammering at the castle door.


Far out at sea, in the small hours, the yacht sped eastward with a
favouring wind. Behind in the vault of night at a great distance shone a
point of brightness, which flickered and fell as if from some mighty
fire.

The two sat in the stern in that first rapture of comradeship which has
no words to fit it. Her head lay in the crook of his arm, and she sighed
happily, like one awakened to a summer's dawn from a night of ill
dreams. At last he spoke.

"Do you know that I have been looking for you for twenty years?"

She nestled closer to him.

"And I," she said, "have been waiting on you from the beginning of the
world."




VII

DIVUS JOHNSTON


     "The Emperor assumed the title of _Divus_ or Divine, not of his own
     desire, but because it was forced upon him by a credulous
     people."--SUETONIUS, _Lives of the Cæsars_.


This story, which you may believe or not as you like, was told me by my
friend Mr Peter Thomson of "Jessieville," Maxwell Avenue, Strathbungo,
whom I believe to be a man incapable of mendacity, or, indeed, of
imagination. He is a prosperous and retired ship's captain, dwelling in
the suburbs of Glasgow, who plays two rounds of golf every day of the
week, and goes twice every Sunday to a pink, new U. F. Church. You may
often see his ample figure, splendidly habited in broadcloth and
finished off with one of those square felt hats which are the Scottish
emblem of respectability, moving sedately by Mrs Thomson's side down the
avenue of "Balmorals" and "Bellevues" where dwell the aristocracy of
Strathbungo. It was not there that I met him, however, but in a Clyde
steamboat going round the Mull, where I spent a comfortless night on my
way to a Highland fishing. It was blowing what he called "a wee bit o'
wind," and I could not face the odorous bunks which opened on the
dining-room. Seated abaft the funnel, in an atmosphere of ham-and-eggs,
bilge, and fresh western breezes, he revealed his heart to me, and this
I found in it.


"About the age of forty"--said Mr Thomson--"I was captain of the steamer
_Archibald McKelvie_, 1,700 tons burthen, belonging to Brock, Rattray,
and Linklater, of Greenock. We were principally engaged in the China
trade, but made odd trips into the Malay Archipelago and once or twice
to Australia. She was a handy bit boat, and I'll not deny that I had
many mercies vouchsafed to me when I was her skipper. I raked in a bit
of salvage now and then, and my trading commission, paid regularly into
the British Linen Bank at Maryhill, was mounting up to a fairish sum. I
had no objection to Eastern parts, for I had a good constitution and had
outgrown the daftnesses of youth. The berth suited me well, I had a
decent lot for ship's company, and I would gladly have looked forward
to spending the rest of my days by the _Archibald McKelvie_.

"Providence, however, thought otherwise, for He was preparing a judgment
against that ship like the kind you read about in books. We were five
days out from Singapore shaping our course for the Philippines, where
the Americans were then fighting, when we ran into a queer lown sea. Not
a breath of air came out of the sky; if you kindled a match the flame
wouldna leap, but smouldered like touchwood; and every man's body ran
with sweat like a mill-lade. I kenned fine we were in for the terrors of
hell, but I hadna any kind of notion how terrible hell could be. First
came a wind that whipped away my funnel, like a potato peeling. We ran
before it, and it was like the sweegee we used to play at when we were
laddies. One moment the muckle sea would get up on its hinder end and
look at you, and the next you were looking at it as if you were on the
top of Ben Lomond looking down on Luss. Presently I saw land in a gap of
the water, a land with great blood-red mountains, and, thinks I to
myself, if we keep up the pace this boat of mine will not be hindered
from ending two or three miles inland in somebody's kail-yard. I was
just wondering how we would get the _Archibald McKelvie_ back to her
native element when she saved me the trouble; for she ran dunt on some
kind of a rock, and went straight to the bottom.

"I was the only man saved alive, and if you ask me how it happened I
don't know. I felt myself choking in a whirlpool; then I was flung
through the air and brought down with a smack into deep waters; then I
was in the air again, and this time I landed amongst sand and
tree-trunks and got a bash on the head which dozened my senses.

"When I came to it was morning, and the storm had abated. I was lying
about half-way up a beach of fine white sand, for the wave that had
carried me landwards in its flow had brought me some of the road back in
its ebb. All round me was a sort of free-coup--trees knocked to
matchwood, dead fish, and birds and beasts, and some boards which I
jaloused came from the _Archibald McKelvie_. I had a big bump on my
head, but otherwise I was well and clear in my wits, though empty in the
stomach and very dowie in the heart. For I knew something about the
islands, of which I supposed this to be one. They were either barren
wastes, with neither food nor water, or else they were inhabited by the
bloodiest cannibals of the archipelago. It looked as if my choice lay
between having nothing to eat and being eaten myself.

"I got up, and, after returning thanks to my Maker, went for a walk in
the woods. They were full of queer painted birds, and it was an awful
job climbing in and out of the fallen trees. By and by I came into an
open bit with a burn where I slockened my thirst. It cheered me up, and
I was just beginning to think that this was not such a bad island, and
looking to see if I could find anything in the nature of cocoanuts, when
I heard a whistle like a steam-syren. It was some sort of signal, for
the next I knew I was in the grip of a dozen savages, my arms and feet
were lashed together, and I was being carried swiftly through the
forest.

"It was a rough journey, and the discomfort of that heathen handling
kept me from reflecting upon my desperate position. After nearly three
hours we stopped, and I saw that we had come to a city. The streets were
not much to look at, and the houses were mud and thatch, but on a
hillock in the middle stood a muckle temple not unlike a Chinese pagoda.
There was a man blowing a horn, and a lot of folk shouting, but I paid
no attention, for I was sore troubled with the cramp in my left leg.
They took me into one of the huts and made signs that I was to have it
for my habitation. They brought me water to wash, and a very respectable
dinner, which included a hen and a vegetable not unlike greens. Then
they left me to myself, and I lay down and slept for a round of the
clock.

"I was three days in that hut. I had plenty to eat and the folk were
very civil, but they wouldna let me outbye and there was no window to
look out of. I couldna make up my mind what they wanted with me. I was a
prisoner, but they did not behave as if they bore any malice, and I
might have thought I was an honoured guest, but for the guards at the
door. Time hung heavy on my hands, for I had nothing to read and no
light to read by. I said over all the chapters of the Bible and all the
Scots songs I could remember, and I tried to make a poem about my
adventures, but I stuck at the fifth line, for I couldna find a rhyme to
_McKelvie_.

"On the fourth morning I was awakened by the most deafening din. I saw
through the door that the streets were full of folk in holiday clothes,
most of them with flowers in their hair and carrying palm branches in
their hands. It was like something out of a Bible picture book. After I
had my breakfast four lads in long white gowns arrived, and in spite of
all my protests they made a bonny spectacle of me. They took off my
clothes, me blushing with shame, and rubbed me with a kind of oil that
smelt of cinnamon. Then they shaved my chin, and painted on my forehead
a mark like a freemason's. Then they put on me a kind of white nightgown
with a red sash round the middle, and they wouldna be hindered from
clapping on my head a great wreath of hot-house flowers, as if I was a
funeral.

"And then like a thunder-clap I realised my horrible position. _I was_ a
funeral. I was to be offered up as a sacrifice to some heathen god--an
awful fate for a Free-kirk elder in the prime of life.

"I was so paralytic with terror that I never tried to resist. Indeed, it
would have done me little good, for outside there were, maybe, two
hundred savages, armed and drilled like soldiers. I was put into a sort
of palanquin, and my bearers started on a trot with me up the hill to
the temple, the whole population of the city running alongside, and
singing songs about their god. I was sick with fear, and I durstna look
up, for I did not know what awesome sight awaited me.

"At last I got my courage back. 'Peter,' I says to myself, 'be a man.
Remember your sainted covenanting forefathers. You have been chosen to
testify for your religion, though it's no likely that yon savages will
understand what you say.' So I shut my jaw and resolved before I died to
make a declaration of my religious principles, and to loosen some of the
heathen's teeth with my fists.

"We stopped at the temple door and I was led through a court and into a
muckle great place like a barn, with bats flying about the ceiling. Here
there were nearly three thousand heathens sitting on their hunkers. They
sang a hymn when they saw me, and I was just getting ready for action
when my bearers carried me into another place, which I took to be the
Holy of Holies. It was about half the size of the first, and at the end
of it was a great curtain of leopards' skins hanging from roof to floor.
My bearers set me in the middle of the room, and then rolled about on
their stomachs in adoration before the curtain. After a bit they
finished their prayers and crawled out backwards, and I was left alone
in that fearsome place.

"It was the worst experience of my life. I believed that behind the
skins there was a horrible idol, and that at any moment a priest with a
knife would slip in to cut my throat. You may crack about courage, but I
tell you that a man who can wait without a quiver on his murderers in
the middle of a gloomy kirk is more than human. I am not ashamed to
confess that the sweat ran over my brow, and my teeth were knocking in
my head.

"But nothing happened. Nothing, except that as I sat there I began to
feel a most remarkable smell. At first I thought the place was on fire.
Then I thought it was the kind of stink called incense that they make in
Popish kirks, for I once wandered into a cathedral in Santiago. But
neither guess was right, and then I put my thumb on the proper
description. It was nothing but the smell of the third-class carriages
on the Coatbridge train on a Saturday night after a football match--the
smell of plug tobacco smoked in clay pipes that were no just very clean.
My eyes were getting accustomed to the light, and I found the place no
that dark; and as I looked round to see what caused the smell, I spied
something like smoke coming from beyond the top of the curtain.

"I noticed another thing. There was a hole in the curtain, about six
feet from the floor, and at that hole as I watched I saw an eye. My
heart stood still, for, thinks I, that'll be the priest of Baal who
presently will stick a knife into me. It was long ere I could screw up
courage to look again, but I did it. And then I saw that the eye was not
that of a savage, which would be black and blood-shot. It was a blue
eye, and, as I looked, it winked at me.

"And then a voice spoke out from behind the curtain, and this was what
it said. It said, 'God sake, Peter, is it you? And how did ye leave them
a' at Maryhill?'

"And from behind the curtain walked a muckle man, dressed in a pink
blanket, a great red-headed man, with a clay pipe in his mouth. It was
the god of the savages, and who do ye think it was? A man Johnston, who
used to bide in the same close as me in Glasgow...."

Mr Thomson's emotion overcame him, and he accepted a stiff drink from my
flask. Wiping away a tear, which may have been of sentiment or of mirth,
he continued,--

"You may imagine that I was joyful and surprised to see him, and he, so
to speak, fell on my neck like the father of the Prodigal Son. He hadna
seen a Scotch face for four years. He raked up one or two high priests
and gave instructions, and soon I was comfortably lodged in a part of
the temple close to his own rooms. Eh, man, it was a noble sight to see
Johnston and the priests. He was a big, red-haired fellow, six feet
four, and as strong as a stot, with a voice like a north-easter, and yon
natives fair crawled like caterpillars in his presence. I never saw a
man with such a natural talent for being a god. You would have thought
he had been bred to the job all his days, and yet I minded him keeping a
grocer's shop in the Dalmarnock Road.

"That night he told me his story. It seemed that he had got a post at
Shanghai in a trading house, and was coming out to it in one of those
God-forgotten German tramps that defile the China seas. Like me, he fell
in with a hurricane, and, like me, his ship was doomed. He was a
powerful swimmer, and managed to keep afloat until he found some
drifting wreckage, and after the wind had gone down he paddled ashore.
There he was captured by the savages, and taken, like me, to their city.
They were going to sacrifice him, but one chief, wiser than the rest,
called attention to his size and strength, and pointed out that they
were at war with their neighbours, and that a big man would be of more
use in the fighting line than on an altar in the temple.

"So off went Johnston to the wars. He was a bonny fighter, and very soon
they made him captain of the royal bodyguard, and a fortnight later the
general commanding-in-chief over the whole army. He said he had never
enjoyed himself so much in his life, and when he got back from his
battles the whole population of the city used to meet him with songs and
flowers. Then an old priest found an ancient prophecy about a Red God
who would come out of the sea and lead the people to victory. Very soon
there was a strong party for making Johnston a god; and when, with the
help of a few sticks of trade dynamite, he had blown up the capital of
the other side and brought back his army in triumph with a prisoner
apiece, popular feeling could not be restrained. Johnston was hailed as
divine. He hadna much grip of the language, and couldna explain the
situation, so he thought it best to submit.

"'Mind you,' he said to me, 'I've been a good god to these poor blind
ignorant folk.' He had stopped the worst of their habits and put down
human sacrifices, and got a sort of town council appointed to keep the
city clean, and he had made the army the most efficient thing ever heard
of in the islands. And now he was preparing to leave. This was what they
expected, for the prophecy had said that the Red God, after being the
saviour of his people, would depart as he had come across the sea. So,
under his directions, they had built him a kind of boat with which he
hoped to reach Singapore. He had got together a considerable fortune,
too, chiefly in rubies, for as a god he had plenty of opportunities of
acquiring wealth honestly. He said there was a sort of greengrocer's and
butcher's shop before his altar every morning, and he got one of the
priests, who had some business notions, to sell off the goods for him.

"There was just one thing that bothered Mr Johnston. He was a good
Christian man and had been an elder in a kirk in the Cowcaddens, and he
was much in doubt whether he had not committed a mortal sin in accepting
the worship of these heathen islanders. Often I argued it out with him,
but I did not seem able to comfort him rightly. 'Ye see,' he used to say
to me, 'if I have broken anything, it's the spirit and no the letter of
the Commandment. I havena set up a graven image, for ye canna call me a
graven image.'

"I mind that I quoted to him the conduct of Naaman, who was allowed to
bow in the house of Rimmon, but he would not have it. 'No, no,' he
cried, 'that has nothing to do with the point. It's no a question of my
bowing in the house of Rimmon. I'm auld Rimmon himself.'"


"That's a strange story, Mr Thomson," I said. "Is it true?"

"True as death. But you havena heard the end of it. We got away, and
by-and-by we reached Singapore, and in course of time our native land.
Johnston, he was a very rich man now, and I didna go without my portion;
so the loss of the _Archibald McKelvie_ turned out the best piece of
luck in my life. I bought a share in Brock's Line, but nothing would
content Johnston but that he must be a gentleman. He got a big estate in
Annandale, where all the Johnstons came from long ago, and one way and
another he has spent an awful siller on it. Land will swallow up money
quicker than the sea."

"And what about his conscience?" I asked.

"It's keeping quieter," said Mr Thomson. "He takes a great interest in
Foreign Missions, to which he subscribes largely, and they tell me that
he has given the funds to build several new kirks. Oh yes, and he's just
been adopted as a prospective Liberal candidate. I had a letter from him
no further back than yesterday. It's about his political career, as he
calls it. He told me, what didna need telling, that I must never mention
a word about his past. 'If discretion was necessary before,' he says,
'it's far more necessary now, for how could the Party of Progress have
any confidence in a man if they heard he had once been a god?'"




VIII

THE KING OF YPRES


Private Peter Galbraith, of the 3rd Lennox Highlanders, awoke with a
splitting headache and the consciousness of an intolerable din. At first
he thought it was the whistle from the forge, which a year ago had
pulled him from his bed when he was a puddler in Motherwell. He
scrambled to his feet, and nearly cracked his skull against a low roof.
That, and a sound which suggested that the heavens were made of canvas
which a giant hand was rending, cleared his wits and recalled him to the
disagreeable present. He lit the dottle in his pipe, and began to piece
out his whereabouts.

Late the night before, the remnants of his battalion had been brought in
from the Gheluvelt trenches to billets in Ypres. That last week he had
gone clean off his sleep. He had not been dry for a fortnight, his
puttees had rotted away, his greatcoat had disappeared in a mud-hole,
and he had had no stomach for what food could be got. He had seen half
his battalion die before his eyes, and day and night the shells had
burst round him till the place looked like the ironworks at Motherwell
on a foggy night. The worst of it was that he had never come to grips
with the Boches, which he had long decided was the one pleasure left to
him in life. He had got far beyond cursing, though he had once had a
talent that way. His mind was as sodden as his body, and his thoughts
had been focussed on the penetrating power of a bayonet when directed
against a plump Teutonic chest. There had been a German barber in
Motherwell called Schultz, and he imagined the enemy as a million
Schultzes--large, round men who talked with the back of their throat.

In billets he had scraped off the worst part of the mud, and drunk half
a bottle of wine which a woman had given him. It tasted like red ink,
but anything liquid was better than food. Sleep was what he longed for,
but he could not get it. The Boches were shelling the town, and the room
he shared with six others seemed as noisy as the Gallowgate on a
Saturday night. He wanted to get deep down into the earth where there
was no sound; so, while the others snored, he started out to look for a
cellar. In the black darkness, while the house rocked to the shell
reverberations, he had groped his way down the stairs, found a door
which led to another flight, and, slipping and stumbling, had come to a
narrow, stuffy chamber which smelt of potatoes. There he had lain down
on some sacks and fallen into a frowsty slumber.

His head was spinning, but the hours of sleep had done him good. He felt
a slight appetite for breakfast, as well as an intolerable thirst. He
groped his way up the stairs, and came out in a dilapidated hall lit by
a dim November morning.

There was no sign of the packs which had been stacked there the night
before. He looked for a Boche's helmet which he had brought in as a
souvenir, but that was gone. Then he found the room where he had been
billeted. It was empty, and only the stale smell of tobacco told of its
occupants.

Lonely, disconsolate, and oppressed with thoughts of future punishment,
he moved towards the street door. Suddenly the door of a side room
opened and a man came out, a furtive figure with a large, pasty face.
His pockets bulged, and in one hand was a silver candlestick. At the
sight of Galbraith he jumped back and held up a pistol.

"Pit it down, man, and tell's what's come ower this place?" said the
soldier. For answer, a bullet sang past his ear and shivered a plaster
Venus.

Galbraith gave his enemy the butt of his rifle and laid him out. From
his pockets he shook out a mixed collection of loot. He took possession
of his pistol, and kicked him with some vehemence into a cupboard.

"That yin's a thief," was his spoken reflection. "There's something
michty wrong wi' Wipers the day."

His head was clearing, and he was getting very wroth. His battalion had
gone off and left him in a cellar, and miscreants were abroad. It was
time for a respectable man to be up and doing. Besides, he wanted his
breakfast. He fixed his bayonet, put the pistol in his pocket, and
emerged into the November drizzle.

The streets suddenly were curiously still. The occasional shell-fire
came to his ears as if through layers of cotton-wool. He put this down
to dizziness from lack of food, and made his way to what looked like an
_estaminet_. The place was full of riotous people who were helping
themselves to drinks, while a distracted landlord wrung his hands. He
flew to Galbraith, the tears running down his cheeks, and implored him
in broken words.

"Vere ze Engleesh?" he cried. "Ze méchants rob me. Zere is une émeute.
Vere ze officers?"

"That's what I'm wantin' to ken mysel'," said Galbraith.

"Zey are gone," wailed the innkeeper. "Zere is no gendarme or anyzing,
and I am rob."

"Where's the polis? Get the Provost, man. D'ye tell me there's no polis
left?"

"I am rob," the wail continued. "Ze méchants rob ze magasins and ve vill
be assassinés."

Light was dawning upon Private Galbraith. The British troops had left
Ypres for some reason which he could not fathom, and there was no law or
order in the little city. At other times he had hated the law as much as
any man, and his relations with the police had often been strained. Now
he realised that he had done them an injustice. Disorder suddenly seemed
to him the one thing intolerable. Here had he been undergoing a stiff
discipline for weeks, and if that was his fate no civilian should be
allowed on the loose. He was a British soldier--marooned here by no
fault of his own--and it was his business to keep up the end of the
British Army and impose the King's peace upon the unruly. His temper was
getting hot, but he was curiously happy. He marched into the
_estaminet_. "Oot o' here, ye scum!" he bellowed. "Sortez, ye cochons!"

The revellers were silent before the apparition. Then one, drunker than
the rest, flung a bottle which grazed his right ear. That put the
finishing touch to his temper. Roaring like a bull, he was among them,
prodding their hinder parts with his bayonet, and now and then reversing
his rifle to crack a head. He had not played centre-forward in the old
days at Celtic Park for nothing. The place emptied in a twinkling--all
but one man whose legs could not support him. Him Private Galbraith
seized by the scruff and the slack of his trousers, and tossed into the
street.

"Now I'll hae my breakfast," he said to the trembling landlord.

Private Galbraith, much the better for his exercise, made a hearty meal
of bread and cold ham, and quenched his thirst with two bottles of
Hazebrouck beer. He had also a little brandy, and pocketed the flask,
for which the landlord refused all payment. Then, feeling a giant
refreshed, he sallied into the street.

"I'm off to look for your Provost," he said. "If ye have ony mair
trouble, ye'll find me at the Toun Hall."

A shell had plumped into the middle of the causeway, and the place was
empty. Private Galbraith, despising shells, swaggered up the open, his
disreputable kilt swinging about his putteeless legs, the remnant of a
bonnet set well on the side of his shaggy red head, and the light of
battle in his eyes. For once he was arrayed on the side of the angels,
and the thought encouraged him mightily. The brandy had fired his
imagination.

Adventure faced him at the next corner. A woman was struggling with two
men--a slim pale girl with dark hair. No sound came from her lips, but
her eyes were bright with terror. Galbraith started to run, shouting
sound British oaths. The men let the woman go, and turned to face him.
One had a pistol, and for the second time that day a bullet just missed
its mark. An instant later a clean bayonet thrust had ended the mortal
career of the marksman, and the other had taken to his heels.

"I'll learn thae lads to be sae free wi' their popguns," said the irate
soldier. "Haud up, Mem. It's a' by wi' noo. Losh! The wumman's fentit!"

Private Galbraith was as shy of women as of his Commanding Officer, and
he had not bargained for this duty. She was clearly a lady from her
dress and appearance, and this did not make it easier. He supported her
manfully, addressing to her the kind of encouragements which a groom
gives to a horse. "Canny now, Mem. Haud up! Ye've no cause to be
feared."

Then he remembered the brandy in his pocket, and with much awkwardness
managed to force some drops between her lips. To his vast relief she
began to come to. Her eyes opened and stared uncomprehendingly at her
preserver. Then she found her voice.

"Thank God, the British have come back!" she said in excellent English.

"No, Mem; not yet. It's just me, Private Galbraith, 'C' Company, 3rd
Battalion, Lennox Highlanders. Ye keep some bad lots in this toun."

"Alas! what can we do? The place is full of spies, and they will stir up
the dregs of the people and make Ypres a hell. Oh, why did the British
go? Our good men are all with the army, and there are only old folk and
wastrels left."

"Rely upon me, Mem," said Galbraith stoutly. "I was just settin' off to
find your Provost."

She puzzled at the word, and then understood.

"He has gone!" she cried. "The Maire went to Dunkirk a week ago, and
there is no authority in Ypres."

"Then we'll make yin. Here's the minister. We'll speir at him."

An old priest, with a lean, grave face, had come up.

"Ah, Mam'selle Omèrine," he cried, "the devil in our city is unchained.
Who is this soldier?"

The two talked in French, while Galbraith whistled and looked at the
sky. A shrapnel shell was bursting behind the cathedral, making a splash
of colour in the November fog. Then the priest spoke in careful and
constrained English.

"There is yet a chance for a strong man. But he must be very strong.
Mam'selle will summon her father, Monsieur le Procureur, and we will
meet at the Mairie. I will guide you there, _mon brave_."

The Grande Place was deserted, and in the middle there was a new gaping
shell-hole. At the door of a great building, which Galbraith assumed to
be the Town Hall, a feeble old porter was struggling with a man.
Galbraith scragged the latter and pitched him into the shell-hole. There
was a riot going on in a café on the far side which he itched to have a
hand in, but he postponed that pleasure to a more convenient season.

Twenty minutes later, in a noble room with frescoed and tapestried
walls, there was a strange conference. The priest was there, and
Galbraith, and Mam'selle Omèrine, and her father, M. St Marais. There
was a doctor too, and three elderly citizens, and an old warrior who had
left an arm on the Yser. Galbraith took charge, with Mam'selle as his
interpreter, and in half an hour had constituted a Committee of Public
Safety. He had nervous folk to deal with.

"The Germans may enter at any moment, and then we will all be hanged,"
said one.

"Nae doot," said Galbraith; "but ye needna get your throats cut afore
they come."

"The city is full of the ill-disposed," said another. "The Boches have
their spies in every alley. We who are so few cannot control them."

"If it's spies," said Galbraith firmly, "I'll take on the job my lone.
D'ye think a terrier dowg's feared of a wheen rottens?"[5]

In the end he had his way, with Mam'selle's help, and had put some
confidence into civic breasts. It took him the best part of the
afternoon to collect his posse. He got every wounded Belgian that had
the use of his legs, some well-grown boys, one or two ancients, and
several dozen robust women. There was no lack of weapons, and he armed
the lot with a strange collection of French and English rifles, giving
pistols to the section leaders. With the help of the Procureur, he
divided the city into beats and gave his followers instructions. They
were drastic orders, for the situation craved for violence.

He spent the evening of his life. So far as he remembered afterwards, he
was in seventeen different scraps. Strayed revellers were leniently
dealt with--the canal was a cooling experience. Looters were rounded up,
and, if they showed fight, summarily disposed of. One band of bullies
made a stout resistance, killed two of his guards, and lost half a dozen
dead. He got a black eye, a pistol-bullet through his sleeve, a wipe on
the cheek from a carving-knife, and he lost the remnants of his bonnet.
Fifty-two prisoners spent the night in the cellars of the Mairie.

About midnight he found himself in the tapestried chamber. "We'll hae to
get a Proclamation," he had announced; "a gude strong yin, for we maun
conduct this job according to the rules." So the Procureur had a
document drawn up bidding all inhabitants of Ypres keep indoors except
between the hours of 10 a. m. and noon, and 3 and 5 p. m.; forbidding
the sale of alcohol in all forms; and making theft and violence and the
carrying of arms punishable by death. There was a host of other
provisions which Galbraith imperfectly understood, but when the thing
was translated to him he approved its spirit. He signed the document in
his large sprawling hand--"Peter Galbraith, 1473, Pte., 3rd Lennox
Highlanders, Acting Provost of Wipers."

"Get that prentit," he said, "and pit up copies at every street corner
and on a' the public-hooses. And see that the doors o' the publics are
boardit up. That'll do for the day. I'm feelin' verra like my bed."

Mam'selle Omèrine watched him with a smile. She caught his eye and
dropped him a curtsey.

"Monsieur le Roi d'Ypres," she said.

He blushed hotly.


For the next few days Private Galbraith worked harder than ever before
in his existence. For the first time he knew responsibility, and that
toil which brings honour with it. He tasted the sweets of office; and
he, whose aim in life had been to scrape through with the minimum of
exertion, now found himself the inspirer of the maximum in others.

At first he scorned advice, being shy and nervous. Gradually, as he felt
his feet, he became glad of other people's wisdom. Especially he leaned
on two, Mam'selle Omèrine and her father. Likewise the priest, whom he
called the minister.

By the second day the order in Ypres was remarkable. By the third day it
was phenomenal; and by the fourth a tyranny. The little city for the
first time for seven hundred years fell under the sway of a despot. A
citizen had to be on his best behaviour, for the Acting Provost's eye
was on him. Never was seen so sober a place. Three permits for alcohol
and no more were issued, and then only on the plea of medical
necessity. Peter handed over to the doctor the flask of brandy he had
carried off from the _estaminet_--Provosts must set an example.

The Draconian code promulgated the first night was not adhered to.
Looters and violent fellows went to gaol instead of the gallows. But
three spies were taken and shot after a full trial. That trial was the
master effort of Private Galbraith--based on his own regimental
experience and memories of a Sheriff Court in Lanarkshire, where he had
twice appeared for poaching. He was extraordinarily punctilious about
forms, and the three criminals--their guilt was clear, and they were the
scum of creation--had something more than justice. The Acting Provost
pronounced sentence, which the priest translated, and a file of
_mutilés_ in the yard did the rest.

"If the Boches get in here we'll pay for this day's work," said the
judge cheerfully; "but I'll gang easier to the grave for havin' got rid
o' thae swine."

On the fourth day he had a sudden sense of dignity. He examined his
apparel, and found it very bad. He needed a new bonnet, a new kilt, and
puttees, and he would be the better of a new shirt. Being aware that
commandeering for personal use ill suited with his office, he put the
case before the Procureur, and a _Commission de Ravitaillement_ was
appointed. Shirts and puttees were easily got, but the kilt and bonnet
were difficulties. But next morning Mam'selle Omèrine brought a gift. It
was a bonnet with such a dicing round the rim as no Jock ever wore, and
a skirt--it is the truest word--of that pattern which graces the persons
of small girls in France. It was not the Lennox tartan, it was not any
kind of tartan, but Private Galbraith did not laugh. He accepted the
garments with a stammer of thanks--"They're awfu' braw, and I'm much
obliged, Mem"--and, what is more, he put them on. The Ypriotes saw his
splendour with approval. It was a proof of his new frame of mind that he
did not even trouble to reflect what his comrades would think of his
costume, and that he kissed the bonnet affectionately before he went to
bed.

That night he had evil dreams. He suddenly saw the upshot of it
all--himself degraded and shot as a deserter, and his brief glory
pricked like a bubble. Grim forebodings of court-martials assailed him.
What would Mam'selle think of him when he was led away in disgrace--he
who for a little had been a king? He walked about the floor in a frenzy
of disquiet, and stood long at the window peering over the Place, lit by
a sudden blink of moonlight. It could never be, he decided. Something
desperate would happen first. The crash of a shell a quarter of a mile
off reminded him that he was in the midst of war--war with all its
chances of cutting knots.

Next morning no Procureur appeared. Then came the priest with a sad face
and a sadder tale. Mam'selle had been out late the night before on an
errand of mercy, and a shell, crashing through a gable, had sent an
avalanche of masonry into the street. She was dead, without pain, said
the priest, and in the sure hope of Heaven.

The others wept, but Private Galbraith strode from the room, and in a
very little time was at the house of the Procureur. He saw his little
colleague laid out for death after the fashion of her Church, and his
head suddenly grew very clear and his heart hotter than fire.

"I maun resign this job," he told the Committee of Public Safety. "I've
been forgettin' that I'm a sodger and no a Provost. It's my duty to get
a nick at thae Boches."

They tried to dissuade him, but he was adamant. His rule was over, and
he was going back to serve.

But he was not allowed to resign. For that afternoon, after a week's
absence, the British troops came again into Ypres.

They found a decorous little city, and many people who spoke of "le
Roi"--which they assumed to signify the good King Albert. Also, in a
corner of the cathedral yard, sitting disconsolately on the edge of a
fallen monument, Company Sergeant-Major Macvittie of the 3rd Lennox
Highlanders found Private Peter Galbraith.

"Ma God, Galbraith, ye've done it this time! _You'll_ catch it in the
neck! Absent for a week wi'out leave, and gettin' yoursel' up to look
like Harry Lauder! You come along wi' me!"

"I'll come quiet," said Galbraith with strange meekness. He was
wondering how to spell Omèrine St Marais in case he wanted to write it
in his Bible.

The events of the next week were confusing to a plain man. Galbraith was
very silent, and made no reply to the chaff with which at first he was
greeted. Soon his fellows forbore to chaff him, regarding him as a
doomed man who had come well within the pale of the ultimate penalties.

He was examined by his Commanding Officer, and interviewed by still more
exalted personages. The story he told was so bare as to be
unintelligible. He asked for no mercy, and gave no explanations. But
there were other witnesses besides him--the priest, for example, and
Monsieur St Marais, in a sober suit of black and very dark under the
eyes.

By-and-by the court gave its verdict. Private Peter Galbraith was found
guilty of riding roughshod over the King's Regulations; he had absented
himself from his battalion without permission; he had neglected his own
duties and usurped without authority a number of superior functions; he
had been the cause of the death or maltreatment of various persons who,
whatever their moral deficiencies, must be regarded for the purposes of
the case as civilian Allies. The Court, however, taking into
consideration the exceptional circumstances in which Private Galbraith
had been placed, inflicted no penalty and summarily discharged the
prisoner.

Privately, his Commanding Officer and the still more exalted personages
shook hands with him, and told him that he was a devilish good fellow
and a credit to the British Army.

But Peter Galbraith cared for none of these things. As he sat again in
the trenches at St Eloi in six inches of water and a foot of mud, he
asked his neighbour how many Germans were opposite them.

"I was hearin' that there was maybe fifty thoosand," was the answer.

Private Galbraith was content. He thought that the whole fifty thousand
would scarcely atone for the death of one slim, dark-eyed girl.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] _Anglice_--rats.


THE END





End of Project Gutenberg's The Watcher by the Threshold, by John Buchan