Part 8

At night when the wee one slept, the mother would have her plaid on her head, and through the town, barefoot, in the darkness, passing the folk at the close-mouths quickly for fear they would speak to her, and her heart would crave for share of the noble supper that made steam from the door of her cousin the rich merchant.

Like a ghost sometimes, wandering about the Cadger's Quay or the gutting-stools, where she would be looking for a dropped giley or a bake from the nets, she would come on a young woman.

“_Dhe!_ Jean Rob! is it thyself that is here?”

“Just Jean, my darling, for a little turn, because of the stir in the town, and the smell of the barking nets. Well I like the smell of the bark, and the wind takes little of it up the Lowlands road.”

“Thou art not coming out much since the men went to the North. Art well at the house--the little one, now, bless her?”

“Splendid, splendid, _m' eudail_. Faith, it is too fat we will be getting on the fortune Rob got from Elrigmor.”

“Indeed, yes, Jean, it was the great luck! When a poor person comes----”

“Hut tut! Poor nor rich, my people had their own place on Lochowside, and little did my Rob need MacNicol's dirty money; but he was aye fond of a 'horo-yally,' and that's the way of his being among them.”

“Well, well, if that's the way, our own people were good enough on a time; but a pedigree, thou wilt allow, is a poor plaster for a pain in the stomach. For me, I would have a good shaking of herring and money in the town. It was but black brochan for our one meal to-day, and my mother poorly.”

“My dear! _och_, my dear! and I to brag of plenty! Little enough, in truth, is on my own board; but I have a boiling of meal if you come for it in the morning.”

“Kindly, kindly, thou good dame. It would be but a loan.”

“Yes, indeed, one will be running out of the wherewithal now and again, and 'twas aye 'Mine is yours and yours is mine' in Gaeldom. But I must be stepping.”

And while Jean Rob starved, there was never a word from the best and bravest off at the wars, or how they fared, only now and then a half tale from a travelling caird or a Low-Country carrier about gatherings and skirling pipes and hard knocks. His Grace himself kept a horse or two and a good rider on the other side of the Rest, to gallop hot-hoof into the Castle with the first news of how his clan won; but weary was the waiting.

The town took to its old appearance, the aged men clack-clacking with the shuttle, the boys scattering seed over the rig-and-fur of the ploughed fields, the women minding their houses. And that, too, is war for ye! The dirk is out, the brogues trail over the hills and through the glens, the clans meet and clash, the full heart belches blood, the grass soaks, the world and the chance of it is put on the luck of a swinging stroke at yon one's neck. War! war! red and lusty--the jar of it fills the land! But oh, _mo chridhe!_ home in Glen Shie are women and bairns living their own day's life, and the crack will be blithe in the sheilings to come, for all your quarrels. Where is Hector, and where is Gilean-of-the-Axe, and where is Diarmaid of the boar's snout? They are all gone but for an old song at the sheiling-fire, and life, love, and the Fell Sergeant still come and go in the place the warriors made such stir in! A stranger would think there was little amiss in the Duke's town. The women sang their long songs of love and yore as they span about the wheel and carded the wool; the bairns guddled in Jumping John's burn, and tore their kilts among the whins, and came home with the crows, redfaced and hungry-warned. At the ale-house there was traffic by day, and heavy drovers and gaugers stamped their feet to the choruses at night. The day lengthened, and comforting winds came from the two bonny black glens; the bracken put on new growths, like the crook of St Molach that's up-by in the Castle; Easachosain reeled to the piping of birds.

There might be an eye many times a-day on the Stron Point to see if a horseman was rounding it, and the cruisies were kept burning a little longer at night in case the news would come in the darkness like the Athol thieves. But patience was ever the gift of the Gael, and few lost heart.

And at last the news came of Culloden Moor.

It was on a Sunday--a dry clear day--and all the folk were at the church, with old Colin the minister sweating at it for the good of the Ceannloch fishermen in the loft. He was in the middle of his prayer when a noise came over the town, a dunting of hoofs on the causey of the Provost's house-front.

“Amen!” said the cunning Colin, quick as could be, and then, “Friends, here is news for us,” and down the pulpit steps he ran briskly like a lad of twenty.

Peter MacIntyre set back the bolt from the door with a bang, and past him the people made rush. The Duke's rider from over the Rest was there in the saddle of a grey garron foaming at the mouth and its hurdies in a tremble.

“Your tidings, your tidings, good man!” cried the people.

The lad sat stark in the saddle, with his eyes wet and his nose pricking with the Gaelic pride.

“I have been at the Castle, and-”

“Your news, just man.”

“I have been at the Castle, and Mac-Cailein Mor, who said I rode well from the Rest, said I might come in-by and carry my budget to you.”

“Out with it, Paruig, little hero. Is't good or ill?”

“What would it be, my heroes, with our own lads, but good? Where's the beat of them? It's 'The Glen is Mine' Dol' Dubh will be playing this day on Culloden, for ours is the battle. They scattered the dirty Northmen and the Irishers like chaff, and Cailein Mor himself gave me a horn of ale from his own hands on the head o't.”

A roar went up that stirred the crows on Scaurnoch, and there was a Sunday spoiled for you; for the ale went free and merry in the change-house at the Duke's charge till the moon was over Ben Ime.

But there were five houses with the clocks stopped (for the ghosts take no heed of time); five houses with the glasses turned face to the wall (for who dare look in glass to see a wraith at the back of the shoulder?); there were four widows and five mothers wet faced, keening for five fine men who had been, and whose names were now writ on paper on the church door.

III.

Day followed day, and still home came no Campbells. They were far to the dreary North, plying sword and fire among the bad clans, harrying for the glory of Mac-Cailein Mor.

And at last on a day the sea-pigs rolled and blew off Stron Point, and the scarts dived like arrows from the sun's eye, deep into a loch boiling with fish. Night found the brown sails bellying out on the scudding smacks, and the snouts of skiff and galley tearing the waves to get among the spoil. Bow-to-back, the nets spotted Finne mile on mile; the kind herrings crowded thick into them; the old luck was back, and the quays in the morning heard the fine tune of the cadger's clinking silver. In a hurry of hurries the fleet came up to the mouth of Shira--Tarbert men, Strathlachlan men, Minard men, black fellows from MacCallum country, and the wine-traffickers from French Foreland to swap sour claret for the sweet fat fish.

It was ho-rol and spill the bicker in yon town, for all that the best of its men were away and afar at the killing. The smoke was black from the fires in the Cooper's Pool, the good healthy smell of the gut-pots sought up to the Castle door. Little doubt his Grace (_beannachd leis!_) would come out to the door-step and curse because it made him bock his breakfast, dainty man!

Throng though the town was, round about the little house on the left of the Lowlands Road crept a queer quietness. The cow had dried, and the dull weather kept the spout fish too deep down in the sand for the ready fingers to reach them. So the household of Rob Donn starved to the bone.

“To-morrow--they will be home tomorrow,” said Jean to herself every day to keep up her heart; but the days went by, and though it was something to know that Rob was not among the killed at Culloden, it was not something to stay the stomach. A stone-throw off were the best and kindest hearts in the world: the woman's cousin, the rich merchant, would give all he had on his board if he knew her trouble, and friends without number would share the last bite with her. But to ask it would be to say she was at the lowest, and to tell that Rob had left her nothing, and she would sooner die in her pride.

Such people as passed her way--and some of them old gossips--would have gone in, but the withie was aye across the door, and that's the sign that business is doing within no one dare disturb. The withie was ever there except at night, when Jean was scouring the countryside for something to eat.

The bairn dwined so fast that even the mother (and blind indeed's the mother at that bit) saw a little of it. There was no longer the creepie-stool at the back of the house, in the sun, and the bairn on it, watching the birds; her shanks grew thin like spirtles; her eyes sank far ben in her face, and she would not go the length of the door. She sat at the fireside and laughed her poor cold laugh less every day, till one long thought came to her that kept her busy at the thinking from morning till night with a face like a _cailleach_ of eighty.

“White love, white love,” Jean would be saying, “your father is on the road with stots and a pouch of cockades.”

At that the bairn would come back from her roaming; but soon she was off again into the deeps of mind, her wide eyes like the windows of an empty house for all that could be seen through them.

“Oh! but it will be the fine cockade,” poor Jean would press--“what am I saying?--the pack of your father will be full of them. Not the white ones of silk only, but the red and the grassy green, my little calf. You'll be wearing them when you will.”

No heeding in the bairn's face.

Then Jean would go out and pull the tansy at the door, and give it to the little one to get the fine scent. The curious shells from the shore, too, would she gather, and lay in rings about the chair, and call her the Queen in her castle. For ever would there be a song at her lips, even if the drops would be in her eyes--old daft songs from fairs and weddings, and fairy rhyming and cheery stories about the Good People up on Sithean Sluaidhe. Her fingers were for ever soft about the bairn, her flesh and blood, stroking in the hair, softening the cushion, petting her in every hand's-turn. She made a treat to herself by asking her, now and then, something that had to be answered “Yes” or “No,” and “Mother” was so sweet in her ears that she would be content to hear no more in all her lifetime.

All the day the bairn crouched up in a hoop-chair with her neck slack and her chin on her breast. Jean was loth to leave her in her bed in the mornings, for she had a notion that to get her out of the blankets and to put her in the clothes of the busy world would be to keep her in the trim for living on.

Still there was no sign of the men returning. Often was Jean's foot at the door and her hand over her eyes to see if there was no stir at Stron or Kilachatrine, and but for good stuff, her heart failed five-score times a-day.

At last, on a day of days, the bairn could not be stirred to notice anything. The tansy fell out of her fingers, and she picked at the wool of the plaid that wrapped her; the shells had no charm for her eye.

Jean made the pack of the coming father as routh as a magic cave. “That father of yours, darling, what a many wonderful things he will bring! I see him on the road. Stots, and cows with milk brimming from the udders, and a pet sheep for his _caileag bheag_; pretty gold and silver things, and brooches and shining stuff. That father of yours! Hurry, father, hurry! Jingling things, and wee fairy-men, and bells to ring for you, m' eudail; pretty glasses and dishes to play with, and--O my darling! my darling!”

The bairn's face lost the deep red spots; her little mouth slacked and fell; her eyes shut on the sight of the fine things her poor mother made for her out of a rich and willing mind.

Jean lifted her and put her on the bed, and ran with a gutting-knife to where Mally the dappled one lay at the back.

“I must be doing it!” said the woman, and she bled the brute as they do in the poor years in Lorn, and took the cogie of blood into the house to make a pudding of. The last handful of meal in the girael went into the pot with the warm blood, and she was stirring it with a spoon over the fire when the child cluttered at the throat.

Jean turned about with a cry, and at the minute a bagpipe's lilting came over the glassy bay from Stron Point.

It was Clan Campbell back from the wars, the heroes! clouted about the heads and with stains on their red waistcoats that were thicker than wine makes. Dol' Dubh played the old port, sweet and jaunty, at the head of them; the Cornal and the Major snuffed the herrings and said, “Here's our own place, sure enough! See the smoke from our own peats! And the fine cock of the cap on Dunchuach!”

On the Lowlands road the town emptied itself, and the folks ran fast and furious--the boys first, the young women next, and the old folks peching behind. But if the town was up on the warriors soon, the Duke himself was before it. He saw the first of the Company from the Castle, and he was in the saddle for all his threescore, like a boy, and down like the wind to Boshang Gate.

“Halt!” cried the Cornal to his men, and Dol' Dubh's bag emptied itself with a grant.

“_Tha sibh an sol!_ You are here, cousin,” said the Duke. “Proud am I to see you and our good lads. They did the old trick well!”

“They did that, MacCailein. The stuff's aye to the fore.”

“It's in the blood, man. We have't in us, high or low. I have but one thing to vex me.”

“Name it, cousin.”

“Well ye ken, Cornai. It's that I had not been with you to see the last crushing Clan Campbell may need to give to an asp's head.”

“It was a good ploy missed, I'll not deny.”

“What about the Tearlach one? Well plucked, they are telling me?”

“As foolish a lad as ever put tartan on hip, my lord! Frenchy, Frenchy, MacCailein! all outside and no cognisance. Yourself or any of your forebears at the head of his clans could have scoured all Albainn of Geordie's Low-Country red-coats, and yet there were only six thousand true Gaels in all the fellow's corps.”

“To read my letters, you would think the whole North was on fire!”

“A bantam's crow, cousin. Clan Campbell itself could have thrawed the neck of it at any time up to Dunedin.”

“They made a fair stand, did they not?

“Uch! Poor eno'--indeed it was not what you would call a coward's tulzie either.”

“Well, well, that's over, lads I I am proud of my clan and town. _Slochd a Chubair gu bragh!_ Stack your guns in the arm-room, see your wives and bairns, and come up-by to the Castle for the heroes' bite and sup. Who's that with the white cockade in his bonnet? Is't Rob Donn?”

“It is Rob Donn, cousin, with a bit of the ribbon contrivance for the diversion of his bairn. He tore it from the bonnet of the seventh man he put an end to.”

“There's luck in the number, any way, though it was a dear plaything. March!” Down the road, with their friends hanging about them, and the boys carrying guns and knapsacks, went the men for the town, and Rob Donn left the company as it passed near his own door.

“Faith! 'tis a poor enough home-coming, without wife or bairn to meet one,” said he, as he pushed in the door.

“Wife! wife!” he cried ben among the peat-reek, “there's never a stot, but here's the cockade for the little one!”

A FINE PAIR OF SHOES

THE beginnings of things are to be well considered--we have all a little of that art; but to end well and wisely is the gift of few. Hunters and herds on the corri and the hill--they are at the simple end of life, and ken the need for the task complete. The stag must be gralloched ere ye brag of him, the drove must be at the market ere ye say anything of the honesty of the glens ye pass through.

And what I like best about our own Gaels is their habit of bringing the work of a day or the work of a lifetime to what (in their own notions) is an end round and polished.

When our women die, they do it with something of a daintiness. Their dead-clothes are in the awmrie; I have seen them with the cakes toasted and the board set for their funerals. Travelling wide on unfriendly foreign roads, living by sword or wit, you know that our men, the poorest among them, with an empty sporran, kept the buttons of their duds of good silver, to pay, if need be, for something more than a gangrel's burial. I like to think of him in story who, at his end in bed, made the folk trick him out in gallant style with tartan, targe, brogue, and bonnet, and the sword in his hand.

“A Gaelic gentleman,” said he, “should come to his journey's end somewhat snod and well-put-on.” And his son played “Cha till mi tuilidh” (“I return no more”) on the bag-pipe by his firm command.

It is not even in this unco undertaking of Death that the polish must be put on the task (though poor's the creature who dies clumsily); it should be the same with every task of a day.

And so Baldi Crom, making a fine pair of shoes on a day in Carnus, put the best skill of his fingers to every stitch. He had been working at them since the command came in the morning, and now it was the mouth of night, and on one of them the finest of the fine sewing was still to do. About the place there was nobody but the old man, for he was the last, in a way, of the old stock of Carnus (now a _larach_ of low lintels, and the nettle over all); and he was without woman to put _caschrom_ to his soil or hip to a creel of peats. And so he lived on the brae of Camus--that same far up and lonely in the long glen.

“They'll be the best I ever put brog in,” said he, looking fondly at the fine work, the yellow thread standing out on the toes, patterned like a leaf of the whortleberry, set about with the serpent-work of the old crosses. Bite nor sap, kail nor crowdie, did he taste all day. Working in the light of his open door, he could see, if he had the notion, the whole glen rolled out before him, brimming with sun, crossed in the heat of the day by deer from Dalavich seeking for the woods of Loch Finne; the blue reek of the townships at the far end might have cheered him with the thought that life was in sight though his house was lonely. But crouped over the lap-stone, he made love to his work, heeding nothing else but the sewing of the fine pair of shoes.

It was the night before the town market. Droves of bellowing cattle--heifers, stots, and stirks--were going down the glen from Port Sonachan, cropping hurried mouthfuls by the way as they went and as the dogs would let them. And three Benderloch drovers came off the road and into Baldi Crom's house, after the night was down on the glen and he had the cruisie lighted. They sat them down round the fire in the middle of the floor and ate bannocks and cheese.

“How's thy family, 'Illeasbuig?” said a drover, stirring up the peat as if he were at his own door-end. Down on the roadside the cattle, black and yellow, crushed the sappy grass and mourned in bellows for their lost fields.

“Splendid! splendid!” said the old man, double over his shoes, fondling them with the fingers of a mother on a first baby. The light was low in the cruisie, for the oil was well down, and the fire and the cruisie made a ring of light that could scarcely slip over the backs of the men sitting round the peats. A goat scratched his head but-and-ben against the wattles; in corners the darkness was brown and thick.

“I hear Cailen's in the Low-country, but what has come of Tormaid?” said one, with knee-breeches, and hose of coarse worsted.

The old man gave a quick start, and the lapstone fell from his knees, the shoe he was at with it. He bent over and felt like a blind man for them on the floor before he made answer.

“Tormaid, my gallant son! Ye have not heard of him lately, then?”

“Never a word, 'Illeasbuig. People on the going foot, like drovers, hear all the world's gossip but the _sgeuls_ of their own _sgireachd_. We have been far North since Martinmas: for us there must be many a story to tell 'twixt here and Inneraora. A stout lad and pretty, Tormaid too, as ever went to the beginning of fortune! Where might he be enow?”

“Here and there, friend, here and there! A restless scamp, a wanderer, but with parts. Had he not the smart style at the game of _camanachi?_ He was namely for it in many places.”

“As neat a player as ever took shinty in hand, master! I have the name of a fair player myself, but that much I'll allow your lad. Is he to the West side, or farther off?”

“Farther off, friend. The pipes now--have you heard him as a player on the chanter?”

“As a piper, 'Illeasbuig! His like was not in three shires. I have heard him at reel and march, but these were not his fancy: for him the _piobaireachds_ that scholarly ones play!”

“My gallant boy!” said Baldi Crom, rubbing soft on the shoe with the palm of a hand.

“Once upon a time,” said the drover, “we were on our way to a Lowland Tryst. Down Glen Falloch a Soccach man and I heard him fill the nightfall with the 'Bhoilich' of Morar, with the brag of a whole clan in his warbling. He knew piping, the fellow with me, and the tear came to his cheek, thinking of the old days and the old ploys among the dirks and _sgians_.”

“There was never the beat of him,” said the shoemaker.

“Throughither a bit--”

“But good, good at heart, man! With a better chance of fortune he might be holding his head to-day as high as the best of them.” The drovers looked at each other with a meaning that was not for the eyes of the old man; but he had small chance of seeing it, for he was throng at his fine pair of shoes.

“He had a name for many arts,” said the man with coarse hose, “but they were not the arts that give a lad settlement and put money in his purse.”

“The hot young head, man! He would have cured,” said the old man, sewing hard. “Think of it,” said he: “was ever a more humoursome fellow to walk a glen with? His songs, his stories, his fast jump at one's meaning, and his trick of leaving all about him in a good key with themselves and him. Did ever one ask a Saxon shilling from his purse that it was not a cheery gift if the purse held it?”

“True, indeed!” said the drovers, eating bannocks and cheese.

“'Twixt heaven and hell,” said the fellow with the coarse hose, “is but a spang. It's so easy for some folk to deserve the one gate--so many their gifts--that the cock-sureness leaves them careless, and they wander into the wrong place.”

“You were speaking?” said Baldi, a little angry, though he heard but half.

“I said thy son was a fellow of many gifts,” answered the drover, in a confusion.

“He had no unfriends that I ken of,” said the old man, busy at the shoes; “young or old, man or woman.”

“Especially woman,” put in another drover, wrinkling at the eyes.

“I've had five sons: three in the King's service, and one in the Low-country; here's my young wanderer, and he was--he is--the jewel of them all!”

“You hear of him sometimes?”

“I heard of him and from him this very day,” said Baldi, busy at the brogues, white and drawn at the face and shaking at the lips. “I have worked at these shoes since morning, and little time is there to put bye on them, for at Inneraora town must they be before breakfast. Solomon Carrier, passing at three, gives me a cry and takes them.”

“They're a fine pair of shoes.”

“Fine indeed; the finest of the fine! They're for a particular one.”

“Duke John himself, perhaps?”

“No, man; a particular one, and were they not his in time a sorry man was I. They're the best Baldi Crom ever put leather on.”