unexpectedly. It was so, at least, with myself. As to Miss Irma I cannot
say, and, of course, Agnes Anne does not count, for she sat back in the
shelter of a great cupboard, well out of range of "King George," and
went on with her knitting till she fell asleep.

However, Miss Irma and I sat together in the jutting window, where, as
the night darkened and the curtains of the clouds drew down to meet the
sombre tree-tops, a kind of black despair came over me. Would "King
George" really do any good? Would I prove myself stout and brave when
the moment came? Would the beacon we had prepared really burn, and,
supposing it did, would any one see it, drowned in woods as we were, and
far from all folk, except the peaceable villagers of Eden Valley?

But I had the grace to keep such thoughts to myself, and if they visited
Miss Irma, she did the like. The crying of the owls made the place of a
strange eeriness, especially sometimes when a bat or other night
creature would come and cling a moment under the leaden pent of the
window.

Such things as these, together with the strain of the waiting on the
unknown, drew us insensibly together--I do not mean Agnes Anne--but just
the two of us who were shut off apart in the window-seat. No, whatever
her faults and shortcomings (too many of them recorded in this book),
Agnes Anne acted the part of a good sister to me that night, and her
peaceful breathing seemed to wall us off from the world.

"Duncan?" queried Miss Irma, repeating my name softly as to herself;
"you are called Duncan, are you not?"

I nodded. "And you?" I asked, though of course I knew well enough.

"Irma Sobieski," she answered. And then, perhaps because everything
inside and out was so still and lonely, she shivered a little, and,
without any reason at all, we moved nearer to each other on the
window-seat--ever so little, but still nearer.

"You may call me Irma, if you like!" she said, very low, after a long
pause.

Just then something brushed the window, going by with a soft _woof_ of
feathers.

"An owl! A big white one--I saw him!" I said. For indeed the bird had
seemed as large as a goose, and appeared alarming enough to people so
strung as we were, with ears and eyes grown almost intolerably acute in
the effort of watching.

"Are you not frightened?" she demanded.

"No, Irma--no, Miss Irma!" I faltered.

"Well, I am," she whispered; "I was not before when the mob came,
because I had to do everything. But now--I am glad that you are here"
(she paused the space of a breath), "you and your sister."

I was glad, too, though not particularly about Agnes Anne.

"How old are you, Duncan?" she asked next.

I gave my age with the usual one year's majoration. It was not a lie,
for my birthday had been the day before. Still, it made Irma thoughtful.

"I did not think you were so much older than your sister," she said
musingly; "why, you are older than I am!"

"Of course I am," I answered, gallantly facing the danger, and
determined to brave it out.

On the spot I resolved to have a private interview with Agnes Anne as
soon as might be, and, after reminding her of my birthday just past,
tell her that in future I was to be referred to as "going on for
twenty"--and that there was no real need to insert the words "going on
for."

Irma Sobieski considered the subject a while longer, and I could see her
eyes turned towards me as if studying me deeply. I wondered what she was
thinking about with a brow so knotted, and I knew instinctively that it
must be something of consequence, because it made her forget the letter
nailed to the door, and the warning which might veil a threat. She fixed
me so long that her eyes seemed to glow out of the pale face which made
an oval patch against the darkness of the trees. Irma's face was only
starlit, but her eyes shone by their own light.

"Yes, I will trust you," she said at last. "I saw you the day when the
mob came. You were ashamed, and would have helped me if you could. Even
then I liked your face. I did not forget you, and when Agnes Anne spoke
of her brother who was afraid of nothing, I was happy that you should
come. I wanted you to come."

The words made my heart leap, but the next moment I knew that I was a
fool, and might have known better. This was no Gerty Gower, to put her
hand on your arm unasked, and let her face say what her lips had not the
words to utter.

"I want a friend," she said; "I need a friend--a big brother--nothing
else, remember. If you think I want to be made love to, you are
mistaken. And, if you do, there will be an end. You cannot help me that
way. I have no use for what people call love. But I have a mission, and
that mission is my brother, Sir Louis. If you will consent to help me, I
shall love you as I love him, and you--can care about me--as you care
about Agnes Anne!"

Now I did not see what was the use of bringing Agnes Anne into the
business. At home she and I were quarrelling about half our time. But
since it was to be that or nothing, of course I was not such a fool as
to choose the nothing.

All the same, after the promising beginning, I was enormously
disappointed, and if only it had been lighter, doubtless my chagrin
would have showed on my face. It seemed to me (not knowing) the
death-blow to all my hopes. I did not then understand that in all the
unending and necessarily eternal game of chess, which men and women play
one against the other, there is no better opening than this.

But I was still crassly ignorant, intensely disappointed. I even swore
that I would not have given a brass farthing to be "cared about" by Irma
as I myself did about Agnes Anne.

Dimly, however, I did feel, even then, that there was a fallacy
somewhere. And that, however much human beings with youthful hearts and
answering eyes may pretend they are brother and sister, there is
something deep within them that moves the Previous Question--as we are
used to say in the Eden Valley Debating Parliament, which Mr. Oglethorpe
and my father have organized on the model of that in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_.

But Irma, at least, had no such fear. She had, she believed, solved for
ever a difficult and troublesome question, and, on easy terms, provided
herself with a new relative, useful, safe and insured against danger by
fire. Perhaps the underwriters of the city would not have taken the
latter risk, but at that moment it seemed a slight one to Irma Sobieski.

At any rate, to seal the new alliance, in all sisterly freedom she gave
me her hand, and did not appear to notice how long I kept it in the
darkness. This was certainly a considerable set-off against the feeling
of loneliness, and, if not quite content, I was at least more so. I
wondered, among other things, if Irma's heart kept knocking in a choking
kind of way against the bottom of her throat.

At least mine did, and I had never, to my knowledge, felt just so about
Agnes Anne. Indeed, I don't think I had ever held Agnes Anne's hand so
long in my life, except to pick a thorn out of it with a needle, or to
point out how disgracefully grubby it was.

CHAPTER X

THE CROWBAR IN THE WOOD

We sat so long that I grew hungry. And then forethought was rewarded.
For as I well knew, Agnes Anne had much ado to keep the house supplied
(and the larder too often bare with all her trying!), I had done some
trifle of providing on my own account. I had a flask of milk in my
pouch--the big one in the skirt of the coat that I always wore when
taking a walk in the General's plantations. Cakes, too, and well-risen
scones cut and with butter between them, most refreshing. I gave first
of all to Irma, and at the sound of the eating and drinking Agnes Anne
awakened and came forward. So I handed her some, but with my foot
cautioned her not to take too much, because it was certain that she
would by no means do her share of the fighting.

Both were my sisters. We had agreed upon that. But then some roses smell
sweeter than others, though all are called by the same name.

We had just finished partaking of the food (and great good it did us)
when Agnes Anne heard a sound that sent her suddenly back to her corner
with a face as white as a linen clout. She was always quicker of hearing
than I, but certain it is that after a while I did hear something like
the trampling of horses, and especially, repeated more than once, the
sharp jingle which the head of a caparisoned horse makes when, wearied
of waiting, it casts it up suddenly.

_They were coming._

We said the words, looking at each other, and I suppose each one of us
felt the same--that we were a lot of poor weak children, in our folly
fighting against men. At least this is how I took it, and a sick
disdain of self for being no stronger rose in my throat. A moment and it
had passed. For I took "King George" in hand, and bidding Irma see that
little Louis was sleeping, I ran up the stairs to the open tower-top.
Here I had thought to be alone, but there before me, crouched behind the
ramparts and looking out upon a dim glade which led down towards the
landing-place at Killantringan, was Agnes Anne. In answer to my question
as to what she was doing there, she answered at first that she could see
in the dark better than I, and when I denied this she said that surely I
did not think she was going to be left down there alone, nearest to the
assailants if they should force a passage!

One should never encourage one's real sister in the belief that she can
ever by any chance do right. So I said at once that whether she was
behind the door or sitting on the weathercock at Marnhoul Tower would
make no difference if the people were enemies and once got in.

"Hush!" she said. "What is that I hear now?"

And from away down the glade came slow and steady blows like those which
a man might make as he lifts his axe and smites into the butt. There was
a sort of reverberation, too, as if the tree were hollow. But that might
only be the effect of the night, the stillness, and the heavy covert of
great woods which lay like a big green blanket all about us, and tossed
every sound back to us like a wall at ball-play.

"Oh, if we could only see what they were doing--who they are?" I
groaned. "I could go out quite safely by the door in the tower, but then
who would fire off 'King George'?"

"Toc! Toc!" came the sounds. And then a pause as if the woodsman had
straightened himself up and was wiping his brow. The timing of the
strokes was very slow. Probably, therefore, the labour itself was
fatiguing. Sometimes, too, the axe fell with a different swing, as if
other hands grasped it, but always with the same dull thudding and
irritating slowness.

Then Agnes Anne made an astonishing proposition.

"See here, Duncan," she whispered, "let _me_ out by the little postern
door at the foot of the tower. Miss Irma can watch behind it to let me
in if I come running back, and you stay on the top ready with 'King
George.' I will find out for you everything you want to know." And I got
ready to say, brother-like, "Agnes Anne, you are a fool--your legs would
give way under you in the first hundred yards."

But somehow she saw (or felt) the speech that was coming, and cut me
short.

"No, I wouldn't either," she said hurriedly and quite boldly. "You think
that because I hate that great thing there filled with powder and slugs
(which even you can't tell when it will go off, or what harm it will do
when it does) that I am a coward. I am no more frightened than you are
yourself--perhaps less. Who was the best tracker when we played at
Indians and colonists, I should like to know? Who could go most quietly
through the wood? Or run the quickest? Just me, Agnes Anne MacAlpine!"

Well, I had to admit it. These things were true. But then they had
little to do with courage. This was serious. It was taking one's life in
one's hand.

"And pray what are we doing here and now?" snapped Agnes Anne. "If they
are strong enough to break in one of the doors, or get through one of
the windows, what can we do? Till we know what is coming against us, we
are only going from one blunder to another!"

Now this was most astonishing of our Agnes Anne. So I told her that I
had known that Irma was plucky, but not her. And she only said, very
shortly, "Better come and see!"

So we went down and told Irma. At first she was all against opening any
door, even for a moment, on any account. The strength of these defences
was our only protection. She would rather do anything than endanger
that. But we made her listen to the slow thud of the axe out in the
wood, and even as we looked the figure of a man passed across the glade,
black against the greyish-green of the grass, on which a thick rise of
dew was catching the starlight.

This figure wrapped in a sea-cloak, with head bent forward, passing
across the pale glimmer of the glade, sufficed to alter the mind of
Irma. She agreed in a moment, and locking the door of little Louis's
room, she declared herself willing to keep watch behind the little
postern door of the tower, ready to let Agnes Anne in again, on the
understanding that I should be prepared from the open window above to
deal with any pursuer.

I admit that in this I was persuaded against my judgment. For I felt
certain that though Agnes Anne could move with perfect stillness through
woods, and was a fleet runner, her nerve would certainly fail her when
it came to a real danger. And so great was the sympathy of my
imagination that I seemed already to feel the pursuer gaining at every
stride, the muscles of my limbs failing beneath me and refusing to carry
me farther, just as they do in a dream.

But Agnes Anne was serious and determined, and in the end had to have
her way. I can see the reason now. She knew exactly what she meant to
do, which neither Irma nor I did--though of course both of us far
braver.

We got the door open quite silently--for it was the one Irma had used
in her few and brief outgates. Then, shrouded in her school cloak of
grey, and clad, I mean, in but little else, Agnes flitted out as silent
as a shadow along a wall.

But oh, the agony I suffered to think what my father, and still more my
grandmother, would say to me because I had let my sister expose herself
on such an errand. Twenty times I was on the point of sallying forth
after her. Twenty times the sight of the pale face of Irma waiting there
stopped me, and the thought that I was the only protector of the two
poor things in that great house. Also after all Agnes Anne had gone of
her own accord.

All the same I shivered as I kneeled by the window above with the wide
muzzle of "King George" pointing down the path which led from the glade.
Every moment I expected to hear the air rent with a hideous scream, and
"King George" wobbled in my hands as I thought of Agnes Anne lying slain
in the glow-worm shining of that abominable glade, with that across her
white neck for which my conscience and my grandmother would reproach me
as long as I (and she) lived. One thing comforted me during that weary
waiting. The hollow thudding as of axe on wood never ceased for a
moment. So from that I gathered (and was blithe to believe) that the
alarm had not been given, and that wherever Agnes Anne was, she herself
was still undiscovered.

My eyes were so glued to that misty glade that presently I got a great
surprise. "There she is!" cried Irma, looking round the door, and I saw
a figure flit out of the dusk of the copse-covert within two yards of
the postern door. The next moment, without advertisement or the least
fuss, Agnes Anne was within. I heard the sliding of bolts, the hum of
talk, and then the patter of returning feet on the stair.

CHAPTER XI

AGNES ANNE'S EXPERIENCES AS A SPY

"Well, at first I did not think much about anything" (said Agnes Anne),
"except keeping quiet and doing what Duncan did not believe I could do.
But I knew the wood. It was not so dark as one would think, and once out
of the echo of the house walls I could hear far better. I leaned against
a larch, holding on to the trunk and counting the sticky rosettes on its
trailers to keep me from thinking while I listened. Twice I thought I
had made out exactly from which direction the sound came, and twice I
found I was mistaken. But the third time I followed the ditch under the
sunk fence till I came to the mound which is shaped like a green hat at
the end next the house. The thudding came from there--I was sure of it.
When I could hear men talking, I was (and I am not saying it to put
Duncan in the wrong) more glad than afraid.

"The bottom of the ditch was full of all sorts of underbrush--hazel and
birch roots mostly--growing pretty close as I found when once I got
there, but rustling horribly while I was getting settled. However, there
was nothing for it, if I wanted to find out anything, but to go on. So
on I went. I was close to the mound now, and could hear the voices.

"'Quiet there a moment!' said some one, 'I'll swear I heard a noise in
the ditch!'

"And as I crouched something like a blade of a sword or maybe a pike
came high above me stabbing this way and that. Twigs and leaves pattered
down, but I was safe behind the stump of a fallen tree. Presently the
steel thing I had seen glinting struck the dead and sodden wood of the
tree-trunk, and snapped with a sharp tang like a fiddle-string--a
hayfork it may have been, or one of the long thin swords such as are
hung up in the hall.

"But another and deeper voice--like that of a man somewhat out of
breath, said gruffly, 'Better get the job done! 'Tis only a fox or a
rabbit--what else would be out here at this hour?'

"And then, with the noise of spitting on the hands, the sound of the
heavy tool began again. It had a ring in it like steel on stone. I think
they had been chopping something with a pickaxe and had got through. For
now the clink was quite different, though that again might be because I
was nearer.

"'Have you found the passage? Surely it is long in showing?'

"That was the first voice again, the better educated one, I take it. He
spoke like a gentleman, like the General or even the Doctor himself,
though there was much rudeness in the voice of the other when he
answered him.

"'D'ye think I am breaking my back over this stone-door for fun?'
growled the man in panting gasps. 'If I imagined you were any hand at a
tool, you should have a chance at this one quick enough!'

"'Steady, Dick!' said the first, always in his pleasant tone, 'it can't
be far away at the farthest now!'

"'Hang it, it may not be there at all. Did you ever hear of a mouldy old
castle but had its tale about a secret passage? And did anybody ever see
one? Better make the woman speak, I tell you!'

"'Well,' argued the first suavely, 'it may come to that, of course. But
let us give this a good trial first. To it, Dick--to it!'

"'Aye, "To it, Dick--to it!" And your own arm up to the elbow in your
blessed pocket,' he grunted, and I could hear him set to work again with
an angry snarl. 'If this doesn't fetch it--well--there's always the
woman!'

"'Aye--but it _will_ do it this time,' said the man with the soft voice.
'I hear by the clink of the crow that you are nearly through. My uncle
used often to tell me about this. The big green mound is the ice-house
of Marnhoul. It was his father that made it, and the passage also to
connect with the cellar. See where it drains sideways into that ditch.
That is what makes the green stuff grow so rank about there!'

"Between the noise of the heavy crowbar and the dispute, I ventured to
edge a bit closer, so that at last I could make out the two men, and
beyond them something that looked like a figure of a woman lying under a
cloak. But all was under the dimness of the stars and the twinkling dew,
so that I could see nothing clearly.

"But what I had heard was enough, for in the middle of the worker's
gasping and cursing there came a sudden crash and a jingle.

"'She's through--I told you so. Uncle Edward was right!' cried the first
and taller man, while the other only stared at the sudden disappearance
of his tool, and stood looking blankly at his own empty hands.

"'What's to be done now?' said the tall man.

"'Lever it up with the nose of the pick!' growled the short thick man;
'here, you--hang on to that!'

"And then I knew that the sooner Duncan and 'King George' were down in
the cellar of Marnhoul House, the better it would be for our lives."

When Agnes Anne finished we sat a moment agape. But very evidently there
was no time to be lost. They would be among us before we knew it, if
once they got down into the passage. We tried to find out from Irma
where the cellar was, but she was sunk in terrible thoughts, and for a
long while she could say nothing but "Lalor Maitland--it is Lalor
Maitland, come to kill my poor Louis!"

And indeed it was difficult to get her aroused sufficiently to help us.
Left to herself I do not doubt that she would have gone up-stairs and
fled with the child in her arms in the hope of hiding him in the wood.

At last we got it out of her that the keys of the cellar were in the
great cupboard behind the door. She directed us to a double flight of
broad stairs. Irma had only looked into the cellar when she first came,
and had found it rifled, the barrels dry and gaping, full of dust,
dry-rot and the smell of decay.

But she too had heard her father tell of the passage to the ice-house,
and how he and his brothers had used it for their escapades when the
house was locked up and the keys taken to their father's room.

We went down--I leading with "King George" under my arm and the two
girls following. But on the stairway a sudden terror leaped upon Irma.
While we were all down in the cellar, might not Lalor and his companion
enter by the front door, or by some unguarded window. So she turned and
ran back to the little boy's room to defend him with an old pistol I had
found on the wall and loaded for her with powder and ball.

Then Agnes Anne and I made our way into the cellar. We had taken with
us the lantern, which we had hitherto kept covered, lest by the moving
of the light about the house we might be suspected of being on our
guard.

Hastily I made the tour of the great cellar. The back of the place was
full of the _débris_ of ancient barrels, some intact, some with gaping
sides, many held together with no more than a single hoop. But packed
together in one corner and occupying a place about one third of the
whole area of the floor was something very different. Tarpaulined,
fastened together by ropes, and guarded from damp by planks laid below
them, were some hundreds of kegs and packages--all, so far as I could
see, marked with curious signs, and in some cases the names of places.
One I remember, "Sallet Ooil--Apuglia," gave me a sense of such distance
and strangeness, that for a moment I seemed to be travelling in strange
countries and seeing curious sights, rather than going down to risk my
life in Miss Irma's quarrel with men I had never seen.

It was very evident that there could be but one place where the passage
Irma had spoken of (on her father's information) could debouch upon the
great cellar of Marnhoul. In the angle behind the mass of kegs was an
open space of some yards square, so clean that it looked as if it had
been recently swept.

Beyond this again and quite in the corner, there was a step or two
downwards, as if it were into the bowels of the earth. This was stopped
with a door of stone accurately arranged and fitted with uncommon skill.
And I could see at a glance that it was probably one of the same kind
that the men whom Agnes Anne had seen were engaged in bursting by stroke
of crow. I understood more than that. For there was all the winter in
Eden Valley scarce any other subject of talk than the Free Trade (which
is to say, plainly, smuggling), and concerning the various "ventures" or
boats and crews attached to some famous leader engaged in it.

There was, in fact, no particular moral wrong attaching to the business
in Eden Valley or along the Solway shore high and low--rather a sort of
piety, since the common folk remembered that the excise had first been
instituted by that perjured persecutor of the Church, Charles II. Even
the Doctor, though he denounced the practice from the pulpit in
befitting words, did so chiefly on the ground that the attractions of
Free Trade, its dangers even, carried so many promising young men forth
of the parish, and a goodly proportion of them to return no more.

But for all that, I never heard that he refused to partake of the anker
of Guernsey which his lady found by chance in the milk-house among the
creaming-pans, or by the tombstones of his predecessors in the
"Ministers' Corner" of the kirkyard.

I looked at the means of defence, and hidden among the packages at the
back I found two good muskets and one or two very worn ones--yet all
bearing the marks of recent attention. So, since the smuggled casks
formed a kind of breastwork right round the steps--up from the passage
that was blocked by the stone door--it came into my head that I could
there set up a kind of battery and run from one to the other of them,
firing--that is, if the worst came to the worst and the passage were
forced. So, having plenty of powder and shot and the wrappings of the
lace packages making excellent wads, I set about loading all the
muskets. I knew that Agnes Anne would be afraid of what I was doing,
having had a horror of firearms ever since, as a child, she had seen
Florrie, our old dun cow, shot dead by Boyd Connoway to be our "mart" of
the year, and salted down for the winter's food in the big beef barrel.
Agnes Anne would never be induced to eat a bit of Florrie, though indeed
she was very good and sweet, because forsooth she had been used to milk
her and give her handfuls of fresh grass. Since then she had never
forgiven Boyd Connoway, and had never been able to look upon a gun with
any complaisance.

Yet when I told her to stand back and keep away from the powder horn and
the lantern (for it is none of the easiest to charge strange pieces in a
dark cellar) she said that she would stand by "King George" while I was
at hand--yes, and fire him off, too, if need were. Only I must show her
how to pull the trigger, and also adjust the muzzle so as to bear on the
steps by which the villains would come up!

This I relate to show how (for the time being) Agnes Anne was worked
upon. For, as all have seen, she was naturally of a very timorsome and
quavering disposition. At any rate I did get the muskets, all five of
them, loaded, and set in position with their noses cocked over the
squared bulwarks of Mechlin and Vallenceens, of Strasburg yarn, and
Italian silver-gilt wire.

And I can tell you they looked imposing in the light of the lantern,
though I was more than a little doubtful about some of them going off
without blowing themselves up. But it was no time to cavil about small
matters like that, and I said nothing about this to Agnes Anne, who, for
her part, continued to glance along the barrel of "King George" at the
stone door with the fixity of my father viewing a star through his large
brass spy-glass. Only Agnes Anne, being unable to keep one eye shut and
the other open, had to hold the lid of the unoccupied organ hard down
with her left hand, as if it too were about to bounce out on us like the
two men she had seen in the ice-house mound by the edge of the sunk
fence.

We waited a good while with the light of the lamp smothered--all, that
is, but barely sufficient to give air to the flame. And I tell you our
hearts were gigotting rarely. Even Agnes Anne had taken a sudden liking
to "King George," and would not let him go as I proposed to her, now
that all the other muskets were loaded and ready.

"You would do better service with the lantern," I told her, "you could
hold it up to let us see them better."

But she answered that the lantern could take care of itself. She was
going to do some of the real fighting, and so I should not scorn her any
more. But I knew very well that it was only a kind of hysteria and would
all go off at the dangerous moment. Down she would go on the floor like
a bundle of wet rags!

However, to encourage Agnes Anne (as one must do to a girl), I said that
she was not to fire till she saw the white of their eyes. I remembered
that my father, in speaking of some battle or other, told how the
general had given his men that order, so that they might not miss. I
thought it very fine.

But Agnes Anne said promptly that she would not wait for the white of
anybody's eyes. She would fire and run for it as soon as she saw their
ugly heads coming up out of the ground. This shows how little you can do
with a girl, even if she have occasional fits of bravery. And I do not
deny that Agnes Anne had, though not naturally brave like myself and
Miss Irma.

It was anywhere between five minutes and a century before we heard the
first stroke of the crow behind the barricade. It sounded dull and
painful, as if inside of one's head. At first we heard no talking such
as Agnes Anne had described at the entrance of the ice-house.

Also, as they had been a good while on the way; I believe that they had
found other difficulties which they had not counted upon in traversing
the passage. But they were very near now, for presently, after perhaps
twenty strokes we could hear the striker sending out his breath with a
"_Har_" of effort each time he drove his crow home.

It was very dark in the cellar, for we had covered the lamp more
carefully and almost ceased to breathe. But we saw through certain
chinks that our assailants had a light of some sort with them. We could
discern a faint glimmering all round the upper portion of the stone, and
stray rays also pierced at various places elsewhere.

The long line of light at the top suddenly split and seemed to break
open in the middle. There came a fierce "_Hech_" from the assailant, and
the point of his crowbar showed, slid, and was as sharply recovered.
Next moment it came again.

"Lever it!" cried the gruff voice, "if you have the backbone of a
windlestraw, lever!"

And after a short, hard-breathing struggle, the stone door fell inwards,
the aperture was filled with intense light, dazzling, as it appeared to
us--and in the midst we saw two fierce and set faces peering into the
dark of the cellar.

CHAPTER XII

THE FIGHT IN THE DARK

One of the peering faces was hot and angry, bearded too, which few then
used to do except such as followed the sea. The other was dark and
beaked like a hawk, so that the shadow of an aquiline nose fell on the
man's chin as he held the lantern high above his head.

At first we could only see them to about the middle of the breast, as
for a little space of time they stood thus, hearkening with their heads
thrust forward.

"Not a ratton--forward there, Dick!" said the man behind, and the man
with the bushy beard advanced, rising as he did so till I could see the
ties of tarry cord with which he looped up his corduroy small-clothes.

Now it was high time to act. The game had been played far enough.

"Hold there--stand!" I cried. "Not a step further or we fire!"

I suppose my voice was echoed and fortified by the hollow vault.
Certainly in my own ears it roared like the sound of many waters. At any
rate the men stood, dumb-stricken, the tarry sailorly man a little in
front with his mouth open and his yellow dog-teeth gleaming. The other,
he who had given the orders, held the lantern higher in the air almost
against the stones of the vault, so as to see over the barricade of
boxes and barrels.

"'Tis no more than the----" he was beginning. But he never got the
sentence completed. For I took good aim from a rest upon a package of
cloth, and let fly with the best of the muskets--but at the clear lowe
of the lantern, not at the man's face, as I had at first intended.
Somehow, a kind of pity came over me. I did not want to slay such men,
who, taken in their iniquity, must go right to their accounts. But the
lantern was hit clean, and the glass went jingling to the ground in a
hundred fragments.

I judge also that some of the slugs must have strayed a little, for out
of the darkness came curses and the voice of the commander crying on
Dick to get back--that they were too strong for only two men. But the
sailor man advanced till I could hear him actually pulling himself over
the breastwork, gasping (or, as we say, "pech-"ing) with the effort.
Then I ran along my battery, and directing the next two of the old
muskets to the arched roof, I fired them off, bringing down with a crash
handfuls of rough lime and small bits of stone, mingled no doubt with
the ricocheted bullets themselves. At any rate our tarry Galligaskins
soon had enough of it. He turned and made good his retreat towards the
stairs up which he had forced his way.

Then Agnes Anne, who had no chivalrous ideas of sparing anybody who came
assaulting the house of her friends, pulled the trigger of "King
George," and in a moment all lesser sounds were drowned in a roar loud
as of a piece of ordnance.

The blunderbuss had been trained on the opening with some care, and it
was lucky for the men that they happened to be in retreat, and so
presenting their backs at the time--lucky, also, that only buckshot had
been used instead of the bullets and slugs with which the other guns
were loaded. But even so it was enough. She was always careless and
scattery, our old "King George." And from the marks on the lintels
afterwards she had sprinkled her charge pretty freely. Also there were
tokens, besides the yells and imprecations of the assailants and the
threats of Galligaskins to come back and do for us, that both of them
(as Constable Jacky would have said) "carried off concealed about their
persons an indictable quantity of my father's good lead drops."

So far, good. Better than good, indeed--better than we had the least
reason to expect, all owing to my presence of mind, and the fortunate
nervousness of Agnes Anne--which, however, in the case under review,
Providence directed to a wise and good end. I was for running
immediately back up the stairs to put the mind of Miss Irma at rest, but
Agnes Anne, with that stubbornness which she will often manifest
throughout this history, withstood me.

"What is it now?" I asked her, somewhat impatiently, I am bound to
admit. For I was all in a sweat to tell Irma about my victory, and how I
fought--and also, of course, about Agnes Anne pulling the trigger of
"King George" at random in the dark.

"This is the matter," said she, "Irma can wait. But if we do not improve
our victory, they will be back again with a whole army of men before we
can wink."

"Well," I answered, "I will load the guns first and then go up!"

"Loading the guns is good," said Agnes Anne. "But before that we must
blind up this hole by which they climbed in. We will give them something
more difficult to break through in this narrow passage than a stone door
which they can make holes in with a crowbar!"

And I caught at the idea in a moment, wondering how I had not thought of
it myself. But of course, though I did not actually suggest it, Agnes
Anne could never have carried it through without me.

We set about the work immediately. I took the big stone they had
loosened with their tools and tumbled it down the well of the stairway,
where, after rebounding once, it stuck at the turn and made a good
foundation for the barrels, boxes and packages we threw down till the
whole space was choke full, and then I danced on the top and defied the
lantern-man and Dick to get through in a week.

"_Now_ go and tell your Irma!" said Agnes Anne, and I went, while she
stopped behind with the lantern and a gun to watch if anything should be
attempted against the cellar.

But I knew right well that no such thing was possible. Nothing short of
such a charge of gunpowder as would rive the whole house of Marnhoul
asunder would suffice to clear the staircase of the packing I had given
it. So Agnes Anne might just as well have come her ways up-stairs with
me. Still, I do not deny that it was thoughtful of her; Agnes Anne meant
well.

Irma had heard the firing, and I found her with her little brother in
her arms, sitting by the window of the parlour overlooking the pilasters
of the front door. She held little Louis wrapped in a blanket, and kept
both herself and him out of sight as much as possible behind the
curtain. But she had the horse pistol I had given her on the ledge of
the sill close at her hand.

She listened to my tale with a white intensity which was very pitiful.
Her eyes seemed so big that they almost overran her face, and there were
little sparks of light like fairy candles lit at the bottom of each.

"Lalor Maitland--it was no other man!" she said in an awed voice. "And
now he is wounded he will be furious. He has many men always in his
power. For he can make or mar a man in the Low Countries, and even bad
men will do much for his favour. He will gather to him all who are
waiting. They will be here immediately and burst in the doors. Oh, what
shall we do? My poor, poor Louis!"

"There is the woman whom Agnes Anne saw," I said. "Can you guess what
she has to do with it? They said they would try her if they did not
succeed."

"Why not light the beacon now?" said a voice from the door. It was Agnes
Anne, who, being left to herself, the thought had come to her in the
dark of the cellar, and had run up to propose it. For me, I was too much
occupied with Irma, and I am sure that Irma was far too troubled
concerning her brother to think about the beacon. Yet it was the obvious
thing to do, and if I had had a moment to spare I would have thought of
it myself. So Agnes Anne had no great credit, after all, when you come
to look at it rightly.

But the effect of the suggestion on Irma was very remarkable. It was as
if the voice of my sister actually raised her from the place where she
had been listlessly sitting with her brother in her arms. She snatched
the lantern from the hands of Agnes Anne and put little Louis back on
his pillow, bidding him stay there till the time should come for him to
get up.

"Are the bad men all killed, Irma?" he asked.

"We are going to bring the good people to help us!" she cried. And with
that she ran up-stairs, and I after her, in a great pother of haste. For
the candle in her hand was the only bit of fire we had, and I did not
want it blown out if I could help it.

CHAPTER XIII

A WORLD OF INK AND FIRE

The idea of Irma's danger on the open house-top and in the full glare of
the beacon acted on me like a charm--yet people will say that there is
nothing at all in such a relationship as ours. Why, I would not have
been half as much concerned for Agnes Anne! And as a matter of fact, I
had not been so anxious down there behind the barrels and packages in
the cellar, when Lalor Maitland and Galligaskins were coming at us.

Besides which, I knew that Irma, being unused to fire-building, would
only waste the excellent provision of kindling, and perhaps do us out of
our beacon altogether.

So having joined her, it was not long till we had the tarred cloth off,
and, through the interstices of the iron bucket, the little blue and
yellow flames began chirping and chattering. But as I pulled the basket
up to the height of its iron crane, the wind of the night sent the fire
off with a mighty roar. The tops of the nearer trees stood out, every
leaf hard and distinct, but the main body of the woods all about
Marnhoul remained dark and solid, as if you could have walked upon them
without once breaking through.

I stood there watching, with the chain still in my hand, though I had
run the ring into the hoop on the wall. We had been very clever so far,
and I was full of admiration for ourselves. But a bullet whizzing very
near my head, struck the basket with a vicious "scat," doing no harm,
of course, but extending to us an urgent invitation to get out of range,
that was not to be disregarded.

Irma was close beside me, following with her eyes the mounting crackle
of the beacon, the sudden jetting of the tall pale flames that ran
upward into the velvet sky of night. For from a pale and haunting grey
the firmament had all of a sudden turned black and solid. Middle shades
had been ruled out instantly. It was a world of ink and fire.

But that sharp dash of danger cooled admiration in my heart. I caught
Irma by the shoulders and, roughly enough, pulled her down beside me on
the platform behind the stone ramparts. For a moment I think she was
indignant, but the next thankful. For half-a-dozen balls clicked and
whizzed about, passing through the square gaps that went all round the
tower, as if the wall had had a couple of teeth knocked out at regular
distances every here and there.

Very cautiously we crawled to the stair-head, leaving our invisible
enemies cracking away at the fire basket, knocking little cascades of
sparks out of it, indeed, but doing no harm. For the beacon was
thoroughly well alight, and the chain good and strong.

As we descended the ladder I went first so as to help Irma. She was a
little upset, as indeed she might well be. For it was quite evident that
the number of our assailants had singularly increased, and we did not in
the least know whether our signal would do us any good or not.

"It may waken Boyd Connoway," I thought, "but that will be all. He will
come sneaking through the wood to see what is the matter so as to tell
about it, but he never used a weapon more deadly than a jack-knife with
a deer-horn handle."

As Irma's foot slipped on the bottom rung of the ladder, I caught her as
she swayed, and for a moment in that dark place I held her in my hands
like a posy, fresh and sweet smelling, but sacred as if in church. She
said, without drawing herself away, at least not for a moment longer
than she need, "Duncan, you saved my life!"

I had it on my tongue tip to reply, "And my own at the same time, for I
could not live without you!"

When one is young it is natural to talk like that, but my old awe of
Miss Irma preserved me from the mistake. It was too early days for that,
and I only said, "I am glad!" And when we got down there was Agnes Anne,
with her finger on her lip, watching little Sir Louis sleeping. She
whispered to me to know why we had made such a noise firing on the top
of the tower.

"It isn't like down in the cellar," she said, "you came as near as you
can think to wakening him!"

I was so astonished that I could not even tell Agnes Anne that she would
soon find it was not we who had done the firing. The most part of the
guns were in the cellar any way, as she might have remembered. Besides,
what was the use? She had caught that fell disease, which is
baby-worship.

Instead, I posted myself in the window, my body hidden in the red rep
curtain, and only my eyes showing through a slit I made with my knife as
I peered along the barrel of "King George." I had resolved that with an
arm of such short "carry," I would not fire till I had them right
beneath the porch, or at least coming up the steps of the mansion.

It was in my mind that there would be a brutal rush at the door,
perhaps with pickaxes, perhaps with one of the swinging battering-rams I
had read of in the Roman wars, that do such wondrous things when cradled
in the joined hands of many men.

But in this I was much mistaken. The assailants were indeed rascals of
the same tarry, broad-breeched, stringfasted breed as Galligaskins of
the cellar door. But Galligaskins himself I saw not. From which I judge
that Agnes Anne had sorted him to rights with the contents of "King
George," laid ready for her pointing at the top of the steps by which an
enemy must of necessity appear.

But they had a far more powerful weapon than any battering-ram. We saw
them moving about in the faint light of a moon in her last quarter just
risen above the hills--a true moon of the small hours, ruddy as a fox
and of an aspect exceedingly weariful.

Presently there came toward the door two men with a strange and shrouded
figure walking painfully between them, as if upon hobbled feet. I could
see that one of the men was the tall man of the cave, he in whose hand I
had smashed the lantern. I knew him by a wrist that was freshly
bandaged, and also by his voice when he spoke. The other who accompanied
him was a sailor of some superior grade, a boatswain or such, dressed in
good sea cloth, and with a kind of glazed cocked hat upon his head.

It was a very weird business--the veiled woman, the dim skarrow of the
beacon, the foxy old moon sifting an unearthly light between the
branches, everything fallen silent, and our assailants each keeping
carefully to the back of a tree to be out of reach of our muskets.

They came on, the two men leading the woman by the arms till they were
out of the flicker of the flames both outside and under the shadow of
the house.

Then the tall man, whom in my heart I made sure to be Lalor Maitland, as
Irma said, held up his bandaged hand as a man does when he is about to
make a speech and craves attention.

"I have been ill-received," he cried, "in this the house of my
fathers----"

"Because you have striven to enter it as a thief and a robber!" cried
Irma's voice, close beside me. She had passed behind me, slid the bolt
of the window, and was now leaning out, resting upon her elbows and
looking down at the men below. She was apparently quite fearless. The
appearance of her cousin so near seemed somehow to sting her.

"Your brother and yourself are both under my care--I suppose,
Mademoiselle Irma, you will not deny that?"

"We were," Irma answered, in a clear voice; "but then, Lalor Maitland, I
heard what the fate was you were so kindly destining for me after having
killed my brother----"

"And I know who put that foolishness into your head," said Lalor
Maitland; "she regrets it at this moment, and has now come of her own
will to tell you she lied!"

And with a jerk he loosened the apron which, as I now saw, had been
wrapped about the head of the swathed figure. I shall never forget the
face of the woman as I saw it then. The uncertain flicker of the flames
and sparks from our beacon (which, though itself invisible, darkened and
lightened like sheet lightning), the dismal umbery glimmer of the waning
moon, and the pale approach of day over the mountains to the east, made
the face appear almost ghastly. But I was quite unprepared for the
effect which the sight produced upon Irma.

"Kate," she cried, "Kate of the Shore!"

The woman did not reply, though there was an obvious effort to speak--a
straining of the neck muscles and a painful rolling of the eyes.

"Yes," said Lalor calmly, as if he were exhibiting a curiosity, "this is
your friend to whom you owe your escape. She was doubtless to have
received a reward, and in any case we shall give her a fine one. But if
you will return to your protector, and come with me immediately on board
the good ship _Golden Hind_, which in some considerable danger, is
beating off and on between the heads of Killantringen--then I promise
you, you will save the life of our friend Kate here. If not----" (He
waved his hand expressively.)

"You dare not kill her," cried Irma; "in an hour the country will be up,
and you will be hunted like dogs."

"Oh, it is not I," said Lalor calmly, "I do not love the shedding of
blood, and that is why I am here now. But consider those stout fellows
yonder. They are restive at having to wait for their pay, and the loss
of their captain, wounded in aiding me in obtaining my rights in a quiet
and peaceable manner, has by no means soothed them. I advise you,
Mistress Irma, to bring down the boy and let us get on board while there
is yet time. No one in the house shall be harmed. But listen to
Kate--Kate of the Shore. She will speak to you better than I! But first
we must perform a little surgical operation!"

And with that he whipped out a bandanna handkerchief, which had been
knotted and thrust into her mouth in the manner of a gag.

"Now then," he said, "put a pistol to her head, Evans! Now, Kate, you
have told many lies about your master, the late Governor of the fortress
of Dinant. Speak the truth for once in a way. For if you do not tell
these foolish children that they have nothing to fear--nay more, if you
cannot persuade them to quit their foolish conduct and return to their
rightful duty and obedience, it will be my painful duty to ask Evans
there, who does not love you as I do, to--well, you know what will
happen when that pistol goes off!"

But even in such straits Kate of the Shore was not to be frightened.

"You hear me, Miss Irma," she said, "I know this bad man. He is only
seeking to betray you as he betrayed me. Defend your castle. Open not a
window--keep the doors barred. They cannot take the place in the time,
for they have the tide to think of."

"I expected this," said Lalor, with a vaguely pensive air, "it has ever
been my lot to be calumniated, my motives suspected. But I have indeed
deserved other things--especially from you, Irma, whom (though your
senior in years, and during the minority of my ward Sir Louis, the head
of the house), I have always treated with affectionate and, perhaps, too
respectful deference!"

"Miss Irma," cried Kate of the Shore, "take care of that man. He has a
pistol ready. I can see the hilt of it in his pocket. You he will not
harm if he can help it, but if that be your brother whom I see at the
fold of the window-hanging, bid him stand back for his life."

"Drop your pistol, Evans," commanded Lalor Maitland, "this part of the
play is played out. She will not speak, or rather what she says will do
us no good. Women are thrawn contrary things at the best, Evans, as I
dare say you have noticed in your Principality of Wales. But take heed,
you and your precious defenders, I warn you that in an hour the house of
Marnhoul shall be flaming over your heads with a torch that shall bring
out, not your pitiful burghers from their rabbit-holes, but also the men
of half a county.

"Hear me," he raised his voice suddenly to a strident shout, "hear me
all you within the house. Give up the girl and the child to their legal
protectors, and no harm shall befall either life or property. We shall
be on shipboard in half-an-hour. I shall see to it that every man within
the castle is rewarded from the Maitland money that is safe beyond seas,
out of the reach of King George! Of that, at least I made sure, serving
twice seven years for it in the service of a hard master. I offer a
hundred pounds apiece to whoever will deliver the boy and the maid!"

This was a speech which pleased me much, for it showed that from the
stoutness of our defence, and the many guns which had been shot off,
Lalor was under the impression that the house was garrisoned by a proper
force of men--when in truth there was only Miss Irma and me--that is,
not counting Agnes Anne.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WHITE FREE TRADERS

But the country was by no means so craven as Lalor supposed. There were
bold hearts and ready saddles still in Galloway. The signal from the top
of the beacon tower of Marnhoul was seen and understood in half-a-dozen
parishes.

Not that the young fellows who saw the flame connected it with the two
children who had taken refuge in the old place of the Maitlands. In
fact, most knew nothing about their existence. But their alacrity was
connected with quite another matter--the great cargo of dutiable and
undutied goods stored away in the cellars of Marnhoul!

There was stirring, therefore, in remote farms, rattling on doors,
hurried scrambling up and down stable ladders. Young men on the
outskirts of villages might have been seen stealing through gardens,
stumbling among cabbage-stocks and gooseberry bushes as they made their
way by the uncertain flicker of our far-away beacon to the place of
rendezvous.

Herds rising early to "look the hill" gave one glance at the red dance
of the flames over the tree-tops of Marnhoul great wood, and anon ran to
waken their masters.

For in that country every farmer--aye, and most of the lairds, including
a majority of the Justices of the Peace--had a share in the "venture."
Sometimes the value of the cargo brought in by a single run would be
from fifty to seventy thousand pounds. All this great amount of goods
had to be scattered and concealed locally, before it was carried to
Glasgow and Edinburgh over the wildest and most unfrequented tracks.

The officers of the revenue, few and ill-supported, could do little.
Most of them, indeed, accepted the quiet greasing of the palm, and
called off their men to some distant place during the night of a big
run. But even when on the spot and under arms, a cavalcade of a couple
of hundred men could laugh at half-a-dozen preventives, and pass by
defiantly waving their hands and clinking the chains which held the kegs
upon their horses. The bolder cried out invitations to come and drink,
and the good-will of the leaders of the Land Free Traders was even
pushed so far that, if a Surveyor of Customs showed himself pleasantly
amenable, a dozen or more small kegs of second-rate Hollands would be
tipped before his eyes into a convenient bog, so that, if it pleased
him, he could pose before his superiors as having effected an important
capture.

The report which he was wont to edit on these occasions will often
compare with the higher fiction--as followeth:--

    "Supervisor Henry Baskett, in charge of the Lower Solway district,
    reports as follows under date June 30th: Found a strong body of
    smugglers marching between the wild mountains called Ben Tuthor and
    Blew Hills. They were of the number of three hundred, all well
    mounted and armed, desperate men, evidently not of this district,
    but, from their talk and accoutrement, from the Upper Ward of
    Lanerickshire. Followed them carefully to note their dispositions
    and discover a favourable place for attack. I had only four men with
    me, whereof one a boy, being all the force under my command.
    Nevertheless, at a place called the Corse of Slakes I advanced
    boldly and summoned them, in the King's name and at the peril of
    their lives, to surrender.

    "Whereat they turned their guns upon us, each man standing behind
    his horse and having his face hidden in a napkin lest he should be
    known. But we four and the boy advanced firmly and with such
    resolution that the band of three hundred law-breakers broke up
    incontinent, and taking to flight this way and that through the
    heather, left us under the necessity of pursuing. We pursued that
    band which promised the best taking, and I am glad to intimate to
    your Excellencies, His Majesty's Commissioners, that we were
    successful in putting the said Free Traders to flight, and capturing
    twenty-five casks best Hollands, six loads of Vallenceen, etc.,
    etc., as per schedule appended to be accounted for by me as your
    lordship's commissioners shall direct. In the hope that this will be
    noted to our credit on the table of advancement (and in this connect
    I may mention the names of the three men, Thomas Coke, Edward Loval,
    Timothy Pierce, and the boy Joseph McDougal, whom I recommend as
    having done their duty in the face of peril), I have the honour to
    sign myself,

                    "My Lords and Hon. Commissioners of H. M. Excise,
                    "Your obedient, humble servant,
                    "Henry Baskett (Supervisor)."

The other view of this transaction I find more concisely expressed in a
memorandum written in an old note-book belonging to my Uncle Tom.

"Baskett held out for forty best French, but we fobbed him off with
twenty-five low-grade Rotterdam--the casks being leaky, and some packs
of goods too long left at Rathan Cave, which is at the back of the
isle, and counted scarce worth the carrying farther. The night fine and
business most successful--thanks to an ever-watchful Providence."

The reader of these family memoirs will perhaps agree with me that, if
any one could do without an ever-watchful Providence troubling itself
about him, that man was my Uncle Tom.

While, therefore, we in the House of Marnhoul were in the wildest
alarm--at least Agnes Anne was--forces which could not possibly be
withstood were mustering to hasten to our assistance. The tarry jackets
of the _Golden Hind_ would doubtless have rushed the front door with a
hurrah, as readily as they would have boarded a prize, but Lalor
Maitland ordered them to bring wood and other inflammable material. At
least, so I judge, for presently I could see them running to and fro
about the edges of the wood. They had now learned the knack of keeping
in shelter most of the way. But I did not feel really afraid till I saw
some of them with kegs of liquor making towards the porch. There they
stove them in, and proceeded to empty the contents on the dry branches
and fuel they had collected. The matter was now beginning to look really
serious. To make things worse, they were evidently digging out the
bottom of our cellar-stair barricade, and if they succeeded in that they
would turn our position and take us in the rear.

So I sent down Agnes Anne (she not being good for much else) to the
cellar to see how things were looking there, bidding her to be careful
of the lantern, and to bring back as many of the five muskets as she
could carry, so that I might keep the fellows in check above.

Agnes Anne came flying back with the worst kind of news. A great flame
of fire was springing up out of the well of the staircase into which we
had tumbled the barrels and boxes. It threatened, she said, to blow us
sky-high, if there were any barrels of powder among the goods left by
the smugglers.

At any rate, the flame was rapidly spreading to the other packages which
had formed our breastwork of defence, and was now like to become our
ruin.

For, once fairly caught, the spirit would flame high as the rigging of
Marnhoul, and we should all be burnt alive, which was most likely what
Lolar Maitland meant by his parting threatening.

"And it is more than likely," Agnes Anne added, "that some of the
barrels burst as we threw them down the stairs, and so, with the liquor
flowing among their feet, the assailants got the idea of thus burning us
out."

At all events something had to be done, and that instantly. So I had
perforce to leave Agnes Anne in charge of "King George" again,
cautioning her not to pull the trigger till she should see the rascals
actually bending to set fire to the pile underneath the porch of the
front door. I also told her not to be frightened, and she promised not
to.

Then I went down to the cellar. The heat there was terrible, and I do
not wonder that Agnes Anne came running back to me. A pillar of blue
flame was rising straight up against the arched roof of the cellar. I
could hear the cries of the men working below in the passage.

"Hook it away--give her air--she will burn ever the brisker and smoke
the land-lubbers out!"

Some few of the boxes in the front tier were already on fire, and still
more were smouldering, but the straightness of the vent up which the
flame was coming, together with the closeness and stillness of the
vault, made the flame mount straight up as in a chimney. I therefore
divined rather than saw what remained for me to do. I leaped over and
began, at the risk of a severe scorching, to throw back all the boxes
and packages which were in danger. It was lucky for me that the
smugglers had piled them pretty high, and so by drawing one or two from
near the foundation, I was fortunate enough to overset the most part of
it in the outward direction.

But the fierceness of the flame was beginning to tell upon the
building-stone of Marnhoul, which was of a friable nature--at least that
with which the vault was arched.

Luckily some old tools had been left in the corner, and it struck me
that if I could dig up enough of the earthen floor or topple over the
mound of earth which had been piled up at the making of the underground
passage, the fire must go out for lack of air; or, better still, would
be turned in the faces of those who were digging away the barrels and
boxes from the bottom of the stair-well.

This, after many attempts and some very painful burns, I succeeded in
doing. The first shovelfuls did not seem to produce much effect. So I
set to work on the large heap of hardened earth in the corner, and was
lucky enough to be able to tumble it bodily upon the top of the column
of fire. Then suddenly the terrible column of blue flame went out, just
as does a Christmas pudding when it is blown upon. And for the same
reason. Both were made of the flames of the French spirit called cognac,
or brandy.

Then I did not mind about my burns, I can assure you. But almost
gleefully I went on heaping mould and dirt upon the boxes in the well of
the staircase, stamping down the earth at the top till it was almost
like the hard-beaten floor of the cellar itself. I left not a crevice
for the least small flame to come up through.

Then I bethought me of what might be going on above, and the flush of my
triumph cooled quickly. For I thought that there was only Agnes Anne,
and who knows what weakness she may not have committed. She would never
have thought, for instance, of such a thing as covering in the flame
with earth to put it out. To tell the truth, I did think very
masterfully of myself at that moment, and perhaps with some cause, for
not one in a thousand would have had the "engine" to do as I had done.

When I got to the top of the stairs, I heard cries from without, which
had been smothered by the deepness of the dungeon in which I had been
labouring to put out the fire. For a moment I thought that by the
failure of Agnes Anne to fire off "King George" at the proper moment,
the door had been forced and we utterly lost. Which seemed the harder to
be borne, that I had just saved all our lives in a way so original and
happy.

But I was wrong. The shouting came not from the wicked crew of the
privateersman, but from the shouting of a vast number of people, most of
them mounted on farm and country horses, with some of finer limb and
better blood, managed by young fellows having the air of laird's sons or
others of some position. None of these had his face bare. But in place
of the black highwayman masks of the followers of Galligaskins, these
wore only a strip of white kerchief across the face, though, as I could
see, more for the form of the thing than from any real apprehension of
danger.

Indeed, in the very forefront of the cavalcade I saw our own two cart
horses, Dapple and Dimple, and the lighter mare Bess, which my
grandfather used for riding to and fro upon his milling business. I had
not the least doubt that my three uncles were bestriding them, though I
never knew that there were any arms about the house except the old
fowling-piece belonging to grandfather, with which on moonlight nights
he killed the hares that came to nibble the plants in his cabbage
garden.

Soon the sailors and their abettors were fleeing in every direction.
But, what took me very much by surprise, there was no firing or cutting
down, though there was a good deal of smiting with the flat of the
sword. And at the entrance of the ice-mound I saw a great many very
scurvy fellows come trickling out, all burned and scorched, to run the
gauntlet of a row of men on foot, who drubbed them soundly with cudgels
before letting them go.

Seeing this, I opened the window and shouted with all my might.

"Apprehend them! They are villains and thieves. They have broken into
this house and tried to kill us all, besides setting fire to the cellar
and everything in it!"

The men without, both those on foot and those on horseback, had been
calm till they heard this, and then, lo! each cavalier dismounted and
all came running to the door, calling on us to open instantly.

"Not to you any more than to the others!" I cried. For, indeed, I saw
not any good reason. It appeared to me, since there was no real
fighting, that the two parties must be in alliance, or, at least, have
an understanding between them.

But Agnes Anne called out, "Nonsense, I see Uncle Aleck and Uncle
Ebenezer. I am going to open the door to them, whatever you say!"

So all in a minute the house of Marnhoul, long so desolate and silent,
wherein such deeds of valour and strategy had recently been wrought,
grew populous with a multitude all eager to win down to the cellar. But
Agnes Anne brought up my three uncles (and another who was with them)
and bade them watch carefully over the safety of Louis and Miss Irma.
(For so I must again call her now that she had, as it were, come to her
own again.)

As for me they carried me down with them, to tell all about the attempt
to burn the goods in the cellar. And angry men they were when they saw
so many webs of fine cloth, so many bolts of Flanders lace, so many kegs
of rare brandy damaged and as good as lost. But when they understood
that, but for my address and quickness, all would have been lost to
them, they made me many compliments. Also an old man with a
silver-hilted sword, who carried himself like some great gentleman, bade
me tell him my _name_, and wrote it down in his note-book, saying that I
was of too good a head and quick a hand to waste on a dominie.

And, indeed, I was of that mind (or something very much like it) myself.
An old haunted house like Marnhoul to defend, a young maid of high
family to rescue (and adopt you as her brother for a reward) did somehow
take the edge off teaching the Rule of Three and explaining the _De
Bello Gallico_ to imps who cannot understand, and would not if they
could.

PART II

CHAPTER XV

MY GRANDMOTHER SPEAKS HER MIND

"There is no use talking" (said my grandmother, as she always did when
she was going to do a great deal of it), "no, listen to me, there is no
use talking! These two young things need a home, and if _we_ don't give
it to them, who will? Stay longer in that great gaol of a house, worse
than any barn, they shall not--exposed day and night to a traffic of sea
rascals, thieves and murderers, _they shall not_----"

"What I want to know is who is to keep them, and what the safer they
will be here?"

It was the voice of my Aunt Jen which interrupted. None else would have
dared--save mayhap my grandfather, who, however, only smiled and was
silent.

"Ne'er you mind that, Janet," cried her mother, "what goes out of our
basket and store will never be missed. And father says the same, be sure
of that!"

My grandfather did say the same, if to smile quietly and approvingly is
to speak. At any rate, in a matter which did not concern him deeply, he
knew a wiser way than to contradict Mistress Mary Lyon. She was quite
capable of keeping him awake two-thirds of the night arguing it out,
without the faintest hope of altering the final result.

"The poor things," mourned my grandmother, "they shall come here and
welcome--that is, till better be. Of course, they might be more grandly
lodged by the rich and the great--gentlefolk in their own station. But,
first of all, they do not offer, and if they did, they are mostly
without experience. To bring up children, trust an old hen who has
clucked over a brood of her own!"

"Safer, too, here," approved my grandfather, nodding his head; "the
tarry breeches will think twice before paying Heathknowes a visit--with
the lads about and the gate shut, and maybe the old dog not quite
toothless yet!"

This, indeed, was the very heart of the matter. Irma and Sir Louis would
be far safer at the house of one William Lyon, guarded by his stout
sons, by his influence over the wildest spirits of the community, in a
house garrisoned by a horde of sleepless sheep-dogs, set in a defensible
square of office-houses, barns, byres, stables, granaries, cart-sheds,
peat-sheds and the rest.

"And when the great arrive to call," said Aunt Jen, with sour insight,
"you, mother, will stop the churning just when the butter is coming to
put on your black lace cap and apron. You will receive the lady of the
manse, and Mrs. General Johnstone, and----"

"And if I do, Jen," cried her mother, "what is that to you?"

"Because I have enough to do as it is," snapped Jen, "without your
butter-making when you are playing the lady down the house!"

Grandmother's black eyes crackled fire. She turned threateningly to her
daughter.

"By my saul, Lady Lyon," she cried, "there is a stick in yon corner that
ye ken, and if you are insolent to your mother I will thrash you
yet--woman-grown as ye are. Ye take upon yourself to say that which none
of your brothers dare set their tongue to!"

And indeed there is little doubt but that Mary Lyon would have kept her
word. So far as speech was concerned, my Aunt Jen was silenced. But she
was a creature faithful to her prejudices, and could express by her
silence and air of injured rectitude more than one less gifted could
have put into a parliamentary oration.

Her very heels on the stone floor of the wide kitchen at Heathknowes,
where all the business of the house was transacted, fell with little
raps of defiance, curt and dry. Her nose in the air told of contempt
louder than any words. She laid down the porridge spurtle like a queen
abdicating her sceptre. She tabled the plates like so many protests,
signed and witnessed. She swept about the house with the glacial chill
which an iceberg spreads about it in temperate seas. Her displeasure
made winter of our content--of all, that is, except Mary Lyon's. She at
least went about her tasks with her usual humming alacrity, turning work
over her shoulder as easy as apple-peeling.

Being naturally lazy myself (except as to the reading of books), I took
a great pleasure in watching grandmother. Aunt Jen would order you to
get some work if she saw you doing nothing--malingering, she called
it--yes, and find it for you too, that is, if Mary Lyon were not in the
house to tell her to mind her own business.

But you might lie round among grandmother's feet for days, and, except
for a stray cuff in passing if she actually walked into you--a cuff
given in the purest spirit of love and good-will, and merely as a
warning of the worse thing that might happen to you if you made her
spill the dinner "sowens"--you might spend your days in reading anything
from the _Arabian Nights_ in Uncle Eben's old tattered edition to the
mighty _Josephus_, all complete with plans and plates--over which on
Sundays my grandfather was wont to compose himself augustly to sleep.

Well, Miss Irma and Sir Louis came to my grandmother's house at
Heathknowes. Yes, this is the correct version. The house of Heathknowes
was Mary Lyon's. The mill in the wood, the farm, the hill
pastures--these might be my grandfather's, also the horses and wagons
generally, but his power--his "say" over anything, stopped at the
threshold of the house, of the byre of cows, at the step of the rumbling
little light cart in which he was privileged to drive my grandmother to
church and market. In these places and relations he became, instead of
the unquestioned master, only as one of ourselves, except that he was
neither cuffed nor threatened with "the stick in the corner." All the
same, this immunity did not do him much good, for many a sound
tongue-lashing did he receive for his sins and shortcomings--indeed, far
more so than all the rest of us. For with us, my grandmother had a short
and easy way.

"I have not time to be arguing with the likes of you!" she would cry.
And upon the word a sound cuff removed us out of her path, and before we
had stopped tingling Mary Lyon had plunged into the next object in hand,
satisfied that she had successfully wrestled with at least one problem.
But with grandfather it was different. He had to be convinced--if
possible, convicted--in any case overborne.

To accomplish this Mary Lyon would put forth all her powers, in spite of
her husband's smiles--or perhaps a good deal because of them. Upon her
excellent authority, he was stated to be the most irritating man betwixt
the Brigend of Dumfries and the Braes of Glenap.

"Oh, man, say what you have to say," she would cry, when reduced to
extremities by the obvious unfairness of his silent mode of controversy,
"but don't sit there girning like a self-satisfied monkey!"

"Mother!" exclaimed Aunt Jen, horrified. For she cherished a secret
tenderness for my grandfather, perhaps because their natures were so
different, "How can you speak so to our father?"

"Wait till you get a man of your ain, Janet," my grandmother would
retort, "then you will have new light as to how it is permitted for a
woman to speak."

With this retort Aunt Jen was well acquainted, and had to be thankful
that it was carried no further, as it often was in the case of any
criticisms as to the management of children. In this case Aunt Jen was
usually invited not to meddle, on the forcible plea that what a score of
old maids knew about rearing a family could be put into a nutshell
without risk of overcrowding.

The room at Heathknowes that was got ready for the children was the one
off the parlour--"down-the-house," as it was called. Here was a little
bed for Miss Irma, her washstand, a chest of drawers, a brush and comb
which Aunt Jen had "found," producing them from under her apron with an
exceedingly guilty air, while continuing to brush the floor with an air
of protest against the whole proceeding.

From the school-house my father sent a hanging bookcase--at least the
thing was done upon my suggestion. Agnes Anne carried it and Uncle Ebie
nailed it up. At any rate, it was got into place among us. The cot of
the child Louis had been arranged in the parlour itself, but at the
first glance Miss Irma turned pale, and I saw it would not do.

"I have always been accustomed to have him with me," she said; "it is
very kind of you to give us such nice rooms--but--would you mind letting
him sleep where I can see him?"

It was Aunt Jen who did the moving without a word, and that, too, with
the severe lines of disapproval very nearly completely ruled off her
face. It was, in fact, better that they should be together. For while
the parlour looked by two small-paned windows across the wide courtyard,
the single casement of the little bedroom opened on the orchard corner
which my grandfather had planted in the first years of his taking
possession.

The house of Heathknowes was of the usual type of large Galloway farm--a
place with some history, the house ancient and roomy, the office houses
built massively in a square, as much for defence as for convenience. You
entered by a heavy gate and you closed it carefully after you. From
without the walls of the quadrangle frowned upon you unbroken from their
eminence, massy and threatening as a fortress. The walls were loopholed
for musketry, and, in places, still bore marks of the long slots through
which the archers had shot their bolts and clothyard shafts in the days
before powder and ball.

Except the single gate, you could go round and round without finding any
place by which an enemy might enter. The outside appearance was
certainly grim, unpromising, inhospitable, and so it seemed to Miss Irma
and Sir Louis as they drove up the loaning from the ford.

But within, everything was different. What a smiling welcome they
received, my grandfather standing with his hat off, my grandmother with
the tears in her motherly vehement eyes, gathering the two wanderers
defiantly to her breast as if daring all the world to come on. Behind a
little (but not much) was Aunt Jen, asserting her position and rights in
the house. She did not seem to see Miss Irma, but to make up, she never
took her eyes off the little boy for a moment.

Then my uncles were ranged awkwardly, their hands lonesome for the grip
of the plough, the driving reins, or the water-lever at the mill in the
woods.

Uncle Rob, our dandy, had changed his coat and put on a new neckcloth,
an act which, as all who know a Scots farm town will understand, cost
him a multitude of flouts, jeers and upcasting from his peers.

I was also there, not indeed to welcome them, but because I had
accompanied the party from the house of Marnhoul. The White Free Traders
had established a post there to watch over one of their best
"hidie-holes," even though they had removed all their goods in
expectation of the visit of a troop of horse under Captain Sinclair,
known to have been ordered up from Dumfries to aid the excise
supervisor, as soon as that zealous officer was sure that, the steed
being stolen, it was time to lock the stable door.

But when the dragoons came, there was little for them to do. Ned
Henderson, the General Surveyor of the Customs and head of the district
in all matters of excise, was far too careful a man to allow more to
appear than was "good for the country." He knew that there was hardly a
laird, and not a single farmer or man of substance who had not his
finger in the pie. Indeed, after the crushing national disaster of
Darien, this was the direction which speculation naturally took in
Scotland for more than a hundred years.

In due time, then, the dragoons arrived, greatly to the interest of all
the serving lasses--and some others. There was, of course, a vast deal
of riding about, cantering along by-ways, calling upon this or that
innocent to account for his presence at the back of a dyke or behind a
whin-bush--which he usually did in the most natural and convincing
manner possible.

The woods were searched--the covers drawn. Many birds were disturbed,
but of the crew of the _Golden Hind_, or the land smugglers by whose
arrival the capture and burning of Marnhoul had been prevented, no trace
was found. Even Kate of the Shore's present address was known to but
few, and to these quite privately. There was no doubt of her
faithfulness. That had been proven, but she knew too much. There were
questions which, even unanswered, might raise others.

Several young men, of good family and connections, thought it prudent to
visit friends at a distance, and at least one was never seen in the
country more.

One of his Majesty's frigates had been sent for to watch the Solway
ports, much to the disgust of her officers. For not only had they been
expected at the Portsmouth summer station by numerous pretty ladies, but
the navigation between Barnhourie and the Back Shore of Leswalt was as
full of danger as it was entirely without glory. If they were unlucky,
they might be cashiered for losing the ship. If lucky, the revenue men
would claim the captured cargo. If they secured the malefactors they
would sow desolation in a score of respectable families, with the
daughters of which they had danced at Kirkcudbright a week ago.

In Galloway, though a considerable amount of recklessness mingled with
the traffic, and there were occasional roughnesses on the high seas and
about the ports and anchorages of Holland and the Isle of Man, there was
never any of the cruelty associated with smuggling along the south coast
of England. The smugglers of Sussex killed the informer Chater with
blows of their whips. A yet darker tragedy enacted farther west,
brought half-a-dozen to a well-deserved scaffold. But, save for the
losses in fair fight occasioned by the intemperate zeal of some new
broom of a supervisor anxious for distinction, the history of Galloway
smuggling had, up to that time, never been stained with serious crime.

Meantime the two Maitlands, Sir Louis and Miss Irma, were safely housed
within the defenced place of Heathknowes, guarded by William Lyon and
his three stout sons, and mothered by all the hidden tenderness of my
grandmother's big, imperious, volcanic heart.

Only my Aunt Jen watched jealously with a half-satisfied air and took
counsel with herself as to what the end of these things might be.

CHAPTER XVI

CASTLE CONNOWAY

Meanwhile Boyd Connoway was in straits. Torn between two emotions, he
was pleased for once to have found a means of earning his living and
that of his family--especially the latter. For his own living was like
that of the crows, "got round the country somewhere!" But with the
lightest and most kindly heart in the world, Boyd Connoway found himself
in trouble owing to the very means of opulence which had brought content
to his house.

On going home on the night after the great attack on Marnhoul, weary of
directing affairs, misleading the dragoons, whispering specious theories
into the ear of the commanding officer and his aides, he had been met at
the outer gate of his cabin by a fact that overturned all his notions of
domestic economy. Ephraim, precious Ephraim, the Connoway family pig,
had been turned out of doors and was now grunting disconsolately,
thrusting a ringed nose through the bars of Paradise. Now Boyd knew that
his wife set great store by Ephraim. Indeed, he had frequently been
compared, to his disadvantage, with Ephraim and his predecessors in the
narrow way of pigs. Ephraim was of service. What would the "poor
childer," what would Bridget herself do without Ephraim? Bridget was not
quite sure whether she kept Ephraim or whether Ephraim kept her. At any
rate it was not to Boyd Connoway that she and her offspring were anyways
indebted for care and sustenance.

"The craitur," said Bridget affectionately, "he pays the very rint!"

But here, outside the family domain, was Ephraim, the beloved of his
wife's heart, actually turned out upon a cold and unfeeling world, and
with carefully spaced grunts of bewilderment expressing his discontent.
If such were Ephraim's fate, how would the matter go with him? Boyd
Connoway saw a prospect of finding a husband and the father of a family
turned from his own door, and obliged to return and take up his quarters
with this earlier exile.

The Connoway family residence was a small and almost valueless leasehold
from the estate of General Johnstone. The house had always been
tumbledown, and the tenancy of Bridget and her brood had not improved it
externally. The lease was evidently a repairing one. For holes in the
thatch roof were stopped with heather, or mended with broad slabs of
turf held down with stones and laboriously strengthened with wattle--a
marvel of a roof. It is certain that Boyd's efforts were never
continuous. He tired of everything in an hour, or sooner--unless
somebody, preferably a woman, was watching him and paying him
compliments on his dexterity.

The cottage had originally consisted of the usual "but-and-ben"--that is
to say, in well regulated houses (which this one was not) of a
kitchen--and a room that was not the kitchen. The family beds occupied
one corner of the kitchen, that of Bridget and her husband in the middle
(including accommodation for the latest baby), while on either side and
at the foot, shakedowns were laid out "for the childer," slightly raised
from the earthen floor on rude trestles, with a board laid across to
receive the bedding. There was nothing at either side to provide against
the occupants rolling over, but, as the distance from the ground did
not average more than four inches, the young Connoways did not run much
danger of accident on that account.

Disputes were, however, naturally somewhat frequent. Jerry or Phil would
describe himself as "lying on so many taturs"--Mary or Kitty declare
that her bedfellow was "pullin' every scrap off of her, that she was!"

To quell these domestic brawls Bridget Connoway kept at the head of the
middle bed a long peeled willow, which was known as the "Thin One." The
Thin One settled all night disputes in the most evenhanded way. For
Bridget did not get out of bed to discriminate. She simply laid on the
spot from which the disturbance proceeded till that disturbance ceased.
Then the Thin One returned to his corner while innocent and guilty
mingled their tears and resolved to conduct hostilities more silently in
future.

In the daytime, however, the "Thick One" held sway, which was the
work-hardened palm of Mistress Bridget Connoway's hand. She was
ambidextrous in correction--"one was as good as t'other," as Jerry
remarked, after he had done rubbing himself and comparing damages with
his brother Phil, who had got the left. "There's not a fardin' to pick
between us!" was the verdict as the boys started out to find their
father, stretched on his favourite sunny mound within sight of the
Haunted House of Marnhoul--now more haunted than ever.

But on this occasion Boyd Connoway was on his return, when he met the
exiled Ephraim. His meditations on his own probable fate have led the
historian into a sketch of the Connoway establishment, which, indeed,
had to come in somewhere.

For once Boyd wasted no time. With his wife waiting for him it was well
to know the worst and get it over. He opened the door quickly, and
intruding his hat on the end of his walking stick, awaited results. It
was only for a moment, of course, but Boyd Connoway felt satisfied. His
Bridget was not waiting for him behind the door with the potato-beetle
as she did on days of great irritation. His heart rose--his courage
returned. Was he not a free man, a house-holder? Had he not taken a
distinguished part in a gallant action? Bridget must understand this.
Bridget should understand this. Boyd Connoway would be respected in his
own house!

Nevertheless he entered hastily, sidling like a dog which expects a
kick. He avoided the dusky places instinctively--the door of the "ben"
room was shut, so Bridget could not be lying in wait there. Was it in
the little closet behind the kitchen that the danger lurked? The
children were in bed, save the two youngest, all quiet, all watching
with the large, dreamy blue (Connoway) eyes, or the small, very bright
ones (Bridget's) what his fate would be.

He glanced quaintly, with an interrogative lift of his eyebrows, at the
bed to the left. Jerry of the twinkling sloe-eyes answered with a quick
upturn of the thumb in the direction of the spare chamber.

Boyd Connoway frowned portentously at his eldest son. The youth shook
his head. The sign was well understood, especially when helped out with
a grin, broad as all County Donegal 'twixt Killibegs and Innishowen
Light.

The "Misthress" was in a good temper. Reassured, on his own account, but
inwardly no little alarmed for his wife's health in these unusual
circumstances, Boyd began to take off his boots with the idea of
gliding safely into bed and pretending to be asleep before the wind had
time to change.

But Jerry's mouth was very evidently forming some words, which were
meant to inform his father as to particulars. These, though
unintelligible individually, being taken together and punctuated with
jerks in the direction of the shut door of "doon-the-hoose," constituted
a warning which Boyd Connoway could not afford to neglect.

He went forward to the left hand bed, cocked his ear in the direction of
the closed door, and then rapidly lowered it almost against his son's
lips.

"She's gotten a hurt man down there," said Jerry, "she has been runnin'
wi' white clouts and bandages a' the forenight. And I'm thinkin' he's no
very wise, either--for he keeps cryin' that the deils are comin' to tak'
him!"

"What like of a man?" said Boyd Connoway.

But Jerry's quick ear caught a stirring in the room with the closed
door. He shook his head and motioned his father to get away from the
side of his low truckle bed.

When his wife entered, Boyd Connoway, with a sober and innocent face,
was untying his boot by the side of the fire. Bridget entered with a
saucepan in her hand, which, before she deigned to take any notice of
her husband, she pushed upon the red ashes in the grate.

From the "ben" room, of which the door was now open, Boyd could hear the
low moaning of a man in pain. He had tended too many sick people not to
know the delirium of fever, the pitiful lapses of sense, then again the
vague and troubled pour of words, and at the sound he started to his
feet. He was not good for much in the way of providing for a family. He
did a great many foolish, yet more useless things, but there was one
thing which he understood better than Bridget--how to nurse the sick.

He disengaged his boot and stood in his stocking feet.

"What is it?" he said, in an undertone to Bridget.

"No business of yours!" she answered, with a sudden hissing vehemence.

"I can do _that_ better than you!" he answered, for once sure of his
ground.

His wife darted at him a look of concentrated scorn.

"Get to bed!" she commanded him, declining to argue with such as he--and
but for the twinkling eyes of Jerry, which looked sympathy, Boyd would
have preferred to have joined the exiled Ephraim under the dark pent
among the coom of the peat-house.

He looked to Jerry, but Jerry was sound asleep. So was Phil. So were all
the others.

"Very well, däärlin'!" said Boyd Connoway to himself as his wife left
the room. "But, sorrow am I for the man down there that she will not let
me nurse. She's a woman among a thousand, is Bridget Connoway. But the
craitur will be after makin' the poor man eat his poultices, and use his
beef tay for outward application only!"

CHAPTER XVII

THE MAN "DOON-THE-HOOSE"

But Bridget Connoway, instant and authoritative as she was, could not
prevent her down-trodden husband from thinking. Who was the mysterious
wounded man "down-the-house"? One of the White Smugglers? Hardly. Boyd
had been in the thick of that business and knew that no one had been
hurt except Barnboard Tam, whose horse had run away with him and brushed
him off, a red-haired Absalom in homespuns, against the branches in
Marnhoul Great Wood.

One of the crew of the _Golden Hind_, American-owned privateersman with
French letters of marque? Possibly one of the desperate gang they had
landed called the Black Smugglers, scum of the Low Dutch ports, come to
draw an ill report upon the good and wholesome fame of Galloway Free
Trade.

In either case, Boyd Connoway little liked the prospect, and instead of
going to bed, he remained swinging his legs before the fire in a musing
attitude, listening to the moaning noises that came from the chamber he
was forbidden to enter. He was resolved to have it out with his wife.

He had not long to wait. Bridget appeared in the doorway, a bundle of
dark-stained cloths between her palms. She halted in astonishment at the
sight which met her eyes. At first it seemed to her that she was
dreaming, or that her voice must have betrayed her. She gave her husband
the benefit of the doubt.

"I thought I tould ye, Boyd Connoway," she said in a voice dangerously
low and caressing, "to be getting off to your bed and not disturbin' the
childer'!"

"Who is the man that had need of suchlike?" demanded Boyd Connoway,
suddenly regaining his lost heritage as the head of a house, "speak
woman, who are ye harbouring there?"

Bridget stood still. The mere unexpectedness of the demand rendered her
silent. The autocrat of all the Russias treated as though he were one of
his own ministers of state could not have been more dumbfounded.

With a sudden comprehension of the crisis Bridget broke for the poker,
but Boyd had gone too far now to recoil. He caught at the little
three-legged stool on which he was wont to take his humble frugal meals.
It was exactly what he needed. He had no idea of assaulting Bridget. He
recognized all her admirable qualities, which filled in the shortcomings
of his shiftlessness with admirable exactitude. He meant to act strictly
on the defensive, a system of warfare that was familiar to him. For
though he had never before risen up in open revolt, he had never counted
mere self-preservation as an insult to his wife.

"_Whack!_" down came the poker in the lusty hand of Bridget Connoway.
"_Crack!_" the targe in the lifted arm of Boyd countered it. At
arm's-length he held it. The next attack was cut number two of the
manual for the broad-sword. Skilfully with his shield Boyd Connoway
turned it to the side, so that, gliding from the polished oak of the
well-worn seat, the head of the poker caught his wife on the knee, and
she dropped her weapon with a cry of pain. Jerry and the other children,
in the seventh heaven of delight at the parental duel, were sitting up
in their little night-shirts (which for simplicity's sake were
identical with their day-shirts); their eyes, black and blue, sparkled
unanimous, and they made bets in low tones from one bed to another.

"Two to one on Daddy!"

"Jerry, ye ass, I'll bet ye them three white chuckies[1] he'll lose!"

"Hould your tongue, Connie--mother'll win, sure. The Thick 'Un will get
him!"

Such combats were a regular interest for them, and one, in quiet times,
quite sympathized in by their father, who would guide the combat so that
they might have a better view.

"Troth, and why shouldn't they, poor darlints? Sure an' it's little
enough amusement they have!"

He had even been known to protract an already lost battle to lengthen
out the delectation of his offspring. The Cæsars gave to their people
"Bread and the circus!" But they did not usually enter the arena
themselves--save in the case of the incomparable bowman of Rome, and
then only when he knew that no one dared stand against him. But Boyd
Connoway fought many a losing fight that his small citizens might
wriggle with delight on their truckles. "The Christians to the lions!"
Yes, that was noble. But then they had no choice, while Boyd Connoway, a
willing martyr, fought his lioness with a three-legged stool.

This time, however, the just quarrel armed the three-legged, while cut
number two of Forbes's Manual fell, not on Boyd Connoway's head, for
which it was intended, but on Bridget's knee-cap. Boyd of the tender
heart (though stubborn stool), was instantly upon his knees, his
buckler flung to the ground and rubbing with all his might, with
murmurings of, "Does it hurt now, darlint?--Not bääd, sure?--Say it is
better now thin, darlint!"

Boyd was as conscience-stricken as if he had personally wielded the
poker. But the mind of Bridget was quite otherwise framed. With one hand
she seized his abundant curly hair, now with a strand or two of early
grey among the straw-colour of it, and while she pulled handfuls of it
out by the roots (so Boyd declared afterwards), she boxed his ears
heartily with the other. Which, indeed, is witnessed to by the whole
goggle-eyed populace in the truckle bed.

"Didn't I tell ye, Jerry, ye cuckoo," whispered Connie, "she'd beat him?
He's gettin' the Thick 'Un, just as I told ye!"

"But it's noways fair rules," retorted Jerry; "father he flung down his
weepon for to rub her knee when she hurt it herself wid the poker!"

Jerry had lost his bet, as indeed he usually did, but for all that he
remained a consistent supporter of the losing side. Daily he
acknowledged in his body the power of the arm of flesh, but the vagrant
butterfly humour of the male parent with the dreamy blue eyes touched
him where he lived--perhaps because his, like his mother's, were
sloe-black.

Nevertheless, in spite of mishandling and a scandalous disregard of the
rules of the noble art of self-defence (not yet elaborated, but only
roughly understood as "Fair play to all"), Boyd Connoway carried his
point.

He saw the occupant of the bed "doon-the-hoose."

He was a slim man with clean-cut features, very pale about the gills and
waxen as to the nose. He lay on the bed, his head ghastly in its white
bandages rocking from side to side and a stream of curses, thin and
small of voice as a hill-brook in drought, but continuous as a
mill-lade, issuing from between his clenched teeth.

These adjurations were in many tongues, and their low-toned variety
indicated the swearing of an educated man.

Boyd understood at once that he had to do with no vulgar Tarry-Breeks,
no sweepings of a couple of hemispheres, but with "a gentleman born."
And in Donegal, though they may rebel against their servitude and meet
them foot by foot on the field or at the polling-booths, they know a
gentleman when they see one, and never in their wildest moods deny his
birthright.

Boyd, therefore, took just one glance, and then turning to his wife
uttered his sentiment in three words of approval. "I'm wid ye!" he said.

Had it been Galligaskins or any seaman of the _Golden Hind_, Boyd would
have had him out of the house in spite of his wife and all the wholesome
domestic terror she had so long been establishing.

But a Donegal man is from the north after all, and does not easily take
to the informer's trade. Besides, this was a gentleman born.

Yet he had better have given hospitality to Galligaskins and the whole
crew of pirates who manned the _Golden Hind_ than to this slender,
clear-skinned creature who lay raving and smiling in the bedroom of
Boyd Connoway's cabin.

[Footnote 1: "Chuckies," white pebbles used, in these primitive times,
instead of marbles.]

CHAPTER XVIII

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF AUNT JEN

Never was anything seen like it in our time. I mean the transformation
of Aunt Jen, the hard crabapple of our family, after the entrance of the
Maitland children into the household of Heathknowes. Not that my aunt
had much faith in Irma. She had an art, which my aunt counted uncanny,
indeed savouring of the sin of witchcraft. It mattered not at all what
Irma was given to wear--an old tartan of my grandmother's Highland Mary
days when she was a shepherdess by the banks of Cluden, a severe gown
designed on strictly architectural principles by the unabashed shears of
Aunt Jen herself, a bodice and skirt of my mother's, dovelike in hue and
carrying with them some of her own retiring quality in every line. It
was all the same, with a shred or two of silk, with a little undoing
here, a little tightening there, a broad splash of colour cut from one
of my Uncle Rob's neckcloths--not anywhere, but just in the right
place--Irma could give to all mankind the impression of being the only
person worth looking at in the parish. With these simple means she could
and did make every other girl, though attired in robes that had come all
the way from Edinburgh, look dowdy and countrified.

Also she had the simple manner of those who stand in no fear of any one
taking a liberty with them. Her position was assured. Her beauty spoke
for itself, and as for the old tartan, the slab-sided merino, the
retiring pearl-grey wincey, their late owners did not know them again
when they appeared in the great square Marnhoul pew in the parish
church, which Irma insisted upon occupying.

I think that a certain scandal connected with this, actually caused more
stir in the parish than all the marvel of the appearance of the children
in the Haunted House. And for this reason. Heathknowes was a Cameronian
household. The young men of Heathknowes were looked upon to furnish a
successor to their father as an elder in the little meeting-house down
by the Fords. But with the full permission of my grandmother, and the
tacit sympathy of my grandfather, each Sabbath day Miss Irma and Sir
Louis went in state to the family pew at the parish kirk (a square box
large enough to seat a grand jury). The children were perched in the
front, Irma keeping firm and watchful guard over her brother, while in
the dimmer depths, seen from below as three sturdy pairs of shoulders
against the dusk of a garniture of tapistry, sat the three Cameronian
young men of Heathknowes.

Nothing could so completely and fully have certified the strength of my
grandmother's purpose than that she, a pillar of the Covenant, thus
complacently allowed her sons to frequent the public worship of an
uncovenanted and Erastian Establishment.

But there was at least one in the house of Heathknowes not to be so
misled by the outward graces of the body.

"Favour is vain and the eye of Him that sitteth in the heavens regardeth
it not," she was wont to say, "and if Rob and Thomas and Ebenezer come
to an ill end, mother, you will only have yourself to thank for it!"

"Nonsense, Jen," said her mother, "if you are prevented by your
infirmities from talkin' sense, at least do hold your tongue. Doctor
Gillespie is a Kirkman and a Moderate, but he is--well, he is the
Doctor, and never a word has been said against him for forty year, walk
and conversation both as becometh the Gospel----"

"Aye, but _is_ it the Gospel?" cried Jen, snipping out her words as with
scissors; "that's the question."

"When I require you, Janet Lyon, to decide for your mother what is
Gospel and what is not, I'll let ye ken," said my grandmother, "and if I
have accepted a responsibility from the Most High for these children, I
will do my best to render an account of my stewardship at the Great
White Throne. In the meantime, _you_ have no more right to task me for
it, than--than--Boyd Connoway!"

"There," cried Jen, slapping down the last dish which she had been
drying while her mother washed, "I declare, mother, I might just as well
not have a tongue at all. Whatever I say you are on my back. And as if
snubbing me were not enough, down you must come on me with the Great
White Throne!"

Her aggrieved voice made my grandmother laugh.

"Well-a-well!" she said, in her richly comfortable voice of a mother of
consolation, "you are of the tribe of Marthas, Jen, and you certainly
work hard enough for everybody to give your tongue a right to a little
trot now and then. You will have all the blessings, daughter
Janet--except that of the peacemaker. For it's in you to set folk by the
ears and you really can't help it. Though who you took it from is more
than I can imagine, with a mother as mild as milk and a father----"

"Well, what about the father--speak of the--um-um--father and he will
appear, I suppose!"

It was my grandfather who had come in, his face bronzed with the sun
and a friendly shaving tucked underneath his coat collar at the back,
witnessing that some one of his sons, in the labours of the pirn-mill,
had not remembered the first commandment with promise.

His wife removed it with a smile, and said, "I'll wager ye that was yon
rascal Rob. He is always at his tricks!"

"Well, what were you saying about me, old wife?" said grandfather,
looking at his wife with the quiet fondness that comes of half-a-century
of companionship.

"Only that Jen there had a will-o'-the-wisp of a temper and that I knew
not how she got it, for you only go about pouring oil upon the waters!"

"As to that, you know best, guidwife," he answered, smiling, "but I
think I have heard of a wife up about the Heathknowes, who in some
measure possesses the power of her unruly member. It is possible that
Jen there may have picked up a thorn or two from that side!"

William Lyon caught his daughter's ear.

"Eh, lass, what sayest thou?" he crooned, looking down upon her with a
tenderness rare to him with one of his children. "What sayest thou?"

"I say that you and mother and all about this house have run out of your
wits about this slip of a girl? I say that you may rue it when you have
not a son to succeed you at the Kirk of the Covenant down by the Ford."

The fleeting of a smile came over my grandfather's face, that quiet
amusement which usually showed when my grandmother opposed her will to
his, and when for once he did not mean to give in.

"It's a sorrowful thing--a whole respectable household gone daft about
a couple of strange children;" he let the words drop very slowly.
"Specially I was distressed to hear of one who rose betimes to milk a
cow, so that the cream would have time to rise on the morning's milk by
their porridge time!"

"Father," said Jen, "that was for the boy bairn. He has not been brought
up like the rest of us, and he does not like warm milk with his
porridge."

"Doubtless--ah, doubtless," said William Lyon; "but if he is to bide
with us, is it not spoiling him thus to give way to suchlike whims? He
will have to learn some day, and when so good a time as now?"

Aunt Jen, who knew she was being teased, kept silence, but the shoulder
nearest my father had an indignant hump.

"Wheesht, William," interposed grandmother good-naturedly, "if Jen rose
betimes to get milk for the bairn, ye ken yoursel' that ye think the
better of her for it. And so do I. Jen's not the first whose acts are
kindlier than her principles."

But Jen kept her thorns out and refused to be brought into the fold by
flattery, till her father said, "Jen, have ye any of that fine
homebrewed left, or did the lads drink it a' to their porridges? I'm a
kennin' weary, and nothing refreshes me like that!"

Jen felt the artfulness of this, nevertheless she could not help being
touched. The care of the still-room was hers, because, though my
grandmother could go through twice the work in the day that her daughter
could, the brewing of the family small beer and other labours of the
still-room were of too exact and methodical a nature for a headlong
driver like Mary Lyon.

My grandfather got his ale, of the sort just then beginning to be
made--called "Jamaica," because a quantity of the cheap sugar refuse
from the hogsheads was used in its production. In fact, it was the
ancestor of the "treacle ale" of later years. But to the fabrication of
this beverage, Jen added mysterious rites, during which the door of the
still-room was locked, barred, and the keyhole blinded, while Eben and
Rob, my uncles, stood without vainly asking for a taste, or simulating
by their moans and cries the most utter lassitude and fatigue.

William Lyon sat sipping his drink while Jen eyed him furtively as she
went about the house, doing her duties with the silence and exactitude
of a well-oiled machine. She was a difficult subject, my aunt Jen, to
live with, but she could be got at, as her father well knew, by a
humanizing vanity.

He sat back with an air of content in his great wide chair, the chair
that had been handed down as the seat of the head of the house from many
generations of Lyonses. He sipped and nodded his head, looking towards
his daughter, and lifting the tankard with a courtly gesture as if
pledging her health.

Jen was pleased, though for a while she did not allow it to be seen, and
her only repentance was taking up the big empty goblet without being
asked and going to the still-room to refill it.

During her absence my grandfather shamelessly winked at my grandmother,
while my grandmother shook her fist covertly at her husband. Which
pantomime meant to say on the part of William Lyon that _he_ knew how to
manage women, while on his wife's side it inferred that she would not
demean herself to use means so simple and abject as plain flattery even
with a "camsteary" daughter.

But they smiled at each other, not ill-content, and as my grandmother
passed to the dresser she paused by the great oak chair long enough to
murmur, "She's coming round!" But my grandfather only smiled and looked
towards the door that led to the still-room, pantries and so forth, as
if he found the time long without his second pot of sugar ale.

He was something of a diplomat, my grandfather.

It was while sitting thus, with the second drink of harmless "Jamaica"
before him, my aunt and grandmother crossing each other ceaselessly on
silent feet, that a knock came to the front door.

Now in Galloway farm houses there is a front door, but no known use for
it has been discovered, except to _be_ a door. Later, it was the custom
to open it to let in the minister on his stated visitations, and later
still to let out the dead. But at the period of which I write it was a
door and nothing more.

Both of these other uses are mere recent inventions. The shut front door
of my early time stood blistering and flaking in the hot sun, or
soaking--crumbling, and weather-beaten--during months of bad weather.
For, with a wide and noble entrance behind upon the yard, so
well-trodden and convenient, so charged with the pleasant press of
entrants and exodants, so populous with affairs, from which the chickens
had to be "shooed" and the moist noses of questing calves pushed aside
twenty times a day--why should any mortal think of entering by the front
door of the house. First of all it was the front door. Next, no one knew
whether it would open or not, though the odds were altogether against
it. Lastly, it was a hundred miles from anywhere and opened only upon a
stuffy lobby round which my grandmother usually had her whole Sunday
wardrobe hung up in bags smelling of lavender to guard against the
moths.

Nevertheless, the knock sounded distinctly enough from the front door.

"Some of the bairns playing a trick," said my grandmother tolerantly,
"let them alone, Janet, and they will soon tire o't!"

But Jen had showed so much of the unwonted milk of human kindness that
she felt she must in some degree retrieve her character. She waited,
therefore, for the second rap, louder than the first, then lifted a wand
from the corner and went "down-the-house," quietly as she did all
things.

Aunt Jen concealed the rod behind her. Her private intention was to wait
for the third knock, and then open suddenly, with the deadly resolve to
teach us what we were about--a mental reservation being made in the case
of Baby Louis, who (if the knocker turned out to be he) must obviously
have been put up to it.

The third knock fell. Aunt Jen leaped upon the door-handle. Bolts
creaked and shot back, but swollen by many rainy seasons, the door held
stoutly as is the wont of farm front doors. Then suddenly it gave way
and Aunt Jen staggered back against the wall, swept away by the energy
of her own effort. The wand fell from her hand, and she stood with the
inner door handle still clutched in nervous fingers before a slight
dapper man in a shiny brown coat, double-breasted and closely buttoned,
even on this broiling day--while the strident "_weesp-weesp_" of brother
Tom down in the meadow, sharpening his scythe with a newly fill
"strake," made a keen top-note to the mood of summer.

"Mr. Poole," said the slim man, uncovering and saluting obsequiously,
and then seeing that my aunt rested dumb-stricken, the rod which had
been in pickle fallen to the floor behind her, he added with a little
mincing smile and a kind of affected heel-and-toe dandling of his body,
"I am Mr. Wrighton Poole, of the firm of Smart, Poole, and Smart of
Dumfries."

CHAPTER XIX

LOADED-PISTOL POLLIXFEN

Now Aunt Jen's opinion of lawyers was derived from two sources,
observation and a belief in the direct inspiration of two lines of Dr.
Watts, his hymns.

In other words, she had noticed that lawyers sat much in their offices,
twiddling with papers, and that they never went haymaking nor stood
erect in carts dumping manure on the autumnal fields. So two lines of
Dr. Watts, applicable for such as they, and indeed every one not so
aggressively active as herself, were calculated to settle the case of
Mr. Wrighton Poole.

    "Satan finds some mischief
    For idle hands to do."

Indeed, I had heard of them more than once myself, when she caught me
lying long and lazy in the depths of a haymow with a book under my nose.

At any rate Aunt Jen suspected this Mr. Poole at once. But so she would
the Lord Chancellor of England himself, for the good reason that by
choice and custom he sat on a woolsack!

"I'd woolsack him!" Aunt Jen had cried when this fact was first brought
to her notice; "I'd make him get up pretty quick and earn his living if
he was my man!"

My grandfather had pointed out that the actual Lord Chancellor of the
moment was a bachelor, whereupon Aunt Jen retorted, "Aye, and doubtless
that's the reason. The poor body has nobody to do her duty by him!"

For these excellent reasons my Aunt Jen took a dislike to Mr. Wrighton
Poole (of the firm of Smart, Poole, and Smart, solicitors, Dumfries) at
the very first glance.

And yet, when he was introduced into the state parlour with the six
mahogany-backed, haircloth-seated chairs, the two narrow arm-chairs, the
four ugly mirrors, and the little wire basket full of odds and ends of
crockery and foreign coins--covered by the skin of a white blackbird,
found on the farm and prepared for stuffing--he looked a very dapper,
respectable, personable man. But my Aunt Jen would have none of his
compliments on the neatness of the house or the air of bien comfort that
everything about the farm had worn on his way thither.

She drew out a chair for him and indicated it with her hand.

"Bide there," she commanded, "till I fetch them that can speak wi' you!"
An office which, had she chosen, Jen was very highly qualified to
undertake, save for an early and deep-rooted conviction that business
matters had better be left to the dealing of man and man.

This belief, however, was not in the least that of my grandmother. She
would come in and sit down in the very middle of one of my grandfather's
most private bargainings with the people to whom he sold his spools and
"pirns." She had her say in everything, and she said it so easily and so
much as a matter of course that no one was ever offended.

Grandfather was at the mill and in consequence it was my grandmother who
entered from the dairy, still wiping her hands from the good, warm
buttermilk which had just rendered up its tale of butter. There was a
kind of capable and joyous fecundity about my grandmother, in spite of
her sharp tongue, her masterful ways, the strictness of her theology and
her old-fashioned theories, which seemed to produce an effect even on
inanimate things. So light and loving was her hand--the hand that had
loved (and smacked) many children, brooded over innumerable hatchings of
things domestic, tended whole byrefuls of cows, handled suckling lambs
with dead mothers lying up on the hill--aye, played the surgeon even to
robins with broken legs, for one of which she constructed a leg capable
of being strapped on, made it out of the whalebone of an old corset of
her own for which she had grown too abundant!

So kindly was the eye that could flash fire on an argumentative
Episcopalian parson--and send him over two pounds of butter and a dozen
fresh-laid eggs for his sick wife--that (as I say) even inanimate
objects seemed to respond to her look and conform themselves to the wish
of her finger tips. She had been known to "set" a dyke which had twice
resolved itself into rubbish under the hands of professionals. The
useless rocky patch she had taken as a herb garden blossomed like the
rose, bringing forth all manner of spicy things. For in these days in
Galloway most of the garnishments of the table were grown in the garden
itself, or brought in from the cranberry bogs and the blaeberry banks,
where these fruits grew among a short, crumbly stubble of heather, dry
and elastic as a cushion, and most admirable for resting upon while
eating.

Well, grandmother came in wiping her hands. It seems to me now that I
see her--and, indeed, whenever she does make an entry into the story, I
always feel that I must write yet another page about the dear,
warm-hearted, tumultuous old lady.

She saw the slender lawyer with the brown coat worn shiny, the scratch
wig tied with its black wisp of silk, and the black bag in his hand. He
had been taking a survey of the room, and started round quickly at the
entrance of my grandmother. Then he made a deep bow, and grandmother,
who could be very grand indeed when she liked, bestowed upon him a
curtsey the like of which he had not seen for a long while.

"My name is Poole," he said apologetically. "I presume I have the honour
of speaking to Mistress Mary Lyon, spouse and consort of William Lyon,
tacksman of the Mill of Marnhoul with all its lades, weirs, and
pendicles----"

"If you mean that William Lyon is my man, ye are on the bit so far,"
said my grandmother; "pass on. What else hae ye to say? I dinna suppose
that ye cam' here to ask a sicht o' my marriage lines."

"It is, indeed, a different matter which has brought me thus far," said
the lawyer man, with a certain diffidence, "but I think that perhaps I
ought to wait till--till your husband, in fact----"

"If you are waiting for Weelyum," said Mary Lyon, "ye needna fash. He is
o' the same mind as me--or will be after I have spoken wi' him. Say on!"

"Well, then," the lawyer continued, "it is difficult--but the matter
resolves itself into this. I understand--my firm understands, that you
are harbouring in or about this house a young woman calling herself Irma
Sobieski Maitland, and a child of the male sex whom the aforesaid Irma
Sobieski affirms to be the rightful owner of this estate--in fact, Sir
Louis Maitland. Now, my firm have been long without direct news of the
family whom they represent. Our intelligence of late years has come from
their titular and legal guardian, Mr. Lalor Maitland, Governor of the
district of the Upper Meuse in the Brabants. Now we have recently heard
from this gentleman that his wards--two children bearing a certain
resemblance to those whom, we are informed, you have been
harbouring----"

My grandmother's temper, always uncertain with adults with whom she had
no sympathy, had been gradually rising at each repetition of an
offending word.

"Harbouring," she cried, "harbouring--let me hear that word come out o'
your impident mouth again, ye upsettin' body wi' the black bag, and I'll
gie ye the weight o' my hand against the side o' your face. Let me tell
you that in the house of Heathknowes we harbour neither burrowing rats
nor creepin' foumarts, nor any manner of unclean beasts--and as for a
lawvier, if lawvier ye be, ye are the first o' your breed to enter here,
and if my sons hear ye talkin' o' harbourin'--certes, ye stand a chance
to gang oot the door wi' your feet foremost!"

"My good woman," said the lawyer, "I was but using an ordinary word, in
perfect ignorance of any----"

"Come na, nane o' that crooked talk! Mary Lyon is nae bit silly Jenny
Wren to be whistled off the waa' wi' ony siccan talk. Dinna tell me that
a lawvier body doesna ken what 'harbouring rogues and vagabonds'
means--the innocent lamb that he is--and him reading the _Courier_ every
Wednesday!"

"But," said the solicitor, with more persistent firmness than his
emaciated body and timorous manner would have led one to expect, "the
children are here, and it is my duty to warn you that in withholding
them from their natural guardian you are defying the law. I come to
require that the children be given up to me at once, that I may put them
under their proper tutelage."

"Here, William," my grandmother called out, recognizing the footsteps
of her husband approaching, "gae cry the lads and lock the doors!
There's a body here that will need some guid broad Scots weared on him."

But the lawyer was not yet frightened. As it appeared, he had only known
the safe plainstones of Dumfries--so at least Mary Lyon thought. For he
continued his discourse as if nothing were the matter.

"I came here in a friendly spirit, madam," he said, "but I have good
reason to believe that every male of your household is deeply involved
in the smuggling traffic, and that several of them, in spite of their
professions of religion, assaulted and took possession of the House of
Marnhoul for the purpose of unlawfully concealing therein undutied goods
from the proper officers of the crown!"

"Aye, and ken ye wha it was that tried to burn doon your Great House,"
cried my grandmother--"it was your grand tutor--your wonderfu' guardian,
even Lalor Maitland, the greatest rogue and gipsy that ever ran on two
legs. There was a grandson o' mine put a charge o' powder-and-shot into
him, though. But here come the lads. They will tell ye news o' your
tutor and guardian, him that ye daur speak to me aboot committing the
puir innocent bairns to--what neither you nor a' the law in your black
bag will ever tak' frae under the roof-tree o' Mary Lyon. Here, this way,
lads--dinna be blate! Step ben!"

And so, without a shadow of blateness, there stepped "ben" Tom and Eben
and Rob. Tom had his scythe in his hand, for he had come straight from
the meadow at his father's call, the sweat of mowing still beading his
brow, and the broad leathern strap shining wet about his waist. Eben
folded a pair of brawny arms across a chest like an oriel window, but
Rob always careful for appearances, had his great-grandfather's sword,
known in the family as "Drumclog," cocked over his shoulder, and carried
his head to the side with so knowing an air that the blade was cold
against his right ear.

Last of all my grandfather stepped in, while I kept carefully out of
sight behind him. He glanced once at his sons.

"Lads, be ashamed," he said; "you, Thomas, and especially you, Rob. Put
away these gauds. We are not 'boding in fear of weir.' These ill days
are done with. Be douce, and we will hear what this decent man has to
say."

There is no doubt that the lawyer was by this display of force somewhat
intimidated. At least, he looked about him for some means of escape, and
fumbled with the catch of his black hand-bag.

"Deil's in the man," cried Mary Lyon, snatching the bag from him, "but
it's a blessing I'm no so easy to tak' in as the guidman there. Let that
bag alane, will ye, na! Wha kens what may be in it? There--what did I
tell you?"

Unintentionally she shook the catch open, and within were two pistols
cocked and primed, of which Eben and Tom took instant possession.
Meanwhile, as may be imagined, my grandmother improved the occasion.

"A lawvier, are you, Master Wringham Poole o' Dumfries," she cried? "A
bonny lawvier, that does his business wi' a pair o' loaded pistols. Like
master, like man, I say! There's but ae kind o' lawvier that does his
business like that--he's caa'ed a cut-purse, a common highwayman, and
ends by dancing a bonny saraband at the end o' a tow-rope! Lalor
Maitland assaulted Marnhoul wi' just such a band o' thieves and
robbers--to steal away the bairns. This will be another o' the gang.
Lads, take hold, and see what he has on him."

But with one bound the seemingly weak and slender man flung himself in
the direction of the door. Before they could move he was out into the
lobby among the lavender bags containing Mary Lyon's Sunday wardrobe,
and but for the fact that he mistook the door of a preserve closet for
the front door, he might easily have escaped them all. But Rob, who was
young and active, closed in upon him. The slim man squirmed like an eel,
and even when on the ground drew a knife and stuck it into the calf of
Rob's leg. A yell, and a stamp followed, and then a great silence in
which we looked at one another awe-stricken. Mr. Wringham Poole lay like
a crushed caterpillar, inert and twitching. It seemed as if Rob had
killed him; but my grandfather, with proper care and precautions drew
away the knife, and after having passed a hand over the body in search
of further concealed weapons, laid him out on the four haircloth chairs,
with a footstool under his head for a pillow.

Then, having listened to the beating of the wounded man's heart, he
reassured us with a nod. All would be right. Next, from an inner pocket
he drew a pocket-book, out of the first division of which dropped a
black mask, like those worn at the assault upon Marnhoul, with pierced
eyeholes and strings for fastening behind the ears. There were also a
few papers and a card on which was printed a name--

"Wringham Pollixfen Poole"; and then underneath, written in pencil in a
neat lawyer-like hand, were the words, "Consultation at the Old Port at
midnight to-morrow."

At this we all looked at one another with a renewal of our perturbation.
The firm of Smart, Poole and Smart had existed in Dumfries for a long
time, and was highly considered. But in these troubled times one never
knew how far his neighbour might have been led. A man could only answer
for himself, and even as to that, he had sometimes a difficulty in
explaining himself. One of the firm of lawyers in the High Street might
have been tempted out of his depth. But, at any rate, here was one of
them damaged, and that by the hasty act of one of the sons of the house
of Heathknowes--which in itself was a serious matter.

My grandfather, therefore, judged it well that the lawyers in Dumfries
should be informed of what had befallen as soon as possible. But Mr.
Wringham Pollixfen Poole, if such were his name, was certainly in need
of being watched till my grandfather's return, specially as of necessity
he would be in the same house as Miss Irma and Sir Louis.

None of the young men, therefore, could be spared to carry a message to
Dumfries. My father could not leave his school, and so it came to pass
that I was dispatched to saddle my grandfather's horse. He would ride to
Dumfries with me on a pillion behind him, one hand tucked into the
pocket of his blue coat, while with the other I held the belt about his
waist to make sure. I had to walk up the hills, but that took little of
the pleasure away. Indeed, best of all to me seemed that running hither
and thither like a questing spaniel, in search of all manner of wild
flowers, or the sight of strange, unknown houses lying in wooded
glens--one I mind was Goldielea--which, as all the mead before the door
was one mass of rag-weed (which only grows on the best land), appeared
to me the prettiest and most appropriate name for a house that ever was.

And so think I still.

CHAPTER XX

THE REAL MR. POOLE

So in time we ran to Dumfries. And my grandfather put up at a hostelry
in English Street, where were many other conveyances with their shafts
canted high in the air, the day being Wednesday. He did not wait a
moment even to speak to those who saluted him by name, but betook
himself at once (and I with him) to the lawyers' offices in the High
Street--where it runs downhill just below the Mid Steeple.

Here we found a little knot of people. For, as it turned out (though at
the time we did not know it), Messrs. Smart, Poole and Smart were agents
for half the estates in Dumfriesshire, and our Galloway Marnhoul was
both a far cry and a very small matter to them.

So when we had watched a while the tremors of the ingoers, all eager to
ask favours, and compared them with the chastened demeanour of those
coming out, my grandfather said to me with his hand on my shoulder, "I
fear, Duncan lad, we shall sleep in Dumfries Tolbooth this night for
making so bauld with one of a house like this!"

And from this moment I began to regard our captive Mr. Poole with a far
greater respect, in spite of his pistols--which, after all, he might
deem necessary when travelling into such a wild smuggling region as, at
that day and date, most townsbodies pictured our Galloway to be.

We had a long time to wait in a kind of antechamber, where a man in a
livery of canary and black stripes, with black satin knee-breeches and
paste buckles to his shoes took our names, or at least my grandfather's
and the name of the estate about which we wanted to speak to the firm.

For, you see, there being so many to attend to on market day, they had
parted them among themselves, so many to each. And when it came to our
turn it was old Mr. Smart we saw. The grand man in canary and black
ushered us ben, told our name, adding, "of Marnhoul estate," as if we
had been the owners thereof.

We had looked to see a fine, noble-appearing man sitting on a kind of
throne, receiving homage, but there was nobody in the room but an old
man in a dressing-gown and soft felt slippers, stirring the
fire--though, indeed, it was hot enough outside.

He turned towards us, the poker still in his hand, and with an eye like
a gimlet seemed to take us in at a single glance.

"What's wrong? What's wrong the day?" he cried in an odd sing-song;
"what news of the Holy Smugglers? More battle, murder, and sudden death
along the Solway shore?"

I had never seen my grandfather so visibly perturbed before. He actually
stammered in trying to open out his business--which, now I come to think
of it, was indeed of the delicatest.