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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Colonel, by James Milne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Black Colonel
+
+Author: James Milne
+
+Release Date: June 14, 2007 [EBook #21834]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK COLONEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BLACK COLONEL
+
+
+BY
+
+JAMES MILNE
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+  THE ROMANCE OF A PRO-CONSUL
+  THE EPISTLES OF ATKINS
+  JOHN JONATHAN AND COMPANY
+  NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE
+  MY SUMMER IN LONDON
+  THE GORDON HIGHLANDERS
+
+
+
+  "A tale of the times
+  of old, of the deeds of
+  the days of other years."
+      _Ossian_.
+
+
+
+JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED
+
+LONDON
+
+MCMXXI.
+
+
+
+
+TO J. T. M., WHO KNOWS THE
+
+STORY OF THE BLACK COLONEL
+
+
+
+
+_Chapters and Contents_
+
+
+     I.  WE MEET IN THE PASS
+    II.  TRAPPED BY THE RED-COATS
+   III.  OVER THE HILLS OF HOME
+    IV.  THE OPENING ROAD
+     V.  A CAIRN OF REMEMBRANCE
+    VI.  THE FINGER OF FATE
+   VII.  A PARLEY AND A SURPRISE
+  VIII.  THE CONQUERING HERO
+    IX.  'TWIXT NIGHT AND MORN
+     X.  THE WAY OF A WOMAN
+    XI.  THE CRACK OF THUNDER
+   XII.  RAIDERS OF THE DARK
+  XIII.  THE WOUND OF ABSENCE
+   XIV.  THE CARDS OF LOVE
+    XV.  NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE
+   XVI.  THE WOOIN' O'T!
+  XVII.  A SONG OF OTHER SHORES
+ XVIII.  MY GARDEN OF CONTENT
+
+
+
+
+_Personal and Particular_
+
+The strangest thing about this tale is that it happened, though not,
+may be, as I here relate it; which is merely to seek, in a humble
+spirit, the great company of George Washington, who could not tell--a
+story!
+
+That of the Black Colonel came to me in scraps of talk from my mother
+when, as Byron grandly sang of himself, "I roved, a Young Highlander,
+o'er Dark Lochnagar," a wild landscape beloved of Queen Victoria, at
+Balmoral, for, you see, the eminences will come in.  My mother had it
+from her people, a Forbes family long planted in the brave uplands of
+Deeside, and I was taken a generation nearer to it in the conversation
+of my grandfather, whose folk were on the no less brave uplands of
+Donside.  Nay, he could remember, what my own father, born like him,
+and myself, in the Forbes Country, first stirred me by saying, when the
+Red Coats still garrisoned the Castle of Braemar and the Castle of
+Corgarff, old Grampian strongholds where they had been installed to
+overawe the Jacobites of the Aberdeenshire Highlands.
+
+The "Seventeen-Forty-Five," with the "Standard on the Braes o'
+Mar . . . up and streamin' rarely" for Bonnie Prince Charlie, saw fiery
+times in those remote parts, and knew times of dule afterwards, and the
+difficulty about any authentic tale of events, is that, in its passage
+down time, from mouth to mouth, it necessarily loses immediacy of
+phrase, even of fable, and that rude frame of living and loving,
+fighting and dying, in which it was originally set.  But human nature
+does not change, we only think it does in changed circumstances, and if
+Jock Farquharson, of Inverey, could return from the Hills of Beyond and
+read our chronicle of himself and others, why, he might recognize it,
+which would mean, perhaps, that some of the romantic colour, the
+dancing atmosphere, and the high spirit of adventure of those ancient
+years, has been saved from them.  It was little he did not know about
+the gallantries and the intrigues of war-making and love-making,
+holding them the natural occupations of a Highland gentleman, even when
+he had become a "broken man" and an "outlaw"; as you may now, if you
+please, go on to learn, with many other things of surprise, diversion
+and quality.
+
+J. M.
+
+THE CALEDONIAN CLUB,
+  LONDON,
+    _Midsummer Day_, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+THE BLACK COLONEL
+
+
+_I--We Meet in the Pass_
+
+We might have gone by each other in
+the Pass, the Black Colonel and
+I, if his horse had not kicked a
+stone as we came together.  It
+struck my foot and then a rock, making a rattle
+in the dark night.  You know how noise gains
+when you cannot see the cause of it, and all
+your senses are in your ears.
+
+"Woa, Mack!" said the Black Colonel to
+his beast; "can't you stand still with those
+mettlesome legs of yours?  You may," he went
+on, more to himself than to the horse, "need
+them to-night, for our friend, Captain Ian
+Gordon of his Hanoverian Majesty's forces, is
+late, and when a man is late it generally bodes
+trouble; for a woman anyhow, I might confess
+from my experience.  It is less matter if a
+woman be late, because it is a fashion with the
+sweet sex that you should wait upon it, and
+I am always willing to oblige out of my own
+warmth in gallantry, or so folk say.  Eh!
+Mack?  Kept you waiting at many a gate,
+have I, forgetful that it was cold outside?"
+
+The Black Colonel and I had met before,
+though slightly, distantly, and I knew his habit
+of talking to his horse.  Not an unnatural
+thing, because Mack was an animal of fine
+intelligence, coupled, it is true, with the
+stallion's devil of a temper, and they had spent
+much time alone together, which begets
+understanding.  Were they, indeed, not a romance
+of the countryside, inseparable, with a
+friendship only found between a lonely man and his
+horse or his dog?  They had been through a
+whole chapter of adventures together, and were
+willing to face more, or they would not have
+been there in the Pass.
+
+When the stone hit my foot I stood still,
+knowing it must be the Black Colonel, yet
+wishful to be certain before I spoke.  His
+words to Mack revealed his presence, but left
+me unsure whether he knew that I was within
+a few yards of him.  Of course the horse knew,
+for animals of the higher order have an instinct
+which is often more sure than reason in a man.
+It is their reason, the shield of guidance which
+Nature gives to all her creatures.
+
+Suddenly communication seemed to arise
+between us, although no word of mutual
+greeting had been spoken.  You know how
+those things come about!  No, you don't,
+nor do I, nor does anybody else, but they do
+happen out of a world 'twixt earth and heaven.
+They call them uncanny in our land, which
+only means they are unknown, the mysteries
+of them, but some day they will grow clear
+and be no more black witchery, only golden light.
+
+"Walked all the way from Corgarff Castle?"
+he abruptly asked, preparing the way, with the
+usual nothings of conversation.  It is oddly
+difficult to get into natural talk in a dark,
+dividing night, when eyes, faces, gestures, are
+hidden, and I just answered, "Yes, walked
+over the hills, as I've often done before,
+knowing them well, without having the honour
+of a safe conduct from you."
+
+"Some day," he snapped, "you'll be able
+to bring your red-coats by the same paths,
+knowing them, as you say, well, and capture
+me for the Lowland money your Government
+puts on my Highland head.  Nobody is too
+well off in our parts in these times.  Captain
+Gordon, not, it may be, even you, who was
+born, I suppose, with an eye for prosperity."
+
+It was unfair of him to say that, and as he
+climbed off Mack and threw the bridle loose
+on the horse's neck he mumbled as much.
+
+"A touch of temper against your royal
+employer, nothing worse; not bad temper,
+merely temper, so pray excuse it.  Mostly I
+have, as you know, been accustomed to express
+myself with the sword. . . ."
+
+"Except," I interrupted with some sharpness,
+for I was still nettled, "when you have
+confided your language to the dirk, or let it
+speak in silence for itself."
+
+"Now we are even, Captain Gordon, for
+that is not worthy of you, if, as I take it, you
+suggest that, on occasion, I have struck foul.
+No, sir, not that, never on my honour, as a
+gentleman; outlawed, if you like, though that
+troubles me little.  But the fine ethics of the
+broad-sword and the dirk are too nice for
+discussion between a Gordon and a Farquharson;
+met as we are with, I suspect, a Forbes to
+attract and divide us.  Besides, I spoke
+clumsily, not meaning any personal insult,
+since I want, sincerely want, to be friendly, if
+that be possible.  Anger is a poor hostess,
+believe me, and I, who have been in its way,
+should know better than you who are young, amiably young."
+
+Mine melted under his soft words, because
+such, even when they are not deeply sincere,
+may turn wrath aside like balm.  Moreover,
+he had a wild charm of manner which, if it
+did not quite capture another man, as almost
+surely it would have won a woman, yet had
+its effect.  Where exactly it lay I have never
+been able to decide, but the melody of his
+tongue had something to do with it, even when
+he spoke in Sassenach English.  We could
+have talked in the Gaelic, I also having it
+natively, but the Black Colonel would always
+speak English if he met somebody to whom
+he could show his command of the language.
+It was one of his several accomplishments,
+acquired by study and travel in England and
+France, and he prided and guarded them all,
+as a woman does her graces of the person.
+
+So we stood in the chasm of night and the
+Pass, one waiting upon the other, because our
+trouble, as in all affairs where two men and
+a maid are concerned, was how to begin,
+more particularly as we had no idea what
+would be the end.  The Black Colonel had
+said as much when he spoke the name Forbes,
+the third of our Aberdeenshire clans, though
+it may not have all the lustre of the Gordons
+or the Farquharsons.
+
+"Ehum," he murmured, dropping into a
+Scots mannerism which made no more than
+an overture to speech between us, and yet
+signified something already said.
+
+"Your letter was urgent," I said.  "It
+might have been a summons to another
+hoisting of the Stuart Standard on the Braes
+of Mar."
+
+"And would you have come?" he inquired;
+"would you have come?"
+
+"It is hard," I answered coldly, "to tell
+what a man would or would not do if his
+honour could always march with his inclination.
+But no summons from you would bring
+me to the colours, even of those who were our
+rightful Scottish kings."
+
+"Still, you have come to-night."
+
+"True, but it must occur to you that it is
+not of the first order of a gentleman to force
+a meeting, by wrapping a threat in a woman's
+Christian name, even when you send your
+message by so secure a hand as that of your
+ghillie, Red Murdo."
+
+He turned his head and, I felt, though I
+could still only see vaguely, was looking straight
+at me, as, certainly, I was looking at him.
+While we looked and saw not, a quick, low
+whistle came from the foot of the Pass and an
+answering whistle, just as low, blew from the
+top of it.
+
+
+
+
+_II--Trapped by the Red-Coats_
+
+Never, in all my experience of the hills, their fragrant peace and
+their rude surprises, have I been so moved by an unexpected noise as I
+was then, standing with the Black Colonel in the black Pass.  Partly
+this was because the surprise was complete, being unheralded by a
+rustle or a movement, but, still more, because it was the magic hour at
+which the womb of night moves to the birth of a new day.
+
+Mingle the void of heaven and earth, and the sense of unseen spaces;
+the long, sleeping mountains, with the drowsy trees that guard the
+foot-hills; the caressing sigh of the wind, and, maybe, the murmur of a
+stream flowing to the sea, and out of all this catch a whistle and its
+answer.  They sounded strangely eerie as they died into the hills,
+touching us like the still small voice of the Scriptures and, also,
+like it, carrying a note of apprehension, even of awe.
+
+Under stress a mind moves instantly, and two thoughts leapt into mine,
+that a trap had been set for the Black Colonel, and that he must
+suspect me of it.  To be sure I was, myself, within the wings of that
+trap, but this perfect retort was like a gun in a bad position, it
+could not be brought to bear.  However, my own situation, peculiar as I
+realized it to be, troubled me less, at the moment, than did the Black
+Colonel's thoughts, as I conceived them, about my honour, and I do
+suggest that it would have been the same with any other gentleman.
+
+Ugly thoughts have a trick of riding double, and I fancied I heard him
+trying his stirrup leathers and bridle, to be satisfied they were in
+order.  Even I thought I saw his hand drop down to his right garter,
+where a Highlander wears his skean-dhu, or short dirk, an ornament
+mostly, with its Cairngoram stone in the handle, but likewise a solid
+weapon in an emergency, like the present.
+
+There, probably, I did him an injustice or, if his hand did make the
+furtive inquiry, I could think wrongly of the reason behind it.
+Anyhow, he said never a word, hating to be openly suspicious, where, as
+I could have sworn, on my conscience, there was no reason for
+suspicion, whatever might have happened among others, apart from me and
+my night's doings.
+
+Thus we held our places, two unarmed men, for the Black Colonel had
+said in his letter that he would come weaponless, as he expected me to
+come, and a hose-dirk did not count, being, as I have said, in the
+first place, an ornament for a well-made leg, an Order of the Garter,
+to borrow an ancient title.  We had met in the habiliments and
+disposition of peace, and if we were to close in strife it would not, I
+reasoned and hoped, be at our direct wish or bidding.  Would it?
+
+He must have been asking himself the same question, for he broke the
+silence in a changed voice which seemed doubly changed, because he had
+to keep it low, lest it should be overheard, and what he said was, "How
+comes all this, sir?"
+
+"I don't know," I answered simply, naturally, truthfully, to his
+charge, for it was a charge in words and in directness.
+
+"You don't," he went on, and I could not miss the tone which was like
+the growl of a dog, an ill-natured dog; not like that of my own little
+Scots terrier, Rob, whose bark is only meant to give himself confidence
+and never had the snap of biting in it.
+
+"You don't!" repeated the Black Colonel.  "I must believe you, though a
+suspicious man might read the signs otherwise.  Still, why should you
+have kept the red-coats from their sleep this night and morn, in the
+castles of Braemar and Corgarff?  There is no reason, for a talk
+between Highland gentlemen, if so we be, about a Highland lady, whose
+ladyship is beyond doubt, needed no garrison as audience.  No, no, if
+the red-coats had been summoned to round-up some poor Jacobite devil,
+say myself, Captain Ian Gordon would have been with his men, as a
+soldier should, much as he might--and I put this to his credit--have
+disliked the mission."
+
+It was idle for me to pretend any misunderstanding of the Black
+Colonel's meaning.  He was taunting me with suspicions which he would
+not bring himself to believe, having a generous side to his nature, a
+state of mind that has inflicted much suffering on the human race, ever
+since the world began to go round.  Mostly it occurs between men, for
+women are more elemental, more red in beak and claw, even when the claw
+is bejewelled, which indeed may give it another sharpness.
+
+Could I blame him?  Not to his face, at all events, because that would
+be to notice his challenge, to admit that it was not unnatural on his
+part.  Events must be my guarantee, and if there were to be no more,
+well, let him say quickly why he had asked me very specially to meet
+him on an urgent private affair.  Yes, although it were to have a
+casual ending, such as characterizes half the affairs of life.
+
+Aye! good thinking, my friends, but our relations were cast in a
+sterner mould, and they were not to take the road of well-being.  This
+became manifest when the now growing dawn lightly touched the eastern
+door of the Pass at its highest crag.  The Black Colonel put his hand
+to his eyes, using them as you would a spy-glass, made a hawk-like
+sweep of the point I have indicated, and murmured harshly, "A red-coat,
+ah!"
+
+Quickly he followed the wispy, growing light towards the western end of
+the Pass, and after another moment of hawkish searching growled: "A
+red-coat there also!  It has been shrewdly arranged, this affair,
+Captain Gordon.  My congratulations, for you have earned them well, as
+well, perhaps, as something else from me."
+
+I said nothing, and indeed I was too full of surprise to think, except
+in a wondering fashion.  It was only by an effort of attention that I
+heard the Black Colonel's further words, cursed out in a wrath not bred
+of any anxiety for himself, but, naturally enough, directed at me.
+
+"So the moving picture declares itself, my dear, thoughtful kinsman,"
+he hissed.  "The red-coats from Braemar are at the western end of the
+Pass, those from Corgarff are at the eastern end, and the Black Colonel
+is within somewhere--isn't he?--keeping a private meeting with an
+officer in his Georgian Majesty's uniform, an officer and a gentleman!
+Shrewdly planned, as I say, shrewdly planned, and I suppose you want to
+intrigue me here until I cannot get away any more.  Would you think of
+trying to hold me yourself, eh?  It would be like your adventurous
+spirit?  No!"
+
+This was said with a rough sneer, and the Black Colonel made the sting
+sharper by adding, "You'll be thinking it an assured capture, with the
+ends of the Pass sealed by red-coats and its sides so steep that only
+those tough sheep over there can climb them."
+
+"Truth," said I quickly, gaining my tongue, "will force you to eat
+those words, for I knew nothing of all this.  It will be a bitter meal
+for you to digest, if I, by good chance, am there to assist you."
+
+"A Highland welcome will be yours," quoth he arrogantly; "a welcome as
+warm as if I were to bring my riding whip round your shoulders now."
+
+His words, cracking as if they were a lash, stung me beyond endurance.
+I made a step to strike him, and we might have been at it, like common
+brawlers, only he saved us from that shame.  He had been waiting with
+his left foot in the stirrup.  When I drove at him he swung on to the
+back of Mack, who turned half round, as a spirited horse does in the
+process of being mounted.  This threw his big body between us, but the
+Black Colonel leant down and said in my ear, "To our next meeting, my
+kinsman!  May it be soon!"
+
+Then he rode for an opening in the undergrowth which braided the lower
+slopes of the precipitous Pass, and I was left alone, a man all
+a-wonder, for events were growing beyond me, as they do when suddenly
+we find our whole personal fortune, even our spiritual destiny, put to
+the ordeal of the unexpected.
+
+
+
+
+_III.--Over the Hills of Home_
+
+How shall I tell, with proper restraint and yet efficiency, what
+followed the going of the Black Colonel on his black horse?
+
+The Pass, wherein we had met so sharply, lies almost due east and due
+west.  You would have a good idea of its appearance, if you were to
+suppose a hill twice as long from east to west as it is broad from
+north to south.  Then imagine its length sliced in two, and each half,
+by force of dead weight, falling away from the other.  Heather and
+whins had seeded on the sliced faces, and after them the hardy silver
+birch and the hardier green fir had sprung up.  Nature makes coverings
+for the sores suffered by Mother Earth, as a dog licks a bruise until
+the hair grows again.
+
+The strong Highland winds and the heavy Highland rains and snows had
+wrinkled the riven hill in a hundred ways.  Its twin faces were warted
+with rocks, from which most of the soil had been washed away, leaving
+them as though suspended in mid-air.  Waters, draining from the higher
+hills, had run down those faces, making ribboned scores to the bottom.
+There had been constant falls of earth from above, and here and there a
+large tree had been thrown over the abyss, and, in that position,
+holding on by its roots, had taken a new lease of life.
+
+Thanks then to Nature, working for long years, the twin, or rather the
+divorced hill-cheeks which, at their separation, were raw earth, now
+had a covering of undergrowth and overgrowth.  It would be dead in the
+winter when the sap is down, budding in the spring when the sap rises,
+green in the summer when it has run into leafage, brown in the autumn
+when the storage roots begin to call their own back again.
+
+A sort of rough road, worn by usage, as a short-cut for the folk of the
+region, ran on the level between the halves of the Pass.  Big rocks
+fallen from above lay around, and I confusedly sat down beside one of
+these.  It broke the snellish wind which had begun to blow with the
+first dawn, as it often does in those parts, a blast to the parting
+night and the coming day.
+
+Presently a shot was fired from one end of the Pass and I could make no
+mistake as to the weapon used.  It was the military flintlock, a clumsy
+gun, better suited to scare crows than shoot straight, but it was the
+best we had.
+
+A warning, a signal for some purpose, I judged, because it was followed
+by what I can only describe as a waiting silence.  You had the echoes
+of the shot scattering up the heights of the Pass, and then a tense
+feeling in the atmosphere, as if a hundred men expected an answer.  It
+came, in another straggling shot, from the other end of the Pass.
+
+Next there was solid evidence that what I heard had been a pre-arranged
+signal, to which a plan of campaign attached.  At each end of the Pass
+I saw the red-coats multiply until they formed faint bunches of colour.
+Who, I wonder, first clothed the soldier man in scarlet, for an easier
+target he could not offer, even to an ill-shooting flint-lock.  Scarlet
+and the pageantry of courts, scarlet and the capturing of women's
+hearts, but for the soldier himself, when he gets down to his trade, it
+is scarlet and death.
+
+As I waited intently and looked, I could almost count, up on the brows
+of the Pass, how many red-coats the sentinels of our first alarm had
+grown into.  They made dots, moving against the skyline, and, as I next
+made out, they were in concert with other knots of scarlet, active at
+the end of the Pass below.  I did not need to be a soldier of some
+instinct, which I hope I always have been, to grasp the order and
+purpose of those doings.
+
+Clearly the plan was to search the bottom of the Pass and its northern
+top with men who would meet midway, two parties below, and two above.
+The Black Colonel could not, therefore, get away by the western end,
+which led to his habitual fastness up the valley of the Dee, for the
+door of escape was sealed.  No hope could lie south, or east, because
+that would be to come out into open country where numbers would capture
+any fugitive.  There was nothing but the northern side, no possibility
+of escape except up its stern face, and it was a forlorn possibility,
+alike on account of the terrible climb and because the red-coats were
+already there, shaping to cut off even an attempt in this direction.
+
+What would the Black Colonel do?  What was he doing?  I wondered, and
+two thoughts came to me, one that as an animal pursued ever makes for
+home, if only to reach it and die, so a hunted man will do likewise,
+should there be the smallest prospect of success; the other that
+possibly it is the sounder doctrine to face great perils in getting
+clear, when you are sure of an open road and a place of refuge, rather
+than seek deliverance by an easier door and then land in unknown
+plights.
+
+True strategy in any tight place, military or civil, is based on a
+knowledge of human nature, what the enemy will do.  That entails the
+gift of imagination, and there was a touch of it in the disposition
+going on before my eyes.  The knots of red on the bottom pathway drew
+together, and the red strings on the northern height were also
+approaching each other.  They progressed warily, but I could see an
+occasional gleam of bare bayonets against the skyline, silhouetted by
+the trees.
+
+Presently a rumble of displaced stones reached my ear from the other
+side of the Pass.  My eye searched for the spot, halfway up, where the
+trees grew sparser and the hard, sharp rocks gained the dominance.  Out
+from this streak of trees and rocks rode the Black Colonel on black
+Mack, and I gasped at his dare-devilry.
+
+I understood instinctively that, by cautious pilotage, probably
+dismounting and leading his horse at places, he had managed,
+undiscovered, to get thus far up that northern cliff, for it was almost
+sheer.  But he must next make the upper, still steeper half, with
+little shelter from the on-coming flint-locks, and the worst kind of
+footing for Mack.  Could any horse foaled of a mare climb that crag and
+bear his rider to safety, for this was the double, doubtful issue?
+
+When, a moment later, the soldiers caught sight of the Black Colonel
+they halted in mute surprise, then shouted, as a dog barks on sight of
+a quarry, the killing instinct in man and beast finding tongue.  It was
+instantly a gamble of the pursued and the pursuers, to escape or to
+capture, the keenest yet least noble game which can be played, that
+with a human life for the prize.  The Black Colonel, a man with a
+bar-sinister, but a remarkable man, was the hunted, and two companies
+of King George's soldiers, decent fellows enough each man of them, were
+the hunters.  The outcome depended chiefly on a horse, but such a
+horse, Mack!
+
+The King's word had gone round the countryside that our rebel and
+canteran was to be taken alive or dead.  That is a mandate which loses
+its dividing line when the guns begin to shoot.  Therefore, while the
+soldiers shouted, on getting sight of the Black Colonel, they also
+began to fire wildly at him.  The immediate range was too far for harm
+to hit him, but it would shorten swiftly enough.  Realizing this, he
+stretched himself along his horse's neck, thus showing a smaller
+target, and, as I felt sure, whispering words of encouragement into the
+great creature's ear.
+
+The tradition is that the Black Colonel used his dirk for spur on that
+ride, but I, who was a witness, know better.  He did not need to use
+it, and would not have done so in any event, loving Mack as he did.
+His soft Gaelic whisper of bidding was his only spur, and up, up,
+slowly, yet surely, went the gallant animal.  Ah! you should have seen
+it all.  It was fine.
+
+Mack's shapely, muscular body was stretched like whip-cord against the
+dull grey of the broken precipice.  You could fancy you heard the very
+cracking of his sinews as he rose foot by foot.  The reins lay on his
+neck, and I saw the Black Colonel slip oft the bridle, with its heavy
+iron bit, to give him the uttermost chance.  The rivulet of stones
+which his hoofs had set going grew into a stream, telling me that,
+while ever he lost a little on the treacherous ground, he more than
+made it good with the next stride.
+
+The sight so moved me that I nearly shouted in admiration and quite
+forgot the pursuers.  The soldiers in the hollow of the Pass had met
+and were loading and shooting with a certain discipline.  The Black
+Colonel's real danger, however, was not from this fusilade but from the
+intercepting soldiers at the top of the Pass.  Theirs had been a longer
+and rougher way to travel; would they, by the time he reached the
+summit, if reach it he did, be near enough to capture or shoot him?
+
+Up, up, still panted the noble Mack, almost exhausted, until, with a
+final effort, he gained the last ridge and, oh, what a relief!  His
+flanks heaved, his beautiful head dropped to the heather, and I could
+see that his forequarters had turned from black to a lather of white
+foam, testimony to the great strain of the climb.  The Black Colonel
+sprang from the saddle, walked to the edge of the crag, took his dirk
+from his garter and put it to his lips.  He was vowing the oath of a
+"broken" Highlander, to be revenged, or thanking Providence for his
+escape, perhaps both.
+
+He did all this, as I could follow, in the grey morning light, coolly,
+nay disdainfully, seeming to regard the bullets from the converging
+sharp-shooters as just so many bees buzzing harmlessly about him.
+Next, he tightened the girth, which Mack's panting had loosened,
+bridled the horse again, vaulted lightly into the saddle, touched his
+bonnet in mock salutation, and rode over the hills for home.
+
+There were those who saw a white horse go up the strath that morning
+with, as they swore, the Black Colonel for rider, though all knew the
+actual colour of Mack to be black.  There were others who said it was
+Death on his White Horse, and because a man died in the same small
+hours those mongers of destiny were believed.
+
+
+
+
+_IV--The Opening Road_
+
+If this were a story invented, and not a tale of true happenings, there
+would be an end when the Black Colonel rode triumphantly from the Pass.
+
+But, sitting alone and lonely a few days later in my room at Corgarff
+Castle, and reflecting on the affair, I said to myself that it was only
+the beginning.  A drama of real life rarely closes with the hero in
+heroics, the heroine a-swoon in her beauty, and the world a-clap with
+admiration.
+
+No doubt the Black Colonel had got away very well, almost as if he had
+leapt through a lighted window, with a resounding crash of broken
+glass.  Well, there would be the fragments to gather up, for the
+fragments have always to be remembered, or they may cause harm.  Here I
+was a fragment, and I asked myself into what basket I was to be
+gathered, because, you should know, the hills give those of us who
+dwell among them a sense of fate--of the inevitable.
+
+I was awakened from these thoughts by the entrance of my lieutenant,
+who said, "Still sighing that you were out of the chase after the Black
+Colonel?"
+
+I answered vaguely, "A soldier who is a real soldier, which I may or
+may not be, is always sorry to miss an enterprise, whether it be duty
+or merely an adventure."
+
+"Well," he remarked, "you had not been long gone when word came from
+Braemar Castle that the Black Colonel was to be in the Pass of Ballater
+about midnight, meeting some unknown person, and asking us to help
+capture him.  We saw nothing of the other person, whether man or woman."
+
+He looked slyly at me, and I remembered having said to him that I had
+had a tryst to keep among the hills.  You must not, I think, mislead
+people by telling what is untrue, but you need not tell everything if
+it is going to make mischief.  Mostly it is poor policy to try and ram
+the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, down a man's
+throat, because your version of it may not be his, and, anyhow, it
+makes dry eating.
+
+My thoughts have a habit of wandering, of dreaming dreams, often when
+they should be otherwise occupied, and isn't there a bunch of
+manuscript verse somewhere in testimony of the same?  Knowing this the
+lieutenant lighted and smoked a pipe of American tobacco, then a
+novelty and a luxury in the Scottish Highlands.  With a wink of the eye
+he asked, "Who was she, captain?  Wench or maid?"  And he pronounced
+the words in different tones, as if I needed to be instructed about the
+difference he implied by them.  A man says nothing to an
+arch-pleasantry like that, unless he be no man and only a babbler and
+boaster of his conquests.  Then he has had none, and is a liar.  No
+sort of fellow more fills men with contempt, and women, by their
+woman's instinct, pass him by, for any confidence whatever, in word or
+in deed.
+
+"Don't let it be one of the Black Colonel's flames," said the
+lieutenant with a laugh, as he went out again, without the answer he
+had not expected, being himself a gentleman.  "It needs a long spoon to
+sup with that dark devil at any time, but come between him and his
+rustic gallantries and you'll need a longer spoon than Corgarff Castle
+happens to possess."
+
+The Black Colonel and I, as you will have gathered, were on different
+sides in politics, though we belonged to neighbouring clans which had
+many associations; he a Farquharson, I a Gordon.  He was Jock
+Farquharson of Inverey, the last of his house, as I can say looking
+back on him, and doomed, so a woman of second-sight had declared, when
+he was born, to be the last; while I, Ian Gordon, was a cadet of the
+Balmoral Gordons, captain in his Majesty's Highland Foot, with no more
+to expect than what my commission brought me, and that was little
+enough.
+
+He was a Jacobite, keeping that rebel flame alive in the Aberdeenshire
+Highlands, when, on the heels of the "Forty-Five," a red and woeful
+time, we were half-heartedly scotching it with garrisons in the Castles
+of Braemar and Corgarff.  Yes, I wore the scarlet tunic of King George,
+thanks to family circumstances which had woven themselves before I was
+born, but the tartan lay under it, next my heart.  We were rivals in
+war, thrown on different sides by the fates which gamble so strangely
+with mere men.  Was there to be a still more vital rivalry?  As has
+been hinted, I had more than rumours of the Black Colonel's strange
+powers among women.  What if he had Marget Forbes in his dark eye?
+
+Wherever the heart is concerned you have intuition, and that is why a
+woman has more of such super-sense, or rather, I would say, of
+wonderously delicate feeling, than a man.  She needs it, being oftener
+heart-strung, because the wells of her heart are more emotional.
+
+I suspected, from the first, why the Black Colonel wanted to meet me,
+and for no other reason would I have consented to meet him.  But our
+meeting had been so brief, so disturbed, so futile as regards its
+purpose, that I had got no light from him whatever.  Still, ever since
+then I had been seeing, in the mirror of life, the face of Marget
+Forbes, a daughter of the clan whose name she bore, a handsome lass
+with a long pedigree, heiress to the lands of Corgarff, now forfeit for
+the Jacobite cause, when they should come back to her line, and
+incidentally, but all importantly, a kinswoman both of Jock Farquharson
+and myself.
+
+Memory is rarely honest with us, because it is imperfect, and
+unconsciously we tell the best account of things, but I fancy I was
+wondering on this text when there came at my door the sharp rap of
+bony, hurried knuckles.  "Enter!" I said, and in marched the corporal
+of the guard.  His hand went easily to the salute.  He had a message in
+his face.
+
+"What is it?" said I, for I expected nothing of moment, beyond a poor
+devil of a Jacobite captured, or a "sma' still" raided and its rude
+whisky drunk by the red-coat raiders until they were merrily "fou."
+
+"Sir," he answered in the parade voice which the regular soldier soon
+acquires, this, softened by his nice Scots drawl, "Sir, there's a man
+outside an' he says he's a letter for you and that he maun gie it to
+yoursel'."
+
+"What's he like?  Where does he come from?  Is he friend or no friend?"
+
+"Canna' say, sir.  I should think no friend.  He's short and swack o'
+body, red of hair and face, wears a kilt o' Farquharson tartan, and
+winna' say where he comes frae.  He has a letter for you, sir, and is
+to deliver it himself, an' that's a' he'll tell."
+
+"Bring him in," I ordered, and in came, as, by now, I half expected,
+Red Murdo, the Black Colonel's henchman.  I had seen him before, and by
+hearsay was more than familiar with his repute as an excellent servant
+to his not so excellent master.
+
+"A letter," he whispered in his hoarse voice, as if he did not want the
+corporal to hear.  I took the letter, and before I could even break the
+seal he was gone again, without motion of salute or further word, all
+quite in the Black Colonel's manner of doing things.
+
+It was addressed "To Captain Ian Gordon," and when I opened the
+envelope and unfolded the contents I found them to commence with these
+same words and no other form of ceremony.  I instantly knew the strong,
+irregular, aggressive and yet persuasive handwriting to be that of the
+Black Colonel, but unconsciously, as a girl tries at the end of a story
+to find whether happiness be there, I turned to the signature--"your
+kinsman, Jock Farquharson of Inverey."  What went before, when I had
+time to master it, was this:
+
+"These greetings, which I am inditing in the cold safety of the
+Colonel's Bed, a fastness where no enemy has yet tracked me, though all
+my true friends in the countryside know the secret roads to it, will be
+delivered to you by my faithful Red Murdo, who deserves blessings,
+whereas I sometimes give him curses; and their purpose is to tell you
+explicitly why I asked you to meet me in the Pass the other evening,
+since events, on which I here offer no comment, made it impossible for
+us to have any plain, forthright talk.
+
+"I'll reveal the heart of my business by recalling that there is a long
+association between our families, who have always been friends and
+enemies, and that the Corgarff Forbeses also come into this
+association, and continue it, in a fashion which takes me to our
+personal quarrel of Stuart and Guelph, because, by the exercise of a
+little ingenuity, such as is permissible, and a kinsmanship such as is
+proper, there may emerge good seasoning for us all.
+
+"Pray remember that if the Corgarff Forbeses were to fail in issue, and
+there is only one life between them and that failure, the life of a
+young unmarried lady, I, by descent on the distaff side, which I need
+not outline in particularity, would be heir to the estates; only as a
+Jacobite outlawed, a broken man, I can inherit nothing, not even
+possess, little as it is now, my own in peace.
+
+"But, if I am not ill-informed, and news travels among the hills as
+swiftly as, we are told, it travels in the desert, King George's
+advisers would gladly return the Corgarff estates to the Forbes family
+if that family had a strong man at its head and so such an influence as
+would keep the region, always a key to the Highlands, I will not
+exactly say in order for the German king, because that would be a
+tactless fashion of arranging, but wean it gradually from its sympathy
+for Prince Charlie, and his house of misadventure and ill-luck.
+
+"Now, if you will be good enough to assume in me qualities for this
+mission and the willingness to undertake it; if you will accept the
+circumstance that it would merely be a case of a remote legal heir
+coming into his own by a round-about way; and if you will set those
+facts in what I consider the national importance of the matter and help
+it forward in a form so delicate and chivalrous that I must not even
+hint it, why, you will be rendering a potent service to the cause which
+enlists you and which might, who knows, enlist me also!"
+
+That was the letter, considered in language, crafty in purpose, really,
+an overture for the hand of Marget Forbes, and I sat far into the
+night, while my peat fire died out in Corgarff Castle, wondering how I
+was to answer it, and, even more, how I myself stood towards the acute
+personal situation which it created.  For I saw that the Black Colonel
+meant to make love and do business at the same stroke, not for the
+first time, perhaps, in his life of emprise; and certainly here was no
+new thing in the world's queer story.
+
+
+
+
+_V.--A Cairn of Remembrance_
+
+It is a good way, when you are in doubt, to wait and let events shape a
+decision, and this was how I came to regard the Black Colonel's letter.
+
+He had set me a pretty puzzle in his written words, because, contrasted
+with the light touch-and-go of spoken words, these always seem to have
+something fateful in them, as of a king's signature to a decree.
+Moreover, I was vaguely conscious of being the guardian of a woman's
+instinct for safety, an instinct which arrives with the cradle and only
+goes with the grave, and that made me feel somewhat helpless; a man in
+depths he cannot fathom, for such is the uncharted sea of womanhood.
+
+Marget Forbes and her mother lived in the Dower House, thrown to them,
+as a piece of bread might be tossed from a rich man's table, when
+Corgarff was declared forfeit and the castle occupied by soldiery.  Her
+men-folk had been out with Charlie and had not come back from Culloden,
+as the Cairn of Remembrance on the hills might have told any seeker for
+them.  Each clansman, as he departed, had put a stone to it, and none
+had returned to lift that stone again, so it became a tombstone.
+
+They were dead for ever to Corgarff and to the lands which had been the
+property of their forbears, almost since time was in those
+blood-heathered Highlands.  Families rose and fell, for family reasons,
+or as the clans to which they belonged prospered or had adversity.
+Thus vital changes in a corner of the Scottish Highlands, like this of
+ours, were more frequent than the historians, men apt to assess on
+surface generalities and neglectful of the hidden human wells, usually
+make out.
+
+But, as the changes took place within what I may call the ring-fence of
+the clan system, they really only mattered to those who were directly
+concerned.  Corgarff Castle, however, had been held by the same Forbes
+family in direct, unbroken line, partly because its successive chiefs
+had strong right arms, partly because the domain had little to make
+anybody else covetous.  The Sabine women whom the old Romans took,
+would have been the beautiful ones, and it is the same with the face of
+Mother Earth.  What appears best is taken first!
+
+There was no great personal bitterness in the Aberdeenshire Highlands
+as between clans or families who were on different sides in the
+"Forty-Five."  The ambition, or the greed of chiefs, often determined
+the sides, and a consciousness of that made lesser men tolerant with
+each other.  Thus, an acquaintanceship between Marget and her mother
+and myself, although begun under a certain stress of circumstance,
+passed naturally into friendship, and, on my part, into something
+warmer.  We were of the same Celtic strain, and, in the heart and mind
+of upbringing, blood tells all the time.  But I had not seen much of
+them, and nothing at all since the tale of the Black Colonel's escape
+in the Pass had set the countryside talking and, doubtless, secretly
+rejoicing.
+
+It was a fine thing, a very fine thing, that he should have escaped
+from the red-coats so perfectly, so dramatically.  They were the living
+tokens of a government which, on every ground of sentiment, was alien
+to the Highland people, a government, moreover, that had been tactless
+in its plans and its acts.  The Black Colonel stood for a native royal
+cause which had colour and flair, even if its genius for government had
+been exhausted.
+
+We soldiers were only disliked for what we represented, for the dry
+Hanoverian salt we ate, not for ourselves, because most of us were
+Highland by bone and heart.  The Black Colonel was liked for what he
+represented, rather than for himself.  He had, indeed, a way of
+commandeering other men's goods, when he needed them, that was
+inconvenient to those others.  But there was a strong local pride in
+his name and achievements, as the name and achievements of a first-rate
+fighting man, whose sword-handle held in its silver-work the letter
+"S," standing for Stuart, an allegiance and a challenge never hidden by
+him.
+
+Naturally, like every other Forbes, Farquharson, or Gordon--I omit none
+with those names--Marget would be quietly rejoicing over the Black
+Colonel's success in out-manoeuvring us.  I say "us," although I was
+not in the pursuit, a fact, I reflected, which might relieve me a
+little of Marget's scorn if she knew.  Did she know?  Had gossip
+carried her that news also?  It could not tell her that I was out of
+the chase after the Black Colonel, because I was meeting him privately,
+and that her affairs were the occasion of the meeting.
+
+Of the dangers wrapped in all this, I was to have an inkling when I did
+meet Marget, and that came about as if it did not matter, as if nothing
+matters!  I had been up the Don valley with a patrol, was returning,
+and scarce a mile from Corgarff Castle, when I saw a woman's figure
+ahead, going my road, a very soft and gracious sight, believe me,
+against the hill-side.  Soon, thanks either to my eyes which could then
+see far, or to a man's feeling of instinct for the presence of a woman
+who interests him, I discovered that it was Marget Forbes.  She turned
+round, perhaps at the approaching sound of our steady tramp, or perhaps
+moved by some unconscious woman's sense, and, as my men passed on and I
+fell behind them, she said, "Ah, Captain Gordon, where have you been
+these many days?  Chasing the Black Colonel, eh?"
+
+It was said easily, with a half-smile, as if she were alluding to
+something which had happened since we last met, as, indeed, it had.  It
+was good, however, that the light was failing, because I could feel my
+face burn, not with shame, but with a confusion in which there was more
+than the Black Colonel.
+
+"Oh no, Mistress Marget," I answered, "one cannot always be in the
+company of the Black Colonel, however interesting some of us may find
+him."  This, observe, was intended as a delicate touch for her, but it
+probably struck her as clumsy, so much finer is a woman's feeling than
+a man's.
+
+"You found him interesting then," she merely replied.  "I'm glad to
+hear that, because, as a distant relative of ours, he is really one of
+the men-folk of the family.  Perhaps he has some of the nature which,
+so they say, characterizes our women?  His Forbes grandmother or
+great-grandmother, whichever she was, would have passed it on to him."
+
+She stopped when she noticed the sweet conceit into which she had
+fallen, for certainly what she had claimed in name of the Forbes women,
+was richly present in herself.  She had sparkle, bloom, charm, that
+witching, elusive, mixed something in a woman which nobody can describe
+but which every true man feels, and she looked it all in the gloamin'
+of that perfect Highland evening.
+
+"My dear Mistress Forbes," I said more formally, "I could forgive the
+Black Colonel much if I thought he had any of the qualities of your
+Forbes women-folk.  As it is, I envy him your championship," at which
+she looked at me with considering eyes.
+
+"A woman naturally champions all her men," she said with a deft smile
+for me, as being also a relation, "and it would be sad if she didn't;
+but I have never yet seen the Black Colonel.  He has not come our way,
+although, no doubt, we should, for what has been, make him as welcome
+as your men, quartered in our old castle, might permit."
+
+"Naturally!  Why not?" I said, for I understand her feelings though,
+somehow, the remark stung me a little.  "Perhaps," I added, "you may
+have your wish gratified and meet him one of these days."
+
+"Do you mean as a prisoner," she asked quickly.
+
+"No.  I mean that when the Black Colonel wants to call on anybody, he
+does not let danger or ceremony stand in his path.  So far, I take it,
+there has been no occasion for you to make his personal acquaintance,
+and may that continue."
+
+"Why should you say that?  Whether he be good or ill, he is a
+picturesque figure, a stout fighter, a man who has stood up for his
+faith through thick and thin, and, moreover, one of us.  I have heard
+the things that are said about him, things no woman cares to hear about
+a man, but to hear is not to believe, is it?  Only," and Marget laughed
+quietly, "here am I defending a rank Jacobite to the Georgian commander
+of Corgarff Castle, whose business it is to lay that rank Jacobite by
+the heels--if he can!"
+
+"Oh, we'll catch him some day," I lightly, rather wryly, observed, "but
+his luck does serve him well."
+
+"There's often a reason for luck," answered she; "more in it than just
+luck.  Now, if a company of soldiers went after a man of resource, like
+the Black Colonel, would their chance of catching him not be less if
+they had no captain leading them?  A boyish lieutenant may have
+energetic qualities, but they are hardly likely to be a match for those
+of the Black Colonel."
+
+We were getting on to ground perilous for me, because Marget had
+evidently heard something and was determined to test it at first hand.
+Behind the curiosity there seemed, judging by her tone, to be a fight
+going on between friendliness and pique.  It is a dangerous mixture for
+a man to have to counteract in a woman, because, responding to the
+friendliness, he may make admissions which increase the pique.
+
+Therefore I sought to give our talk a turn by saying, "Everybody seems
+to know everything there is to be known about the Black Colonel's
+escape, so there's an end of it--until next time."
+
+"But, Captain Gordon, although one knows generally, one may still keep
+wondering--may one not?  A woman always wonders; it is one of her
+privileges, and often wonder is kinder to her than certainty."
+
+"Wonder, dear lady, is a hard thing to gratify, being illimitable,
+like . . . !
+
+"Like the hills," she caught me up, "when one is alone among
+them--alone, or going to meet somebody in the dark of the night, or the
+dimness of early morning."
+
+"It would depend on the somebody," I said boldly, facing her boldness,
+"and whether it was a man or a woman that was to be met."
+
+"But," she said quite softly, "it must be a man that any other man
+would be meeting in these parts, because . . ."  She stopped abruptly.
+
+"Because what?  Tell me!"
+
+"Nothing; only that every man needs to be mothered by a woman, a charge
+which any good woman, young or old, will instinctively assume, even if
+she knows that it may be only a cross for her to bear."  Her voice was
+low, almost a whisper, may be a first whisper of the mother of men in
+her, a revelation to all women, come it when it may; and that thought
+kept me silent.
+
+We had, by this time, reached the Dower House, and she said
+"Good-night," and I answered, as simply, "Good-night."
+
+What I really said to myself was, "Philandering, was I, instead of
+soldering, on the night the Black Colonel was raided--that's the story
+she's heard!"
+
+And I was concerned, strangely concerned--like Marget herself.
+
+
+
+
+_VI--The Finger of Fate_
+
+Here I was in a double tangle of private affairs, for I had the Black
+Colonel's designs upon Marget Forbes to handle, and I had her mistaken
+notion of my doings to disperse.  It was a drumly outlook for one whose
+chief equipment was honesty of purpose, with, I am afraid, little of
+the arts of human diplomacy.
+
+Marget had all the woman's acute anxiety when a man's act seemed
+hidden, or, at least, uncertain, even if he was no more to her than a
+kinsman.  It is from those delicate things that half our troubles
+spring, because, as between man and woman, they cannot be explained in
+words.  They must be left to reveal themselves, and meanwhile they may
+destroy sweet possibilities or gracious relationships.
+
+My difficulty with the Black Colonel was still more complicated, for it
+was as if a hair-rope of many strands, such as the Highlanders made,
+enwound us.  We were public enemies, sworn to causes which could have
+no dealings with each other.  Yet we had met secretly; and though that
+mattered little to him it might easily ruin me, or, at all events, my
+military career.
+
+But, may be, I could remove that danger by a simple report to my
+superiors saying what had happened.  Could I?  No; I could not, for a
+woman's reputation was, all unknown to her, engaged in the affair, and
+that takes us directly to Marget Forbes and the Black Colonel's designs
+upon her name and estates.
+
+I knew he would not stop at the sending to me of his letter, and
+getting no immediate answer, which was the course I had taken, if only
+because his last throw with affairs was involved.  Therefore I looked
+for some further act, and, having regard to the difficulty of personal
+meetings, and his amiable weakness for writing, as something in which
+he excelled, I was not surprised when it came in the form of another
+dispatch, also borne secretly by the vagrant Red Murdo.
+
+We actually had an old clanish knowledge of each other, this fellow and
+I, because, although he was a Farquharson, the croft on which his
+people dwelt was near the Gordon estate of Balmoral.  We had played
+with each other as boys, for the feudal system of the clans was
+communal and democratic.  It was, to take one illustration, customary
+for the sons of chiefs to have foster-brothers adopted from the
+commonalty, companions in peace time, comrades and defenders in war
+time.
+
+When then, Red Murdo, who had been lurking in a peat-moss near Corgarff
+Castle, surprised me, out-of-doors, one day, it was with the friendly
+salutation, "Good-morning, Captain Ian."
+
+"Hullo," I said, "isn't it dangerous for you to be here again?"
+
+"Not when it's to see you, but I wis gettin' weary waitin' in this damp
+hole, an' the Cornel, he'll be wonderin' why I'm no' back."
+
+"Well, my friend," said I coldly; "I won't keep you from him."
+
+"But, I've a word to say to ye for him, and something to gie ye.  I'm
+to say that he expects to hear from ye in satisfaction of his letter.
+But if you need remindin', will ye study, as conveyin' his feelin's and
+intents, a plain copy, made by him, which I've carried in my sporran,
+of my Earl Mar's known epistle to the first Jock Forbes of Inverernan,
+near by Corgarff."
+
+With this mysterious message haltingly said, as if the Black Colonel
+had drilled it into his man, which was, no doubt, the truth.  Red Murdo
+held me out a crumpled sheet of paper.
+
+"Tak' it, sir," he added, "an', as advice from a humble man who wishes
+ye no ill, obleege the Black Cornel if you can, or he'll be tryin'
+other means.  You an' I ken him, Captain, ken him weel, I'm thinkin',
+an' it disna' dae to neglect him, as I've found mysel' at various
+times."
+
+It was a famous and familiar document with which I had been served, or,
+rather, with a fair copy of it, in the Black Colonel's best round-hand;
+but its use by him to convey his sentiments and intentions to me was
+quaintly original.  Here was he, framing himself in the words of
+urgency and high consequence, which the Earl of Mar, when that nobleman
+was raising the "Standard on the Braes o' Mar," flung, like a fiery
+cross, at Jock Forbes of Inverernan.  You will perceive the lordly
+egotism of the Black Colonel when I give you the missive, as I read it
+myself, with its new, intimate and individual bearing, immediately Red
+Murdo had disappeared.
+
+"Jock," it opened, "ye was right not to come with the hundred men ye
+sent up tonight, when I expected four times that number.  It is a
+pretty thing, when all the Highlands of Scotland are now rising upon
+the King and the country's account, as I have accounts from them since
+they were with me, and the gentlemen of the neighbouring homelands
+expecting us down to join them, that my men should only be refractory.
+
+"Is not this the thing we are about which they have been wishing these
+twenty-six years?  And now, when it is come, and the King and the
+country's cause is at stake, will they for ever sit still and see all
+perish?  I have used gentle means too long and shall be forced to put
+other means into execution.
+
+"I have sent you, enclosed, an order for the Lordship of Kildrummy,
+which you are immediately to intimate to all my vassals; if they give
+ready obedience it will make some amends, and, if not, you may tell
+them from me that it will not be in my power to save them--were I
+willing?--from being treated as enemies by those who are ready soon to
+join me; and they may depend on it that I will be the first to propose
+and order their being so.
+
+"Particularly let my own tenants in Kildrummy know that if they come
+not forth with their best arms, that I will send a party immediately to
+burn what they shall miss taking from them.  And they may believe this
+only a threat, but by all that's sacred, I'll put it into execution,
+that it may be an example to others.
+
+"You are to tell the gentlemen that I'll expect them in their best
+accoutrements, on horseback, and no excuse to be accepted of.  Go about
+this with diligence, and come yourself and let me know your having done
+so.  All this is not only as ye will be answerable to me, but to your
+King and country."
+
+Straight writing enough!  And that was why the Black Colonel had sent
+me the historic epistle, laughing in his sleeve, I had no doubt, at the
+slim originality of his method.  He was for gentle means, if he could
+so win his ends and Marget, but if they answered not, then, like my
+Lord Mar with Jock Forbes of Inverernan, he would be "forced to put
+other means into execution."  While I was the immediate target for his
+threat, I quite saw that the Black Colonel was aiming at a larger prize
+behind me.
+
+But what could he, a "broken man," a fugitive from justice, the justice
+of the Hanoverian though it was, do to compel anybody to his schemes
+and ambitions?  That was to forget his place of notoriety, which gave
+its own power, among the people of the Aberdeenshire Highlands.
+Whenever, in going about the hills and the valleys, I met a simple man
+of the soil he would touch his bonnet in salute to me, never to my
+uniform, and, after a little, remark in his soft Gaelic, "So the Black
+Colonel is still defying you all--a tremendous lad, isn't he?"  This
+would be said with a gleam in the eye, to give it delicacy, a bearing
+of personal courtesy which I did not miss because I was liked for
+myself, and we all like to be liked for ourselves.
+
+You will apprehend by now, perhaps, that I knew my Highland men,
+whether I found them digging peats in the moss, or gathering in their
+skimp harvest of unopened corn, so that it should escape the hungry
+grouse and the coming winter.  They were wholly kindly, as follows from
+simple living, generous in their narrow outlook, and yet strongly
+individual.  They had, as a people, character, which is the noblest
+gift of the gods, for everything else depends on it, and hardly
+anything can be achieved without it.
+
+They took a pride in the Black Colonel, as one of themselves, and in
+his deeds as a fighter who, on many occasions, had reversed the saying
+about being willing to wound but afraid to strike.  He had, they
+admitted, wrong ways at times, and if these could not openly be
+defended, still they were almost forgiven a man with his back to the
+wall where a shot, or a stab, might find him any day or any night.
+
+Withal, too, he bore about him a touch of romance, a gallant
+atmosphere, and your Highlander, loving to sit on a stile and look at
+the sun, will pardon much for that.  Thus there was a general sympathy
+with the Black Colonel, which he could draw upon either as a veil to
+conceal his doings, or for active help, and it was this knowledge which
+caused me to be apprehensive.
+
+For, though thirty years had passed since his lordship of Mar
+peremptorily wrote to the chief of Inverernan, our Highland life had
+not changed vitally.  The same rude passion ran through it, as like
+mists hung over the Slock of Morvan and the gaping chasm in the side of
+Lochnagar.  Civilization remained primitive, love and hatred could run
+high on the ebbing Jacobite tide, and the common round was still very
+much what a strong hand could do and a weak one could not do.
+Affections and hatreds bloom even more strongly in times of ordeal than
+in times of tranquillity, perhaps because the moral reins governing
+them have grown worn, and so become slacker.
+
+It should be said, however, of the Scottish Highlands, that the chiefs,
+at least, those of the northern ridge of the Grampians, were humane in
+their doings, even kindly, and certainly they were never fond of taking
+a clansman's life on the gallows-tree.  Their whole code was against
+that ignoble death, unless when an enemy had played them unfair, or a
+vassal had proved himself traitor, and then they swiftly slipped a life
+to the other world, holding this world to have no use for it.
+
+Possibly, too, they found the sight of a corpse dangling from a tree
+uncanny, a vision armed with threats which made them hold their
+hangman's hand, for, while crafty enough, they were superstitious to a
+degree.  They let the gallows-tree stand grim and expectant on the
+hill-side, a terror to foes and a clan discipline, and, when necessary,
+found a way to their desires by the short dirk or the long sword.
+
+Moreover, at the time of my writing, we were between the immediate
+butchery of Culloden, a red and rueful business, and the insecurity of
+tenure in life and home, which was to follow.  It was a rough marking
+of time, when national elements were in the mill, as well as those
+which go to the chronicle of the Black Colonel, Marget Forbes, and
+myself.
+
+Here was I, on the edge of such happenings as assail one when he finds
+subtle intrigue on the one side and innocent misunderstanding on the
+other.  It is always hard enough to manage such elements, but let them
+get out of hand and a miracle is needed for salvation.  Also you have
+to find the miracle, and I composed myself to search for it in the
+little things, the natural things of the situation.  They have a knack
+of conducting you to the heart of a problem, if you will only have
+simple faith and follow them, and be not otherwise, which is
+presumption.
+
+Faith and miracles go hand in hand, in story as in fact, and when one's
+mind, working rapidly, if unconsciously, has got an issue down to a
+point where it can be expressed in a word, a decision has been taken.
+If it be a human decision, the hills, which grow strangely mothering
+and kind to their people, seem to know it, for they talk to each other
+of everything but their own secrets; and they knew that I had decided
+upon my course of action.
+
+
+
+
+_VII.--A Parley and a Surprise_
+
+You must ride with fortune if you expect to win many of her favours.
+Like a woman, she sighs to be courted, even if she fears to be
+captured.  She likes adventures for themselves, and may be good to you
+if you give her some.  But the man who lets her ride by alone, or with
+somebody who has already bridled her, and then goes out in pursuit, has
+a long chase before him.
+
+My affair with the Black Colonel was both private and public, and thus,
+in a two-fold sense, the right policy was to take the offensive.  Yes,
+I would tell him bluntly that there could be nothing between us on the
+matters he had raised, and that it was war to the dirk, with such an
+eventual issue as God might will.
+
+This was my decision, and it seemed to me that, as an officer and a
+gentleman, I must intimate it to him at first-hand by invading his
+retreat, the Colonel's Bed, over there in Strathdee, near his Inverey.
+Singly, and alone, I would seek the Black Colonel in his den,
+honourably shake myself clear of his dark overtures, and tell him to
+cease his designs.
+
+If I were to read this chronicle as remote from its occurrences as you
+may do, I should, probably, toss my head and call that a quixotic
+decision, but I have enough pride in being a Gordon, to wish that I may
+stand fairly with the future, in small as in great matters.  Therefore,
+I beg you that you put yourself in my place, bearing in mind the
+difficult conditions of the time in the Scottish Highlands.
+
+A man needs a stout heart, a clear head, and a sure hand, to hold his
+own in a welter of interests and antagonisms such as beset me.  The
+eternal instinct in a full man is to get through, to achieve, to live,
+aye, and to love, thus making life a great, clamorous thing not a mere
+existence.  So concluding, I took the first occasion by the hand, with
+what personal risk there might be, and made across the rugged bridge of
+mountain which both binds and divides the Don and the Dee, to interview
+the Black Colonel.
+
+My mood was less heroic by the time I had done the miles of scarped
+hill, clinging moor, and lifting wood, with bridle-paths for roads,
+which took me to the locality of the Colonel's Bed.  Where it was
+exactly I did not know, but he had friends around who kept him
+informed, and I counted on meeting one of them.  Then I could send a
+message to him, saying I desired to speak with him privately, and he
+would guess the rest.
+
+Things fell out like that, and I was bidden to rest in a Highland
+shieling, squat of form, thatched with rushes, floored with earth, and
+eat a bannock and drink a bowl of goat's milk, while my message went
+forward and an answer returned.  Perhaps two hours passed, and I slept
+a little, for I was tired, before that answer did arrive by the eternal
+Red Murdo.
+
+To be sure, I would be made welcome by his master, but I must not feel
+offended if I was blindfolded during the walk to the Colonel's Bed.
+This request, courteously put by Red Murdo, showed me the situation I
+had invited for myself, but, having gone so far, I was not to turn
+back, and I said, "Very well."  He tied a coarse tartan scarf of
+home-spun wool, which he wore himself, tightly round my eyes, so
+tightly that at first it hurt a little, and we started for our
+destination.
+
+We had a rough, difficult track, all up and down again, to follow, as
+my feet discovered, with no sight to guide them.  But Red Murdo, a
+study in loyalty to his chief and in consideration for me, supported me
+sturdily, and I broke no shin on the many rocks strewing our road.
+
+I was wondering if we should ever arrive, when I heard the rush of a
+stream almost beneath us.  Instinctively I stopped, as one does when an
+unseen danger is near, but Red Murdo said, "It's a' right; we're near
+there."  Next I felt as if I were walking in a cave, for there was a
+peculiar hollow echo to our tread.  Then the tartan scarf was removed
+from my eyes, and, opening them, I saw the Black Colonel holding out
+his hand.
+
+"Glad, Sir Visitor, to see you," he said, "and such hospitality as this
+poor place can offer is yours."
+
+I took his hand, without holding it, bowed stiffly, and sat myself on a
+chair made of birch branches, to which he pointed.  It was, apart from
+an equally rude litter-bed and a rough table, the only furniture in the
+refuge.  This I saw by the light of a fire of broken wood and peat
+which burned slowly in a corner, where, apparently, the smoke found
+some channel of escape, because it drifted slowly upward in spirals.
+
+My feeling had been right, for this was a cave, or, rather, a tunnel,
+worn in the course of centuries by the stream which had now deserted
+it, to flow lower down.  Above us, as I judged, rose the side of a
+small hill, and immediately without there would be a sheer drop to the
+departed waters, whose noise soughed like a strong wind among pine
+trees.
+
+It was a retreat made by Nature in her chance moods, and used by the
+Black Colonel at that straitened time of his life.  Probably only he,
+Red Murdo, and a few others actually knew he was there, though he had
+boasted that many did, and I should know no more than that I had been a
+visitor to the Colonel's Bed.  And yet I should probably know a good
+deal more, for otherwise why was I there?
+
+Anyhow, after the previous hour or two of tensity, it was a relief to
+be face to face with my man, I able to read his, if I could, he able to
+read mine.  It was only in the grey half-light of his hole in the
+rocks, but, at least, we should look each other in the eyes, as men
+wish to do when they are acting honestly towards each other, even if
+later they must fight.
+
+You are quick, at a drawn moment, to seize the picture of a man, to
+sound his being, and the Black Colonel, as he stood there courteously
+attentive, intelligently alert, made a picture which vouchsafed a clear
+personality.  He would have been something ripely over thirty, but ten
+years of adventure and philandering sat lightly on him, and he looked
+even younger than he was.  A dark man keeps the freshness of youth
+well, until it begins to go in the greying of his hair, when it goes
+quickly; while a fair man grows middle-aged soon, but fends off old age
+well, or, at all events, the look of it.
+
+The Black Colonel was dark entirely; dark of skin, or rather olive, as
+you find men and women among a Celtic people; dark of eye to the point
+of a scowl, behind which, however, there was a well of mirth; dark of
+hair and dark of beard.  His hair he wore long, not being always within
+reach of scissors, and his beard had that silky texture which comes of
+never having known a razor.
+
+Once, as the story went, he asked Red Murdo, so-called for sundry
+reasons besides his tousled red hair, to shave him with the sharp edge
+of a dirk.  The experiment began so ill that it never actually began at
+all, and the Black Colonel had a virgin beard in which he took a due
+conceit--why not?  He thought it manly, where, perhaps he was right,
+and he had learned in France that women thought it manly, so he was
+doubly right.
+
+The Celts, wherever found, are not generally tall, and the Black
+Colonel was a pure Celt in body as well as in nature.  He was
+upstanding, bore himself easily, was clean in line and tough of frame.
+True, he was long of the leg, among a people who, having to climb and
+descend hills constantly, are, in the providence of fitness,
+short-legged, but he was all of a part.  The kilt tests a man's figure,
+bringing out any flaw in it, and the Black Colonel's stood the test
+admirably.
+
+Moreover, he had that physical quality peculiar to the Celt which you
+might call elasticity, for it is comparable to a mountain ash which
+bends but does not break.  There was, too, a fineness, a delicacy about
+him, such as proclaims a race which has dreamt dreams and lived with
+the wild glories of Nature.  You cannot make common men of her
+gentlemen, and her women are music to the French chanson, "It's love
+that makes the world go round."
+
+None knew this better than the Black Colonel, a Highlander with that
+venturing air which goes to a woman's heart, because she fondly wants a
+man who will give her the gamble of danger, and yet be strong enough to
+save her from herself?  You might say that he was born for quest and
+conquest, what with his suavity of tongue, his grace of manner, his
+roguery of eye, and his fame as a great lover.
+
+But I was keeping him waiting and I had no desire to do that, so I
+said, "You may suppose that I am not here very willingly, that it is
+only duty which brings me."
+
+"Not official duty, I hope," he answered, with an acid emphasis on the
+words.
+
+"No; I simply want, as between Highland gentlemen, to tell you two
+things: first, that I return you, point blank, your overtures touching
+our kinswoman, Marget Forbes, and her estate; and, second, this being
+done, that I, as an officer of his Majesty's forces, will unrelentingly
+discharge my commission, as best I can, next time we meet, be it soon
+or not so soon."
+
+I fired out the words as if I had been loaded with them, which, truly,
+was the case, but I felt, somehow, as if the shot had not gone home.
+It had no outward effect on the Black Colonel, who turned the peat
+ashes of the fire with his brogued foot, and looked at the little spits
+of smoke and flame which flew up.  Evidently he was not so unprepared
+for my ultimatum as I had expected, but I had delivered it, and the
+rest was for him.
+
+"Captain Gordon," he said, putting his hands behind his back and
+looking hard at me, "I appreciate the sense of personal honour which
+has brought you here.  You felt you must clean the private slate
+between us, before you were free to write what is to be on the public
+slate.  You wanted to give due declaration of war, and you have done it
+at close quarters, which is the action of a Highland gentleman.  But,
+Captain Gordon, haven't you begun at the end of the story, instead of
+at the beginning?"
+
+"I am only concerned with the end of the story, although I have
+probably been foolish in thinking that I must myself bring you news of
+it."
+
+"No honourable action is ever lost," he rejoined; "and, however events
+go, I'll always put this to your credit in the account between us."
+
+"Thank you," said I, laconically, and he moved as if my tone had stung
+him, which I did not intend, because even in a war parley one may be
+correct--courteous.
+
+"What I wished to say," he went on, "is this: isn't there a way out of
+our affairs which shall be creditable to you, nay, to us both, and, at
+the same time, be in the public interest?  Can't this private
+relationship into which we have drifted, thanks to circumstances, be so
+managed that it shall be fair to you as a soldier of King George, as
+well as relieve me from my difficulties?"
+
+"Surely, Jock Farquharson," I protested with warmth, "you forget your
+place when you, an outlaw by decree, the doer, by admission, of many
+wrongs, presume to make terms with a King's officer, even in his
+private capacity."
+
+"Strong words, my young friend," and he laughed in an airy tone that
+stung me; "strong words don't belong to youth, but to the years when
+the blood grows sour.  You say outlaw!  Why, yes and no; I am a loyal
+subject of the King--the King over the water!  You say I'm a cateran!
+Well, I do no more than tax my enemies for what I need, and I need
+little, holding as I do by the simple life, especially as no other is
+open to me."
+
+"This," I said stiffly, "is neither the rendezvous nor the time for
+high-flown sentiments, especially if they have no sincerity."
+
+"That," he added, "would be a windy business, and here the die is far
+too serious to be played with, anyhow for me.  Let us get down to the
+humanities, which are the final element in solving a problem or leaving
+it unsolved.  There need be no personal bitterness between us; merely
+we are in antagonism in politics and war, for the two count together
+just now."
+
+"You are unusually modest to eliminate yourself like that," I cut in,
+thinking of the Black Colonel's record, but only striking his Highland
+pride.
+
+"If it so please me," he said almost angrily, "I can afford to be
+modest, for I have done things.  I come of good blood; I bear a name
+which is old among the hills; I have carved my way to a colonelcy under
+the Stuart flag, where promotion, like kissing, has often gone by
+favour, yet sometimes by merit.  The Prince himself, when he gave me my
+rank, called me the Black Colonel in compliment to my beard, which
+nobody has ever singed.  The Black Colonel I remained when the Stuart
+army melted in the bloody furrows of Culloden, and in truth I have, and
+need not deny it, left my name in many quarters.  I took it with me
+when I sought the safe retreat of my own corner of the Highlands, among
+friends, and I submit it with pride to you, Captain Ian Gordon."
+
+He was aflame between wrath and egotism, and I was afraid the contagion
+might catch me, which was the least desirable thing, because there lies
+the road to a losing cause.  But, next moment, he laughed and said,
+"No, no; temper beseems neither high nor low, being kitchen work.  You
+are sensible enough, Captain Gordon, to let a full man have his talk,
+and I have not finished yet."  He thought for a moment, as if he
+expected me to say something, but I only got up from my somewhat hard
+seat, as if preparing to go.
+
+"Not yet," he said; "stay a little, because, since you are here, it
+would be a pity if anything remained unclear between us.  I gather that
+you see no course for it but open war, that you refuse the road of
+solution which my proposal about the Forbes estate opens out.  Might I
+ask why you are so unsympathetic to that idea, which would serve every
+interest?"
+
+"I am," I declared hotly, "neither a matchmaker, especially for
+adventurers, nor a scheming politician, and on both grounds I decline
+to have anything to do with you.  Your insistence compels me to speak
+with a plainness which I would rather have avoided, but you must blame
+yourself.  It's a far cry to Loch Awe, and a farther cry to the pardon
+of the Black Colonel, but he thinks it might be contrived if he had
+Marget Forbes and her property for a trump card.  A pretty scheme, but
+not one which my commission for King George instructs me to
+countenance."
+
+Now I, in turn, had gone aflame, despite all my resolve to the
+contrary, but if I had spoken the name of Marget Forbes it was, I tried
+to reflect, as if it had no intimate meaning for me.  That would have
+been to blunder doubly, because it would show me personally, nay,
+intimately, interested.
+
+The Black Colonel had been silent, and, when I ceased talking, I
+noticed a strained, even a queer, look in his eye.  Was he counting up
+some element of the game which, thus far, was unknown to me?  For when
+the minds of men rub fiercely against each other, as ours had been
+doing, they speak quicker than words.  A kind of communication springs
+up, vague of detail, but unfailing in its general import.
+
+I was not surprised, therefore, when the Black Colonel put his hand
+within his coat and drew a paper from a pocket there.  But I was
+surprised when he said, "I have something here which I owe to the
+favour of my friends in the south, and you will find that it bears upon
+our conversation."  He unfolded the paper slowly, I seeing, as he did
+so, that it was an official paper, and then he handed it to me.
+
+It was not easy to read, in the dim light of the Colonel's Bed, thanks
+to its crabbed orthography and its long formal phrasing, but gradually
+I made out its wording to be this:
+
+
+"Greetings:
+
+"Whereas, trusty and well-beloved councillors advise it in the interest
+of our cause in the Scottish Highlands, that influential gentlemen who
+have been Jacobite in sympathy, and even act, be won over to Our
+Settled Sovereignship;
+
+"Therefore it is ordered that they shall, wherever possible, be
+installed in the headship of houses and estates kindred to them, which
+have been forfeit and estreated, all on strict condition of loyalty to
+Ourselves and our Crown for ever;
+
+"And this wisely considered and, in our graciousness of heart, clement
+policy, shall, we instruct, apply to John Farquharson of Inverery,
+commonly called the Black Colonel, if, and when, he is able to
+implement its essence in reference to the Forbes estate of Corgarff in
+the far uplands of Aberdeenshire, where we wish to be loyally regarded
+by our subjects.
+
+"In token of all which foregoing greetings and intimations on our part,
+herewith witness our royal signature.
+
+"GEORGE REX."
+
+
+"You understand?" said the Black Colonel, as I lifted my eyes from the
+document and handed it back to him.
+
+I nodded, mechanically, for I was thinking--thinking chiefly of Marget
+and myself.
+
+
+
+
+_VIII.--The Conquering Hero_
+
+It is unbelievable how the sweet face of a lass, or her soft figure,
+with its air of passion song, will come between two men and make any
+great affairs of state dividing them, seem as nothing by comparison.
+The Black Colonel and I would hardly, as individuals, have quarrelled
+about Stuart and Guelph, knowing well the value which Stuart and Guelph
+would have put on us.  But with Marget Forbes as prize it was another
+affair altogether, for, in her, a whole bouquet of calling qualities
+united.
+
+Her heart, so far, was all in the open joy of living, though in the
+troublous times which surrounded her and her family, she found burden
+enough of sorrow.  She was a flower of the heather, opening late, like
+it, but perhaps with the same red, rich bloom, for it was not hard to
+divine that elements of high possibility were enclosed in her young
+womanhood.  It gave you, for all its simplicity, a sense of latent
+treasure, when it should fully open, even, it might be of surprise to
+herself.
+
+Seventeen! they say, when girlhood is trembling, quivering on the
+portal of womanhood, a world of mysteries.  But it is not half so
+dramatic as twenty-five, when a woman, if she be rightly healthy in
+mind and body, comes into woman's estate, feeling, desiring, some
+earlier, some later, but roughly then.  Peril is there, as well as
+beauty, for then all the Margets in the wide world are pulling at the
+silky bonds of sex, thinking these will stretch and stretch, only to
+find, perhaps, that there is a strain at which they must break or
+surrender.
+
+If the insurgency of newly-found womanhood can be fitly employed all is
+well, but remember that most women are, in thought, rebels for romance.
+Nature, too, runs fullest in the veins of those who live with her
+naturally, aloof from the veneer of society.  Nature is lusty in
+Nature's lap, and she mothered our Corgarff without let or hindrance,
+in sun and in snow, Marget Forbes included.
+
+You are to suppose a region far removed even from such a niggard
+commerce of life as there was then in the Scottish Highlands.  It is
+sixty miles from the warming salt-wash of the sea, and has winds nearly
+as cold as those that blow from the Arctic.  This is because it stands
+high, and is so bare of trees that they blow unbroken over its area.
+They catch you with their ice tang in them, untouched by long,
+sheltering woods, or soft, rolling dales, and they make your face
+tingle into red and white, the blushes of Mother Nature.
+
+That is the winter, when the land is often covered with snow, and the
+little burns of the hills are frozen into snake-like icicles.  If the
+picture is hard, it is nevertheless beautiful, looked out upon from the
+comfort of good clothes and a full stomach.  It invites you to explore
+it, to follow that far track ending on the snow-line of Morven, or yon
+other, which dips and is lost in the riven sides of Lochnagar.  The air
+sings through your lungs with the force of strong drink and makes you
+hearty.  You feel monarch of all you survey, even if it be not worth
+having, which is the most stirring feeling a landscape can yield.
+
+Nor would there be much to divide your monarchy; only a chimney,
+reeking blue into the grey sky, from a fire of peat, a few sheep, or
+some hardly [Transcriber's note: hardy?] cattle turned out in the
+height of the day to gather what scraps of food they might, a pair of
+wandering red deer at the same hard game of finding a living, or a
+hare, grown bluish-white for the winter-time, to resemble the friendly
+snow, scampering off before the snap of your foot on the heather.  When
+the rigour of winter lies upon the land, men and women can do little
+but keep their beasts alive, and themselves sit round the fire, passing
+the slow time of day with what gossip may be made.
+
+We froze within the old walls of Corgarff Castle, for they were time
+and weather worn.  Gales had beaten them, snowstorms had driven at
+them, and rains had lashed them, until they were corrugated with
+furrows and hollows, like the face of an ancient man.  It is curious
+how age, whether in a face or in a building, takes on the same
+milestones of hollow and hillock, to record the march of time and the
+dents in a soul.
+
+But come the summer in Corgarff, and the far-flung ranges of hill lose
+their white severity and assume the kindlier mantle of sprouting
+heather and green grass; the ptarmigan flies back to its heights above
+the snow-line, content with the thin picking and the splendid peace
+which summer there provides; the red deer no more falls hungrily upon
+the lower pastures, with the roaring fight gone out of the stags and
+the hinds left bleating to their own company, like so many widowed
+women of the wild.
+
+Instead, the thin sheep of the clansmen, each with its owner's brand to
+identify it, wander forth to the common grazings, glad that the bloom
+of living is on Nature again.  That brings a panorama of scenery which
+lights the eye and braces the heart and mind, hills which run into
+mountains, mountains which run into the skies, all proclaiming the
+splendour of God.
+
+Now, I have tried to tell you this, not very well, perhaps, because our
+surroundings in life have much to do with our actions, and the two sets
+of circumstance must be comprehended together, especially in a sparsely
+peopled countryside.  You unconsciously take your dispositions from the
+atmosphere, and you cannot be certain always where you may either begin
+or end.  Thus a simple Highland ball which we soldiers organized at
+Corgarff Castle, to while away a night, and be a token of friendliness
+towards our neighbours, developed a deep import in my true story.
+
+It was natural for me to smooth and sweeten, as far as I could, the
+relations between those in formal authority whom I represented, and the
+local clan-folk.  To that end I organized this dance in the ancient
+Castle, and made it known that anybody and everybody would be welcome.
+Any misgiving I had about the response, was balanced by my knowledge of
+the Highland fondness for dancing.  It has been in the Celtic blood
+from the beginning of time; and gillie-callum, over the swords, the
+throbbing, squeezing, square reel, the sultry Highland Schottische, and
+the rest of the figures, will last until the last trump sounds the last
+morning.
+
+You dance for the joy of life, if you are born in a land of the sun,
+and in a land of cold you dance for the joy which springs from warmth.
+It is a primal expression of feeling, and the Scottish Highlanders have
+always had beautiful dances, and danced them well; dances with the
+music of sex in them, though they might not admit it, or did not know
+it.  Religion and dancing have often been the only things in their
+lives, apart from the common round of fighting and working, when they
+cared for work.  Thus, my ball, though it might be an affair of the
+enemy, had a subtle call to the Highland blood, especially in the women.
+
+My first invitation was to Marget Forbes and her mother, because, if I
+could only persuade them to be present everything would be well.  Let
+the ladies of the ancient great house come, and there was no reason why
+the commonalty should stay away.  The times had been sorrowful for
+mother and daughter, as the black they wore betokened, but, I wrote
+gently, "We must let the dead bury their dead, and try and build some
+bridge on which the living may meet."
+
+So it was arranged that Marget, the young chieftainess of the Corgarff
+Forbeses, with her mother, should open the ball.  This news was out a
+week before the event, and we soon learned that, as I had thought, we
+should have a good muster of guests.  I took my soldier men entirely
+into my confidence, and they grew keen to make the dance a success,
+being kindly fellows and open to softer adventures, as well as the
+other kind.
+
+They were collectively to be hosts, and whoever crossed the doorstep on
+the night was to be received without prejudice and with all honour.
+Everybody should have what we could give to eat and drink, and when
+they set home again it would be from a warm welcome and a sincere
+good-bye.  Ah! if I could only have foreseen one acceptance of that
+general invitation to the countryside; but I didn't, and how could I?
+Men are not gods in wisdom, and how dull life would be it they were;
+how dull especially for their women-folk who, thanks be, are not always
+angels, except of light, and even they know how to darken the radiance.
+
+The famous night came, and in good time came also Marget and her
+mother, with their small group of servants from the Dower House.  Our
+largest room, where the dance was to be, a sort of hall of the Castle,
+was filling with robust Highlanders in tartans, and with their
+women-folk in their best gowns.  Personally I felt easy and happy when
+I shook Marget's hand, saying, "It is kind of you to help me, and
+perhaps between us we are doing good."  Then I conducted her and her
+mother to seats on a low platform at the further end of the room and
+quietly ordered the dance to begin.
+
+A brace of fiddlers, seated in a corner, were scraping their catgut
+into tune for the music, while, outside, a piper was playing a Highland
+gathering.  The Scots bagpipes yield their real melody in the open air,
+and only then, and to me, from a little distance, they sounded loud and
+rarely that cold star-lit night.  The piper's business was this
+overture, and presently, when it was completed, he would march in, as
+grand as you like, and pipe us the first reel, in which Marget, I had
+fondly thought, was to be my partner.  Oh, everything was very well
+arranged, and nothing happened as had been arranged, which is, perhaps,
+the peculiarity of life, when we reflect on it as a perpetual drama.
+
+Presently I heard a slight commotion, as if something had happened
+unexpectedly, and then the hoof of a horse stamping the ground.  The
+sea of heads in the room, pulled by curiosity, bent towards the door,
+and I realized that some surprise was approaching.
+
+At that moment the piper, a Forbes man, to whom the honour of playing
+had been given, struck up his reel and strode in upon us.  He was big,
+broad, imposing, with his kilted figure, and he seemed to halt, in
+order that we might admire him, for a good piper and a peacock are
+vain; but this was merely my fancy.  What I saw, immediately following
+him, was no fancy but staggering truth; it was the Black Colonel!
+
+Yes, the Black Colonel in full Highland regalia, bowing and nodding to
+the people about him, who courtesied back with an easy homage, for they
+knew him instantly; the Black Colonel as large as life, eminently
+pleased with himself, taking possession of the place and the occasion,
+as if he were a conquering hero coming into his own; the Black Colonel,
+Jock Farquharson of Inverey, a chief among the men of whom it has been
+written that:
+
+  "Brak loose and to the hills go they."
+
+
+If I was stunned, the piper was not, for he walked up the room with a
+deliberation which the quick step of his tune did not warrant.  Behind
+him paced the Black Colonel, and as he came nearer to myself and the
+ladies, I saw them turn as if to ask me whether this was in the
+programme.  So far, the Black Colonel had not let his eyes catch ours.
+He gave himself to the crowd, as a well-graced actor gives himself to
+the house when it applauds him.  He had the music on his side, too,
+for, at the platform, the piper stepped aside into a corner, still
+blowing hard, and this brought the Black Colonel full to the front,
+immediately beside us.  Thereupon he slowly bent in salutation to
+Marget and her mother, while everybody watched and waited, wondering
+what was to happen now.
+
+"Ladies," he said softly, but distinctly, "I hope that if to-night I
+have come unbidden by our friend, Captain Gordon, I am not unwelcome to
+you, aye, and even to him.  We are all kins-folk, and I wished to
+manifest a kindly feeling by joining in this meeting.  I also desired
+to make fuller acquaintance, than has hitherto been possible, with two
+kins-women who have suffered hardly in times which, let us hope from
+the promise of this gathering, are about to be forgotten.  It would
+show my boldness forgiven if I might open the ball with Mistress
+Marget, for Captain Gordon, as host, will wish to conduct her mother."
+
+Again the Black Colonel bowed, as if he were master of the situation,
+which, in fact, he fully appeared to be.  Confident and gracious, he
+offered Marget his arm, and she took it mechanically, such being the
+force of suggestion, exercised by a strong man's mind, especially with
+many eyes looking on.  Mechanically, also, I held out my arm to
+Marget's mother and, while our small world still wondered, I found
+myself in a foursome reel with the Black Colonel.  But he was Marget's
+partner!
+
+He talked merrily to her when the drowning music would let him, even
+though she scarcely replied, being still in the custody of his
+surprise.  He was out to please, and he undoubtedly was handsome, or,
+at all events, striking in his tartans, and he danced perfectly.  Why
+deny it, even if it had not been patent to every onlooking, wondering
+eye?  He made a mightily fine picture, and he knew it, though he did
+not spoil the picture by showing he knew it.
+
+Marget was in a simple black gown with a ruffle of white French lace at
+her neck and a flush in her cheeks.  Her black hair was twined
+naturally about her head, which she carried high, so I told myself, as
+if in defiance of the Black Colonel, while she had to be his partner
+and prisoner.  She glanced at me once or twice with an amused twinkle
+in her eye, thinking, I suppose, of her bold capture from the host of
+the evening, my unlucky self.  Some women are a blessing, others keep
+you guessing, somebody will say, and Marget, I judged, even in the
+whirl of that reel, could be both, if she cared to try.
+
+Quicker time the music made it, many a foot keeping stroke, and quicker
+time we had to make it.  You know the romp of a Highland reel at the
+double, how it causes the blood to sing in the veins and the feet to
+jig.  Marget's mother had been a fine dancer, but, as she whispered to
+me, she was no longer young.  Marget herself had inherited all her
+mother's ease and grace of carriage, and she had her own spirit and go.
+The music and the motion caught her into forgetfulness of everything
+else, and she danced with a grace and a swing which were bewitching.
+
+She had, again I was bound to admit, a complete dancing partner in the
+Black Colonel, a fellow of natural and acquired accomplishments.  He
+had his clean ankles and elegant uprightness from his Highland
+forbears, and he had got his polish of deportment when he was among the
+English Jacobites in France.  The result was that he danced all of a
+piece, with as near the poetry of movement as a man might attain, and
+then there was the intimate, intriguing ripple of his tartans.
+
+Myself, I was quite a good dancer, but, if I may be my own apologist,
+not so showy a dancer as the Black Colonel.  While I could hold my own
+with most men in the Highland dances, probably surpass many, I could
+not fill a dancing floor as he did, with his natural air of drama.  A
+woman who herself dances well, sighs for a fit partner, but give her in
+that partner a personality drawing a general homage to them both, and
+she is twice blessed.  After all, she is a woman, with the woman's
+prayer for attention, for being, once in a way, the centre of a
+picture, as she is on her wedding day, the Day of Promise, whatever
+follows.
+
+An early episode in the life of the Black Colonel had associated him
+with the rollicking "Reel O'Tulloch," a dance originated in Strathdee.
+His people had gone to church, so went the tale, but, the weather being
+wintry, no parson arrived.  Seeking warmth, they began to blow on their
+hands, then to shuffle with their feet on the floor, and presently,
+when somebody fetched a fiddler, this broke into a reel.  A bottle with
+inspiration in it was brought from the change-house near by, and faster
+went the music and faster grew the fun.
+
+When young Jock Farquharson, hearing of this, came on the scene, the
+"Reel O'Tulloch" was being danced "ower the kirk and ower the kirk,"
+and voices cried:
+
+  "John, come kiss me now,
+  John, come kiss me now,
+  John, come kiss me by and by
+  And mak' nae mair adow."
+
+
+One of the guests at our later, different dance, in Corgarff Castle,
+must have remembered this, for suddenly there was a sort of "soughing"
+of the song, then a singing of it, and it was positively roared out by
+the assembly when the music stopped and the dance ended.  I understood
+the application and the invitation which were intended, and I caught a
+look in Marget's flushed face, as if she also understood.  Her mother
+glanced at the roystering singers, then at the Black Colonel and, with
+an apology for leaving me, went and stood beside her daughter, the
+mothering instinct of protection called into action.
+
+"Thank you, Mistress Marget," I heard Jock Farquharson say, in his most
+melodious tone, "you have been kind to me, and I will hope to thank you
+again.  And thank you, Madame," he said, bowing low to her mother, "for
+letting me lift my head to-night, as it has not been lifted for long.
+I shall not forget to be grateful and, I hope, to deserve your
+good-will."
+
+Then he made me, the official host, a last, low bow with a mockery,
+subtle but noticeable, in it, walked down the room, saluting and being
+saluted on every side, and was gone.  Our friendly ball, from which I
+had expected so much, died away to the clink of Mack's galloping hoofs,
+an unsettling rhythm.
+
+
+
+
+_IX.--'Twixt Night and Morn_
+
+They declare that if you are drowning, or otherwise at the crack o'
+doom, your whole life's record leaps through your mind in an instant.
+It may be so, Providence giving a man, however his balance-sheet
+stands, a last chance to square it fair and well.
+
+Everybody being gone home, and I being alone, after our dizzy ball, I
+felt that I had to count up the position.  It needed no effort to
+understand that the Black Colonel's purpose in invading me had been to
+meet Marget and her mother, to impress himself upon them, all in the
+interest of his designs.  He had relied for safety upon the temporary
+state of neutrality which the ball carried with it, and he had come, he
+had seen, he had--what?  So far my thoughts convoyed me.  But my little
+room in the castle with its cell-like windows, its low ceiling, even, I
+would add, its sense of plain refinement, worried me, and I went out
+into the night and the spaciousness of earth and heaven.  Oh, for
+freedom to breathe and think, and oh for it at that witching time when
+night and day hold their bridal of mating among the Highland hills.
+
+It was the hour, in our altitudes, at which night sleeps her heaviest,
+as if to snatch the last wink from the breaking morn.  Nature was
+superbly at rest, sloughing the worn trappings of yesterday, preparing
+the shining armour of the morrow.  It was the hour of creation, the
+wonder-coming of a child into the world, magnified beyond imagining, a
+tender life, very, very beautiful.  It cried to my soul, seeking the
+humblest companionship for its own great soul, playing upon mine with a
+touch of incomparable delicacy.
+
+And yet, yet, the chief feeling was almost that of a paganism, of an
+earth-smell and an earth-worship, of a giant awakening from torpor,
+ravenous with hunger.  It was all the grand savagery, the terrible
+strength of Mother Earth, the Great Protector, from whose loins I had
+sprung, but who is unspeakably awesome until you see her face in the
+rising sun.  Then the nightmare of the darkness which empalls her with
+a cold sense of death, turns into a radiance as of gold and kindness.
+
+Ah! it was worth while to be abroad among the heather and the fir-trees
+at dawn, for the virgin world, the pagan, freed from cerements and
+found in the twilight to be a god, was all my own, mine to enjoy.  I
+think I know why primitive man, when he lived in lands where Nature was
+wild and the nights were long, was a resolute pagan.  No light, no
+warmth of its torch, had he to set the fire of reverence in him
+burning, and reverence is the footstool of belief in God.  I think I
+also know why the other primitive man of the south, dwelling in a land
+of the sun, would be a sun-worshipper: because it gave him reverence
+and drew it from him.
+
+We fear endless things when it is dark, the stoutest-hearted of us,
+but, in the geniality of a shining sun, we have courage.  The picture,
+in ancient Greek legend, of husband and wife, one of them about to die,
+taking a long farewell as the dipping sun-rays gilt Olympus at its
+highest peaks, has often seemed to me a fine linking of the night of
+paganism and the morn of sunlit faith.
+
+Odd thoughts to run in a man's head as he walked the dew-damp heather,
+careless which track he took, conscious only that he sought a new
+morning.  But you do think strange thoughts if you have in you any of
+the dreamy Celt and have been born and nurtured in the cradle of the
+hills.  They infect you, I will not say with second sight, though there
+have been proved instances, but with their own moods, like a
+soft-falling foot, which, in our spiritual pilgrimage, is the Foot of
+Fate.
+
+My step lightly touched the heather, but, even so, my way was marked by
+a disturbance of the birds and animals of the wild.  A grouse ran with
+a flutter and took wing with a cry, half in protest at being wakened
+from its sleep, half in alarm at my presence.  A rabbit rushed from a
+sheltering hole in such a hurry that, as I could tell by its clatter
+among the bracken, it nearly fell over itself, as rabbits clumsily do,
+making fluffy, woolly balls of themselves.
+
+When there is danger about, Nature gives all her children of the open a
+chance to escape by instantly warning them, and, in this, alarming
+their instinct.  My particular rabbit had scarcely run out of hearing
+when half a dozen others were scurrying hither and thither in the same
+expectant confusion.  Poor little things!  What a fluster they made,
+and their scare communicated itself to a crow in a solitary fir-tree,
+against which I nearly collided.  He croaked, flapped his wings and
+sailed off heavily, blackly, also anxious for safety.
+
+Now, by the sheer exercise of walking, I had spent my restlessness, and
+the hill air had driven the blood from my head.  Moreover, I grew
+tired, for the road tells when you have to pick your steps in the dark,
+over rough ground.  So, coming upon a fir-tree root, I made a seat of
+it, and waited for night to fully turn into day, a transformation which
+came swiftly.
+
+We have all seen the first flicker of a piece of tinder, fired by a
+beaten flint.  It is like something come, only to go again, but
+presently it passes into a stronger flame, and then into light.  This
+is the awakening of a Highland day, when the conditions resemble those
+of that morning.
+
+The heavy pall of clouds, lying low over the hills, seemed to take
+motion, for trifling rents appeared in them.  The rents grew bigger,
+and then the stars, which had been shining all the time in the welkin
+above, began to look through those peep-holes.  It was the sun setting
+to work upon the earth once more, our side of the globe returning to
+his rays and warmth.
+
+Slowly I looked about me, like one roused from a half-dream, seeing the
+near things first, and, as the dawn grew, ranging for the far things.
+Beneath me lay a glen pavilioned in the splendour of the rising sun,
+and gilded with the praise of the hills.  Browns and reds and greens
+swam before my eyes into a radiant landscape, along which flowed the
+water of Don, a ribbon of silver, whose surface the fat trout would
+presently be breaking.  Beside it wandered the road, on which,
+presently, to my astonishment, I made out two figures.  Who could they
+be, there, at that time?
+
+When I left Corgarff Castle I had, out of habit, slung my spyglass over
+my shoulder, and I set it towards the men.  One was in the tartan of my
+own regiment, the other in a tartan of darkish green with a red stripe
+in it, like the Farquharson tartan.  I made out, by their actions, that
+they were quarrelling, so I started for them, and who do you think I
+found?  My own sergeant and the Black Colonel's Red Murdo.
+
+"What are you men doing and how are you here?" I asked abruptly, for I
+was breathless, as well as surprised and angry.
+
+The sergeant's answer was a salute, for he had not time to speak before
+Red Murdo was launched on a torrent of indignant words.  He had, he
+said, come over to the ball in attendance on the Black Colonel, as I
+might know.  He intended to depart with him, but had taken more of my
+hospitality--stout fellow!--than he could carry, which delayed his
+departure.  Some of my men had old scores against him, old crows to
+pick with him, particularly this sergeant, who, therefore, had followed
+him, determined to have the quarrel out: "While I," quoth Red Murdo,
+"only want to go quietly home."
+
+"What's the quarrel?" I demanded of the sergeant.
+
+"Well," he replied quaintly, "it does na' matter what it is, tho' he
+kens, as lang's we settle who's the better man.  He's up to every
+dodge, but there's no room for that wi' only the twa o's here."
+
+"And what were you doing when I arrived?  What was about to happen?" I
+asked.
+
+"We were jist arguin' which was the better man," declared the sergeant,
+"and I was na' goin' to leave it at that.  A deceesion for me; he
+beggit to be let awa'!"
+
+"Beggit!" broke in Red Murdo; "beggit anything from you, my man!  Na,
+na; I was beggin' you to return to Corgarff Castle in case something
+happen't to you.  You wid'na', as I tell ye, be the first red-coat on
+whose hide I had left a mark.  But I was forbearin', because I did na'
+want trouble to follow Captain Ian's kindness in askin' us to the ball
+last evening."
+
+Red Murdo glanced at me, as if he expected me to side with him, but my
+thoughts were not yet for words.  You can best hold a judicial air when
+you say little, give no reasons, and here I had to be judge and jury.
+For the quarrel, if it was carried to a violent end, might have
+unfortunate results on the general peace of the country.  It would not
+do to have my sergeant killing Red Murdo in single combat, or Red Murdo
+killing my sergeant, certainly not with me looking on.
+
+If you happen to know some legal jingle of words you can almost
+certainly pacify the raw man of strife, by gravely reciting it at him.
+Sheriffs, procurators-fiscal, bailies and others accustomed to take
+oaths, and sometimes to say them, will confirm this curious influence
+of formality.  Partly it impresses, and it will surely confuse, and
+then the subject can be led to a better frame of mind.
+
+So I thought of the oath banning the Highland dress, which, in the
+unwisdom of our over-lords, exercised by right of force, a Jacobite
+rebel had to take, before he could get a pardon.  It had an official
+place among the papers of my office, and there I had let it rest, but I
+loathed it so much that its language had bitten itself into my mind.
+
+How this foully conceived oath had fired the spirit of a people proud
+to wear their tartans, because of the Highland sentiment which they
+clothed!  But to use it to compass a private quarrel, to twist its
+possible tragedy into healing honour, that was appealing!  My sergeant
+I must support outwardly, and my stratagem would secure this, without
+putting Red Murdo in peril.  He, probably, had a secret inkling that I
+was searching for a way out, because he kept looking, looking at me,
+even while he talked and talked.
+
+"You know the law?" I slowly addressed him.
+
+"Only like my master," he said, "by breakin' it."
+
+"You know that any man who has been in rebellion against his Majesty
+King George may be apprehended on sight, tried, punished and executed."
+
+"If you say that it'll be so, but it does na' interest me; I tak' my
+orders frae the Chief of Inverey, nae frae King George or his officers,
+least o' all a mere sergeant."
+
+"Still," I went on, "you will perceive that he was doing his duty, or
+what he thinks his duty."  Red Murdo's look suggested that he thought I
+was rambling, but I went on sharply; "and in the exercise of his duty
+he is entitled to all the support of his superior officer."
+
+The sergeant's face beamed with approval, as if he had been discovered
+in an act of great public advantage and was to be rewarded
+[Transcriber's note: a line appears to be missing from the book here.]
+that of Red Murdo simply asked, "What are you driving at?"
+
+"Now," I said, lifting my right hand in the manner of judges, "I am
+going to administer an oath to you, and when you have taken it all will
+be well and you shall go your way."
+
+"What sort o' oath," he asked; "what has it to do wi' me, who's only
+concern't wi' the Black Cornel's oaths?  Tell it to me, first."
+
+"Very well, listen," and with as much solemnity as I could muster I
+repeated the words of the oath:
+
+"I do swear, as I shall answer to God at the Great Day of Judgment, I
+have not, nor shall have, in my possession, any gun, sword or arm
+whatsoever, and never use tartan, plaid, or any part of the Highland
+garb; and if I do so, may I be cursed in my undertakings, family and
+property; may I never see my wife and children, father, mother or
+relations; may I be killed in battle as a coward, and lie without
+Christian burial, in a strange land, far from the graves of my
+forefathers and kindred: may all this come across me if I break my
+oath."
+
+Red Murdo kept looking at me, mute, perhaps impressed; anyhow, he
+presently asked, "What if I refuse?"
+
+"The penalties laid down by law," I told him, still solemnly, "are six
+months in prison for a first offence and transportation beyond the seas
+for a second."
+
+"A device o' the devil and King George," grunted Red Murdo, and I
+should have been glad to agree with him, only I had to play the game
+out.
+
+"Will you take the legal oath?"
+
+"Never.  It's what I suppose the sergeant was goin' to cram doon my
+throat an' he could, the same infernal thing.  Never, frae you, or him,
+or the pair o' ye."
+
+This was a turn I had not expected, and I was wondering what to do next
+when Red Murdo said, "I'll tell ye what I'll dae.  I'll wrestle the
+sergeant which o's will eat a copy of that ugly oath, and that'll also
+satisfy him who's the better man."
+
+The sergeant did not show an instant keenness for this challenge, but
+it got me round a corner, and must be accepted.  I declared to that
+effect, and desired both men to get ready, saying I would be umpire.  I
+added that there should be only one bout because, secretly, I had no
+wish to see them hurt one another.
+
+Red Murdo and the sergeant put their plaids, their jackets, their
+bonnets, their sporans, and their brogues, in little heaps, with each
+man's weapons above each man's things.  Neither spoke, for action,
+which naturally has the effect of sealing the tongue, had now arrived,
+and I chose a level piece of sward where they might fall with
+comparative softness.
+
+When I saw how nearly they were matched in physique, the spirit of
+primitive combat in me began to be interested, to calculate who would
+win.  True to the fighting tactics he knew Red Murdo rushed to grips,
+but the sergeant drove him off, and they manoeuvred round each other
+for the next effort.  It was pretty to see them, that bright morning,
+with the whole picturesque valley for arena and I for the only
+spectator of their prowess.  Moreover, they were warming to the fight,
+which was one between the disciplined strength and skill of the soldier
+and the wild agility of Red Murdo.
+
+Those different qualities met so evenly that feint, and catch and heave
+as each combatant would, the other remained unthrown.  Once Red Murdo
+got his antagonist by the waist, lifted him clean off the ground and
+whirled him round like a totum, only to have him alight on his feet.
+Once, also, the sergeant, by a supple twist of arm and leg, working
+together, got Red Murdo half down and no more.  Really it was a toss-up
+who should win, or whether there would be a winner at all.
+
+My only ground of interference would be foul play, and although they
+went at each other almost savagely there was no absolute act of that
+kind.  But the strain was telling on both men, for they took no rest,
+and hardly waited to get fresh breath.  The sinews of their legs stood
+out like whip-cord, their chest heaved like bellows in distress, their
+necks were scarlet with the tumult of the blood there.  Only the
+unexpected would make a victor or a loser, and the unexpected did not
+happen, as it does sometimes.
+
+Red Murdo tried a last torrential rush, but the sergeant withstood it,
+and they merely locked themselves together.  Nay, they were now so
+exhausted that they could only hang on to each other for support, a
+spectacle which brought me to their side.  Their bulging eyes stared at
+me with the pleading look which a horse has after being driven too far
+and too fast.  When I divided them by a touch of my hand they both fell
+to the ground like logs and so lay.
+
+Honour was satisfied, the hated oath of the kilt had not to be eaten by
+anybody, and I was glad.
+
+
+
+
+_X.--The Way of a Woman_
+
+Between you and me, I fancy that the average, natural woman likes to
+think any man who is after her a bit of the devil.  It makes her pulse
+beat, if not her heart; it gives a fine spice to the pursuit, and she
+is confident there will be no capture, unless she wills it.  Anyhow, I
+was not going to help the Black Colonel in his schemes by holding him
+up as a hero of that order, and he would have made the comment that he
+needed not the service from me.
+
+Marget Forbes and I had fallen into the pleasant custom of lending each
+other such books as came the way of our remote land, and I called at
+the Dower House to leave her one, a newly imprinted volume entitled
+"Robinson Crusoe."  I did not seem to wish to make meetings with her,
+though I was glad of them, so I chose a time, the mid-afternoon, at
+which she and her mother usually walked out.  However, Marget was at
+home, and she called to me from the parlour, would I not enter and rest
+a minute?  Necessarily I must step inside to say I would not wait, and
+necessarily I found myself sitting down near her.
+
+"Mother," she said, "is on her weekly round among the sick and old, to
+whom a kind word from her is like gold, of which we now have none to
+give.  Usually I go with her, but to-day she would have it that I
+looked tired, and she bade me stay indoors and rest.  I'm glad you
+called and brought me a book, especially this wonderful 'Robinson
+Crusoe,' of which I have heard vaguely, and which they say is founded
+on the adventure of a Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk.  You are always
+thoughtful, or shall I say sometimes?" and Marget looked as if she
+expected me to understand the qualification.
+
+Was it a reproach that I did not come into her company often enough;
+was it a playful invitation to do so oftener; or was it the woman's
+primal instinct, old as Eve in the Garden of Eden, just to tease the
+man?  I scarcely asked myself those questions.  They ran through my
+mind with the kind of physical impulse which you feel in the presence
+of the possible woman.  You are aware, then, of feelings and shadows of
+feeling which cannot be expressed.  There is something in you which
+goes on speaking to the something in her, and you let it speak, glad,
+wondering, expectant, never sure, never sorry.  Odd, isn't it, this
+language of sex which says most when it says nothing by speech, which
+needs not speech, because it is spiritual, though springing, maybe,
+from the call of the blood.
+
+Marget had been reading, and when she invited me in, and I went, she
+put the open book face downward on a little table, beside a half-made
+sampler.  She saw my eye wandering to the volume, a mere mechanical
+curiosity on my part, and she picked it up with a laugh, saying, "There
+is no need to hide those pages, unless it be that they are dull."
+
+"What is the book all about?" I asked idly.
+
+"It is a French romance," she said, "in which a lovely heroine treads
+her way through an endless maze of difficult paths and a brigade of
+villains to what, I have no doubt, when I get there with her, if ever I
+do, will be endless wedded bliss.  It is an over-sentimental story, for
+the French young girl, but, then, one must try to keep up what French
+one has, because it is a delightful language."
+
+Marget had learned it as a girl in France, for she had lived there a
+while, seen something of the Stuart Court over the water, of the Court
+of King Louis also, and even heard the passing rustle of the skirts of
+"the Pompadour" and Madame du Barry.  Already the breath of a freer day
+to come was blowing across that fair land, and her stay in it
+definitely influenced Marget's character, ripened it quickly on broadly
+beautiful lines, without hurting its pure scent of Scottish heather.
+
+Hospitality was a duty as well as a pleasure in every Highland home,
+and, after our trifles of a few minutes, she rose and went to give some
+order.  When she returned she said she had a small treat in store for
+me, and it came into the room almost with herself.  What do you think
+it was?  Why, tea!
+
+It was a beverage then almost unknown in the Scottish Highlands, but
+Marget's family, as she said, had at intervals received packets of it
+from their friends in the south.  Those gifts were hoarded as if they
+contained treasure, and only dipped into for very special reasons.
+
+"It flatters me," I remarked airily, "to think I am a special reason,
+because that must come near being a special friend."
+
+"Oh," quoth Marget, "but you are an official enemy, so how could you be
+a special friend?  And still such things are possible, you know, but I
+shall not tell you how they are possible.  You would not understand a
+bit"; and, as she spoke, her eyes and hands were arranging the
+tea-table.
+
+"I should, I assure you, try very hard," said I, "and it would be odd
+if I did not succeed, with a dish of tea for stimulant.  I don't
+remember when I tasted tea last," I added laconically, as Marget poured
+it out of a quaint old pot into dwarfy cups of French mould.  Most of
+the dainty things, the bric-à-brac of households in the Jacobite
+Highlands were from France, just as we had come to say "ashets" and
+"gigots" of mutton, and generally to graft French cookery into our
+Scottish meals, for the "Auld Alliance" had various harvests.
+
+As we talked over the tea-cups, Marget and I, I thought how quickly in
+that Nature's cradle of Corgarff she had ripened to woman's estate.
+She had, at times, been in touch with the artificialities of social
+life, but they had not dulled her free, strong character.  She had
+drawn her instincts, as she had drawn her blood, from the long hills,
+and she had no self-consciousness to dim her lights.  But when I rose
+to leave she said merrily, "We have spoken much foolish nonsense, have
+we not, Captain Gordon?"
+
+"Wise nonsense, Mistress Forbes," I answered.
+
+"Thank you, but wise nonsense is most becoming when it is expressed as
+a parable."
+
+"Then let us have the parable."
+
+"Oh! parables are not in fashion with so many hard realities about, and
+there should not be three people in one.  Three's never company, they
+say, good company, even in a parable."
+
+"Then, dear lady, why put in three?"
+
+"This parable, dear Captain, would need three; first, a high-minded
+young man who wears arms and dreams dreams, who is beloved by everybody
+for his good nature and qualities, who is on the other side of where he
+would be most welcome, and who will probably never summon courage to
+get there; secondly, an older man of more picturesque, more risky
+qualities, an adventurer in love and war, never afraid to strike, even
+if the stroke might wound, a personality able, on occasion, to
+commandeer what could not be secured by affection, thanks to an
+understanding of woman's nature and the imperfections of man's
+government; and, thirdly, between those personal forces a woman who
+might, to her undoing, be captured by the force of family and state
+circumstances, instead of by the man of her tell-tale heart's desire."
+
+"A very subtle parable!" I remarked, for no reason whatever, but the
+tone of it held more than this banality, although she showed no heed of
+that, but remarked:
+
+"No; a very common parable; it's what every woman knows by instinct or
+experience, if few would care to reveal it, even in a parable."
+
+We said good-bye without more ado, and I set off for the castle,
+troubled for my unreadiness in woman nature, the most puzzling,
+calling, captivating skein in all the universe, because it holds,
+behind the silken veil of its treasure-house, the eternal mystery of
+creation, that something divine which is nearest to God Himself.
+
+When in trouble, my trouble, anyhow, one sighs for a song, and my
+heart-quaking carried me to a ballad, very familiar in our countryside,
+which tells of an unbridled lover laying siege to a woman he covets.
+Her men were absent, and she and her domestics were the only garrison
+of the castle when he knocked roysterously at its gates:
+
+  "The lady ran up to her towe-head,
+    As fast as she could drie,
+  To see if by her fair speeches
+    She could with him agree.
+
+  "As soon he saw the lady fair,
+    And her yates all locked fast,
+  He fell into a rage of wrath,
+    And his heart was aghast.
+
+  "Cum doon to me, ye lady fair;
+    Cum doon to me; let's see;
+  This nigh ye's ly by my ain side
+    The morn my bride sall be!"
+
+
+It was pagan wooing, but it has often won the day, only why should I
+let it disturb me, whose cause stood by itself?  What I must realize
+was that powers above me were at work, for "state reasons," on affairs
+in which I was concerned, privately.  I must try to meet this influence
+without letting as much be known outwardly, because I was an officer
+bound by my commission to serve his Majesty's desires and commands.
+
+Now I am no good schemer, and I merely drifted to those conclusions as
+a swimmer goes with a tide in which he happens to find himself.  He
+feels that he is in its custody, but, on the instinct for life, he
+makes a stroke now and then and their cumulative effect probably bears
+him somewhere safe to land.  Might it be so with me!
+
+Unfortunately I was a swimmer in the dark, for I did not know, however
+I might guess, what Marget and her mother were thinking.  Perhaps my
+heart really assured my mind as to Marget, or so I was fain to
+conclude.  Her mother, however, might take a mother's view, the
+far-carrying view which thinks of daughters settled in such a manner as
+will continue the old line.
+
+Every man has, deep down in him, the desire to own a little bit of
+land, even though most of us only get six feet for a grave.  It is
+man's form of ancestor-worship, and in woman it finds expression in the
+home, and continuous olive branches to fill that home.  The man likes
+to have his foot securely on a rood of Mother Earth, a patch to call
+his very own.  The woman supplements that by peopling a house; and is
+not this service of the maternal instinct the greater, the finer of the
+two?
+
+One placed in circumstances which need strong action, should not think
+too much, because by doing that he raises a wall of difficulties around
+him.  Mental ghosts are no use to anybody, although, to be sure, they
+weren't unknown to me.  So I welcomed a letter that reached me next
+morning from Marget's mother, but I opened it with a dread.  It
+addressed me as "Dear Captain Gordon," and it read:
+
+"I am troubling you for advice, because there is nobody else whom I can
+ask, and because the matter may interest you, both as a relative, far
+removed I admit, and as a soldier of the reigning king.  You will guess
+what it is, and that makes it easier for me to explain.
+
+"It has been made known to us in a round-about, but authoritative way,
+that it would give King George and his ministers satisfaction to see
+our house and people established again, and that Jock Farquharson, the
+laird of Inverey, would be confirmed in the chiefship, if as much were
+agreeable to my daughter and myself.
+
+"They don't ask me will I give my daughter in ransom for the house and
+possessions of our ancestors, but that is what is meant, and you can
+judge how the idea has concerned me.  You may also, however, concern
+and interest a mother at the same time, and I have hesitated to return
+a 'No,' especially as Marget said, about the letter, when I showed it
+to her, 'Well, the sons of the house have sacrificed enough for it.  It
+may now be the turn of the daughter to sacrifice something . . .!"
+
+"That was dutifully said, but what she expects, I'm certain, is that I
+shall say the 'No' of my own accord, and I want your advice as to the
+manner in which it can best be done.  I want it at once, because news
+comes to me, through the early channel of our domestics, that the Black
+Colonel means to ride over upon us one of these evenings, a friendly
+call, I suppose.  Marget does not know of this intention on his part,
+and I am not going to tell her, for a mother's instinct naturally
+wishes to shield a daughter from disturbance.
+
+"If you would advise me how to say 'No' without bringing further
+displeasure from high places upon our ruined house, you would be doing
+us a service.  If, besides that, you were to find a means of keeping
+the Black Colonel away, why, you would be doing a further service."
+
+As I read that last sentence an idea struck me, and I at once sent a
+note to the dear lady, saying I would solve her difficulty.  Then I
+dispatched a pair of trusty scouts in quest of certain information I
+needed, and in eight hours they were back with it.  After that, I felt
+more myself than I had done for some time, just because I was now
+committed to definite, perhaps even dangerous, action.
+
+
+
+
+_XI--The Crack of Thunder_
+
+It is fine how the spur of danger, especially danger to somebody else,
+dear if not near, helps a man's spirits upward.  The blood flows more
+quickly in him, his hand is surer, his brain works better.  He feels
+that the die has been cast, that nothing more matters, except the
+reckoning, and, so feeling, he sheds all timorous self-consciousness
+and is himself.
+
+That, at all events, was how I felt as I took the road southward,
+across the hills towards Deeside, with a cracking wind to walk against.
+I would intercept the Black Colonel's raid on Marget and her mother,
+and break the whole scheme behind it--if I could!
+
+So we scheme, we glorious little fellows of this world, bent on love or
+hatred, and the Great Beneficence smiles at us, at our cleverness, or
+it may be the Great Furies, however you will have it.  Anyway, Nature
+has merely to move and our grandest plans may crinkle up like a feather
+held to a "cruisie," the rude lamp, fed with dried splinters of
+fir-wood, or mutton tallow and a wick, which our Highlanders used for
+lighting.
+
+But that was not in my thoughts when I came to the top of the last hill
+dividing our strath from the Black Colonel's.  My estimate was that if
+I got there by break of day and waited I should, being in a high eyrie
+with a wide view, see him come from the opposite direction.  My
+information from my scouts was that he would travel alone, a fit thing,
+having regard to his mission at the Dower House, Corgarff.
+
+Tired and hungry, I looked about for a rock which would shield me from
+the wind, and got out my fodder.  It consisted only of "whisky bukky,"
+oatmeal rolled with whisky, not delicate stuff to eat, but easily
+carried and sustaining.  Haggis is better food for the march, because
+it is tastier and still harder to digest, so even more lasting, as the
+Highlanders, for whose war sustenance it was, perhaps, invented, knew,
+but on leaving Corgarff Castle I had just taken what I could lay my
+hand upon.
+
+While I ate I half-marvelled at the splendour of the scene about me,
+half-rehearsed my catechism with the Black Colonel, when he should
+appear.  I would put it to him as a gentleman that he must not intrude
+upon the Forbes ladies, and, indeed, must frankly abandon his designs
+there.  If reason failed, then we might be driven to solve the knot by
+a single combat, as the custom of the Highlands permitted, and, indeed,
+sometimes ordered, very much like the duel in the land of France.  Why
+not such a combat, because the test was an honest if barbaric tribute
+to plain manliness?  Give me that rather than the snivel, the chicane,
+the shake-you-by-the-hand and stab-you-in-the-gloaming, which passes by
+the name of diplomacy, high diplomacy, I believe.
+
+The tradition of single combat went back into the very mists of time in
+the Highlands; and merely the form varied.  There was Cam-Ruadh, the
+early red-haired man of tradition, who, fallen prisoner among a batch
+of hostile "kern," or outlaws, was offered his liberty if he could make
+so many good arrow-shots.  He drew and drew, with much seeming
+innocence, on the arrows of his captors, and wove a circle of stabs in
+the ground about the target, but never did he hit it; oh, no!
+
+They jeered at him when he came to the last arrow possessed by the
+company, saying he had better reserve it for himself and save them the
+trouble of making an end to him.  Instead, he sent it, as he could have
+sent the others, straight into the middle of the target, and flew there
+almost with it.  Before the outlaws could realize the logic of events
+he had gathered all the arrows under his arm, put one to the string of
+the bow and cried, "I am Cam-Ruadh, who never misses, never before
+until now, and you who are without arrows had better take leg-bail,"
+which they quickly did.
+
+Nearer in time was the duel of valiant Donald Oig with the chief of a
+band of "broken men" who had a grudge against him.  Donald was a famous
+swordsman, and the chief had no active relish to try skill with him.
+But, again, it was the custom of the country, and the invitation could
+not be refused if the chiefship of the "broken men" was to be held,
+because here was a test of both courage and honour.
+
+He was a slim fellow, however, this head raider, one with the false
+doctrine, as ancient as human nature, that if you succeed it matters
+little how.  When, then, he and Donald Oig stood up to fight he
+exclaimed, "Shake hands on it, first!"  But he gripped the extended
+right hand hard, intending, with it thus prisoned, to strike a foul
+blow and close, in his own favour, a duel which had not begun.  Swift
+of instinct and eye, Donald saw this, caught out his dagger with his
+left hand, and stabbed the foul fighter.  The rest of the "broken men,"
+being witnesses of it all, had nothing to complain about, and Donald
+went his way.
+
+While my thoughts wandered like that, and I ate and, from my pocket
+flask, washed my dry eating down, the weather changed with a swiftness
+familiar enough among the Scottish mountains.  The heavens passed
+behind a veil of drifting clouds, through which the sun flared in red,
+angry bursts.  The elements had declared hostilities, and when I looked
+down into the valley, two thousand feet beneath me, I saw a great
+thunderstorm on the march, the very panoply of havoc.
+
+It moved as if it were an army going to war, with scout-like horns
+thrust out in front and on either side.  These were constantly shot by
+fangs from the mass of lightning in the clouds, themselves a hell of
+angry colours, There was the inky black of the outer sheath, next a
+seam of half-black, half-orange, then a depth of iridescence which
+constantly changed its hues, and, finally, a molten pot boiling and
+rolling in august wrath.
+
+Ah! it was a spectacle to watch, those thunder-clouds come through the
+glack, or rift, dividing the falling hill on which I stood, from the
+rising one beyond.  Down in the valley ran a stream and a track used by
+cattle-drovers, and, as my eye went there, I thought I saw a tall
+figure.  Certainly, for he looked up and, during a moment, we were both
+silhouetted in the radiance of light which the thunder-clouds, now
+massed into one huge bank, drove before it.  If I saw that solitary
+figure it was likely he would see me, as we were the only living things
+in the landscape, and like turns to like, even making mutual
+communication, although witchcraft was the word for that then, and the
+mention of it dangerous.
+
+Presently the terrific cloud ate up the spot where I had seen the man,
+for its base was in the valley and its top above my altitude.  Never
+had I beheld such a thunder-cloud, but it was awe, a worship of the
+forces of Nature, which filled me, not fear.  Why should I, a young,
+healthy man, with good nerves, be afraid, since the excessive tumult
+was below me, and I was a privileged spectator.  Quickly, however, the
+cloud must burst, and then the sluices of heaven would indeed be open.
+How would it fare with myself and the figure lost in the valley?
+
+That thunderstorm and the consequent flood became events in our local
+history, and to me a quick personal adventure.  The rain came down,
+first in a thick shower, then in torrents, finally in sheets.  The fall
+was so solid that it seemed to half-scotch the lightning and half-dull
+the roar of the thunder.  Actually, for I record truly, the drops leapt
+up again in splashes as they struck the ground beside me, and in an
+instant I was soaked, though that was no unusual experience in our
+adventurous climate.
+
+The thunder-cloud had now taken command of the whole firmament, so
+swiftly had its violence of contagion spread.  Here, verily, was a
+rainfall on a great scale, and as it settled to business a sort of
+darkness spread over the land.  I must seek shelter, and I would find
+it on the levels rather than on the exposed heights.
+
+Therefore, I started for the valley, picking my way as best I could in
+the black deluge.  You will scarce believe me if I again tell you that
+the rain-water ran down the hill-side with me, inches deep.  It took
+gravel and stones with it, and scoured away the bedding of large rocks
+which, thus released, joined in the downward plunge.  Some folk thought
+it was the Flood of the Bible come again as prophesied, and, at all
+events, the comparison gives a notion of it.  The stream, which I had
+seen an insignificant stripe below, met me, a roaring river.  Its
+waters had already overflowed the whole valley.  Now you only saw the
+tops of hillocks or trees, for all else was a gurgling waste of waters.
+
+Over those waters came a cry which caught me, even in my sorry plight,
+because it was human.  Wild birds, beaten to the ground by the storm
+and then engulfed in the waters, were screeching as they drowned.
+Hares and rabbits, and a fox, wherever he came from, all went past me
+on a floating tree, and they were squealing for mercy, not from each
+other, but from the elements.  The other sound I had heard, however,
+was quite different, and I listened for it again.
+
+Ah! there it was!  And as I bent to the level of the flowing waters and
+looked towards its source, I saw a man marooned on one of the hillocks
+which the flood had left unsubmerged.  Evidently he had seen me first,
+for he was waving his hands and making signs with them.  He was in keen
+alarm about his predicament, but method governed his alarm, and it was
+for me to discover it.
+
+Clearly he was a prisoner on the island, in so far that he could not
+wade or swim through the roaring dam which divided us.  Clearly, also,
+the water was rising by miraculous draughts upon the rain, and soon his
+refuge would be drowned, and he swept from it.  What was to be done by
+me to save him, for action must be rapid?
+
+He was beckoning up-stream with a meaning.  Searching with my eye the
+meeting-place of land and water, I saw what looked like a boat.  Where
+could it have come from?  There had been an old broad-bottomed craft,
+used for fording in spate times, on a pool a mile or so up the glen,
+and the flood had brought it down and thrown it ashore.  Could I get it
+afloat, navigate it to the perishing man, and rescue him?
+
+No sooner said than done!  Not at all; things don't happen so, at
+least, when anything worth doing has to be done.  It took me a toilsome
+journey to the boat, and I found it half-full of flood-water.  This I
+emptied by hauling the boat, as the river rose, on to a shelving rock.
+Then I waited for it to float free, having meanwhile got hold of a
+long, fir sapling, which, pruned of its branches, I thought to use as a
+guiding pole, helm or oar, as the rushing of many waters might demand.
+
+Thus equipped, out I sailed on that uncharted ocean with never a
+thought in my head whether I should again see dry land or riot.  The
+darkness had deepened, but I could still distinguish the hillock and
+the man thereon, now up to his waist in the waters, and for those
+fading signs I steered.  Quickly I was in the flood race, but I kept my
+head, otherwise I should not have heard the voice come to me again in
+what seemed to be the words, "Hurry!  For God's sake, hurry!"
+
+Down-stream I rushed, here shoving from disaster against a tree trunk,
+there avoiding a smash with something else.  How it was all done I have
+not the remotest notion--perhaps it was mere luck--but when I came
+level with the hillock I was only three feet clear of it on the near
+side.
+
+"Jump," I roared, and the man with outstretched arms jumped strongly,
+and I felt a pull which almost upset me, for I had been standing in the
+boat.  Two hands had caught the gunwale, and the pull of dead weight
+swung the heavy, clumsy craft round on a new course without, however,
+upsetting it.  This took us into shallower waters, and presently the
+suction of the main surge got fainter and we were aground on the
+moorland edge.
+
+I had not, in the dark, seen the face of my companion at all, and,
+trailing beside the boat, he had no opportunity for making himself
+known.  I stepped out, knee-deep, to find him also a-foot, and seeking
+the land.
+
+"Come on," I said, "whoever you may be."
+
+"Yes," he answered; "whoever you may be, you are a friend in need."
+
+I recognized his voice, and exclaimed, nay, shouted in my surprise,
+"Jock Farquharson!"
+
+"Yes, Ian Gordon," he said in turn.  "Would you rather not have saved
+me?"
+
+"God's will be done," said I.
+
+"Amen!" said he.
+
+Dramas of life do end laconically, like that, as death often comes by
+casual side-steps.
+
+
+
+
+_XII--Raiders of the Dark_
+
+A man does something in a natural way and it takes the world's ear and
+is called heroism.  Another man does a like thing, to all purpose, but
+the world does not listen to it, or, anyhow, sings him no praises, all
+of which we try to explain by saying "Luck."
+
+It is natural for a man to show courage in extremes, for a woman to be
+loving, self-sacrificing.  Every now and then the Great Bookkeeper
+records an example for the common good; and the rest are a lost legion.
+We do not know why, and if we did what good would it do us, though the
+curiosity for knowledge is inbred, like inability, sometimes, to use it?
+
+News of my rescue of the Black Colonel from the flood got about, and I
+was acclaimed as a hero of sorts.  He, I fancy, for his own ends,
+fathered a glowing account of what happened, and as it passed from
+mouth to mouth it grew in glory.  He meant to be grateful, and his
+gratitude took that form.  It was his airy way, for egotism, even when
+it is not dislikeable, must ever carry its possessor into the picture.
+
+Perhaps he also thought to please me, and thus to win a point towards
+his larger ends, for I knew they would, in no wise, be modified by what
+had happened.  By them, as he saw his case, he had to stand or fall,
+and thus, in this reasoning, he had no choice at all.  His bonds, in
+that sense, were entwined with coming events, which do not necessarily
+cast their shadows before, anyhow when they are events of the heart.
+
+Now, my secret hope for the Black Colonel, the inner prayer which I
+hardly whispered to myself, was that he should escape his troubles as a
+rebel, by going away to the foreign wars, and there make a new name.  I
+thought I might help him out of the country, even if it had to be at
+the risk of my commission.  He would be welcome wherever he found a
+British camp across the sea, and no questions would be asked.  Truly,
+there would be need to ask none, because his repute as a fighting man
+among the Jacobites had gone far and wide.  By-and-by he could return,
+when the feuds of Stuart and Guelph had died down to the dross they
+were, though they had made a bloody toll, and sit in the home of his
+fathers, not merely unmolested, but honoured by both sides.
+
+I am not going to pretend that my own inclinations were not behind this
+plan, for they were.  Why should I seek to hide them, even from the
+Black Colonel himself; a hopeless thing to try, anyhow.  He had one
+scheme for getting back to the world, and it struck bitterly across my
+path.  I offered him another, which would attain his end, and if that
+were so, why should he not take it and thank me?  I was not
+ill-disposed to him personally; certainly well enough disposed to help
+him--to help me.  When were we to make the reckoning?
+
+He was seeking to live up to his new pretensions as a head of a clan,
+and he had to find the wherewithal on which to do it.  The consequence
+was that he used Red Murdo for taxing the country in the matter of his
+necessaries.  If somebody, early some morning while it was still dark,
+awoke to ask the question: "Are you come to harry and spulzie my ha'?"
+it would most likely be Red Murdo who gave an insolent answer.  The
+fellow, in fact, got swollen upon the little plunderings which his
+master ordered, until he was hard to keep in hand.  But this, again,
+suited the Black Colonel, because, to push his claims, he found money
+handy, there being always smaller fry of the other side of friendship,
+who have hungry purses, or none at all.
+
+So Red Murdo, flown as he was with a lowly man's pride, which tends to
+an unbalancing, must launch upon an expedition of no common sort.  It
+embellishes a ballad of which only two lines come to me as I write:
+
+  "There's four-and-twenty milk-white nowt, twal o' them kye
+  In the woods of Glen-Tanner, it's there that they lie."
+
+
+Beyond what the lines tell of a bold piece of rieving and spulzy by
+Jock Farquharson's henchman, and done for him, I need not trouble to
+instruct you, because the event only leads into our chronicle as by a
+tributary wind.  When there is a mystery, and you cannot fathom it by
+direct evidence, you are driven back on motives.  They are, in fact,
+the nut and kernel of what lawyers call circumstantial evidence, a
+fitting together of suspicions which have made the coffin of many an
+honest Highland rebel.
+
+I sought to keep my soldiers as unseen as a not over-great distance
+from Marget and her mother at the Dower House would permit.  Naturally
+the Hanoverian uniform was a sore sight for their eyes, and even a
+personal grief, in that it recalled dear ones who had perished on the
+losing side.  My desire to spare them was known to my men, who, in the
+same spirit, would often walk a mile round not to show themselves to
+the desolated inmates of the Dower House.
+
+But it was essential, if anything unusual were to happen there, that we
+should know, since it was part of our charge to protect Marget and her
+mother from perils incidental to an unsettled country.  Therefore, I
+had a private understanding with an old retainer of the family that he
+was to hasten to me, should protection at the Dower House ever be
+necessary.
+
+This he was to do quietly, before giving any general alarm, as that
+might not prove necessary, and also because I remembered an old
+Highland wisdom, "Never cry fire, unless you want the heather to
+catch."  Its bearing, as you will grasp is on strifes and feuds set
+alive, not on the actual burning of heather, which is done to let
+grass, for the sheep beasts, grow without being choked.
+
+Well, on a night which I recall for its dense blackness, there came a
+tap, tap, tap, three of them, slowly and distinctly, at the small
+window of my room in the Castle.  I knew by the method of the
+disturbance that it was not an accident, but I was on my feet and
+peering hard into the outer darkness before I realized that here was
+the prearranged signal of danger at the Dower House.
+
+A hand moved close to the window, signalling me, and I motioned back,
+though, on either side, all this was divined, as divination takes place
+in the dark, rather than seen at all.  I picked up my sword, which
+always stood in a certain corner of my room, pulled the door gently
+towards me and stepped softly out on to the grass, which grew close up
+to the Castle walls.
+
+"Come ye, fast, Captain Gordon," quietly said a figure gliding beside
+me, and without another word we made for the Dower House.  When I felt
+myself beyond ear-shot of the sentry, I asked:
+
+"What's happened--what's wrong?"
+
+"I'm no' exac'ly sure," was the old retainer's answer, "but men hae
+been surroundin' the place, as if to attack it.  They wakened me, bein'
+a light sleeper, because they made sounds different fae' the ordinary.
+It was like men crawlin' amon' the grass on a plan, and I slippit doon
+for you."
+
+"What had we better do?" I asked formally, and not because I expected
+any answer, for I had decided to get into the Dower House without
+alarming anybody, if that could be done.
+
+We managed to open a window and step through it, but then the dogs
+sleeping inside set up an alarm.  This quickly awoke everybody, and the
+confusion set affairs moving outside, where I heard a voice that seemed
+familiarly like Red Murdo's cry hoarsely:
+
+"Lie close, lie close!"
+
+Presently Marget and her mother, who had both dressed hastily, came to
+the stair-head, holding a glimmering light over the darkness beneath.
+Behind them crowded their few scared domestics, and odd the whole scene
+looked, although, indeed, between keeping off the barking dogs and
+wondering what was to happen outside, I had no desire or time to study
+it.
+
+"Who's there?" called Marget, in a not uncomposed but expectant voice,
+and I answered, telling in a few words what I knew.  Quick in thought
+and action she thanked me for coming, and said she would just get her
+cloak.  She took her mother with her, but in a moment was back again
+asking, "How can I be of service?"
+
+She carried a stout walking-stick, and I looked at it as she came down
+the stairs to where I stood in the lobby, her mother following.  "Yes,"
+she said, "my hand lighted on it somewhere, perhaps because it has been
+through troubles and wars and is in the presence of more.  Shall we say
+that the fighting instinct, even in a stick, leaps to the call?"  She
+laughed quietly, but with a concerned note in the laugh, and I knew she
+was thinking of her mother's safety and health, both threatened by this
+strange incursion of ill-disposed men.
+
+Wishful as one would be at such a moment to magnify a trifle, in order,
+if possible, to occupy an anxious woman's mind, I remarked, "Oh, a
+stick can be a very sound weapon in a good hand."
+
+"It's about all that the orders of search and suppression have left us
+Jacobites," remarked Marget; "openly confessed, anyhow, for I suppose
+there may be a small, concealed arsenal or two, even among our Corgarff
+hills."
+
+Nothing, apparently, had happened outside in those tense minutes, and
+it was the strain of waiting which made us resolutely talk of
+nothing--but a stick.  There had been no further cry since the "Lie
+close" already mentioned, and it, no doubt, had been a mischance on the
+part of Red Murdo.  All was silence and black without, and within all
+quiet alarm, such as you get when a household suppresses itself in
+obedience to some demand.
+
+It was an oppressive silence, this waiting, and I was glad to hear
+Marget tap the floor with her sinewy hazel and say merrily, thinking to
+lighten her mother's concern, "My grandfather insisted that a stick
+with a nob was no stick for a Highland gentleman.  It escaped, he would
+say, when it was most needed, and that might, at times, leave the best
+of Highland gentlemen by the wayside."  Joking, under difficulties!
+
+She paused, for there arose a crack-cracking as of men coming closer
+among the scrub of heather and fern which surrounded the Dower House,
+only it was quite momentary.  The stick which she had half-lifted, an
+unconscious act of readiness for defence, tapped back on to the floor,
+and my sword-point made a sharper rattle, though I was unaware that my
+hand had even moved it.  The tyranny of doing nothing began to be
+intolerable and to insist on an issue, be it what it might.
+
+Think of the situation for me, and although I am, I hope, neither more
+selfish nor more cowardly than other men, I could not help doing that.
+Here was I, the chief and head of his Majesty's garrison at Corgarff
+Castle, standing defence on the door-step of a Jacobite household.  Why
+was I there at all?  What was I there to accomplish?  How was I to do
+this unknown something and return with composure to my quarters, secure
+in my loyalty to King George and his ministers?
+
+Moreover, what had I come out for to see?  A mere expedition of
+burglary by a band of hungry caterans who took the chattels of friend
+or foe indifferently?  Possibly that was all.  Then I could have
+fetched half-a-dozen soldiers and apprehended those same footpads, or,
+at all events, driven them to the hills again.  But at the head of what
+defensive force did I find myself?  Why, a few domestics without
+resource enough even to escape from the danger, a dear old lady who
+anxiously wanted to mother the trouble about her, and a young woman of
+nerve and resolve, my only stand-by.
+
+There, for it was a new discovery in our relationship, I realized that
+to have Marget by me was a very welcome comradeship, and, somehow, so
+natural, that it made the other things of no burden.  I was curiously
+happy, and could have left matters at that, but what to do, what to do?
+
+There must, in all of us, be an instinct for our keeping, when we are
+in danger.  Give it headway and you will probably win through, as a
+thirsty horse knows how to reach a springwell among the hills.  Argue
+with it and it says, "Take your reasoned method, your road of the
+better judgment, but don't blame me, your natural guardian, if you come
+to harm."
+
+With this I got the strong intuition, possibly communicated to my mind
+or heart by Marget's nearness, that here was no ordinary raid for
+spoilage.  Something else of a personal and intimate sort was behind, I
+was sure of it, something to which acute danger attached for my dearest
+wishes.
+
+When you are, in small authority, set over the people of a locality,
+you are apt to develop a small official mind which obscures the power
+of seeing, understanding, divining.  Such an attitude, as I had
+painfully seen in various parts of the Highlands, fretted the great
+sore of defeat that lay upon the Jacobites, whereas the effort should
+have been to heal it.  My own mind I had tried to keep fresh and free
+in all my relationships at Corgarff, impelled, may be, by a nature
+which liked, possibly out of vanity, to give sympathy.  From this and a
+mute speaking with one near and dear, I now had my personal reward, for
+I understood.  Marget was the trophy sought in this dark raid, and she
+was to be the Black Colonel's trophy.
+
+"Action, front!" I said to myself, in one of the drill-book commands.
+Offence is always a soldier's best defence, although it is a sailor's
+phrase, so I would go out and make a reconnaissance from the back of
+the Dower House.  This should cause the invaders to show themselves,
+and might, if they thought the move stood for any force, even alarm
+them into a quiet retreat, which, for several reasons, was what I most
+desired.
+
+Quickly I told Marget of my intention, and the need for it, and asked
+her to remain on guard where she was.  She answered briskly, a woman
+determined to be brave and not a burden, that nobody should enter the
+place without feeling the weight of her grandfather's stick.  She
+added, and here came in the other woman, that I was not to be long
+absent.  This touched me sweetly, for it showed that Marget was
+thinking less of her own safety, or, at the moment, even of her
+mother's, than of mine in the night outside.  Honestly, I went dancing
+from her side with a wine of joy in me that I had never tasted, for she
+had shown that I was something to her, perhaps more than something.  I
+might have been drunk, and if I had I could not have been more lost
+than I was in the darkness behind the Dover House, because it instantly
+swallowed me up.
+
+There is a darkness to which, after a little, the eye so accustoms
+itself that it can see trees and rocks and even faces in contour.
+There is another darkness which seals the eyes and numbs the mind and
+even weights the feet as with lead.  This was that night's darkness, so
+pall-like that I was simply lost in it.
+
+Nevertheless, calling up all my sense of locality, and feeling the way
+lightly with my bare, ready sword, I started to make a circle of the
+Dower House.  Ten, twenty, thirty, forty cautious steps, with my
+sword-point probing the way, and it touched something soft and
+yielding.  That something a-sort of whimpered, as a dog caught poaching
+would, or as a man might who felt a quick pain.  A sword-prick stings,
+and the something leapt erect and with a curse turned at me, when I
+instinctively fell on guard.  Another sword struck at mine, my blade
+slid up this other, caught in the handle and wrenched it from the
+unseen hand.  The weapon fell among the bracken, but my man thought
+more of getting away than of looking for it, so he doubled round a tree
+and was gone.
+
+Evidently I had struck the investing circle, and I went on cautiously,
+but never another figure did I perceive, though, before me, ran many
+soft noises of as many retreats.  Finally there was a suppressed rush
+away, and with that I arrived at the front door of the Dower House to
+hear a mother's cry of distress, "Marget, Marget! oh, Marget, Marget!"
+
+"Where is she?" said I anxiously.
+
+"She grew alarmed for you," answered her mother more anxiously, "and
+went out, although I tried to keep her.  Hardly had she gone when I
+heard a smothered sob, and then there was a hustle of feet as if she
+were being carried oft by force."
+
+There was a boding of ill in her cry, like a coronach, and the
+domestics took it up in sympathy, as Highland women will.  "Marget!
+Marget!  Mistress Marget!" rose the cry, and we became aware that all
+the inmates of the castle were stirring to it.  But never a response
+came from Marget, never a token from the raiders, and it was forced on
+me that she and they were both gone from us.
+
+We called on her, and searched for them until the dawn came, but only
+found the sword which I had encountered, and I knew it as one the Black
+Colonel had long worn, and then, when he himself got a better, that
+with the "S" for "Stuart" on its handle, had given to Red Murdo.  The
+larger knowledge, brought by the dawn, was that the raiders had
+vanished as secretly as they had come, and that they had, beyond doubt,
+taken Marget with them.  For though--
+
+  "We sought her baith by bower and ha',
+  The lady was not seen."
+
+
+
+
+_XIII--The Wound of Absence_
+
+You will probably know what it is to lose somebody who by physical
+fragrance, the mystery of a common spirituality, or both, has become
+essential to you.  The wound is twice as bitter if, until the parting,
+you were unaware how much that presence really meant.  It is as if you
+had come into a new world of your own and then found it vanish, before
+you could take possession.
+
+I had no doubt, thanks to the hearing of his voice and the leaving
+behind of his sword, that the raiders were headed by Red Murdo, the
+Black Colonel's henchman.  Actual light came during the morning, in the
+form of a message by word of mouth: "I am a prisoner in the topmost
+room of Lonach Tower, and Red Murdo and his men are camped below."
+
+When the Highland woman who brought it had said that, she melted away
+again without taking bite or sup.  She lived in the ruin of Lonach
+Tower, and that was how Marget had been able to send her with the
+message.  She could not be too long absent, however, or she might be
+missed by Red Murdo, whom, she said, she had left snoring out his lost
+night's sleep.
+
+I found a Highlander who had engaged in relations with Red Murdo,
+though their nature need not be mentioned, and who was anxious to score
+them off for a settled life.  Working on that, I told him to go to
+Lonach Tower, where he would find Red Murdo, and say the Black Colonel
+was waiting at a fold of the hills, which I named--waiting to hear how
+the night's work had fared!  That, as you will mark, was the nice
+significance of the message, which I hoped would move Red Murdo and his
+merry men--his master waited "to hear how the night's work had fared!"
+
+If the Black Colonel was behind the business it would seem a natural
+message, nay, a command, and my messenger went off with it.  When he
+had gone, I picked out a dozen of our best soldiers, and, hinting the
+mission, without explaining it, we followed at a distance.  We halted
+behind the last peak of the hill which looks down on Lonach Tower and
+awaited events.
+
+We saw the receding Highland figure wend slowly towards the bare, lean
+turret, and, when he reached it, my eyes lifted to its queer little
+windows, seeking to look through them.  They gave no sign of anybody
+inside, and, indeed, the mullioning of time had so dimmed them that,
+perhaps, the outside world could hardly be seen from within.
+
+My Highlander hammered at the one entrance door, and he had to hammer a
+while before it opened to him.  Then it only opened partly, as if the
+guardian kept a shoulder to it, while he spoke the visitor.  Next it
+shut again, leaving my man outside, but evidently the colloquy had not
+finished, for he waited.
+
+Ten minutes more and the door drew wide, as we could see, and Red Murdo
+came out, his comrades with him, and there was more questioning of the
+bringer of news.  Evidently he played his part well, perhaps because,
+knowing nothing of what lay behind, he simply stuck to the terms of his
+delivery, for presently Red Murdo's party set off towards the
+meeting-place I had named for them.
+
+Here was my time to act, and I only waited until the coast, or rather
+the valley, was clear.  When the tartans of Red Murdo's party had
+fluttered out of sight, in obedience, as they fancied, to the commands
+of their chief, I got my fellows quickly a-foot for Lonach Tower and
+she who was a captive there.
+
+The heavy oaken, iron-clasped door had been locked by the departed
+raiders, and no sign of any tenant within fluttered out to us.
+Half-measures are no more useful in opening bolted doors, of which you
+have not the key, than they are in accomplishing other difficult
+things.  So, finally, we put our collective weights against it, pushed
+hard and steadily, and when the weather-worn bars and hinges gave way,
+tumbled headlong into the old keep.
+
+Nobody was in the ground-room floor, nothing, except the untidiness
+left by half-a-dozen rough men, and I mounted the narrow stair and
+tried the room above.  Again we had to use force, and when the door
+flew inward I almost landed in the lap of Marget Forbes.  There she
+was, bound to a rough seat, in the middle of the room, with a cravat
+tied round the lower part of her face, to keep her silent.  Gently but
+swiftly I undid the gag, and after that cut the rough tow which bound
+her to the seat.  Being thus freed, she told me, with an agitation
+which I tried to still, what had happened just before we came and on
+the previous night.
+
+Red Murdo, she said, when she could speak, had told her, with awkward
+apologies, that he did not want to be unchivalrous but that he and his
+men were called away for a little and that he must make siccar about
+her custody, and no alarm giving, against his return.  She had ceased
+asking him why she had been forcibly abducted and what was intended for
+her, because on that he would say nothing except, "You are quite safe,
+my young lady, quite safe.  We may be plain fellows, but we are
+Highland men towards a woman, especially towards Mistress Marget Forbes
+of Corgarff." "But how," I asked, for she had now somewhat recovered
+her nerve and composure, and the agreeable surprise our arrival had
+caused her, "how did you fall into their hands at the Dower House?"
+
+"Oh," said she, "that was simple.  You went out to reconnoitre, and,
+hearing in the stillness, words and a noise like a passage of swords, I
+became anxious about you.  Under this impulse I opened the front door
+and stepped out a few yards when a Highland plaid fell round my head,
+silencing me effectually before I could shout an alarm, and I was borne
+swiftly away by two men.  My astonishment was so great that I am not
+sure if I attempted to resist until I was some distance from the Dower
+House.  Then two other men relieved my captors in carrying me, and by
+stages, for I absolutely declined to walk a step, I was brought here
+and placed in this room."
+
+"Where you have been unable to give any alarm?"
+
+"That you can see, and all I knew was that Red Murdo was the leader of
+my captivity, because he grumbled about having been stabbed in the leg
+and about losing his sword.  'What,' I asked, 'could he and his master,
+the Black Colonel, want by spiriting me away?'  But Red Murdo wouldn't
+answer the question, and I haven't been able to answer it myself.
+Somehow I have felt that no personal harm was intended me because my
+captors, if not exactly friends, were not strangers, but men in some
+relationship to our own people.  Mostly I have been anxious for the
+anxiety of my mother," and her eyes looked concern at me.
+
+"Well," I said, "we shall relieve that anxiety very soon now; you have
+probably had enough of Lonach Tower, which, I notice, is sadly in need
+of the repairer.  Let us go home!"
+
+I said that last word out of my heart, and I thought Marget answered
+with a gleam which comes into a woman's eyes only when her heart is
+somewhere behind it.  We went down the slender, creaky stair, the
+soldiers following, and came to the door, where, if you please, we ran
+slap into the Black Colonel, Red Murdo, and the other caterans.  In the
+unexpected lies drama, and here, indeed, was a dramatic confronting.
+We stared at each other for a moment as if asking who was to speak
+first, and, like himself, the Black Colonel managed to do it.
+
+"I heard only an hour ago," he said, "of a lady in distress in this old
+house.  I have come, at my best speed, to help her, as who would not,
+when that lady is Mistress Marget Forbes."
+
+"Would it not have been better," I cut in, "if you had heard of her
+distress before and come earlier to remedy it?"
+
+"Possibly," he answered, "but if I had been earlier, Captain Gordon, I
+might not have met you here.  So you see," he added challengingly,
+"there are compensations, although these are things, as far as my
+experience goes, with which we could often dispense."
+
+"Well," said I, "I have been able to render first aid to Mistress
+Forbes, but it would be a satisfaction if you could explain to us how
+she came to need it."
+
+"Explain!  How can I explain?"
+
+"You have cultivated a name for gallantry, Colonel"--he bowed--"and it
+would be gallant to a lady if you would say why Red Murdo invaded the
+Dower House last night and carried its young mistress away?"
+
+"Did he, the villain?  He did not tell me of that, when I ran into him
+and his following this morning.  He said he came to where we met, in
+response to an order from me.  There was no such order, though it is
+true that I was keeping an open eye for Red Murdo, a habit I have when
+I know he is abroad, lest he might have anything for me."
+
+By this time it was clear that the Black Colonel had commissioned Red
+Murdo to kidnap Marget in order that he might rescue her, and, by the
+act of so doing, advocate his plans towards her.  He was denying it now
+that he found in Lonach Tower not Marget alone and a captive, but
+Marget with a good, stout bodyguard to look after her.
+
+She had not spoken so far, partly because she had not been directly
+addressed, partly because, as I could see, she was in a hot fury with
+the Black Colonel.  But the strange fascination of the man was working
+on her, as I could also see, and, woman-like, speak she would or die.
+
+"If," she demanded of him quietly, slowly, for she had herself in hand,
+"you had anything special, even private to say to me, why did you not
+come to the Dower House instead of sending your handy men to scare us
+all and run off with me?  Whatever you hoped to gain, that, you must
+know, was not the way to gain it."
+
+The Black Colonel looked at her composedly for a moment and said,
+"Mistress Marget, I am the last person in the world to think that any
+form of duress would influence your actions.  On the other hand, since
+the opportunity has come, I make bold, even in the presence of Captain
+Gordon and our respective followers, to say a word in frankness, out of
+regard for you and your house.  There are events pending which might go
+far to re-establish your family, and you should know about them, not
+merely indirectly but directly from me, who am deeply concerned in the
+business."
+
+Marget blushed and flushed and glanced at me, as if asking me to
+protect her from what was very like a manifesto for public knowledge,
+thrust upon her when she could not help it.  Her unconscious appeal
+warmed my heart like the sun, but I held back, preferring she should
+give the word which would, once and for all, put the Black Colonel in
+his place.
+
+"By what right," she said with dignity, "do you address your proposals
+to me as you have done?  You have schemed them in an underground way.
+Must you commit the affront of offering them to me in public, after
+using force to bring me here?"
+
+"I have told you," broke in the Black Colonel, "what I know of Red
+Murdo and his doings on this morning, and if you do not believe me,
+why, I cannot help it.  It may be that I had a plan for meeting you
+face to face, but no plan like what has now emerged."
+
+"No," said I, intervening, "your plan was to find Marget alone in this
+eerie place, to work on her woman's feelings, her anxiety for her
+mother, her regard for her house, all that you might commit her with
+the Crown authorities as assenting to the secret negotiations which you
+are ripening."
+
+"Doesn't that reflection come oddly from an officer of the Crown," he
+retorted, "because I have not heard you have resigned your commission?
+You should leave it to us who are not honoured with service under the
+foreign king, to flout his Majesty."
+
+"There are moments, Jock Farquharson," I hotly replied, "when one's
+first duty is to be a man, and this is such a moment.  I tell you if
+you do not drop your persecution of this lady you will have to count on
+a forthright quarrel with me."
+
+"A pretty speech, my Captain Gordon," he said, adding: "Pretty speeches
+have a habit of coming from those whose tongues are their boldest
+weapons."
+
+"You credit me," I said warmly, "with an accomplishment which I may or
+may not have; you assail me for want of a quality which I beg you to
+permit me to prove here and now."
+
+There was no mistaking that, and he and his men looked their
+understanding.  My feelings were what you can imagine, but I spoke
+deliberately.  Perhaps I realized the need for quiet resolution rather
+than temper, which is ever too brittle a weapon to work well.  As I
+understood, the Black Colonel, having failed to get Marget into his
+hands, with the object of mentally coercing her, now wanted to break
+me, if he could, in her presence.  There was no end to the man's
+resource when the bad side of his character got going, and no measure
+at which he would stick.
+
+His insult to me had been spoken in a voice loud enough to be heard by
+everybody.  He so meant it to be heard, but my reply, an instant
+acceptance of his challenge, surprised him for a moment.  He looked at
+me, hesitating what to say, and I looked at him with a perfectly clear
+purpose in my face.  We both looked at Marget, at his Highlanders and
+at my men, knowing that with all these for witness of what had
+happened, more must follow.
+
+Deep down in my heart I felt relief, because I was sure that some day
+we must fight out the odds between us, and when you come to that pass
+with any man, it is best it should be settled.  They say that delay is
+fatal in love and deadly in war, and with me the two risks combined,
+for mine was both a question of love and a question of war.
+
+"Is it elegant," the Black Colonel said in a purring voice of which I
+knew the worth, "that two men who are kinsmen in a degree, should
+fight, in the presence of a young lady who is a kinswoman?"
+
+"You should have thought of that before," I quickly retorted.
+
+"I agree with Captain Cordon," said Marget, interrupting us, "for I
+come of a people who have never been afraid to see trouble through, and
+I beg of you, Colonel Jock Farquharson, not to let me stand in the way.
+Nay, if you will accept me, I shall be referee!"
+
+I bent my head to thank her for this, and he bowed in the over-polite
+fashion which he had learned among the French.  By this time our
+respective followers, now taking a fight for granted, had lined
+themselves up to watch it, one set of men in one row, the other set in
+another, with space between them.  A spirit of the love of combat for
+combat's sake, shone in their expectant eyes and echoed in their
+suppressed, excited talk.
+
+There had once been a small garden attached to the Tower of Lonach, but
+it had been so overgrown with grass, and the grass had been so
+industriously eaten by sheep and deer, that now it was a rough, hard
+green, an entirely good place for swordsmen.  On it, as the sun began
+to dip behind the hills, we took our stand, with my sergeant for second
+to me, while Red Murdo filled the same office towards the Black Colonel.
+
+Things had happened so swiftly that I had scarcely time to think, and
+perhaps that was well, for thought never nerves you in such business as
+I had before me.  There was I confronted with one of the best swordsmen
+in the Highlands, while I was--well, passably good.  He was bigger,
+stronger, a more heroic, more impressive figure altogether than I was,
+and these pictorial attitudes count by the impression they make.  I had
+to rely on a cool head, a nimble wrist, and I must in no wise depart
+from the style of fighting by which alone, as I well knew, I could hope
+to hold my own.
+
+The Black Colonel would be sure, following the untutored Highland
+manner, and keeping his French training in reserve, to attack
+furiously, hoping so to destroy me at the beginning.  My plan, based
+upon the barracks and camp training of a regular soldier, was to parry
+with him, to hold him off, to wear him down, and then, if I had the
+luck, which Heaven give me, get a blow home.
+
+Marget, for all her courage, had walked over to a far corner of the
+green, where, however, she could still see us, because my soldiers and
+the Black Colonel's men stood aside to let her do that.  Their common
+instinct for a fight flamed while they waited, but I knew that there
+would be no interference from either party of retainers, however things
+fell out, and so I had no anxiety as to the quarrel going beyond the
+Black Colonel and myself.  All men of Highland degree were brought up
+to believe that honest disputes could be settled better by combat than
+anyhow else, and, indeed, they almost have a traditional reverence for
+the broad-sword of their country.
+
+Nobody called on us to begin, but when the Black Colonel and I, our few
+preparations made, had looked at each other for a minute from the
+measured distance which divided us, we both advanced.  As I had
+expected, he came with a rush, and if it had not been for my sound
+training in defence he might have smitten me at once.  As it was, by a
+turn which seemed new to him, I caught his sword under the point and
+lifted it lightly upward into the empty air.  He almost flew past me
+with the motion which he had gathered, and we both had to face squarely
+round in order that we might continue.
+
+This time, apparently, he meant to be more deliberate, thinking,
+perhaps, that if he missed me again with one of his wild lunges, he
+might meet the sting of my thrust.  He played with me, and I responded
+to his caution, so far as he could be cautious, in the same spirit.
+Our swords were of equal length and about the same weight, but he had a
+longer arm than I, as well as a stronger one.  Still, I made up for
+this, as he began to realize, by quicker work in what might be called
+the smaller craft of fighting.  I could be here and there and somewhere
+else with my sword, while he was making a parry or a lunge or a level
+stroke, for he tried everything.
+
+Now his sword ran safely under my left arm where I guided it, and the
+point of mine caught the breast-high edge of his kilt, where the cloth
+is closely plaited and therefore very resisting.  My blade bent so that
+if it had been other than the finest steel it might have snapped.  Then
+the grip in the cloth broke, the sword was free again, and we were
+without hurt, only the battle was growing warm.
+
+Its contagion had agitated the men looking on, to a point where,
+forgetting themselves, they began to shout encouragement to us
+severally, the Black Colonel's men to him, mine to me.  Red Murdo was
+urgently demonstrative, and my sergeant, as he afterwards told me, kept
+an eye on him lest he should be tempted to intervene.  In the distance
+Marget, as I saw momentarily, stood still and quiet, but there was a
+fixed anxiety in her face, and the woman's horror of two men seeking to
+take each other's life on her account!
+
+Now came the third bout, and knowing the limits of my strength I
+determined to make it the last, if I could.  The Black Colonel, it
+encouraged me to notice, had also grown a little tired.  His rush and
+dash were less strong when he came at me, and I thought I caught in his
+eye a new doubtfulness of success.  He was famed for the quickness with
+which he could finish a duel, and probably he had also decided to
+settle this one at the third time of asking.
+
+We parried and thrust, sword to sword, and I was driven to give way a
+few paces by the Colonel's onslaught.  This led him to take risks, as I
+had hoped he might.  Let him tire out his sword arm with heavy lunges
+and elaborate recoveries, while I kept myself on guard, and then,
+perhaps, my turn would come, for getting him.  It did come, but it
+came, as most things come, in an unexpected fashion.
+
+Sweating like a man in a fever, with his eyes wild and savage, the
+Black Colonel at last fairly flung himself on me.  My face was also
+streaming with perspiration, but my head remained cool, perhaps because
+I felt that Marget was looking on.  A warm heart and a cool head should
+neighbour an ordeal, and, in that assailing of me, my maintenance of
+this combination was everything.
+
+As he leapt forward, purposing to overwhelm me, the Black Colonel's
+foot appeared to catch an uprising tuft that had been left unnibbled by
+the sheep, possibly on account of the coarse toughness of its grass.
+He lost his balance and shot heavily at me, holding his sword straight
+out, as if to drive it through me.  Here was my chance, for he could
+not, in this act of falling, change the position of his weapon.  I did
+that for him by a mere touch, and it ran by me, near, it is true, but
+without hurting me.  Mine, on the other hand, pierced the muscle of the
+Black Colonel's right arm, and instantly his sword fell from his hand,
+rattling close to my foot.  The blood spurted from him to the cry of
+the onlookers, "Ah, he's ill hit," for he looked it, lying there on the
+ground with a long, red gash in his arm.
+
+"No," he said, slowly rising, "I am not ill hurt, but I am hurt in a
+measure which will keep me from fighting any more this afternoon.  Here
+I am with a useless right hand, and I have never learned to use the
+left, so we must stop."
+
+By this time Marget had come up, offering to bind the Black Colonel's
+wounded arm, and staunch the bleeding, a task which Red Murdo had
+already begun, only his hands were clumsy at it.  Marget made him take
+off the strip of tartan which he was twisting tightly round the forearm
+and put her linen handkerchief nearest the wound.  This tender and
+thoughtful attention seemed to soften the field of battle, and
+presently I found myself picking up the Colonel's sword and returning
+it to him.
+
+"Thank you," he said; "I can only carry it in my belt at present, but I
+would not like to lose it, for it has proved you a better swordsman
+than I had expected."
+
+Handsomely said, was it not?  But we are always inclined to think a
+compliment to ourselves fitting, especially when it comes from an enemy
+as formidable as Jock Farquharson was.
+
+"I hope, sir," I answered without undue gravity, "that I have earned
+the compliment and I accept it, as I accepted your challenge, without
+reserve.  Now, I suppose, our meeting is finished, and so we may each
+go our own way.  Mistress Forbes, will you allow me to see you home?"
+and I turned towards her.
+
+She took my arm and we walked quietly from Lonach Tower and quietly
+across the hills to the Dower House, neither of us saying much on the
+way, possibly because our thoughts were not for the six soldier men who
+strode behind us.
+
+
+
+
+_XIV--The Cards of Love_
+
+A man who serves the cause of a good woman is serving well, her and
+himself, even if he only waits in the garden of the emotions.  He is
+probably helping that woman in subtle, beautiful ways, to be herself,
+to realize the full majesty of her womanhood, which otherwise she might
+miss.  I had the highest wish to help the interests of Marget, and if
+my heart beat an accompaniment, that was only another test of my
+sincerity.
+
+There, perhaps, I have written as if I had grown sure of Marget, which
+I had no right to be, which no man can ever be of any Marget, else
+romance would perish.  Typical of other youth and maid stories was
+ours, a story without a beginning, a middle, or an apparent ending; a
+sort of skein of hope and unspoken understanding such as links two
+people, until they come closer or drift apart, ships that pass in the
+night that should be the morning.
+
+When did we begin to care for each other, if that state of regard as
+between us was to be assumed, because people do ask themselves such
+questions, and if they do, why not admit it?  When does a flower begin
+to bloom?  Who can tell?  You see it, one unheralded high-noon, as if
+it were just ready to burst beautifully upon its world.  So it is,
+still much depends on how the world is going to treat it.  The flower
+blows, if sunshine greets and warms it.  But let the sky be grey,
+sombre, leaden, and that flower cometh not to its full kingdom--cometh
+not, she said.
+
+We had not spoken, Marget and I, to each other of love; we had not
+called it by a name to each other; we had only felt and dreamt it.
+Possibly, that is the natural course of a simple, true love, for it is
+undemonstrative.  It likes the half-lights of the dusk, to live in the
+shadow of its silvery clouds, and to arrive round corners, if only that
+it may have a safe way of escape, should it be frightened.  Ever it
+likes running away, and, better still, it likes being pursued!
+
+All this goes with one dark little story of my love for Marget, and I
+would only tell it under the compulsion of a full-breasted honesty,
+because I judge it to be sacred to her as well as to me.  It was when I
+first felt as if something hitherto unknown to me had come into my life
+at Corgarff.  I had seen Marget once, with interest, because she was
+good to look upon, the second time with pleasure, because she seemed to
+see me, the third time with a sense of awkwardness, as if a mysterious
+contact had arisen between us.
+
+Words will not take me nearer to the uncanny, covetous feeling than
+that, for they are bald, empty contrivances invented of this world and
+not, like love itself, the fruit of the spirit world.  But perhaps you
+will understand, certainly if you have experienced yourself, and,
+understanding so much, you will be able to follow what came next.
+
+Marget had been going somewhere, taking a mere walk, perhaps, and I had
+said, "May I not come," and she said, "No, there is really no need,"
+and I did not go.
+
+Unknowing youth!  I saw my condemnation in her eye as she went her path
+resolutely, turning neither to the right nor to the left, a maiden
+determined to give me a lesson in this; that love, even when it is only
+dawning, loves to be assailed.  That was a chapter of the spiritual
+story which lay within the outer story of our doings in Corgarff.  You
+may say that it was a trifle, a thing not worth recalling, and that
+would be true for everybody except Marget and myself, who knew better
+then and confessed it to each other afterwards, because it was a first
+flicker of realization.
+
+And, indeed, behind my marchings and counter-marchings around the grim
+old Castle of Corgarff there lay a mystery of feeling nearer to me than
+any call of arms could be.  It was always present, the most potent
+influence that can exercise a man, born of one woman and in love with
+another.  No doubt Marget and I shirked any admission, but it was in
+our bearing towards each other, that whisper of the heart's throne
+which calls and is answered.
+
+This feeling was my settled comfort now that a cloud of events, as I
+assessed them, was hurrying the Black Colonel into a new necessity
+towards his personal aims and so towards Marget and myself.  The
+"rough, raging, roaring, roystering, robustious rascal" side of him,
+and the description is not mine but taken from an extant document, had
+long been filling up.  Presently it would overflow in happenings urgent
+enough to sweep our pilgrimage along like a high wind on the high hills
+of Corgarff.
+
+They began with a fall out between the Black Colonel and his Red Murdo,
+some little time after the duel at Lonach.  To get his injured but
+recovered sword-arm in trim again the Colonel had taken to practising
+on his man, also a sufficient swordsman, though always liable to make a
+foul stroke.  This time he had to defend himself from a sudden,
+half-angry, half-playful, wholly energetic assault on the part of his
+master, and that without a sword in hand.
+
+What do you think he did, this Red Murdo, when the Colonel's provoking
+blade had positively pinked him in the leg, above the garter and drawn
+blood?  He picked up Jock Farquharson's pet dog, a wise and lively
+Scots terrier, and flung it, a protection against further pinking, on
+the sword-point, with the remark, "A good soldier never lacks a weapon."
+
+The Black Colonel was fondly attached to his dog, and its death, for it
+died from the wound, upset him into other troubles.  It is often the
+way, when one thing goes wrong that many things go wrong, time getting
+out of joint generally.  Naturally, too, if we remember that life is a
+delicate machine which a small first unbalancing will throw into
+disorder, as take the Black Colonel in witness.
+
+It became necessary for him to "raise the wind," as he spoke of the
+process, and to that end he sent Red Murdo on a foraging expedition.
+This worthy, wishful to do the business with as little trouble as
+possible, went after the first batch of cattle he could find.  He
+planned to get them away in the dark of night, have them at a safe
+distance by morning, and then, at his leisure, drive them to a southern
+market and bring back to the Black Colonel what he got for them, less
+his own expenditure on victuals and drink, and the due entertaining of
+other gentlemen of the same kidney, met on the road, because its
+comradeship had to be justly handselled.
+
+Now, shrewdly, as a matter of precaution against raiders high, or kern
+lowly, the owner of the grazing kine had put a white beast among them.
+Consequently when he was wakened by a loud lowing and came forth to
+find the reason, he saw that his cattle were being stolen away, for
+there walked the white one, a guiding star to his eye.  He followed the
+drove quietly at a distance, summoning friends as he passed their
+several homes, and when he had gathered recruits enough, and while it
+was still dark, he set upon Red Murdo and his thieves, gave them the
+heartiest beating you could fancy, and re-captured the cattle.
+
+This attempt to steal the kine was laid at the door of the Black
+Colonel, rightly so, and when he heard of it and its failure he swore
+at Red Murdo, saying he had lost all a henchman and provider's
+artistry.  He was one of those men, very numerous in the world, who
+could ill-support a failure made by himself, and could not bear it at
+all when another failed who was acting for him.
+
+"Why," he rated Red Murdo, "you can neither steal nor lie, as a
+Highland gentleman's ghillie should.  You would have me do those petty
+things myself, and they are not for me, although, mayhap, I'd be equal
+enough to them."
+
+Red Murdo answered nothing to his enraged chief, but perhaps made up
+for his silence by some hard thinking.  When a rebuke is taken silently
+the wrath behind it is apt, in average human nature, to simmer out, but
+the Black Colonel's black fire burned on.
+
+"Why," he roared, "didn't you think of an expedient to keep those
+cattle, the white one and all, for very probably it was a beast to
+fetch a good price?  Where were your wits?  You recollect when, for an
+act which has since been counted brave, I had to fly with half-a-dozen
+men on my heels, and how, coming to a mill, and nobody being there, I
+put on the miller's dusty suit.  I was asked by my pursuers, sure that
+they had seen the man they pursued disappear into the mill a few
+minutes before, 'Did any one enter here?'  'Only the miller is here,' I
+told them, and, as it seemed so, they went their way, and, after a
+while, I went mine."
+
+"But," said Red Murdo, "they wid na' hae believed me if I had sworn a
+score o' oaths that I was the miller.  I'm nae sae good at swearin'
+untrooths as some folk you ken!"
+
+"Possibly," quoth the Colonel loftily.  "To be believed one must, after
+all, look one's words and you might find it a difficulty.  But still a
+ghillie of better strategy would have kept those cattle and, what is
+worse, my friend, saved the suspicion which has fallen upon me."
+
+"Nae for the first time," Red Murdo shot at the Black Colonel.
+
+"It's not first times that matter," he retorted more quietly, being
+pleased, in a manner, with Red Murdo's spirit; "it's last times that
+count, and the need is to take care of them."
+
+Possibly the Black Colonel might have met his material troubles for a
+while longer without having to fly from them, because he was full of
+stratagems.  But on the sentimental side he fell into an affair of much
+sadness for a comely lady who, at her mid-age, should have known
+better, though, indeed, the forties have their storms, like the sea
+latitudes sailors call the "roaring forties."  Delectable as detail
+might be, and desirable to illumine what all befell, I must, for I am
+no scandal-monger, be content to give you the romance and the tragedy
+in three snatches of verse begotten by the same.
+
+First, you must make what you like of--
+
+  "She kept him till mornin', then bade him begane,
+  And showed him the road that he might na be ta'en."
+
+
+Next, you have the news let loose, for--
+
+  "Word went to the kitchen
+  An' word went to the ha'."
+
+
+Finally, when my lord of the lady rides home from a far journey and
+hears that news, and meets her, he goes red, wud mad and--
+
+  "O bonnie, bonnie was her mouth
+    And cherry were her cheeks;
+  And cleir, cleir was her yellow hair
+    Whereon the reid blude dreips."
+
+
+There the Black Colonel had found a tangle which he could not cut
+through, and he sought a side-way out.  How he discovered it he was
+good enough to inform me, though I had no claim to his confidence, in
+an epistle drafted in his best style, which reached me at Corgarff,
+hard on the tidings of what had made the necessity for it.
+
+"To Captain Ian Gordon, for his privy knowledge only," it opened, and
+it continued, in his usual, even manner, for, mind you, he had the
+trick of writing, as well as the odd weakness towards it already
+remarked on, all of which appears in what follows, so:
+
+"It may oblige your calculations that I have a proposal through proper
+channels to go on a special mission to New France, where a state of war
+now exists between the British and the French.  Ordinarily I should
+have hesitated to take a step which would remove me, even for a time,
+from my most particular affairs here, these being familiar to you.
+
+"The offer is put to me, however, as part of earlier overtures in those
+same affairs, and that recommends it.  Moreover, there are urgent
+private reasons, not here to be gone into, but perhaps to be j'aloused
+by you, which favour an early change of air and scenery for yours
+dutifully.  Accordingly I am departing for North America by the first
+government ship on to which I can be smuggled, that, as I grimly note,
+being the elegant word used in a dispatch of instruction to my hand.
+
+"You cannot fail to be curious as to the nature of my mission, and I
+shall inform you thereon so far as its delicate nature permits.  I am
+offered by Government--your Government--a free pardon for the past and
+a captain's commission in Fraser's Regiment of Highlanders, now in
+Canada with General Wolfe, if I succeed in the undertaking which is
+this . . . but its delicacy tries my power of pen.
+
+"Briefly I, a proscribed Jacobite, am to depart from Scotland, find my
+way to Canada, and offer my sword and service to the Marquis Montcalm
+commanding his French Christian Majesty's troops for the defence of
+Quebec.  There I am to keep an open eye, and a close tongue, for all
+and every information of possible use to General Wolfe, and transmit
+the same to him personally, by what safe channels I can devise.  He is
+to be informed of my mission, and he alone, and that's all, though it
+may be enough for you to digest, as it has been, I beg you to believe,
+for me.
+
+"Will you, I pray, make my humble excuses to Mistress Marget Forbes and
+her mother, and accept them for yourself, and you may rely upon hearing
+from me oversea, because I have no intention to relinquish a shred of
+my attachment to my native Highlands and the well-being of the name I
+bear; whereof it is the purpose of this epistle to inform you, as
+between one man of honour and another."
+
+News indeed, intensely personal, therefore intensely interesting news,
+and I let it be known without delay at the Dower House, taking care, in
+delicacy, not to seem curious as to the impression it made there.
+Somewhat later I had intelligence of the actual sailing of the Black
+Colonel for New France, across the Atlantic, with his inseparable Red
+Murdo, whom, I was sure, the adventure would suit grandly, though he
+probably would not be told its secret meaning.
+
+Then came a long silence, and I began to wonder whether the Black
+Colonel had not, somewhere and somehow, been caught in the last kink of
+his pre-destined hair-rope.  While I wondered, off and on, in this
+sense, and our small world of Corgarff drifted uneventfully on, a
+much-worn, salt-sprayed letter reached me, and I recognized in it the
+Black Colonel's writing.
+
+What account had he to give of himself?
+
+
+
+
+_XV.--News from Somewhere_
+
+"Quebec," the Black Colonel had written above the first sheet of his
+letter and he had forgotten to put any date, so I was left to guess how
+long it had taken to reach me.  Nor did it bear any form of address to
+myself, but just began abruptly, "I do not suppose you will be
+specially glad to hear of me in this land of New France.  There was,
+however, an understanding that I should write you, and I am doing it by
+a sure and confidential messenger."  Then it went on as follows, for I
+transcribe it fully, as is needful for the conveyance of its atmosphere
+and even a certain quality of elegance natural to the writer:
+
+"No man is happy who has had disappointments like me, but, at least, I
+survive and am usefully occupied.  If I may say it, my not
+inconsiderable fame in our native Highlands had gone ahead of me to
+this country.  That made it easy to secure service in one of the French
+corps in Quebec, for I speak the language, as you know, with no undue
+stranger accent, and it always brings me gay memories of hours in Old
+France.
+
+"The regimental wages are not great, and they are not paid with exact
+punctuality, because there are too many empty hands waiting between his
+French Christian Majesty's coffers and his soldiers in Canada.  But
+that, to a man like myself who wants little of the so-called comforts
+of life, and has, moreover, other sources, is no great hardship, and
+there are comfortings, sometimes, in unexpected quarters.
+
+"The French, who know the art of romance, and how to spin it to the
+last drop without getting to the dregs, have already peopled this new
+land of theirs with colour, but I doubt me if it will last, which is
+their affair, not mine, or yours.  King Louis himself is indulgent to
+the human colouring of his dominion, in that he sends out shipments of
+wives from the Old Country for the French settlers.
+
+"Therefore they are called 'King's girls,' and being flowers of a
+kingdom which has bloomed rarely with women, they are in much demand.
+It is a joke, when a ship-load arrives, that the plumpest are married
+first, and this, I gather, for two reasons: Being less active, it is
+thought they will more readily stay at home, as honest married women
+should, and, being well covered--not fat, oh no! not that--that they
+will the better resist the icy cold of New France in the winter.  For
+myself they do not interest me, not on account of the reason which
+drove my late Count Frontenac here, he having in the Old Country a
+shrewish wife whose temper he could not bear, but because I have found
+attractions more to my taste, of which you shall know something.
+
+"I may admit, with some assurance, that my luck in the regard of the
+sweet sex, holds amid the altered conditions in which I find myself.
+Those French women have not the freshness, and I am certain not the
+innocence--you will admit me a judge on both counts--of my own
+country-women in the Scots Highlands.  But they have a wondrous charm,
+a quality of attractiveness which is as deadly to a Highlander as if a
+dirk slit his heart.  I speak, you may think, in poetry numbers, but
+you must do that, if, speaking of women, you would do them justice,
+and, incidentally, yourself.  We have all sorts and most conditions of
+women, and the trade in laces and ribbons and the gew-gaws with which
+they adorn themselves, is wonderful for so small a place as Quebec.  No
+sooner does a consignment of finery come in than it is snapped up, and
+the men, too, are admirable dandies, ruffling it, some of them, as if
+Louis Quatorze himself were here with his Court.
+
+"Now, only last night I was at the party of the Intendant Bigot, and a
+gay crowd we were until the small hours of the morning grew again.  His
+Excellency, the Marquis Montcalm, has the Frenchman's natural love for
+pleasure, but he is a serious, honest man who resolutely puts his duty
+before it.  Monsieur Vaudreuil is more the gentleman of pleasure, a
+governor with a large token of the gallant in him, but for chicane,
+knavery and devilry commend me to this fellow the Intendant Bigot.
+They say he grows richer every day by robbing his gracious master, the
+King, first, and the King's subjects next.  I cannot speak with
+authority of that, and it matters not, but I can tell you of what goes
+on at his chateau, the Chateau Bigot, because, as I write, I am
+scarcely cool from its doings.
+
+"There was Bigot himself as master of the revels, a short, stout,
+awkward man of more than middle-age, who did not well become the part.
+He is, I must add, coarse for my taste, and by his appearance you might
+judge him capable of any venture in the getting of money.  He would say
+in his cynical, loud way that the end justifies the means, and with him
+the end is Angélique des Meloises.  She is probably going to be the
+Delilah of New France, the woman who is shearing it of its upholding
+strength, but she is fine.
+
+"Ah, ha! the name of Angélique is fresh to you, has no meaning, and I
+see you halting and asking me to tell you more of her.  But here she is
+a household word--or, should it be, by-word?--and I, a stranger, am
+counted fortunate in having come close to the rustle of her skirt.
+That skirt, you can believe me, is in many fabrics, and ever of the
+best, and, though I cannot confirm it, the other women of Quebec say
+that no parcel of lace, or silk, or satin, freshly sent by Old France
+to New France, is free of being tampered with by Bigot in the
+pleasuring of his mistress.  Without that news in your ear, you would
+not, my friend, comprehend the Chateau Bigot.
+
+"Angélique was not the first flame with whom the old sinner has lit his
+fires in Canada, for there was Caroline, the Algonquin maid, not to
+mention others.  Bigot, the story goes, had been hunting and, be it
+conceded, he is, for a Frenchman, a sound shot, and had lost himself in
+the wilds.  Presently, while he pondered on his course, there appeared
+a fascinating Indian girl, and he made her guide him to his chateau and
+there kept her.  The woman pays in such affairs, be she white, brown,
+or black, all the complexions I have seen, and that Indian lass came to
+a sad end, being found stark one morning in bed, with a knife through
+her lissom body.
+
+"But that was Bigot of the Garden of Eden, the primitive savage of
+passion who would have his apple without having to eat the punishment,
+so far, anyhow, though, I suppose, the devil, who has seven-league
+boots when he likes, will overtake him.  If he were to do it now he
+would find him engrossed in the smiles and, maybe, the caresses of
+Angélique.  I have, myself, pretended to be some judge of woman-folk,
+and Angélique pleases me in divers manners.  That is an admission I
+would not mind making to herself, though, to be sure, I have found it
+the silent gallantry towards women which reaps most harvest.  She is,
+by marriage, Madame Pean, wife of a creature whom Bigot uses, and she
+is a note of lovely abandon which a man with half my insurgency would
+like to pluck an' he could.
+
+"We have been introduced, Madame Angélique and I, for here all goes by
+the most correct form on the surface.  We have even drunk from the same
+cup of wine, because she preferred me hers yester-night, saying, 'To
+our gallant recruit Monsieur Inverey, and to his gallant nation, les
+Ecossais.'  Ah, the laughing witch!  You should have seen the languor
+in her eyes, the blushing red of her lips, the delicate contour of her
+arm, as she raised her glass to me and then bade me empty it.
+
+"'Ah,' said I, bowing and taking it from her hand, against whose baby
+pinkness the champagne sparkled; 'ah, it is good to see, chère Madame,
+that you know the ceremony of the Loving Cup, and how, elegantly, to
+express it.'  My phrase of the Loving Cup took her, I saw, it and my
+significance in using it, and her dark eyes, her pouting lips, and the
+turn of her lovely head, all had a new meaning as, saying, 'To our Lady
+Venus, in New France,' I emptied the glass and set it on the table
+beside her.
+
+"We fell a-talking, Madame Angélique and I, and she was good enough to
+praise my French, and I said that, alas! it was not sufficient to do
+justice to her charms.  She flushed with pleasure, and said archly that
+she wished her husband, Monsieur Pean, or even her very good friend the
+Intendant, would pay her like compliments.  'But,' she added, 'you
+Scotsmen are so gallant and so truthful,' and in her sweet French the
+token rang true.  With it she raised her eyebrows, expecting me to
+confirm her raillery, which I did, for I said, 'Madame, truth is the
+only gallantry that tells twice, and so I am content to employ it, for
+I hope we are to be friends.'
+
+"It was a bold measure to take, but Madame Angélique, I judged, with
+her on-coming air, was precisely the woman who would respond to bold
+measures.  She is none of your woo-me-slowly ladies, her bosom, as it
+rose and fell in her French laces, being eloquent of that.  She is a
+singularly fine animal to whom Providence has, by an unusual
+generosity, given a soul, though mostly, maybe, it hides in the silken
+dalliance which is the note of Angélique.
+
+"You will perceive, my old friend and, I hope, old enemy, that I
+present to you a whole bouquet of charms: beauty of form, the radiance
+of a personality, and brains with an edge to flatter or flout.  Very
+rarely does Providence dower so many graces to one woman, but they are
+all in Madame Angélique.  Moreover, she has the subtlest of sex
+strategy, for in greeting me she made a stumble with her lace petticoat
+so that I might catch the daintiness of her foot and ankle.  She also
+has the swiftest, as well as the softest of glances, and I felt it
+travel from my brogues to my head, approving the journey, I fancied.
+
+"I have been particular about Madame Angélique because she is a woman
+in a thousand, this frail beauty of New France, its Madame de Pompadour
+in brilliance, however the comparison may hold in virtue, and because,
+if I prosper at all in the friendship, I hope to hear from her the
+inner news of events here which, by its usefulness to General Wolfe, is
+to lead me far in my home desires.  When I left Scotland I had a sore
+heart, for truly it fills that heart, but you will gather that I have
+found a fresh land which also has its milk and honey.
+
+"How much of them shall I sip?  That's the gamble, and time will tell,
+but it is a great gamble in which I am enlisted, and, by my faith, I
+like a gamble.  It stirs the blood in me, makes it run as it ran when I
+made love to my first sweetheart, and a strapping lass she was, though,
+alas! I have almost forgotten her very existence.  Poor Carrie!  I
+wonder, I wonder, but hi, ho! what use to ask of the flowers of
+yesterday, where are they?
+
+"Only, my dear Captain Gordon, I wish I could have taken you with me
+last evening to that romp at the Chateau Bigot.  Yes, I remember, your
+tastes are different from my own--less elastic, shall we say?--and you
+might not have come.  Well, set love and gambling and sport, all done
+with abandon, in a choice, beflowered fold of this New France country
+and you may realize what you have missed and I have seen.
+
+"Revelry!  That is not the word for the night, and it took all the
+seriousness in me to recall that I had other interests among the
+revellers besides theirs.  My elegance in our Highland dress, for to be
+sure I wore it, cost me many a temptation, and if Madame Angélique,
+late in the evening, had gone a minute longer with her whimsical
+measurings of my leg where it garters, why, sir, I should have made a
+fool of myself.  But she merely said she wanted to test whether I was
+not modelled to perfection for dancing the Highland dances, and
+wouldn't I oblige her and the company?
+
+"Monsieur Bigot, lolling in a chair, beslippered, be-hosed in the
+fatness of his limbs, be-waistcoated round his windy paunch, wearing
+velvet knee-breeches and a plum-coloured coat, what should he do, for
+his ears miss little, but catch this remark and, wishing, I suppose, to
+keep me from any further impressing of Madame Angélique, he cried,
+'Surely, surely, let us have a Scottish dance from our gallant friend,
+Comte Farquharfils!'
+
+"He ennobled me in one breath, and in the next made French of the
+ancient surname I bear, but that was of no consequence, and his cry was
+taken up instantly by his guests: 'Beautiful ladies and gallant
+gentlemen,' he went on, 'the Chevalier Ecossais--more ennobling of
+me!--will entertain us with a dance of his native country!'
+
+"For a moment I was abashed with confusion, yes, sir, believe it or
+not, because this was a thing which had not come into my plans.  But I
+have not lived for ten years by my wits and my sword without learning
+to make rapid resolutions, and I decided to dance, not alone!  The
+gallants and the ladies had now formed a circle, and I said very
+quietly, 'I am honoured, Monsieur L'Intendant, and your desire will be
+to me a pleasure, if Madame will permit.'
+
+"A glance of curious inquiry went round the circle as I looked at
+Madame Angélique, a radiant and bewitching picture, standing at the end
+of the room, eager to see the Scottish dance for which she had made
+measurements--yes, yes!  Perhaps some of the company had penetrated the
+real purpose of Monsieur Bigot's interference as being what I have
+said, and in that case they saw a challenge in my acceptance of his
+invitation.
+
+"But he was prompt to the occasion, for he said in his lordliest
+fashion, 'Madame, I am sure, will be happy to permit,' and he bowed to
+Angélique, who, in turn, bowed to me her gracious permission for a
+dance Eccosais.  Neither had counted on what was to happen, for I
+quietly walked over to her, invited her to take my arm, and, while
+every one wondered, led her into the middle of the room.  I did this
+amid a buzz of surprise, and I heard one gallant say, 'Parbleu, this
+Scotsman asked the lady's patronage and takes herself.'  Neatly put, I
+thought, and the French mind is neat, as well as swift.
+
+"The music struck up as I passed my right hand about the responding
+waist of Madame and lifted her elegance through a Highland round-dance.
+There was no need to lift her through it a second time, because the god
+of dancing was in that woman's feet, and between us we fairly wove
+poetry on the polished floor.  Never, after the first moment, was there
+such a partner as Angélique; never, perhaps, if I may be allowed the
+conceit, such a pair of partners, a picture, my friend, a picture!
+
+"As we warmed to the dance we lost all sense of an audience, and only
+drank the intoxication of the music.  At first there had been a cold
+silence around us, but we infected it with our own sultry spirit and
+melted it.  'Bravo!' shouted the Frenchmen, and 'Divine!' said the
+ladies, and I took the praise of the women and Madame Angélique the
+praise of the men, a fair division, pleasing to us both.
+
+"Monsieur Bigot alone remained aloof from praise, and as we turned once
+very close to him--so close that he wilted in the hot draught made by
+our wrapt figures--I saw a hard look come into his eyes and a hard
+expression cross his coarse mouth.  When we finished at last and I had
+conducted Madame Angélique to a chair and thanked her, a huzza rang to
+the roof, but the Intendant took no part in it.  He did, however,
+approach me with what others thought to be words of congratulation,
+only you shall judge when I repeat them.
+
+"'You dance like the devil himself,' were his words, 'but you had
+better not dance again with Madame Angélique or you may find yourself
+in the devil's company.  We have other uses in Quebec for you than
+this, and your native Scottish wisdom will convince you of it without
+more ado.'
+
+"Well, the thing was done, the harm or good of it, for one cannot
+always act with deliberation, and never, I should say, when Madame
+Angélique beckons, for she is a witch incarnate.  Rarely is it any use
+revising what has been done, and, frankly, I would not have missed that
+dance even if it were to have cost me my head.  At the moment I am not
+sure whether or not it has cost me my heart; temporarily, shall I say,
+keeping on the safe side of truth?
+
+"Anyhow, my dear Captain Ian Gordon, you will be made aware by these
+greetings, should they reach you in the goodness of time, and the
+friend who carries them, that I am having an experience which agrees
+with me, and so I sign myself with the more heartiness,
+
+"Your very faithful
+  "JOCK FARQUHARSON OF INVEREY."
+
+
+
+
+_XVI--The Wooin' O't!_
+
+There are two kinds of people who make a difference in our lives when
+they leave us: those we like and who like us, and those we do not like
+and who dislike us, for that is one way in which the world wags.
+
+We feel, in the first case, a quick sadness, we dwell on happy
+memories, now tinted to a soft melancholy, and we ask ourselves, "Have
+we been all to them we could have been, and they the most to us?"
+
+Our feeling in the second case is one of relief, coupled with the
+passing of an influence which, if not sympathetic, may yet have been a
+stimulus to us.  Something that has been roused in our nature, goes
+back into its hidden place with the cause which unhappily called it
+out, rivalry, perhaps.  It is a whip that may carry you to the top of a
+hill when otherwise, tempted by a warm sun and a soft wind, you might
+recline on a half-way bank of heather.  Ah! it is good to day-dream at
+the sun, our Highland sun, which plays hide-and-seek with the sailing
+clouds.
+
+But, may be, the incomplete parting is the best, that which has many
+things unsaid, silences which are not silent; because it leaves room
+for the imagination, lets us gild the picture in the roses of hope.
+
+The going of the Black Colonel had meant a difference for myself
+certainly, and also, I could suppose, for Marget and her mother.  But
+it was a mixture of the two feelings which I have suggested, because,
+in a fashion, I had a regard for the man, as well as something else,
+and to the ladies of the Dower House he was both the kinsman and the
+venturer who wanted to be more.  I admired his manly qualities and was
+willing to clothe the others in a veil, as long as he did not make that
+impossible.  They had the bond of family with him, a quiet pride in his
+championage of the Stuart side, which had been theirs, and, well, they
+wished no more of him.  But what, perhaps, we mostly felt, Marget and
+I, without daring for a moment to confess as much, was that some
+element which kept us apart, and might, unhappily, even divide us, had
+passed across the sea to the New World with the Black Colonel.
+
+We began unconsciously, and then, I suspect, noticeably, to grow
+closer, to live the vital little things of life nearer to each other,
+as it this were natural.  That, perhaps, is the most critical period in
+the mating of two young people, as you may learn from the delicate
+nurturing of Mother Nature herself in the spring-time, when the earth
+grows warm.  They are so in the thrill of emotion, that they have no
+thought for the building of the permanent house of the spirit in which
+they are to dwell.  But it goes forward about them and otherwise the
+prospect would be bleak for them, sad for them, and sadness should not
+come to lovers in the honeymoon of their hopes.
+
+"I suppose," Marget said to me one evening while we chatted in the
+Dower House and her mother, tempted by the long summer light of the
+north, read in the garden, "I suppose you really have nothing to do now
+that the Black Colonel is gone, and his disturbance--for you--with him."
+
+"Oh," answered I, "there are still things to do, things, some of them,
+which I don't like, as my military superiors down there in Aberdeen
+town may be suspecting, for only last week, you know, they sent up a
+troop of horse to make a special search of Corgarff for any hidden
+Jacobite powder and shot.  What happened you also know.  Our friends of
+your Stuart faith heard of this expedition long before it arrived,
+filled their knapsacks with bannocks, and went to the hills.  The
+troopers came, found, by persistent search in deserted homes, a few
+barrels of Spanish powder, some hundreds of bullets and a broken
+cannon, and threw them all into the Water of Don.  It was not very
+exciting, especially to me, because it was a kind of censure; but
+nothing worse happened than the breaking of a drunken trooper's neck,
+by a fall from his horse.  Here was one more way of death, not a pretty
+way, for the man's commanding officer said jocosely, 'The idiot, he
+must have come upon bad drink in his searches, and a bad woman is less
+dangerous.'"
+
+"Your statement," said Marget, "is, I see, a confidential apology to me
+for the ongoings of those set over us and you!  I hope you don't spend
+too many hours in reflections as unprofitable as the subject of these,"
+and she made, with this advice, to be a very serious young woman.
+
+"What," I asked, "would you have me do with my spare time?"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know."
+
+"Well, if you don't, who does?"
+
+"I think I see a compliment in what you say, but I'm not quite sure."
+
+"It's against rules, isn't it, to repeat a compliment?  It would be no
+compliment then."
+
+"The more need to make it clear at first."
+
+"I thought I had."
+
+"Men think such a lot of things which are too unsubtle, too clumsy, for
+a woman to comprehend.  Yes, it is so."
+
+"Men--myself--the Black Colonel?"
+
+"He is far away; why bring him back?"
+
+"Only because it may concern you, and anything which concerns you . . .
+is not to be spoken."
+
+"It is more interesting to speculate on what might have happened if he
+had stayed, instead of running from his guns--no, I mean to his guns,
+for he was no coward.  Discount a good deal from him and he remains a
+taking man.  It flatters any woman to be coveted by a man of parts,
+good or bad.  She likes the homage thus implied, and if she did not she
+would be no woman.  She says to herself, 'What a pity that man should
+be in love with me because I would not have him at all.'  With her next
+breath she says, 'A resolute lover, something like a lover, a great
+lover.'"
+
+"The unconventional lover--and more," said I; "that's it, all down
+time, the primitive trait of sex, he who can lift a woman out of her
+groove into a surprise."
+
+"Well," said Marget, "the Black Colonel has the right blood for an
+unconventional lover.  You cannot make a Farquharson respectable by
+force, and I'm not sure about the Gordons!"
+
+She looked at me with amusement in one eye and the rebel woman in the
+other and I laughed, and that was all.  No; not all.
+
+Such talks between Marget and myself may have seemed to lead nowhere,
+but actually they did.  The unspoken side of them was full of those
+secrets which cannot be put into language, because they would perish in
+the effort.  What is spoken may be good, but what is unspoken in love
+is still better.  Behind the word, there hides the speech of the soul.
+You say one thing, and with the eye mean another, or you say it in a
+fashion only intelligible to a particular person.  There is a
+telegraphy of souls, as well as of hearts and minds, and the lesson is
+never to believe your ears.
+
+Things came to be understood between myself and Marget, and the Black
+Colonel had a part in this, far away as he had taken himself and his
+troubles.  He was not out of the picture, because he might return to
+it, but we could paint him in or out as we liked, and that left us
+canvas room.  One day he was returning to set us all by the heels
+again; another day he was gone, to return no more, leaving us to
+fashion our own lives, as we were doing.
+
+"Marget," I asked, "suppose the Colonel comes back, is he to find us
+just as he left us?"
+
+"Not very friendly--or more friendly?" she replied vaguely, teasingly.
+And then a little anxiously, as I thought, "Did you and the Black
+Colonel make any bargain about our old Forbes property which need ever
+call him back?"
+
+"Dear me, no!  But if it would give you pleasure to see him again soon,
+why, let us pray for his coming."
+
+Marget was hurt at this, for she said, "I was only wondering whether
+the Black Colonel will renew the quest here, if he does not reach his
+ends through the New France venture."
+
+That question was to be answered by a last long epistle from him, which
+came to me about this time, and which tells his further part in our
+story, a wandering story, like Jock Farquharson.
+
+
+
+
+_XVII---A Song of Other Shores_
+
+"Quebec, North America.
+
+My Worthy Kinsman,
+
+"You have not written me in reply to a previous letter of mine, nor did
+I expect you would, but I hope you have not lost all interest in my
+fortunes, and I make sure that the great events which have happened
+here, in New France, must interest you, when told with some
+particularity by me.
+
+"You will be well aware, before this reaches you, that the
+_fleur-de-lys_ of his Christian Majesty, King Louis, no longer flies
+over the citadel of Quebec, and that in its place there blows the flag
+of His Britannic Majesty--whom God bless, I suppose!  But of how all
+this happened you will only have general intelligence, and none about
+my own fortunate part in it.
+
+"Well, it was not mere fortune, because I did exert myself strenuously
+to discharge the mission confided to me, and General Wolfe said
+privily, before he marched to a glorious victory and a glorious death,
+that I had succeeded beyond his expectation.  But I should tell you
+that I had necessary audiences of him more than once, while I served
+with the French in Quebec, and these we managed with perfect secrecy,
+thanks to methods which I may not disclose, except that the high esteem
+felt by the French for the Black Colonel, and their faith in his
+honour, alone made them possible.
+
+"Saying so much of General Wolfe, I wish to set down my own monument to
+his evident high parts as a soldier and a man.  I found him modest in
+demeanour, graceful of manner, reasonable in attitude, altogether a
+gallant gentleman.  He was simple and to the point, and when he had
+finished with you he dispatched you courteously, pleased with him and
+with yourself.
+
+"His excellency, the Marquis Montcalm, who also did me the honour of
+various conversations, and who likewise fell gloriously, had qualities
+not dissimilar.  He was a French gentleman with the grand manner,
+meaning he carried his air so quietly that you hardly knew its
+presence, except by feeling it.  I will further say, in token to his
+attributes, that he was of a moral stature in whose presence I felt
+ashamed of my secret trade, a trade which a man can only follow once in
+a life time, and then because he must.
+
+"Perhaps you will scarce believe that several times my tongue was
+bubbling to deliver all to his knowledge, and to throw myself on his
+mercy.  His very trustfulness made that impossible, because in each of
+us there is a natural refusal to destroy confidence, wherever we find
+it.  That would be uprooting a plant which does not grow strongly
+enough anywhere, and I, for one, love to cultivate it.  'So, so,' I
+hear you say, my friend!
+
+"Certainly at times I wished that my Lord Montcalm would treat me with
+less consideration and not ask me questions about the British invading
+forces, because I gathered information from those questions, and, in
+truth, here was the basis of much I imparted to General Wolfe.  He
+asked, did Monsieur Montcalm, in some detail, about the Highlanders of
+Fraser's Regiment, and said that, far away as he had seen them from the
+ramparts, they appeared so picturesque in their tartans as to be hardly
+associable with the even, undeviating, outward English character.
+
+"I answered that there were greater similarities between the
+Highlanders of Scotland and the French than between those same
+Highlanders and the English, both having Celtic blood in them, and that
+this resulted in a natural brotherhood which even the hazards of war
+could not disturb, or only temporarily.  Nay, I said once to his
+excellency that we Jacobites still look more over the water to France
+and to our Stuart King than we look, or ever may look, over the
+Scottish border to England.
+
+"You will mark how I sprawl between my native land and this New France,
+as it was termed until the other month.  A man's heart can be in many
+places, a woman's only in one, and my affections, I confess, have
+mostly been a divided allegiance.  They have gone out and come home
+again, and now, thanks to my prosperity here, they have a tendency to
+abide where my epistle finds me.  For there is grateful comfort in
+Quebec, and a freshness glad to experience, and the society remains
+merry, though the _fleur-de-lys_ has perished for ever.  All the French
+women here in Quebec did not see, in its changed governors, a burial
+for the living, and some of them said, 'It is destiny; let us make the
+best of things.'
+
+"But I anticipate events, and that would be to miss their drama and my
+own little share in them, a share with which, in the result, I am
+satisfied, although I could sincerely have wished the ways and means to
+be more aboveboard.  However, you cannot remain the complete gentleman
+and make history, and my justification lies in this signal fact: that I
+inspired and counselled General Wolfe to his scaling of the cliffs at
+the one place where that was possible, a matter on which I beg you will
+see that right credit and justice be done towards Jock Farquharson of
+Inverey, commonly called the Black Colonel.  He and I alone knew
+beforehand where exactly the escalade was to be, and it was a singular
+joy to share a large, potential secret with another able to make it
+good, as General Wolfe most handsomely did, though, once being shown
+how, no great difficulty remained.
+
+"When, in the hurry of Quebec that fated morning, I heard Fraser's
+Highlanders had climbed the cliffs, swinging from foothold to foothold
+like the wild cats of their native mountains, I said to myself, 'This
+is, indeed, my venture, and it is fitting my own people should carry it
+out.'  But how odd it is that two Highland threads should come together
+in such a fashion, only we Celts have been destined to weave many of
+the red warps of story.  I had knowledge of the part my kinsmen were to
+play in the bloody gamble between General Wolfe and the Marquis
+Montcalm, and, without desiring to appear on the field of battle, which
+was no part of my diplomacy and not hard, with my privileges from the
+French, to avoid, I sought an elevation where I could behold the kilted
+Frasers drawn up in battle array.
+
+"My certes, they made a brave picture, with the sun shining on the
+colours of their kilts and the cool Canadian breeze waving them as in a
+rhythm of martial motion.  Ah! the heart aye warms to the tartan, and I
+could have given my soul, if it be left me, which I must hope, to stand
+in front of that red and green line, an officer of the Fraser's, as I
+have now become, by virtue of the successful completion of my contract.
+They awaited orders with impatience, for the headlong charge has ever
+been the natural form of battle with Highlanders, only the appearance
+of General Wolfe, fearlessly wearing a new, conspicuous uniform, and
+the entire confidence of his step forward and backward while history
+boiled in the pot, held them in like a rein.
+
+"It was the French who joined battle first, making some confusion among
+themselves as they did so, because their several units fired
+differently.  This wasted and scattered their salvoes, but they
+advanced gallantly to within forty yards of the British lines.  Then
+General Wolfe ordered 'Fire!' and before its solid stroke the French
+reeled like trees stricken by lightning.  Swiftly, then, the
+Highlanders leapt forward with bayonets gleaming, and in what I say of
+them--my own people--I say of the British army as a whole: it caught
+the French before they could reform, and thus the issue was already
+decided.
+
+"Now here was a change on the message, my Comte Frontenac, in earlier
+years, returned to a British admiral who demanded his surrender.  'The
+only answer,' he swore, 'I will give will be from the mouth of my
+cannon and musketry, that he may learn that it is not in such a style
+that a man of my rank may be summoned.'  It was a change, too, from the
+ill-success of General Wolfe's assault on Montmorency, over beside the
+little river falling into the big one, where the very elements were
+unfavourable.
+
+"Montcalm won then, very fairly won, for his fire upon the British was
+of a nature which none could overcome.  Monsieur Vaudreuil, the
+Governor, who, like the Intendant Bigot, had an eternal desire to reap
+where he had not sown, was so patronizing as to say after the
+Montmorency fight, 'I have no more anxiety about Quebec.  Monsieur
+Wolfe, I am sure, will make no progress.'  'La, la,' as Madame
+Angélique would say when she teases me, what a poor prophet was his
+excellency Vaudreuil, but, indeed, prophecy has a trick of falling into
+incapable hands and I, being, I trust, capable, have rarely tried it.
+
+"You needed my broad account of events in Quebec to do me justice, and
+that is why I have lingered over it.  I have given you hints enough for
+the proper fitting of me into those events, as when, most casually, I
+hope, I mentioned my advising of General Wolfe precisely where to make
+his ascent to the Plains of Abraham.  However, there are small personal
+items you cannot know, without they are told you, and very chiefly that
+refers to the ingenuity with which, my mission, as compacted, being
+done, I passed from the ranks of the vanquished French to those of the
+conquering British, where I had been expected.
+
+"There was such confusion everywhere, such a tearing up of things, that
+I could do what I wished, and have it go unchallenged.  Moreover, there
+was a want of bitterness between the contending parties, for one
+reason, possibly, because the deaths of Wolfe and Montcalm had softened
+enmity: and nobody has yet hurled the words 'traitor,' 'spy,' at me,
+and I feel I am not truly open to them, my task having been that of an
+intelligence officer on the highest scale.  As much is recognized in
+the affability which I have continued to find among the French since
+the close of the siege, but they are by nature surprisingly agreeable,
+as I would wish, with my heart to subscribe.
+
+"Why, man, and this will make you curious, if envy there be in you,
+young French ladies take pains and pleasure to teach British officers
+French, with what view I know not, if it be not to hear themselves
+praised, flattered and courted, without loss of time.  To praise comes
+natural to me, to flatter is not amiss, and, as to courting, I judge
+you have always appreciated that in me.  You may have doubted me in
+some respects; you had no doubts I fancy, in that particular.
+
+"This quality of mine--I claim it a quality--has made me take, with
+growing kindness, to where I am, and the idea of coming home again,
+when it arises in my mind, I rather put aside.  My natural dream is
+that I shall return, but mostly I am content to play with the fancy, to
+catch it up, put it aside, and again catch it up, and once more let it
+rest.
+
+"There I am backed by the circumstance that I have no tidings whatever
+touching my plans, as declared to you, in regard to Corgarff, and I
+suppose that your thankless rulers have forgotten me.  They were
+willing to use me as a pacifier, and when that did not promise an
+immediate result they found me of use in the war of New France.  This
+service being completed, faithfully, honourably, I dare aver, and to
+the very letter of the bargain, I am, I repeat, for much I repeat,
+given my commission in Fraser's Highlanders.  But, of a settlement in
+the larger spirit which the inclusion of Corgarff would have implied, I
+have no intelligence, and it is conceivable that I may get none.
+
+"Therefore I may remain at Quebec with the Fraser Highlanders so long
+as they continue here, and, when they go hence, still remain as an
+independent gentleman, provided I were, by happy chance, shall I say?
+to find genial companionship.  I am not old, not of the sort ever to
+grow actually old, but the excursions of life have wearied me, and I
+begin to sigh for a permanent holding ground, the anchorage of rest
+which should come to us all.
+
+"That desire, if I may make you a great confidence, would satisfy
+itself in a woman of the qualities of Mistress Marget Forbes.  I do no
+more than quote her because she is known to us both, and therefore she
+makes clear the exact shade of my meaning.  But I imply no freedom with
+her name, except what the honouring of it carries, and if any man
+implied anything more she would know how to answer him.  She has, I
+will say, the tang of the Forbes blood full in her, and I have always
+thought it warmer in its flow of both love and pride than the Gordon
+blood, although of that you should be a better judge than I am.
+
+"One needs a wife of parts if one is, as I hope, to found a new clan in
+a new country, for, mind you, many of the Fraser Highlanders, when they
+end their period of enrolment, will prefer to settle in this lush,
+virgin country where the days go by like a dream.  They will sit down
+on the untilled lands, and out of them find a competence of food and
+raiment, and they will marry French women who are buxom and healthy and
+will be good wives and mothers.
+
+"Granted all this, and it follows that there will be materials for a
+new house of Inverey in some valley by the River Saint Lawrence, where
+the Red Man at present reigns in indolence.  He who can sit on a knoll
+for an hour and let old Mother Earth spin her tune to the fathering
+sun, is ever a friend of mine.  But the Red Man carries the pastime
+beyond me, unless when he is on the warpath, and then he is a devil.
+It would give me no compunction to reign with a hundred or more Fraser
+Highlanders, in a strath from which the Red Man has to be persuaded
+away, or driven by force.  Perhaps I could even hold out a helping
+invitation to smaller 'broken men' still in the Aberdeenshire Highlands
+or elsewhere in dear Scotland, and that would please my self-importance.
+
+"I renounce nothing, give up no legitimate claim that I have put
+forward for hand or land in our native country, but I see that I am
+come to leaving them unclaimed.  Madame Angélique, to whom, mayhap, I
+have confided those consolations and aspirations, and who has a comely
+sense as well as comely looks, says very properly that changed
+circumstances carry other changes, and that even a Highland gentleman
+may recognize as much without loss of self-respect.
+
+"Madame has, in the crash which sank Bigot's fortunes, come to plain
+faring, but I have made no difference in my friendship to her, and she,
+I feel, has increased hers towards me.  She tells me she has no clamant
+ties left in Old France, any more than in New France, where the lustre
+of her powerful French friends has set, and my heart goes out to her in
+sympathy, and, I know not what more, except that she is a very fine
+woman and would adorn the home of. . . .  Why give a name?
+
+"You must make what you can of this scattered epistle and read it into
+my future because you may not hear from me again, or, if you do, only
+briefly in unlikelihoods.  I am no practised writer, though I might
+have acquired the trade, and it is only out of a felt duty, combined
+with a personal regard of some durability, that I have set down, for
+you, those epistles of my doings far across the sea.  Farewell, if it
+be farewell, and to Mistress Marget Forbes the like salutation, if she
+will accept it, as I am sure she will, when presented through you; and
+similarly to Madame Forbes, her mother, my humble duty.
+
+"Always your well-wisher,
+  "JOCK FARQUHARSON, late of Inverey."
+
+
+
+
+_XVIII--My Garden of Content_
+
+  "Said Edom o' Gordon to his men
+  We maun draw to a close."
+
+
+That close, whether to a love story or a life, should come in the
+quiet, natural way which Providence orders, unexpectedly almost, not in
+tumult and trappings.
+
+I am of a family which has been accustomed to storm through the world,
+sometimes with all the world could give, at other times with mighty
+little.  This element has got into our blood, become, you might say, a
+habit, and often, myself, I have felt its prickings.  After all, it
+must be a finely insurgent thing to drive to the devil in a golden
+carriage built for two, or more; and the Gordons have never been
+accustomed to count their guests, so long as they made good company.
+
+Then I had grown up at a time in our Highlands when the kettle of
+history was about to boil over, scalding a great many people in the
+process.  The fiery cross of war carried its message from one valley to
+another and left its embers on new graves wherever it went.
+
+You are asking what this excursion in deep waters has to do with Marget
+and myself and the Black Colonel, Jock Farquharson.  It has everything
+to do with us, because it is the lamp of the road along which we
+journeyed.  Anybody can count turnings in a path, but it is harder to
+catch the other-world glow which sees us past them to our desired haven.
+
+We were in sight of it, and, although we said little, I knew that we
+both rejoiced exceedingly over the news which the Black Colonel sent in
+his last letter.  When we met I looked at Marget as much as to ask,
+"Shall I say it?"  And she looked at me answering, "No, you need not,
+because I understand."
+
+It is a curious state this which, at some time or other, exists between
+two loving people cast for each other's welfaring.  A delicate mystery
+lies in it, and that is an essential strand in every true affection,
+but it can readily be destroyed.  Break it rudely, even shock it a
+little, and a chasm may yawn where, before, there was a silken thread
+of union, tender in its fibre, but beautifully elastic.
+
+You may exclaim, when you read these confidences and remember others to
+which I have confessed, that I was not so awkward a lover as I
+sometimes appeared to be.  No, I was not awkward in thought, but I
+could be, I know full well, very awkward in its expression as deeds.
+Often I would go wrong in form, rarely in feeling, if you can assume a
+man built on those colliding lines.
+
+Marget has told me, in raillery, that she was more than once tempted to
+give me "a good shaking," as the woman's saying goes.  It was not,
+perhaps, that she expected to shake much out of me, or to shake me out
+of myself, but that she would herself have been relieved by the
+exercise, for women, you see, are like that.
+
+My reflection has to do with a day when we spoke of it as settled that
+the Black Colonel would never come back, that the whole episode which
+he represented was over, and that an open road, undisturbed surely by
+any more surprises and alarms, lay before us.  How could I forget the
+scene, for it was to open out our true life, our deep, full love.
+
+She looked at me as much as to ask had I been planning a stratagem, I
+the unsophisticated, which I had not.  She looked again, and I saw she
+knew, that at long length, we were face to face with the soft realities
+which, hitherto, had remained dumb, or only whispered.  I waited to
+take her in my arms, and she told me later her instinct expected me to
+do it, and I didn't.  What poor fools men may be, to miss so much, and
+to place a good woman in the position of having her consent rebuffed,
+for that is to outrage her sex-respect.
+
+I seem to remember that Marget turned her head away in despair with me,
+only she pretended to be watching the sun and the clouds as they dipped
+the hills in light and shadow.  This threw her face into profile, and I
+thought I had never seen it quite so beautiful.  There was an expectant
+vibrancy in it, from the fair forehead to the dimpled chin, but its
+flower of expression was in the flowing eye, the ripe mouth, and the
+tremulous lips.
+
+"A wonderful scene," she said, her look lost in the river and the
+hills; "a scene which makes one think in parables, as the old men of
+Scriptures did."
+
+"Parables," I replied, remembering, as I saw she did, "are very
+unuseful."
+
+"Why do you say that?" she asked gently, still looking at the dance of
+sunlight and shadow upon the heather and the water.
+
+"Oh, because they are," I said absurdly enough.
+
+"That's a woman's reason," she observed, "and it should be left to a
+woman.  Have you nothing more original to say?"
+
+"Well, if I were to tell you a parable, a parable of my own, as you
+once told me one of yours, what would happen?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," she laughed, "but why trouble about what may
+happen?  A little risk gives a spice to life, and, anyhow, it can
+mostly be run away from at the last moment!"
+
+"Then," said I, fairly and warmly hit by that, "it is the parable of a
+maid and a man, the old, old story, in a new setting.  They met under
+cross circumstances, when things around them were difficult and their
+families took separate sides in politics and war.  But if it had not
+been those very troubles they might never have met, or, what is even
+worse, have met too late, as maids and men often do.  Perhaps trouble,
+because it brought them together in sympathy, also began to bring them
+together in heart, that being one road to affection.  Love at first
+sight?  Yes, for a winning face, an elegant figure, a silvery voice, or
+even a shapely foot.  But that, surely, is the stuff of passion which
+may bloom in the morning and fade at night, not love the enduring as, I
+promise you, in my parable."
+
+Marget nodded her head, unconsciously, as if some far voice were
+calling to her from the spreading country of red heath and green
+fir-trees, of dancing sunshine and rippling stream, that lay beneath
+us.  She did not speak, and I went on:
+
+"You do not in parables say much of people, and never by name, but I
+must tell you of my maid, the man, and of the other man who came
+between them--nearly!  She was all simple charm, yet also of pulsing
+womanliness, the healthy product of a country life, a fair survival of
+many ordeals.  Deep in her nature was that intense power of feeling
+which belongs to complete womanhood, as music belongs to an ancient
+fiddle.  There were strings so sweet and subtle, so strange and strong,
+that she herself feared to play on them, and when the man appeared she
+greeted him as a friend, nothing more."
+
+Marget waited as I paused, for when one's heart is in one's mouth words
+are hard to find, and I am not much in command of them at any time.
+
+"The man," I resumed, "what shall I say of him, for he had no personal
+history.  He had an old name, however, which he hoped not to sully, and
+he bent himself quietly to duty, as, crookedly and undesirably, it came
+his way.  He found no call to do great things of the world, but rather
+to straighten out the small things of a wee corner of it, and there to
+keep the peace.  The maid just came into his life, and he, in his plain
+way, thanked Providence and held his tongue, except when secrets would
+half slip out and tell-tale acts come about."
+
+Marget made no sign as to whether or not she recognized the portrait,
+and thus I was brought up abruptly against the other man of our parable.
+
+"He," I said, "had all the ruder qualities admired by women, those of
+manliness, which good women may like, and the others which the other
+women secretly like.  It was not difficult to see him, both as a hero
+and as a villain, and either way the pull of romance lay about him.  He
+had particular ambitions which brought him between the maid and the
+first man, and there was, thanks to certain elements in human ties and
+high affairs, a strong influence favourable to those ambitions.  But,
+as chance or Providence would have it, he was translated to another
+land, and there he found such comfort and companionship that he decided
+to stay.  This left the maid and the man who feared too much, free to
+be to each other what they desired; and there ends my parable."
+
+"But," asked Marget with unsteady words which betrayed her agitation,
+"where is its moral?  A parable must have a moral."
+
+"Has it none?" I boldly asked her, taking her hand in mine, before she
+or I knew it, and kissing it and then her rosy, rebellious lips.
+
+By-and-by she looked at me through wet eye-lashes and asked, "Shall I
+tell you a parable which had a moral, though maybe it has lost it," and
+her tears laughed.
+
+"Do," I said; "I can stand the moral now, whatever it may be."
+
+"It should be a severe moral for you," she whispered, "because you have
+been so foolish, so little understanding with me, yet I'll try and make
+it light.  It also concerns a maiden and two men, but she only cared
+for one of the men, never at all for the other.  Nor would all the
+family interests in the world have made her marry the other.  The real
+man, well, he seemed not to know that there is a precipice of
+influences, of circumstances, for every woman, over which she may be
+let slip by his hesitation; and this without possibility of return,
+for, even if she could return, her sex pride would not let her."
+
+"Ah," I whispered, "and the moral?"
+
+"That you deserved to lose me; and that it would have broken my heart
+if you had."
+
+We sat very close, hand in hand, mind in mind, heart in heart, and
+watched the sun go down behind the silent hills of our beloved
+Corgarff, both of us silent, like them.
+
+Years have gone by since then, and they have proved to us how sure a
+conduct is the heart alike to happiness, and, though it matters less,
+to prosperity.  March where the tune of its soft beating calls, and you
+are blessed.  Traffic with it, and you miss the real lift of life, that
+which makes life good, whatever betides.
+
+Marget and I had learned this in the school of sweet-hearting, and now
+we knew it in the joy of confiding words.  Nothing else mattered,
+because it mattered all, but when the inner world is well the outer
+world responds to it in kind.  The private happiness which we had won
+made a larger good fortune for us without, or at all events, we saw the
+morning radiance, not the morning mists.
+
+Our poor ruined Highlands still lay under their covering of sorrow, as
+grass grows indifferently upon a grave.  But they were mending, even
+while they suffered, for they had spirit in them.  Virile men and
+womanly women do not cry all the time, but give thanks to God for his
+mercies and go forward.
+
+It was my fortunate destiny to be helpful beyond myself at Corgarff,
+and I will tell you how.  When gossip of a purpose of marriage between
+Ian Gordon and Marget Forbes reached high quarters, friends in the two
+political camps got to work on our behalf.  The outcome was that before
+Marget Forbes became Marget Forbes, or Gordon, as the Scots legal form
+has it, the lands which were her peoples had been returned to her, a
+sort of wedding gift.
+
+Good and bad news like not to travel alone, and what must a kinsman of
+my own, an aged bachelor Gordon, do, but say that instead of waiting
+for his estate until he was dead, and his will read, I should come into
+it and its perquisites at once, if only because there must be acre for
+acre exchanged, as between a Gordon and a Forbes.  Thus our heart's
+house of joy was dowered with worldly goods, though I should, in
+justice especially to Marget, add that we laid no stress on that, apart
+from the usefulness towards others which it carried.
+
+At such usefulness, I can fairly say, we laboured whole-heartedly from
+the hour when we took each other for better, and never a minute for
+worse, in the Castle of Corgarff, with Marget's mother saying,
+"Children, you have all my poor old heart, to keep the fire of your
+young hearts warm."
+
+She was a gracious lady, and she dwelt with us until we bore her to the
+little churchyard on the hill-side, where there is a clump of trees to
+break the cold sough of the winds into a lullaby.  By that time another
+Marget, beautiful of face like the Forbeses, lithe of limb like the
+Gordons--we never could agree whom she most resembled!--had been given
+to us.  She was our guerdon of the reverent gospel of home, which is
+the high altar of this world, the source and sanctuary of our
+well-being as men and women.
+
+We have tried to live up to that ideal, and none can do more, unless,
+indeed, it be to seek the perfect heights of the Sermon on the Mount
+itself.  It is good to look upward there, even if one cannot hope to
+reach the golden peaks of that world without an end--Amen!
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Colonel, by James Milne
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