THE STICKIT MINISTER'S WOOING (continued 5)

"'I will go over and bring him hither on my back,' said I. And would have plunged in again to do it. For I thought nothing of perils of waters, being tall and a good swimmer to boot. But this Rachel would in no wise permit. She caught me by the arm and would not let me go back.

"''Deed will you do somewhat less, Harry Wedderburn; if Raif thinks so little of his sister as to convoy her home disguised in liquor, e'en let him stand there on the shore, or else take his way home by the Brig of Dumfries!'

"And this I was very content to do, delivering Rachel into the hands of her uncle, Lancelot Pringle of Quarrelwood, in due time—but a longer time mayhap than in ordinary circumstances it takes to traverse the distance between the fords of Holywood over against Netherholm and the mansion house of Quarrelwood. For the pleasure that I had in carrying of Rachel Pringle through the water had gone to my head some little, and I was perhaps not so clear about my way as I might have been.

"So, minding me on that heartsome and memorable night, together with other things more recent, I was not perhaps very anxious about the affection of Rachel Pringle. For I thought that it would take more than the word of Roaring Raif to change the heart of that little Rachel whom I had carried in my arms over the swellings of Nith Water. I minded me how tight she had held to me, and how, when we got over, she whispered in my ear, before I set her down, 'Harry, I like strong men!' Which saying somewhat delayed my putting of her down, for the ground grew exceedingly boggy and unstable just at that spot.

"So, on the evening of the day after I had forsaken my ill courses at the bidding of the Little Fair Man, I set out from the onsteading of Black Craig of Dee, leaving all there in the keeping of my brother John, a stark upstanding lad, and in those of Gilbert Grier, my chief hired herd. I told them not where I was going, but I think they knew well enough. For John brought me my father's broadsword, which he had sharpened instead of my own smaller whinger, and Gib the herd took the pistols out of my belt and saw to their priming anew. They were always very loyal and sib to my heart, these two, and sped me on my love adventures without a word.

"Now the turn or twist that I gat at the outdoor service before the Kirk of Kells was strange enough. It may seem that the conduct of a man can only be turned by the application of reason or argument. But it was not so with me. The Little Fair Man crooked his finger and said: 'Come!' and I came. So also was it with the others who were convertit that day, aided maybe somewhat by my black quarter-staff. But I have since read in the Book that even so did Mr. Rutherfurd's Friend, when on the shores of the sea He called to Him his disciples. 'Come!' He said to the fishermen, and forthwith they left all and followed Him.

"Now my call did not cause me to follow the Little Fair Man. It was not of such a sort. He did not bid me to that of it. But those who have been my neighbours will bear me witness that I never was the same man again, but through many shortcomings and much warring of the flesh against the spirit, have ever sought after better things, during all the fifty-and-one years since that day.

"So out I set on my road to Kirkchrist with a rose in my coat, the covenanted work of reformation in my heart—and my pistols primed. I knew it would need all three to win bonny Rachel Pringle out of the hand of the Slee Tod and his son Raif, the Roaring One.

"Now Kirkchrist is one of the farm-towns of Galloway, many of which in the old days have been set like fortilices high on every defenced hill. Indeed, the ancient tower still stands at one angle of the square of houses, where it is used for a peat-shed. But by an outside stair it is possible to get on the roof and view the country for miles round. On one side the Cooran burn runs down a deep ravine full of hazel copses feathering to the meadow-edges, where big bumble bees have their bykes, and where I first courted Rachel, sitting behind a cole of hay on the great day of the meadow ingathering. On the other three sides the approach to Kirkchrist is as bare as the palm of my hand, all short springy turf, with not so much as a daisy on it, grazed over by Slee Tod's sheep, and cast up in places by conies, whose white tails are for ever to be seen bunting about here and there among the warreny braes.

"Now somehow it never struck me that Roaring Raif would bear malice. What mattered a broken head that he should take offence at his ancient friend? Had I not had my own sconce broke a score of times, and ever loved the breaker better, practising away with John and Gib till I could break his for him in return? Why not thus Raif Pringle? It was true that he had gotten an uncouth clour from the bier-tram of Kells, but I was willing to give him his revenge any day in the week—and, for my part, bore no malice.

"So in this frame of mind I strolled up towards Kirkchrist, when the reek of the peat fires was just beginning to go up into a still heaven from the cot-house in the dell, and the good cottier wives were putting on their pots to make their Four-Hours. I was at peace with all the world, for since the Kirk of Kells there had been a marvellous lightening of my spirit.

"Rachel is yonder, I thought within me, as I went up the hillside towards the low four-square homestead of Kirkchrist. Her hand will be laying the peat and blowing up the kindling. She will be looking out for me somewhere, most likely at yonder window in the gable end.

"Yes, so she was. For as I came in view of the yard gate I saw a white thing waved vehemently, and then suddenly withdrawn.

"'Dear lass,' I thought, 'she is watching; and thinks thus to bid me welcome. She has doubtless made my peace with the Roaring One.'

"And I smiled within myself, like a vain fool, well-content and secure.

"Also I quickened my steps a little, so that I might arrive in time for the meal, being hunger-sharpened with my travel, and having out of expectance and forgetfulness taken but little nooning provender with me from the Black Craig of Dee.

"I watched the window eagerly, as I came nearer, for another glint of the kerchief. But not the beck of a head or the flutter of a little hand intimated that one of the bonniest lasses in Galloway was waiting within. Yet it struck me as strange that there were no clamorous dogs about, or indeed any sound of life whatever. And ever and anon I seemed to hear my name called, but yet, when I stopped and listened, all was still again on the moment.

"Now the entrance into the courtyard or inner square of Kirkchrist was by a 'yett' or strong gate, closed when any raiders or doubtful characters were in the neighbourhood, as well as in the night season. But now this 'yett' stood wide open, and I could see the yellow straw in the yard all freshly spread, the stray ears yet upon it—which last, together with the empty look of the crofts, told me that the oats had been gathered in that day. Where, then, were the men who had done the work? It was a thing unheard of that they should depart without making merry in the house-place, and drinking of the home-brewed ale, laced with a tass of brandy to each tankard.

"The sun was low behind my back, and I was looking towards the onstead of Kirkchrist, when suddenly I saw something glisten in one of the little three-cornered wicket-windows of the barn. It was bright, and shone like polished metal—a steel pistol stock belike. But, nevertheless, I went on in the same dead, uncanny silence.

"Suddenly 'Blaff! Blaff! Blaff!' Three or four shots went off in front of me and to the right. I heard the smooth hissing sound of lead bullets and the whistle of slugs. Something struck me on the muscle of the forearm, stunning me like a blow, then I felt a kind of ragged tear or searing of the flesh as with a hot iron. I cannot describe it better—not very painful at first, but rather angering, and inclining me, but for my recent conversion, to stamp and swear like a king's trooper.

"This, however, I had small time to do, even if I had wished it; for, after one glance at the barn, through the three-cornered wicks of which, as through the portholes of a ship in action, white wreaths of the smoke of gunpowder were curling, my right arm fell to my side, and I turned to run. Even as I did so, a little cloud of men—perhaps half-a-dozen—came rushing out of the mickle 'yett' with a loud shout, and made for me across the level sward. Foremost of them was Roaring Raif. Then I was advertised indeed that he had not forgiven the clour on the head he had gotten. I knew him by his height and by the white clout that was bound like a mutch about his brows.

"'Harry,' said I to myself, when I saw them thus take after me, 'the Black Craig will never see you more. Ye are as a dead man. You cannot run far with that arm draining the life from you, and there is no shelter within miles.'

"Then I heard the brainge of breaking glass behind me, and a voice: 'The linn—the linn, Harry Wedderburn; flee to the linn! It is your only chance. They are mad to kill you, Harry!'

"And even then I was glad to hear the voice of my lass, for to know that her heart and her prayers were with me. So I turned at the word, and ran redwud for the Linn of Kirkchrist—a wild steep place, all cliffs and screes and slithery spouts of broken slate. I felt my strength fast leaving me as I ran, and ever the enemy shouted nearer to my back.

"'Kill him! Shoot him! Put a bullet into him!'

"Wondrous stimulating I found such remarks as these, made a hundred or two yards to leeward, with an occasional pistol bullet whistling by to mark the sense, as in a printed book. This made me run as I think I never ran before. For, though I was a changed man, I did not want to die and go straight to that Abraham's bosom, of which the Little Fair Man had spoken as one that had lain there of a long season. I did not surmise that the accommodation would suit me so well. No, not yet awhile, with Rachel Pringle praying for my life half-a-mile behind. So I ran and better ran, till the sweat of my brow ran into my eyes and well nigh blinded me. Now in those days I was very young and limber. And I am none so stiff yet for my age.

"At all events, when I came to the taking off of the linn I saw that there was nothing for it but my callant's monkey trick of letting myself down like a wheel. I had often practised it on the heathery slopes of the Black Craig of Dee, so I caught myself behind the knees, and, with my head bent like a hoop, flung myself over the edge. Presently I felt myself tearing through the copses and plunging into little darksome dells. I rebounded from tree trunks and bruised myself against rocks. Stones I had started span whizzing about my ears, and I heard the risp and rattle of shot fired after me from the margin of the linn. My wounded arm seemed as if drawn from its socket. Then I felt the cool plash of water, and I knew no more.

"I might very well have been drowned in Kirkchrist Linn that day, but it had not been to be. For it so chanced that I fell into the deepest pool for miles, and was carried downwards by the strongest current into the place that is now called the 'Harry's Jaws.' This is a darksome spot, half-cavern, half-bridge, under the gloomy arch of which the brown peat-water foams white as fresh-poured ale, and the noise of its thundering deafens the ear. When I came to myself I was lying half out of the water and half in, on the verge of a great fall where the burn takes a leap thirty or forty feet into a black pool. I looked over, and there beneath me, with one of my own pistols in his hand, was Roaring Raif, a terrifying sight, with his bloody clout all awry about his head. He was looking at the pistol, dripping wet as it had gone over the fall when I came down like a runaway cart wheel into the Linn of Kirkchrist.

"'He's farther doon the water, boys,' I heard him cry, and the sound was sweet to my ear. 'Here's the pistol he has left behint him! Scatter, boys, and a braw sheltie to the man that first puts an ounce o' lead into him!'

"A pleasant forgiving nature had this same Roaring One. And I resolved that, though a converted man, I would deal with him accordingly when I gat him into my clutches.

"The place where I found me was not uncommodious. To make the most of it I crawled backwards till I came to the end of the rocks. Here was a little strip of sand, and over that a dry recess almost large enough for a cave. Some light filtered in from unseen crevices above, so that I think it was not roofed with solid rock overhead. Rather it was some falling in of the sides of the linn which had made the hiding-place. Here I was safe enough so long as the burn did not rise suddenly, for I knew well from the 'glet' on the stones and the bits of stick and dried rushes that the waters of the linn filled all the interior in time of flood.

"Then I made what shift I could to bind up my arm. I was already faint from loss of blood, but I bound a band tight about my upper arm, twisting it with a stick till I almost cried out with the greatness of the pain. Then I tied a rag, torn from my shirt, about the wound itself, which turned out to be in the fleshy part, very red and angry. However, it had bled freely, which, though it made me faint at the time, together with the washing in the water of the linn, was probably the saving of me. There was a soft fanning air as the night drew on, and, in my wet clothes, I shivered, now hot, now cold. My head was throbbing and over-full; and I began to see strange lights about me as the cave alternately grew wide and high as the firmament, and anon contracted to the size of a hazel-nut. That was the little touch of fever which always comes after a gunshot wound.

"So after a while fell the darkness, or, rather, if there had not been a full moon, the darkness would have fallen. But, being thirsty with my wound, I crawled down to the water's edge and bent my head to drink, with the drumming of the fall loud in my ears. And, lo! in the pool I saw the round of the moon reflected. I was at the mouth of the little cave, and there, to the north, the Plough hung as from a nail in the August sky, while a little higher I saw one prong of silvery Cassiopeia's broken-legged 'W.'

"The stars looked so remote and lonesome, so safe and careless up there. They minded so little that I was wounded and helpless, that if I had not been a changed man, I declare I could have cursed them in my heart.

"But suddenly from above came a sound that made all my heart beat and quiver. It was a woman's cry. All you who have never heard how soft a woman can make her speech when she fears for her true man's life, take this word. There is no sound so sweet, so low, so far-searching in the world.

"'Harry! Harry Wedderburn!' it said. And I knew that in the midnight Rachel Pringle was searching and calling for me. Though there might be danger, I could not bear that she should pass away from me.

"'I am here,' I answered as softly as I could. But the noise of the waterfall drowned my voice, though my ears, grown accustomed to the roar, had caught hers easily enough.

"So, steadying me on the crutch of a tree that grew perilously over the fall, I went out and stood in the full light of the moon, taking my life in my hand if it had so chanced that any of my enemies were in ambush round about.

"Rachel saw me instantly, and I could see her clasp her hands over her heart as she stood on the margin of the cleuch, black against the indigo sky of night.

"'Harry—Harry Wedderburn!'

"'Here—dear love—here! By the waterfall.'

"In an instant she was flying down the slope, having lifted her skirt, and, as we say, 'kilted' it, so that she might go the lighter. She wore a white gown, and I could see her flit like a moth through the covert of birk and hazel to the water-edge. In another moment, without stopping either for direction or to draw breath, she was coming towards me, her face to the precipice, swiftly, fearlessly, clinging to the little ragged rock-rifts, from which scarce a wind-wafted seed would grow or a tuft of gilly-flower protrude about which to clasp her fingers. But Rachel Pringle came as lightly and easily as if she had been ascending the steps of her father's ha'.

"'Go back,' she whispered, 'go back, dear love! They may see you. I am coming—I know the way!'

"And with that I stepped back out of the moonlight, obedient to her word. Yet I stood near enough to the wall of the cliff to reach my arm over for her to take, so that she might have something to hold by during the last and most difficult steps of the goats' path, the roaring linn being above, the pool deep and black below.

"Now, either by chance or because it was the one which could reach farthest, I tendered Rachel my wounded arm, and as soon as she clasped my hand so rude a stound ran up my wrist that it seemed as though I had been pierced through and through with a hot iron. So when at last Rachel leaped lightly upon the wet rock, I was ready to droop like a blown windlestrae in a December gale into her arms—yes, I, that was the strong man, called Strength-o'-Airm, laid my head on her shoulder, and she drew me within the shelter of the cave's mouth, crooning over me as wood doves do to their mates, and whispering soft words to me as a mother doth to a bairn that hath fallen down and hurt itself.

"But in a little the stound of pain passed away, what with the happiness of her coming, the plash of the nearer waters, and the coolness of the night winds which blew to and fro in our refuge place as through a tunnel.

"Then Rachel told me that she had run from the house while they were all searching for me everywhere. Roaring Raif and his brother Peter, together with Gib Maxwell of Slagnaw, Paul Riddick of the Glen, and Black-Browed Macclellane of Gregorie, Will of Overlaw, and Lancelot Lindesay, the tutor of Rascarrel—as bloodthirsty a crew as ever raked the brimstony by-roads of hell.

"Very well I knew that if they lighted on us together there was no hope for me. But Rachel allayed my fear a little by telling me that she did not believe that any in the house knew of the cave beneath the tumble of rocks save only herself. It had long been her custom to seek it for quiet, when the Roaring One brought his crew about the house of Kirkchrist, and none had ever tracked her thither.

"So she examined my wound in the light of the moon, which shone in at one end as we sat on the inmost crutch of the tree. Now Rachel had much skill in wounds, for, indeed, her house was never free of them, her brothers, Peter and the Roaring One, never both being skin-whole at the same time. And so, with a handsbreadth torn from her white underskirt, she bathed and bandaged the wound, telling me for my comfort that the shot appeared to have gone through the fleshy part without lodging, so that most likely the wound would come together sweetly and heal by the first intention.

"Then, after this was done, we arrived at our first difference. For Rachel vowed that she would in no wise go back to the onstead of Kirkchrist, but would stop and nurse me here in the linn; which thing, indeed, would have been mightily pleasant to the natural man. But, being mindful of that which the Little Fair Man had said, and also of the censorious clatter of the countryside, I judged this to be impossible, and told Rachel so; who, in her turn, received it by no means with meekness, but rose and stamped her little foot, and said that she would go and never return—that she was sorry to her heart she had ever come where she was so little thought of, with many other speeches of that kind, such as spirity maids use when they are affronted and in danger of not getting their own sweet way with the men of their hearts.

"Now it went sore against the grain thus to deal with Rachel. And yet I could think of no way of appeasing her, but to feign a dwalm of faintness and pain from my wound. So when I staggered and appeared to hold myself up by the rock with difficulty, she stayed in the full flood of her reproaches, and faltered, 'What is the matter, Harry?'

"Then, because I made no answer, she kneeled down beside me, and, taking my head in both of her hands, she kissed my brow.

"'I did not mean it—indeed, I did not, Harry,' she said, with that delicious contrition which at all times sat so well on her—even after we were married, which is a strange thing and very uncommon.

"So I touched her cheek with my fingers and forgave her, as a man who has been in the wrong forgives a loving woman who has not. (There is ever a touch of superiority in a man's forgiving—in a woman's there is only love and the desire for peace).

"'Then I may stay with you?' she said.

"And I will not deny but she tempted me sore.

"But swift as the sunbeam that strikes from cloud to hilltop, a thought came to me.

"'Listen to me, Rachel,' I said. 'At the break of day or thereby all will be quiet. The Roaring One and his crew will be snoring in bed——'

"'Or on the floor,' said Rachel, with a quick and dainty sniff of distaste.

"'Either will suffice,' I said. 'Then will we go down and call up the minister. We will cause him to marry us, and then we will fear neither traitor nor slanderer.'

"'But he will not!' she cried. 'Donald Bain is a bishop's hireling, and, besides, our Raif's boon companion.'

"Then I drew my dirk and held it aloft, so that the moonlight ran like molten silver down the blade.

"'See,' said I, 'dear Rachel, if this does not gar the curate of Kirkchrist marry us to a galloping tune, Harry Wedderburn kens not the breed, that is all.'

"'Content!' said she. 'I will do what you say, Harry; only I will not go back to Kirkchrist nor will I part from you now when I have gotten you.'

"Which thing I was most glad to hear from her fair and loving lips. And I thought, smilingly, that Rachel's manner of speaking these words became her very well.

"So there in the din of the water-cavern and under the wheeling shafts of silver light as the moon swung overhead, we two abode well content, waiting for the dawn.

"And so, in this manner, and for all my brave words, the witch got her way."

But how—we shall see.

THE LITTLE FAIR MAN

III.—THE CURATE OF KIRKCHRIST

"The manse of Kirkchrist parish was less than a mile down the glen. It had only a week or two before been taken possession of by one Donald Bain, an ignorant fellow, so they said, intruded upon us by the new bishop. For Mr. Gilbert, our old and tried minister and servant of God, had been removed, even as Mr. Rutherfurd had been put out of Anwoth, and at about the same time.

"Thither, then, we took our way, my dear betrothed and I, with my wounded arm carried across me, the sleeve being pinned to my coat front so that I could not move my hand.

"We kept entirely to the thickets by the waterside, Rachel leading the way. For she had played all her life at the game which had now become earnest and deadly. But we need not have troubled. For as we went, from far away, light as a waft of wind blown athwart a meadow, we heard the chorus of the roisterers in the house of Kirkchrist, and emergent from the servile ruck, the voice of her brother, the Roaring One, urging good fellows all to 'come drink with him.' Somewhat superfluously, indeed, to all appearance, for the good fellows all had apparently been 'come-drink-ing' all night to the best of their ability and opportunities.

"After this Rae and I went a little more openly and swiftly. This chiefly for my sake, because the uneven ground and the little branches of the hazel bushes caught and whipped my wounded arm, making me more than once to wince with the pain.

"And Rachel kept a little beneath me on the brae, and bade me lean my well hand on her shoulder, saying that I could not press over-hard, and that the more I did so, the more would she know that I loved her. In this not unpleasing fashion we came to the house of the curate that had so lately been intruded upon the manse of godly Mr. Gilbert.

"The place was all dark, and the shutters put over the windows for fear of shots from without. Then with my sword hilt I began to knock, and the noise of the blows resounded through the house hollow and loud. For the Highlandman had as yet put little furniture into it, save as they said a sheave or two of rushes for a bed for himself, and another for the wench that keeped house to him—his sister, as he averred.

"In no long space of time his reverence set a shock head out of the window to ask what was the din. The which he did in a bold manner, as though he were the lord and master of the neighbourhood. But I tamed him, for I bade him do his curate's coat upon him, and bring his service book, for that he was to marry two people there and then.

"'Who be you that seek to be married so untimeous?' he asked. 'Cannot ye be content till the morning?'

"'That is just why we cannot be content,' I answered; 'we must be far away by then!'

"So in a little he rose up grumbling and came down.

"'Have you not also a maid in the house?' I asked of him.

"'Aye,' said he, very dried like, 'my sister Jean!'

"'Bid her rise. We have need of a witness!' I bade him.

"'And I, of someone to hold the candle!' he added.

"It was about four of the clock, and the east little more than greying, as we four stood in front of the manse of Kirkchrist. Had any been abroad to see us we had seemed a curious company. The curate in his white gown and black bands, his shambling nightgear peeping out above and under—a red peaked nightcap on his head, the tassel of which nodded continually over his right eye in a most ludicrous manner (only that none thought of mirth that night). Beside him, a dripping candle in her hand, stood his sister, a buxom quean, blowsed with health and ruddy as the cherry.

"Before these two I stood, 'a black towering hulk with one arm in a sling' (Rachel's words), and beside me, my sweet bride, dainty and light as a butterfly at poise on a flower's lip.

"Overhead among the trees the wind began to move, blowing thin and chill before the dawn. And even as the curate thumbed and mumbled beneath the flicker of the candle, I saw the light break behind the Black Craig of Dee, and wondered if ever Rae and I should dwell in peace and content in the lee of it.

"And because neither Rachel nor I knew that form of words, Jean Bain kept us right, prompting us how to kneel here, and what to answer there, here to say our names over, and there promise to love each other—the last not necessary, for if we had not done that already, we had hardly been at the manse of Kirkchrist at four of the August morning in order to be wed by an alien and uncovenanted priest.

"But scarcely had the blessing of Donald Bain made us man and wife, when we heard the roysterers' chorus again abroad on the hills, and Jean Bain came rushing upon us wild with alarm. She guessed well enough who we were. For the searchers had been at the manse the night before swearing to have my life.

"'Flee,' she said; 'take to the heather for your lives. They have sworn to kill your husband!'

"This I knew well enough; but the perversity of fate which at that time clung to me, made me ready to faint.

"'I cannot go—I am dizzy with my wound!' I said, and would have fallen but that Rachel and the young Highland woman held me up in their arms.

"All this time the shouting and hallooing like the crying of hunters on the hills came nearer, and the day was breaking fast.

"Rachel and I were, indeed, in a strait place. I bethought me on the Little Fair Man, and almost repented that his counsels had brought me to this. But even then, and in the house of the Philistine, help came.

"'Come in with you both,' said Jean Bain in a fierce voice, as if daring contradiction. 'Donald, aff wi' your surplice and on wi' your coat. You must meet them, and hold them in parley. It shall not be said that a bridegroom was slaughtered like an ox upon our doorstep within an hour of his wedding.'

"With that she bustled us upstairs to her own room. Truly enough, there was but one broad pallet of heather covered with rushes spread on the floor, and no other furniture whatever.

"Near the bed-head there was the low door of a little closet or deep cupboard. Into this she bade us enter, and told us that she would hang her clothing over it upon the wooden pegs which were there for the purpose. Since no better might be we entered, for my head was running round with my loss of blood and the pain in my wounded arm. I was glad to lie down anywhere.

"Then through the buzzing bees' byke in my skull I could hear Jean Bain giving her last orders to the curate.

"'Hear ye, Donald, lee to them weel. Ye hae seen nocht—ken nocht; and if they offer to bide, tell them that it is the hour when ye engage in family worship. That will flit them if nocht else will!'

"And though I could hear the raucous voice of that gomeril brother-in-law of mine at the bottom of the stairs, I could not help laying my head on Rachel's shoulder, and whispering in her ear the words, 'Little wife!' To which she responded with no more than 'Hush!' So there we abode, crouching and cowering in that dark cupboard while a score of raging demons turned the curate's house upside down, crying for jugs of brandy and tasses of aquavity, while Jean Bain shrilly declared that no brandy could they expect in such a poverty-stricken land, but good home-brewed ale—and even that they should not have unless they behaved themselves more seemly.

"But ever as I lay the darkness seemed to stretch far above me, the walls to mount and then swiftly come together again; now I was upheaved on delicious billows of caller air, and anon I fell earthward again through the illimitable vault of heaven. Yet every now and then I would awake for a moment to find my head on a sweeter than Abraham's bosom, and so fall to contemning my folly. But ere I had time to realise my happiness I was off again ranging the universe, or at converse with hundreds and hundreds of mocking spirits that mopped and mowed about my path. For I was just falling into a fever, and my dear lass had to put her skirt about my mouth to keep the man-hunters from hearing me moan and struggle in my phantasy.

"By nine of the clock they had drunken all that was in the curate's house, and poor Donald Bain had gone to convoy them on their way. They were going (so they swore) to the Black Craig o' Dee to rout me out of my den. And this made Rachel very sore afraid, for she knew well that if we were to go back to the damp cave in the linn I would never rise from my bed alive. And now, as she thought, the way was shut to our only port of refuge. Also she feared for John, my brother—not being acquaint with John, and conceiving tnat they might do him a mischief, together with the innocent plough lads and herds in the house. But this need not have troubled her, for indeed no one about the Black Craig o' Dee desired anything better than that Roaring Raif and his crew should come near at hand to receive the welcome prepared for him.

"But in the very hour of the storm-breaking there appeared a bieldy dyke-back to shelter two poor lost wandering lambs. For no sooner was Donald Bain out of the house with all the ungodly crew than Jean, his sister, flew upstairs to us, with her gown all pulled awry as she had escaped from the hands of the roysterers.

"'Come your ways out, you puir young things,' she cried; 'they are gane, and the foul fiend ride ahint them. May they never come this road again, that kenned neither how to behave themselves seemly in a manse nor how to conduct them before a decent lass. Faith, they little jalloused how near they were to gettin' a durk between the ribs!'

"But by the time Rachel and Jean Bain got me out of that darksome closet I was fairly beside myself. The fever ran high, and I raved about rivers of waters and the sound of great floods, and threeped with them that I saw the Little Fair Man coming on the wings of seraphims and cherubims and lifting me up out of the mire.

"And as soon as Jean Bain heard the yammer and yatter of my foolish running on, she went to the closet for some simple herbs, and put them in a pot over the fire to steam. Then she bade Rachel help me down to the minister's chamber, and between them they undressed me, cutting the sleeve from my coat so as to save the poor wounded arm. They got me finally between the blankets, and made me drink of this herb-tea and that, willy-nilly. For which, as I heard afterwards, I called them 'witch-wives,' 'black crows of a foul nest,' with many other names. But Jean Bain held me by the arm that was whole, while Rachel fleeched with me through her streaming tears; and so in time they gat me to take down the naughty-tasting brew. Nevertheless, in a little it soothed me as a mother's lullaby doth a fractious wean, and in time I fell on a refreshing sleep.

"Yet Rachel would not be comforted, but mourned for me greatly, till Jean Bain told her of the yet sorer case in which she and Donald had but lately been. To which my lass rejoined, proud of her exceedingly recent wifehood! 'Ah, but he is your brother—not your man! I would not care what became of Raif, not if they hanged him on the Gallows hill, and the craws pyked his banes!'

"For she was angry with her brother.

"Then all suddenly Jean Bain set her head between her hands, and began to greet as if her poor heart were near the breaking.

"'He is my man—he is my man!' she cried. "And I wish we were back again in bonny Banff, him a herd-laddie an' me a herd-lassie, and that we could hear again the waves break amang the rocks at Tarlair!

"'Wedded—aye, that are we, firm and staunch,—but Donald daurna let on, or Bishop Sydserf wad turn him awa'. He will hae nae wedded priests amang them that he sets ower his parochins. But, as he says, men kinless and cumberless that are neither feared to stand and fight or mount and ride. It came aboot this gate. When Donald was comin' awa' to get his lear, I was fair broken-hearted. For we had herded lang thegether on the gowden braes, and lain mony a simmer day amang the broom wi' our een on the sheep, but our hearts verra close the yin to the ither. The bishop was o' our clan and country-side, and he made Donald graund offers—siccan fat parishes as there were in the Lawlands—stipend—house and gear—guid faith, he dazzled a' the weel-doin' laddies there-aboot. And Donald gied his word to be a curate, for he was weel-learned, and had been to the schule as mony as four winters, me gangin wi' him, and carryin' his books when I could win clear o' my mither.

"'So since I couldna bide frae him, Donald brocht me here to this cauld, ill, ootland place, where we bide amang fremit and unco folk that hate us. But we were married first and foremost by the minister o' Deer, that was a third cousin o' Donald's aunt's—and a solid man that can keep his tongue safe and siccar ahint his teeth.'

"'But oh—this place that we thocht to be a garden o' a delichts and an orchard o' gowden fruit is hard and unkindly and bare. The gear and plenishin' of this manse are nocht but the heather beds that our ain fingers pu', and the blankets we brocht wi' us. And for meat we hae the fish o' the stream an' the birds that Donald whiles shoots wi' his gun—paitricks and wild ducks on the ponds. For no a penny's worth o' steepend will they pay. And the bishop's warrandice runs nae farther than the range o' the guns o' his bodyguard.'

"So, after this explanation, the two women mourned together as they tended me, and presently the poor curate, Donald Bain, came back to find them thus, and me raving at large, and trying to tear off the bandages from my arm.

"So here in this house, ill-furnished and cheerless, this kindly couple kept us safely hid till the blast had overblown and the bitterest of the shower slacked. Five weeks we abode there before I could be moved, and even then I was still as weak as water. But for the last fortnight we lived in more comfort. For the curate went over on a sheltie which, as he said, he 'had fand in a field,' to the Black Craig of Dee, and there held a long parley with my brother in the gate, while John had all his work to keep Gib Grier and his herd-laddies from shooting the curate for a black hoodie craw o' Prelacy, as they named him.

"And John came back with his visitor to the manse of Kirkchrist on a beast with store of provend upon it, together with good French wines and other comforts, for the upbuilding of the sick.

"'I declare I will never speak against a curate again,' said John, when he heard that which we had to tell him. And he kissed his new sister Rachel with great and gracious goodwill, for John was ever fond of a bonnie lass. Besides, we had had no woman body about the Black Craig ever since our mother died, when we were but wild laddies herding the craws off the corn in the long summer days, and hiding lest we should be made to go with the funeral that wimpled over the moor to the Kirkyaird of Kells.

"Likewise also he saluted Jean Bain, or she him—I am not sure which. For Jean was in no wise backward in affection, but of a liberal, willing, softish nature; fond of a talk with a lad over a 'yett,' and fond, too, of a kiss at parting. Which last she gave to John with hearty goodwill, and that, too, in the presence of the curate.

"And as we went slowly back over the heather, John walked on one side of the horse which carried me, and Rachel rode on the sheltie on the other. John was silent for a long while, and then he all at once said: 'Dod, but I think I could fancy that Heelant lass mysel'!'

"So Rachel began to tell him how it was with Donald Bain the curate and Jean his wife. For with a woman's love for a fair field and no favour in matters of love, she did not wish John to spend himself on that which could never be his. Then was John very doleful for a space.

"But in time he, too, changed his mind, and was most kind to poor Donald Bain and his wife when in the year 1638 he was outed from his parish in the same month that Sydserf, his master, was set aside by the parliament and the people of Scotland. Then great evil might have befallen him but that, being long fully recovered from my wound, Gib Grier and I set out for the manse of Kirkchrist, and brought them both, Donald and Jean, to the Black Craig of Dee, where in the midst of our great moors and black moss-hags they were safe even as I had been in their house. And in our spare chamber, too, was born to them a babe, a thing which, had it been kenned, would have caused great scandal all over the land for the wickedness of the curates. But none knew (save John and Gib, who were sworn to secrecy) till we gat them convoyed away to the north again, where they did very well, and Donald became chaplain to my Lord of Sutherland. And every year for long and long the Edinburgh carrier brought us a couple of haunches of venison well smoked, which served us till Yule or Pasch, and very toothsome and sweet it was. This was a memorial from Donald Bain and Jean his wife.

"Douce and sober we lived, Rachel and I, we who had been so strangely joined. For the Slee Tod of Kirkchrist was glad enough to have his daughter wed to one who asked neither dower nor wedding-gift, tocher nor house linen; and as for Roaring Raif, he broke his neck-bone over the linn coming home one night from the rood-fair of Dumfries. But I kept my mind steadfastly set to make my new life atone for the faults of the old—which may be bad theology, but is good sound fact. And Rachel, like a valiant housewife, aided me in that as in all things. So that I became in time a man of mark, and was chosen an elder by the Session of the parish. But nevertheless the old Adam was not dead within me, but only kept close behind bars waiting to be quits with me. For as the years went by I was greatly taken up with my own righteousness, and so in excellent case to backslide.

"Now it chanced that, being one day in the change house of the clachan, I heard one speak lightly of our daughter Anne, that was now of marriageable age, and of a most innocent and merry heart. So anger took hold of me, and, unmindful of my great strength, I dealt the young man such a buffet on the side of his head that he was carried out for dead, and indeed lay long at his father's house between life and death.

"Now this was a mighty sorrow to me and to Rachel my wife. And though little was said because of the provocation I had (which all had heard), I thought it my duty to resign my office of the eldership, confessing my hastiness and sin to my brethren, and offering public contrition. But for all that I gat no ease, but was under a great cloud of doubt, feeling myself once again without God and without hope in the world.

"Then it came to me that if I could but see the Little Fair Man again he would tell me what I should do. I knew that he had been of a long season regent of a college in the town of Sanct Anders. So I gave myself no rest day nor night till my good wife, after vainly trying to settle me by her loving words, made all preparation of provend in saddle-bags, and guineas in pouch, and set me on a good beast at the louping-on stone by our door. It was the first year of the restored King Charles, the Second of that name, and the darkness was just thickening upon the land, a darkness greater than the first, when I set out to see Mr. Rutherfurd.

"For the early part of my travel all went well, but when I was passing through the town of Hamilton, certain soldiers set upon me, asking for my pass, and calling me 'Westland Whig' and 'canting rebel.' They would have taken from me all that I had, having already turned my saddle-bags outside in, and one of them even came near to thrust his hand into my pocket, when a coach drove up with six horses and outriders mired to the shoulders. Then a pair of grand servants sprang down from behind, and cried: 'Room for my Lord Bishop!' And at this the soldiers desisted from plundering me to do their obeisance.

"Then there came forth first a rosy buxom woman, breathing heavily, and holding out a plump hand to the man-servant.

"But when she saw me with a soldier at either side, she took one long look, and then cried out in a hearty voice: 'What's this—what's this—my friend Harry Wedderburn in the gled's claws? Let be, scullions! Donald, here's our host frae the Black Craig o' Dee!'

"And forthwith, the soldiers falling back abashed, the bishop's lady, she that had been poor Jean Bain, came at me in her old reckless way, and flung her arms about my neck, kissing me soundly and heartily—as I had not been kissed of a long season by any save Rachel, me being no more a young man.

"And the bishop was no other than Donald himself, the same who had been curate of Kirkchrist—and a right reverend prelate he looked.

"Then nothing would do Jean and Donald but I must get into the carriage with them, and have one of their men-servants ride my beast into Edinburgh. Neither excuse nor nay-say would my lady bishop take. So in this manner we travelled very comfortably, I sitting beside her, and at Edinburgh we parted, I to Sanct Anders, they to a lodging near my Lord of Sutherland's house, to whose influence with the king they owed their advancement. For they were hand and glove with him. And the morning I was to ride away came their carriage to the door, and lo! my lady again—this time with a safe-conduct and letter of certification from the Privy Council setting forth that I was a person notably well-affected and staunch; that none were to hinder or molest me or mine in body or estate under penalty of the King's displeasure. Which thing in the troublous times to come more than once or twice stood me in great stead.

"But when I came to Sanct Anders, the first thing I heard was that Mr. Rutherfurd lay a-dying in his college of St. Mary's. I betook me thither, and lo! a guard of soldiers was about the doors, and would in no wise permit me pass. They were burning a pile of books, and I heard say that it was done by order of the parliament, and that thereafter Mr. Rutherfurd was to be carried out, alive or dead, and his bed set in the open street. Lex Rex was the name of the book I saw them turning this way and that with sticks, so as to make the leaves burn faster. I know not why it was so dour to catch, for out of curiosity I got me a copy afterwards, and the Lord knows it was dry enough—at least to my taste.

"But after a while, showing the officer my Privy Council letter, I prevailed on him that I had a mandate from government to see Mr. Rutherfurd, and that I had come directly and of purpose from Edinburgh to oversee the affair, and report on those who were diligent. So at long and last they let me go up the stair.

"And at the top I found many doors closed, but one open, and the sound of a voice I knew well speaking within.

"And still it was telling the praises of the Friend—yes, after a lifetime of struggle and suffering. Nor do I think that, save for taking rest in sleep, the voice had ever been silent on that theme.

"So though none knew me, I passed straight through the little company to the deathbed of the man who spoke. He was the Little Fair Man no longer. But his scant white hair lay soft as silk on the pillow. His face was pale as ivory, his cheeks fallen in, only his eyes glowed like live coals deep-sunken in his head.

"'So, friend—you have come to see an old man die,' he said, when his eyes lighted on me; 'what, a bairn of mine, sayst thou—not after the flesh but after the spirit. Aye, I do mind that day at Kells. A gale from the Lord blew about us that day. So you are Harry of the Rude Hand, and you have fallen into sin. Ah, you must not come to me—you must to the Master! You had better have gone to your closet, and worn the whinstone a little with the knees of your breeks. And yet I ken not. None hath been a greater sinner or known greater mercy than Samuel Rutherfurd. I am summoned by the Star Chamber—I go to the chamber of Stars. I will see the King. I will carry Him your message, Harry. Fear not, the young man you smote will recover. He will yet bless you for laying a hand on him, even as this day you acknowledge the unworthy servant who on the green sward of Kells called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.

"'Sir, fare you well. Go home to your wife, nothing doubting. This night shall close the door. At five of the morning I will fasten my anchor within the veil.'

"And even as he said so it was. He passed away, and, as for me, secure that he would carry my message to the Alone Forgiver of Sins I returned home to find the youth recovered and penitent. He afterwards became a noted professor and field preacher, and died sealing his testimony with his blood on the victorious field of Loudon Hill.

"This is the testimony of me, Harry Wedderburn, sometime called Strength-o'-Airm, who now in the valley of peace and a restored Israel wait the consummation of all things. Being very lonely, I write these things out to pass the time till I, too, cast mine anchor within the veil. And I cheer myself with thinking that two shall meet me there, one on either side of the gate—Rachel, my heart's dear partner, and the Little Fair Man, who will take by either hand and lead into the presence of the Friend, poor unworthy Harry Wedderburn, sometime bond-slave of sin, but now servant most unprofitable of the Lord."

(Note by Mr. John Wedderburn.—"My father departed this life on the morning after finishing this paper, sleeping quietly away about five of the clock.")

MY FATHER'S LOVE STORY

When I am putting together family stories, new and old, I may as well tell my father's. Sometimes we of a younger day thought him stiff, silent, out of sympathy with our interests and amusements; but the saving salt of humour that was in him made this only seeming. In reality tolerance and kindliest understanding beaconed from under the covert of his bushy grey eyebrows.

There was the savour of an infinite discernment in the slow "Aye?" with which he was wont to receive any doubtful statement. My mother said ever ten words for his one, and it was his wont to listen to her gravely and unsmilingly, as if giving the subject the profoundest attention, while all the time his thoughts were far away—a fact well understood and much resented by his wife.

"What am I talkin' aboot, Saunders?" she would say, pausing in the midst of a commination upon some new and garish fashion in dress, or the late hours kept by certain young men not a thousand miles away.

"Oh, breaking the second commandment, as usual," he would reply; "discoursing of the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth!"

"Havers," she would reply, her face, however, glancing at him bright as a new-milled shilling, "your thochts were awa' on the mountains o' vainity! Naething richt waukens ye up but a minister to argue wi'!"

And, indeed, that was a true word. For though an unusually silent man, my father, Alexander (or Saunders) McQuhirr, liked nothing better than a minister to argue with—if one of the Kirk of Scotland, well and good. There was the Revolution Settlement, the Headship of Christ, the Power of the Civil Magistrate. My father enjoyed himself thoroughly, and if the minister chanced to be worthy, so did he. But it took a Cameronian or an Original Secession divine really to rouse within him, what my mother called "his bowels of wrath."

"There is a distinct Brownist strain in your opinions, Alexander," Mr. Osbourne would say—his own minister from the Kirk on the Hill. "Your father's name was not Abel for nothing!"[#]

[#] "Abel," "Jacob," "Abraham" were not common names in Scotland, and such as occurred in families during last century might generally be traced to the time of Cromwellian occupation. David and Samuel were the only really common Old Testament names at that time.

Mr. Osbourne generally reminded him of this when he had got the worse of some argument on the true inwardness of the Marrow Controversy. He did not like to be beaten, and my father was a dour arguer. Once it is recorded that the minister brought all the way up to Drumquhat on a Communion Friday—the "off-day" as it were of the Scottish Holy Week—the great Dr. Marcus Lawton himself from Edinburgh. It happened to be a wettish day in the lull between hay and harvest. My father was doing something in the outhouse where he kept his joinering tools, and the two ministers joined him there early in the forenoon. They were well into "Freewill" before my father was at the end of the board he had been planing. "Predestination" was the overword of their conversation at the noonday meal, which all three seemed to partake of as dispassionately as if they had been stoking a fire—this to the great indignation of my mother, who having been warned of the proposed honour, had given herself even more completely to hospitality than was habitual with her.

Mr. Osbourne, indeed, made a pretext of talking to her about the price of butter, and how her hens were laying. But she saw through him even as he spoke.

For, as she said afterwards, describing the scene, "I saw his lug cockit for what the ither twa were saying, and if it hadna been for the restrainin' grace o' God, I declare I wad hae telled him that butter was a guinea a pound in Dumfries market, and that my hens were laying a score o' eggs apiece every day—he never wad hae kenned that I was tellin' him a lee!"

All day the great controversy went on. Even now I can remember the echoes of it coming to me through the wet green leaves of the mallows my mother had planted along the south-looking wall. To this day I can hear the drip of the water from the slates mingling with such phrases as "the divine sovereignty," the "Covenant of Works," "the Adamic dispensation." I see the purple of the flowers and smell the sweet smell of the pine shavings. They seemed to my childish mind like three Titans hurling the longest words in the dictionary at each other. I know nothing wherewith to express the effect upon my mind of this day-long conflict save that great line in the fifth book of Paradise Lost:

"Thrones, dominations, princedoms, vertues, powers!"

It was years after when first I read it, but instantly I thought of that wet summer day in Lammastide, when my father wrestled with his peers concerning the deep things of eternity, and was not overcome.

My mother has often told me that he never slept all that night—how waking in the dawn and finding his place vacant, she had hastily thrown on a gown and gone out to look for him. He was walking up and down in the little orchard behind the barn, his hands clasped behind his back. And all he said in answer to her reproaches was: "It's vexin', Mary, to think that I only minded that text in Ephesians about being 'sealed unto the day of redemption' after he was ower the hill. It wad hae ta'en the feet clean frae him if I had gotten hand o' it in time."

"What can ye do wi' a man like that?" she would conclude, summing up her husband's character, mostly in his hearing.

"But remember, Mary, the pit from which I was digged!" he would reply, reaching down the worn old leather-bound copy of Boston's Fourfold State out of the wall-press and settling himself to re-peruse a favourite chapter.

* * * * *

My father's father, Yabel McQuhirr, was a fierce hard man, and seldom showed his heart, ruling his house with a rod of iron, setting each in his place, wife, child, man-servant and maid-servant, ox and ass—aye, and the stranger within his gates.

My father does not talk of these things, but my mother has often told me of that strange household up among the granite hills, to which, as a maid of nineteen, she went to serve. In those days in all the Galloway farm-towns, master and servant sat down together to meals. The head of the house was lawgiver and potentate, priest and parent to all beneath his roof. And if Yabel McQuhirr of Ardmannoch did not exercise the right of pit and gallows, it was about all the authority he did not claim over his own.

Yabel had a family of strong sons, silent, dour—the doctrine of unquestioning obedience driven into them by their father's right arm and oaken staff. But their love was for their mother, who drifted through the house with a foot light as a falling leaf, and a voice attuned to the murmuring of a hill stream. There was no daughter in the household, and Mary McArthur had come partly to supply the want. She had brought a sore little heart with her, all because of a certain ship that had gone over the sea, and the glint of a sailor lad's merry blue eyes she would see no more.

She had therefore no mind for love-making, and Thomas and Abel, the two eldest sons, got very short answers for their pains when they "tried their hand" on their mother's new house-lass. Tom, the eldest, took it well enough, and went elsewhere; but Abel was a bully by nature, and would not let the girl alone. Once he kissed her by force as, hand-tied, she carried in the peats from the stack. Whereupon Alexander, the silent third brother, found out the reason of Mary's red eyes, and interviewed his brother behind the barn to such purpose that his face bore the marks of fraternal knuckles for a week. Also Alexander had his lip split.

"Ye hae been fechtin' again, ye blakes," thundered their father. "Mind ye, if this happens again I will break every bane in your bodies. I will have you know that I am a man of peace! How did you get that black eye, Yabel?"

"I trippit ower the shaft o' a cairt!" said Abel, lying glibly in fear of consequences.

"And you, Alexander—where gat ye that lip?"

"I ran against something!" said the defender of innocence, succinctly. And stuck to it stubbornly, refusing all amplification.

"Well," said their father, grimly, "take considerably more heed to your going, both of ye, or you may run against something more serious still!"

Then he whistled on his dogs, and went up the dyke-side towards the hill.

* * * * *

After this, Alexander always carried in the peats for Mary McArthur, and, in spite of the taunts and gibes of his brothers, did such part of her work as lay outside the house. On winter nights and mornings he lighted the stable lantern for her before she went to milk the kye, and then when she was come to the byre he took his mother's stool and pail and milked beside her cow for cow.

All these things he did without speaking a word of love, or, indeed, saying a word of anything beyond the commonplaces of a country life. He never told her whether or no he had heard about the sailor lad who had gone over seas.

Indeed, he never referred to the subject throughout a long lifetime. All the same, I think he must have suspected, and with natural gentleness and courtesy set himself to ease the girl's heart-sore burden.

Sometimes Mary would raise her eyes and catch him looking at her—that was all. And more often she was conscious of his grave staid regard when she did not look up. At first it fretted her a little. For, of course, she could never love again—never believe any man's word. Life was ended for her—ended at nineteen! So at least Mary McArthur told herself.

But all the same, there—a pillar for support, a buckler for defence, was Alexander McQuhirr, strong, undemonstrative, dependable. One day she had cut her finger, and he was rolling it up for her daintily as a woman. They were alone in the shearing field together. Alexander had the lint and the thread in his pocket. So, indeed, he anticipated her wants silently all his life.

It had hurt a good deal, and before he had finished the tears stood brimming in her eyes.

"I think you must get tired of me. I bring all my cut fingers to you, Alec!" she said, looking up at him.

He gave a kind of gasp, as if he were going to say something, as a single drop of salt water pearled itself and ran down Mary's cheek; but instead he only folded the lint more carefully in at the top, and went on rolling the thread round it.

"She is learnin' to love me!" he thought, with some pleasure, but he was too bashful and diffident to take advantage of her feeling. He contented himself with making her life easier and sweeter in that hard upland cantonment of more than military discipline, from whose rocky soil Yabel and his sons dragged the bare necessities of life, as it were, at the point of the bayonet.

All the time he was thinking hard behind his broad forehead, this quiet Alexander McQuhirr. He was the third son. His father was a poor man. He had nothing to look for from him. In time Tom would succeed to the farm. It was clear, then, that if he was ever to be anything, he must strike out early for himself. And, as many a time before and since, it was the tears in the eyes of a girl that brought matters to the breaking point.

Yes, just the wet eyes of a girl—that is, of Mary McArthur, as she looked up at him suddenly in the harvest-field among the serried lines of stocks, and said: "I bring all my cut fingers to you, Alec!"

Something, he knew not exactly what, appealed to him so strongly in that word and look, that resolve came upon him sudden as lightning, and binding as an oath—the man's instinct to be all and to do all for the woman he loves.

He was unusually silent during the rest of the day, so that Mary McArthur, walking beside him down the loaning to bring home the cows, said: "You are no vexed wi' me for onything, Alec?"

But it was the man's soul of Saunders McQuhirr which had come to him as a birthright—born out of a glance. He was a boy no longer. And that night, as his father Yabel stood looking over his scanty acres with a kind of grim satisfaction in the golden array of corn stooks, his son Alexander went quietly up to him.

"Father," he said, "next week I shall be one-and-twenty!" In times of stress they spoke the English of the schools and of the Bible.

His father turned a deep-set irascible eye upon him. The thick over-brooding brows lowered convulsively above him. A kind of illuminating flash like faint sheet lightning passed over the stern face. A week ago, nay, even twenty-four hours ago, Saunders McQuhirr would have trembled to have his father look at him thus. But—he had bound up a girl's finger since then, and seen her eyes wet.

"Well, what of that?" The words came fiercely from Yabel, with a rising anger in them, a kind of trumpet blare heralding the storm.

"I am thinking of taking a herd's place at the term!" said Alexander, quietly.

Yabel lifted his great body off the dyke-top, on which he had been leaning with his elbows. He towered a good four inches above his son, though my father was always considered a tall man.

"You—you are going to take a herd's place—at the term—-you?" he said, slowly and incredulously.

"Yes," answered his son; "you will not need me. There is no outgate for me here, and I have my way to make in the world."

"And what need have you of an outgate, sir?" cried his father. "Have I housed you and schooled you and reared you that, when at last you are of some use, you should leave your father and mother at a word, like a day-labourer on Saturday night?"

"A day-labourer on Saturday night gets his wages—I have not asked for any!"

At this answer Yabel stood tempestuously wrathful for a moment, his hand and arm uplifted and twitching to strike. Then all suddenly his mood changed. It became scornfully ironic.

"I see," he said, dropping his arm, "there's a lass behind this—that is the meaning of all the peat-carrying and byre-milking and handfasting in corners. Well, sirrah, I give you this one night. In the morning you shall pack. From this instant I forbid you to touch aught belonging to me, corn or fodder, horse or bestial. Ye shall tramp, lad, you and your madam with you. The day is not yet, thank the Lord, when Abel McQuhirr is not master in his own house!"

But the son that had been a boy was now a man. He stood before his father, giving him back glance for glance. And an observer would have seen a great similarity between the two, the same attitude to a line, the massive head thrown back, the foot advanced, the deep-set eye, the compressed mouth.

"Very well, father!" said Alexander McQuhirr, and he went away, carrying his bonnet in his hand.

* * * * *

And on the morning that followed the sleepless night of thinking and planning, Alexander McQuhirr went forth to face the world, his plaid about his shoulders, his staff in his hand, his mother's blessing upon his head—and, what was most of all to a young man, his sweetheart's kiss upon his lips:

For in this part of his mandate Yabel had reckoned without his host. His wife, long trained to keep silence for the sake of peace, had turned and openly defied him—nay, had won the victory. The "Man of Wrath" knew exactly how far it was wise to push the doctrine of unquestioning wifely obedience. Mary McArthur was to bide still where she was, till—well, till another home was ready for her. And though her eyes were red, and there was no one to tie up her cut fingers any more, there was a kind of pride upon her face too. And the image of the young sailor-man over seas utterly faded away.

At ten by the clock, Yabel McQuhirr, down in his harvest-field, saw his son set out. He gave no farewell. He waved no hand. He said no word. All the same, he smiled grimly to himself behind the obedient backs of Tom and Abel the younger.

"There's the best stuff o' the lot in that fule laddie," he growled; "even so for a lass's sake left I my father's house!"

And of all his children, this dour, hard-mouthed, gnarl-fisted man loved best the boy who for the sake of a lass had outcasted himself without fear and without hesitation.

* * * * *

It was to a herd's house, shining white on a hillside, a burnie trilling below, the red heather surging about the garden dyke on all sides, that Alexander McQuhirr took his wife Mary, a year later. And there in the fulness of time my brother Willie was born—the child of the cot-house and of the kailyaird. In time followed other, if not better things—first a small holding, then a farm—then I, Alexander the second. And still, thank God, we, the children of Mary McArthur, run with our cut fingers to that steadfast, loving, silent man, Saunders McQuhirr, son of Yabel, the Man of Violence and Wrath.

THE MAN OF WRATH

A man of wrath was my grandfather, Yabel McQuhirr, from his youth up. And I am now going to tell the story of how by a strange providence he was turned aside from the last sin of Judas, and how he became in his latter days a man of peace and a lover of young children.

He was my father's father, and I have already told how that son of his to whom I owe my life, went forth to make a new hearthstone warm and bright for the girl who was to be my mother. But after the departure of that third son, darker and darker descended the gloom upon the lonely uplying farm. Fiercer and ever fiercer fell the angers of Yabel McQuhirr upon his remaining children, Thomas and Abel—the latter named after his father, but whose Christian name never acquired the antique and preliminary "Y" that marks the border-line between the old and the new.

One dismal Monday morning in the back-end of the year there were bitter words spoken in the barn at the threshing, between Thomas and his father. Retort followed retort, till, with knotted fist, the father savagely felled the youth to the ground. There was blood upon the clean yellow straw when he rose. Thomas went indoors, opened his little chest, took from it all the money he had, shook hands silently with his mother, and took his way over the Rig of Bennanbrack, never to be heard of more.

And after this ever closer and closer Yabel McQuhirr shut the door of his heart. He hardened himself under the weight of his wife's gentle sufferance and reproachful silences. He gripped his hands together when, with the corner of an eye that would not humble itself to look, he saw the tear trickling down the wasted cheek. He uttered no word of sorrow for the past, nor did the name of either of his departed sons pass his lips.

Nevertheless, he grew markedly kinder in deed to Abel, the one son who remained—not much kinder in word perhaps, for still that loud and angry voice could be heard coming from field and meadow, barn or byre, till the fearful mother would steal silent-footed to the kitchen-door lest the last part of her threefold sorrow should indeed have come upon her. But not in this manner was the blow to fall.

Abel was the least worthy but greatly the handsomest of the sons of Yabel McQuhirr. He had a large visiting acquaintance among the farm-towns, and often did not seek his garret-bed till the small hours of the morning. Then his mother, awake and vigilant, would incline her ear on the pillow to hear whether her husband was asleep beside her.

Now, oftentimes Yabel, her husband, slept not, yet for his wife's sake, and perhaps because Abel, with his bright smile and clean-limbed figure, reminded him of a wild youth he had long put behind him, he bore with the lad, even to giving him in one short year more money to spend than had been his brothers' portion during all the time they had faithfully served their father.

And this was not good for a young man.

So that early one spring, the wild oat crop that Abel had been sowing began to appear with braird and luxuriant shoot. A whisper overran the parish swifter than the moor-burn when the heather is dry on the moors. Two names were coupled, not unto honour. And on a certain wild March morning, Yabel McQuhirr, having called his son three times, clambered fiercely up to the little garret stair to find an open skylight, a pallet-bed not slept in, and a home that was now childless from flagged hearth to smoke-browned roof-tree.

* * * * *

Yabel rode to market upon Mary Grey, his old rough-fetlocked mare, once badger-grey, but now white as the sea-gulls that fluttered and settled upon his springtime furrows. He heard no word of the story of Abel his son and the gypsy lass, for none durst tell him—till one Rob Girmory of Barscob, bolder or drunker than the rest, blurted it out with an oath and a scurvy jest. The next moment he was smitten down, and Yabel McQuhirr stood over him with his riding-whip clubbed in his hand, the fierce irascible eyebrows twitching, and wide nostrils blown out with the breath of the man's wrath.

But certain good friends, strong-armed men of peace, held him back, and got Girmory away to a quiet cartshed, where, on a heap of straw, he could sleep off his stupor and awake to wonder what had given him that lump, great as a hen's egg, over his right eye.

As for Yabel McQuhirr he saddled Mary Grey and took the road homeward lest any should bring the story first to his wife. For Jen, his Jen, was the kernel of that rough-husked, hard-shelled heart. And as he rode, he cursed Girmory with the slow studied anathema of the Puritan which is not swearing, but something sterner, solemner, more enduring. Sometimes he would cheat himself by saying over and over that there was nothing in the story. Abel had gone in his best clothes to a neighbouring town—he knew the lad had a pound or two that burnt a hole in his spendthrift pocket. He would return penitent when it was finished. And the old man found himself already "birsing" with anger, and thinking of what he would say to the returned prodigal when he caught sight of him—a greeting which would certainly not have run upon the lines of the parable.

Yet, as he went on and on, fear began to enter in, and he set his spurless heels grimly to Mary Grey's well-padded ribs. Never had that sober steed gone home at such a pace, and on brown windy braefaces ploughmen stood wiping their brows and watching and wondering. Shepherds, high on the hills, set their palms horizontally above their brows and murmured, "What's takin' auld Yabel hame at sic a pelt this day, as if the Ill Yin himsel' were after him?"

But for all his haste, some one had forestalled him. The busybody in other men's matters, the waspish gossip to whom the carrying of ill tidings is a chief joy, had been before him. Mary Grey had sweated in vain. There was no one to be heard stirring as he tramped eagerly in—no one flitting softly to and fro in milk-house or dairy.

But within Yabel McQuhirr found his wife fallen by the bake-board near the window, where she had been at work when the Messenger of Evil entered to do her fell work. Her eyes were closed, her hands limp and numb. With a hoarse inarticulate cry of rage Yabel raised his wife and carried her to the neatly-made bed with the patchwork quilt upon it. There he laid her down.

"Jen," he said, more gently than one could have believed the rough harsh man of wrath could have spoken, "Jen, waken, lassie. It's maybe no true. I tak' it on my soul it's no true!"

But on his wife's face there remained a strange fixed smile, and her eyes, opening slowly, began to follow him about wistfully, and seemed somehow to beckon him. Then with infinite care Yabel removed his wife's outer garments, cutting that which would not loosen otherwise, till the stricken woman reposed at ease beneath the coverlet.

"Now, Jen," he said, "I maun ride to the town for a doctor. Will I tell Allison Brown to come and look after you?"

The wistful following eyes expressed neither yea nor nay.

"Then will I send in Jean Murray frae the Boreland?"

The eyes were still indifferent. There was no desire for the help of any of human kind in the stricken woman's heart.

Her husband watched her keenly.

"Or wad ye like Martha Yeatman ower frae the Glen?"

Then all suddenly the dull eyes flashed, glowed, almost flamed, so fierce was the "No" that was in them.

Yabel shut down his upper lip upon his nether. He nodded his head.

"Then I will bring the doctor, and nurse you mysel'," he answered. But within him he said: "So it was Martha o' the Glen. For this thing will I reckon with Martha Yeatman."

It was fortunate for Mary Grey that the distance was not long, for, like Jehu the son of Nimshi, Yabel McQuhirr drave furiously. But at the bend of the highway called the Far-away Turn, just at the point at which the road dives down under a tangle of birch and alder, the old white mare was pulled suddenly up. For there was Dr. Brydson, riding cautiously on his little round-barrelled sheltie, his saddle-bags in front of him, and a silver-headed Malacca cane held in his hand like a riding-whip.

It was no long time before the good old doctor was raising the lax head of Yabel McQuhirr's wife. The strange distant smile was still in her eyes, and the left corner of her mouth twitched.

"She has had a shock," said Dr. Brydson, slowly, when Yabel and he had withdrawn a little. He was pulling his chin meditatively, and not thinking much of the husband.

"A stroke!" said Yabel, and the tone of his voice was so strange and terrible that the doctor turned quickly—"but not unto death! You can cure her—surely you can cure her?"

And he caught the doctor by the arm and shook it vehemently.

"Take your hands away, sir, and calm yourself!" said the physician. "If I am to do anything, we must have none of this."

"Say that she will not die!" he cried. And the deep-set angry eyes flamed down upon the physician, the great fists of iron were clenched.

Dr. Brydson was a little man, but a long course of being deferred to had given him great local dignity.

"I will say nothing of the kind, sir," he retorted. "I will do what I can; but this thing is the visitation of God, and human skill avails but little. Stand away from my patient, sir."

But at that moment a sudden and wondrous change passed over the face of Yabel McQuhirr. The physician was startled. It was like an earthquake rifting and changing a landscape while one looks. In the twinkling of an eye the fashion of Yabel's countenance was altered. He would have wept, yet stood gasping like one who knows not the way to weep. Instead he uttered a hoarse and terrible cry, and flung himself upon his knees by the bed.

"Jen," he cried, "Jen—speak to me, Jen—to your ain man Yabel! Say that this man lies! Tell me ye are no gaun to dee, Jen—Jen, my Jen!"

And at the voice of that strange crying the doctor stood back, for he knew that no earthly physician had power to stay a soul's agony.

Then, like a tide that wells up full to the flood-mark, the slow love rose in the eyes of his wife. Her lips moved. He bent his head eagerly. They seemed to form his name.

"Yes, yes," he said eagerly, "'Yabel, Yabel,' I hear that! What mair? Tell me—oh, tell me, ye are no gaun to leave me!"

He bent his head lower, holding his breath and laying his hand on his own heart as if to still its dull, thick beating. But though the pallid lips seemed to move, no words came, and Yabel McQuhirr heaved up his head and struck his palm upon his brow.

"I canna hear!" he wailed. "She will dee, and no speak to me!" Then he turned fiercely upon the doctor, as if he did not know him. "Who are you that spies on my grief, standing there and doing nothing? Get oot o' my hoose, lest I do ye a hurt."

And the indignant little man went at the word, mounting his sheltie and riding away across the moors without once turning his head, the "Penang lawyer" tapping unwontedly upon the rounded indignant flank of his little mare.

When Yabel turned again to his wife there were tears in her eyes, and the heart of the Man of Wrath was softened within him.

"I am a fool," he said, "an angry fool. I have driven him away that came to do her good. I will call him back."

But though he made the hills to echo, and the startled sheep to run together into frightened bunches, the insulted little doctor upon the sheltie never turned in his saddle.

"Vain is the help of man," said Yabel, as he turned to go in, "and if God will not help me, I will renounce Him also."

He sat awhile by Janet's side, and it was very quiet, save for the clock ticking out the moments of a woman's life. A hen cackled without in the yard with sudden joy over an egg safely nested. Yabel started up angrily and laid his hand on his gun in the rack above the smoked mantel-board. But the woman's eyes called him to desist, and he sat down again beside her with a sigh.

"What is it, Jen? Can ye no speak to me?" The eyes seemed to compel him yet lower—upon his knees.

"To pray—I canna pray, Jen; I winna pray. If the Lord tak's you, I will arise and curse Him to His face."

The direction of the gaze changed. It was upon the family Bible on the shelf, where it lay with Boston's Fourfold State and a penny almanack, the entire family library.

"Am I to read?" said Yabel, reaching it down. "What am I to read?" He ran down the table of contents with his great stub-nailed fingers, "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus." But the speaking eyes did not check him till he came to the Psalms.

He turned them over till he came to the twenty-third. The will in his wife's glance stopped him again. He read the psalm slowly, kneeling on his knees by the bedside.

At the fourth verse his voice changed. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me——"

And at the sound of these words the unstricken left hand of his wife wavered upward uncertainly. It lay a moment, with something in its touch between a caress and a blessing, upon his head. Then it dropped lightly back upon the coverlet.

* * * * *

Yabel McQuhirr sat till the gloaming by the side of his dead wife, a terrible purpose firming itself in his heart. His children had risen up against him. God had cast him off. Well, he, Yabel McQuhirr, would cast Him off. At His very Judgment Seat he would dare Him, and so be thrown unrepenting into the pit prepared for the impenitent.

He had done that which was needful to the body of his helpmeet of many years. There was no more to do—save one thing. He rose and was going out, when his bloodshot eye fell on the great family Bible from which he had read eve and morn for forty years. A spasm of anger fierce as a blast from a furnace came over the man. That Book had lied! It had deceived him. He lifted it in one strong hand and threw it upon the fire.

Then he walked across the yard to the stable to get a coil of cart rope. He stumbled rather than stepped as he went, the ground somehow meeting his feet unexpectedly. He could not find the rope, and found himself exclaiming savagely at the absent and outcast Abel who had mislaid it.

At last he found it among some stable litter, lying beneath the peg on which it ought to have hung. Gathering the coils up in his hand, he crossed the straw-strewn yard again to the barn. There were sound open beams in the open space between mow and mow.

"It had best be done there," he muttered.

There was a rustling among the straw as he pushed back the upper half of the divided door—rats, as he would have thought at another time. Now he only wondered if he could reach the beams by standing on the corn bushel.

As he made the knot firm and noosed the rope through the loop, his eyes fell on the further door of the barn—the one through which, in bygone golden Septembers, he had so often pitchforked the sheaves of corn.

There was something moving between him and the orchard door. In the dull light it looked like a young child. And then the heart of Yabel McQuhirr, who was not afraid to meet God face to face, was filled with a great fear.

A faint moaning whimper came to his ear. He dropped the coil of rope and ran back to the house for the stable lantern. He lighted the candle with a piece of red peat-ash, tossing the unconsumed Bible off the fire. Only the rough calf-skin cover was singed, and its smouldering had filled the house with a keen acrid smell.

Yabel went out again with the lantern in his hand. Without entering, he held it over the lower half of the barn door which had swung to after him. A young woman, clad in the habit of a "gypsy" or "gaun body," lay huddled on the straw, while over her, whimpering and nosing like a puppy, crawled the most beautiful child Yabel had ever seen. As the light broke into the darkness of the barn the little fellow stood up, a golden-haired boy of two years of age. He smiled and blinked, then, with his hands outstretched, he came running across the floor to Yabel.

"Mither willna speak to Davie," he said. "Up—up, Mannie, tak' wee Davie up!"

A sob, or something like it, rose in the stern old man's throat. He could forfeit life, he could defy God, he could abandon all his possessions; but to leave this little shining innocent to starve—no, he could not do it.

He opened the door and went in. The child insisted fearlessly on being taken in his arms. He lifted him up, and the boy hid his face gladly on his shoulder. Yabel put his hand on the woman's breast; she was stone-cold, and had been so for hours. Death had been busy both without and within the little hill-farm that snell March afternoon.

He covered her decently up with a pair of corn-sacks, and as he did so a scrap of paper showed between her fingers, white in the light of the lantern.

"Mither will soon be warm noo," said the child, from the safe covert of Yabel's shoulder. And in the clasping of the baby fingers the evil spirit passed quite out of the heart of Yabel McQuhirr.

And when by the open door of the lantern he smoothed out the paper that had been in the dead woman's fingers, he read these words:—

"This is to bear testimony that I, Abel McQuhirr the younger, take Alison Baillie to be my wedded wife. Done in the presence of the undersigned witnesses

"Abel McQuhirr. May 3rd, 18—.

"RO GRIER. } "JOHN LORRAINE. } Witnesses."

* * * * *

So in the day when Yabel McQuhirr defied his Maker and hardened his heart, God sent unto him His mercy in the shape of a young child. Then, after the grave had claimed its dead, the heart of Yabel was wondrously softened, and these two dwelt on in the empty house in great content. And in the rescued Book, with its charred calf-skin cover, the old man reads to the boy morning and evening the story of One Other who came to sinful men in the likeness of a Young Child. But though his heart takes comfort in the record, Yabel never can bring himself to read aloud that verse which says: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these ... ye did it unto Me."

"I am not worthy. He can never mean Yabel McQuhirr," he says, and shuts the Book.

THE LASS IN THE SHOP

In Galloway, if you find an eldest son of the same name as his father, search the mother's face for the marks of a tragedy. An eldest son is rarely called by his father's Christian name, and when he is, usually there is a little grave down in the kirkyard or a name that is seldom spoken in the house—a dead Abel or a wandering Cain, at any rate a first-born that was—and is not.

Now I am called Alexander McQuhirr. My father also is Alexander McQuhirr. And the reason is that a link has dropped out. I remember the day I found out that you could make my mother jump by coming quietly behind her and calling "Willie." It was Willie McArthur I was after—he had come over from Whinnyliggate to play with me. We were busy at "hide-and-seek."

"Willie!" I cried, sharp as one who would wake an echo.

My mother dropped a bowl and caught at her side.

It is only recently that she told me the whole story.

The truth was that with twelve years between our ages and Willie away most of the time, I had no particular reason to remember my elder brother. For years before I was born my mother had been compassionated with by the good wives of the neighbourhood, proud nursing mothers of ten or eleven, because she could boast of but one chicken in her brood. She has confessed to me what she suffered on that account. And though now I have younger brothers and the reproach was wiped away in time, there are certain Job's comforters whom my mother has never forgiven.

She would be sure to spoil Willie,—one child in a house was always spoilt. So the tongues went ding-dong. It was foolish to send him to school at Cairn Edward, throwing away good siller, instead of keeping him at home to single the turnips. Thus and thus was the reproach of my mother's reluctant maternity rubbed in—and to this day the rubbers are not forgotten. It will be time enough to forgive them, thinks my mother, when she comes to lie on her death-bed.

Yet from all that I can gather there was some truth in what they said, and probably this is what rankles in that dear, kindly, ever vehement bosom. Willie was indeed spoilt. He was by all accounts a handsome lad. He had his own way early, and what was worse—money to spend upon it. At thirteen he was bound apprentice to good honest Joseph Baillieson of the Apothecaries' Hall in Cairn Edward. Joseph was a chemist of the old school, who, when a more than usually illegible line occurred in the doctors' prescriptions of the day, always said: "We'll caa' it barley-water. That'll hairm naebody." All Joseph's dispensing was of the eminently practical kind.

To Mr. Baillieson, therefore, Willie was made apprentice, and if he would have profited, he could not have been in better hands, and this story never had been written. But the fact was, he was too early away from home. He was my mother's eye-apple, and as the farm was doing well during these years, an occasional pound note was slipped him when my mother was down on Market Monday. Now this is a part of the history she has never told me. I can only piece it together from hints and suggestions. But it is a road I know well. I have seen too many walk in it.