You will remember, gentlemen, that when I was interrupted, I was about to follow John
Smith on his march with Captain M’Taggart. Well, you see, Prince Charles Edward chanced
to be at this time at Kilravock Castle, the ancient seat of the Roses. Thither the
sagacious captain thought it good policy to present himself, with the motley company,
the greater number of the individuals of which he had himself collected. There he
received his due meed of praise for his zeal, with large promises of future preferment
for his energetic exertions in the Prince’s cause. But although the Captain [74]thus took especial care to serve himself in the first place, he made a point of strictly
keeping his own promise to John Smith, for he did present him to the Prince, along
with some five or six other recruits, whom he had cajoled to follow him, somewhat
in the way he had cajoled John. But this their presentation was more with a view of
enhancing the value of his own zeal and services, for his own private ends, than for
the purpose, or with the hope of benefiting them in any way. The Prince came out to
the lawn with M’Taggart, and some of his own immediate attendants. The men were presented
to him by name; and John Smith was especially noticed by him. He spoke to each of
them in succession; and then, clapping John familiarly on the shoulder,—
“My brave fellows,” said he, “you have a glorious career before you. The enemy advances
into our very hands. I trust we shall soon have an opportunity of fighting together,
side by side. Meanwhile, go, join the gallant army which I have so lately left at
Culloden, eagerly waiting the approach of our foes. I shall see you very [75]soon, and I shall not forget you.” So saying, he took off his Highland bonnet; and,
whilst a gentle zephyr sported and played with his fair curls, he bowed gracefully
to the men, and then retired into the house.
“She’s fichts to ta last trap o’ her bluids for ta ponny Princey!” cried John, with
an enthusiasm which was cordially responded to by shouts from all present.
M’Taggart then gave the word, and the party wheeled off on their march in the direction
of Inverness, in the vicinity of which town the Prince’s army was encamped. Their
way lay down through the parish of Petty, and past Castle-Stuart. As they moved on,
they were every where loudly cheered by the populace—men, women, and children, who
turned out to meet them, and showered praises and blessings upon them; and this friendly
welcome seemed to await them all along their route, till they joined the main body
of their forces, which lay about and above the mansion house of Culloden.
John Smith would have much preferred to [76]have placed himself under the standard of the Mackintosh, whom the Smiths or Gowe,
the descendants of the celebrated Gowin Cromb, who fought on the Inch of Perth, held
to be their chief, as head of the Clan-Chattan. But M’Taggart was unwilling to lose
the personal support of so promising a soldier. Perhaps also he began to feel a certain
interest in the young man; and he accordingly advised him to stick close to him at
all times.
“Stick you by me, John,” said he—“stick close by my side; I shall then be able to
see what you do, as well as to give a fair and honest, and I trust not unfavourable
report of the gallant deeds which your brave spirit may prompt you to perform. Depend
upon it, with my frequent opportunities of obtaining access to the Prince, I can do
as much good for you, at least, as any Mackintosh.”
On the night of the 14th of April then, John Smith lay with M’Taggart and his company,
among the whin and juniper bushes in the wood of Culloden, where the greater part
of the Jacobite army that night disposed of themselves. [77]Whatever might have been the ill-provided state of the other portions of the Prince’s
troops, that with which John was now consorted, had no reason to complain of any want
of those refreshments which human nature requires, and which are so important to soldiers.
Large fires were speedily kindled; and the Pensassenach’s great sow, with all her
little pigs, and the poor woman’s poultry of all kinds, together with some few similar
delicacies which had elsewhere been picked up here and there, were soon divided, and
prepared to undergo such rude cookery as each individual could command; and these,
with the bread and cheese, and other such provisions, which they had carried off from
the Pensassenach, as well as from some other houses, enabled them to spread for themselves
what might be called a vurra liberal table in the wilderness. But the savoury odour
which their culinary operations diffused around, brought hungry Highlanders from every
quarter of the wood, like wolves upon them, so that each man of their party was fain
to gobble up as much as he could swallow in haste, lest he should fail to [78]secure to himself enough to satisfy his hunger, ere the whole feast should disappear
under the active jaws of those intruders. The liquor was more under their own control.
The flask was allowed to circulate through the hands of those only to whom it most
properly belonged by the right of capture. John, for his part, had a good tasse of
the Pensassenach’s brandy; and the smack did not seem to savour the worse within his
lips, because it was prefaced with the toast of—“Success to the Prince, and confusion
to the Duke of Cumberland!”
After this their refreshment, the men and officers disposed themselves to sleep around
the fires of their bivouac, each in a natural bed of his own selection, John Smith,
being a pious young man, retired under the shelter of a large juniper bush, and having
there offered up his evening prayer to God, he wrapped himself up in his plaid, and
consigned himself to sleep. How long he had slept he knew not; when, as he turned
in his lair to change his position, his eye caught a dim human figure, which floated,
as it were, in the air, stiff and erect, immediately [79]under the high projecting limb of a great fir tree, that grew at some twenty paces
distant from the spot where he lay. The figure seemed to have a preternatural power
of supporting itself; and as the breeze wailed and moaned through the boughs, it appeared
alternately to advance and to recede again with a slow tremulous motion. John’s heart,
stout as it was against every thing of earthly mould, began to beat quick, and finally
to thump against his very ribs, with all manner of superstitious fears. He gazed and
trembled, without the power of rising, which he would have fain done, not for the
purpose of investigating the mystery, but to take the wiser course of looking out
for some other place of repose, where he might hope to escape from the appalling contemplation
of this strange and most unaccountable apparition. He lay staring then at it in a
cold sweat of fright, whilst the faint glimmering light from the nearest fire, as
it rose or fell, now made it somewhat more visible, and now again somewhat more dim.
At length, an accidental fall of some of the half burnt fuel, sent up a transient
gleam that fully illuminated [80]the ghastly countenance of the spectre, when, to John’s horror, he recognised the
pale and corpse-like features of Mr. William Dallas, the packman, whom he had left
so ingeniously inserted into the sack, and deposited in the Pensassenach’s lint-pot.
Though the gag was gone, the mouth was wide open, and the large, protruded, and glazed
eye-balls, glared fearfully upon him. Though the light was not sufficient to display
the figure correctly, John’s fancy made him vividly behold the sack. He would have
spoken if he could; but he felt that the apparition of a murdered man was floating
before him. His throat grew dry of a sudden. He gasped—but could not utter a word.
He doubted not that the packman had been forgotten by Morag, and that, having fallen
down into the water through cold and exhaustion, the wretch had at last miserably
perished; and he came very naturally to the conclusion, that he who had put the unfortunate
man there, was now doomed to be henceforth continually haunted by his ghost. Fain
would he have shut out this horrible sight, by closing his eyes, or by drawing his
plaid over [81]them; but this he was afraid to do, lest the object of his dread should swim towards
him through the air, and congeal his very life’s-blood by its freezing touch. Much
as he loved Morag, he had some difficulty in refraining from inwardly cursing her,
for her supposed neglect of his express injunctions to relieve the packman from the
pool. As he stared on this dreadful apparition, the flickering gleam from the faggot
sunk again, and the countenance again grew dim; but John seemed still to see it in
all its intensity of illumination. No more rest had he that night. Still, as he gazed
on the figure, he again and again fancied that he saw it gradually and silently gliding
nearer and nearer to him. The only relief he had was in fervent and earnest prayers,
which he confusedly murmured, from time to time, in Gaelic. He eagerly petitioned
for daylight, hoping that the morning air might remove all such unrealities from the
earth. At length, the eastern horizon began to give forth the partial glimmer of dawn;
but John was somewhat surprised to find, that, instead of the [82]apparition fading away before it, the outlines of its horrible figure became gradually
more and more distinct as it advanced, until even the features were by degrees rendered
visible. But although John, by this time, began to discover that his fancy had supplied
the sack, he now perceived something which he had not been able to see before, and
that was, a thin rope which hung down from the horizontal limb of the fir tree, and
suspended, by its lower extremity, the body of the poor packman by the neck. John
was much shocked by this discovery. But he could not help thanking God that he was
thus acquitted of the wretched man’s death; and after the misery that he had suffered
from the supposed presence of the apparition of a man who had been drowned through
his means, however innocently, the relief he now experienced was immense. He called
up some of his comrades to explain the mystery; and from them he learned, that Mr.
Dallas had been caught in the early part of the night, in the very act of attempting
to carry off Captain M’Taggart’s [83]horse from its piquet, and that he had been instantly tucked up to the bough of the
fir tree, without even the ceremony of a trial.
The young Prince Charley was in the field by an early hour on the morning of the 15th,
and being all alive to the critical nature of his circumstances, and by no means certain
as yet how near the enemy might by this time be to him, he judged it important to
collect, and to draw up his army on the most favourable ground he could find in the
neighbourhood. He therefore marched them up the high, partly flattish, and partly
sloping ridge, which, though commonly called Culloden Moor, from its being situated
immediately above the house and grounds of that place, has in reality the name of
Drummossie. He led them to a part of this ground, a little to the south eastward of
their previous position in the wood of Culloden, and there he drew them up in order
of battle. There they were most injudiciously kept lying on their arms the whole day,
and if Captain M’Taggart’s men had feasted tolerably well the previous night, their
commons were any thing but plentiful during the time they [84]occupied that position. It was not in the nature of things, that subordination could
be so strictly preserved in the Prince’s army, as it was in that of the Duke of Cumberland.
I, who am well practeesed in the discipline of boys, gentlemen, know very well that
it would be impossible to bring a regiment of them under immediate command, if the
individuals composing it were to be collected together all at once, raw and untaught,
from different parts of the district. It is only by bringing one or two at a time,
into the already great disciplined mass, that either a schoolmaster, or a field-marischal
can promise to have his troops always well under control. By the time evening came,
the officers, as well as the men of the Prince’s army, began to suffer under the resistless
orders of a commander to whom no human being can say nay. Hunger, I may say, was rugging at their vurra hearts, and as they all saw, or supposed that they saw, reason to
believe that there was no chance of the enemy coming upon them that night, many of
them went off to Inverness and elsewhere, in search of food. M’Taggart himself could
not resist those internal [85]admonitions, which his stomach was so urgently giving him from time to time, and accordingly,
John Smith conceived he was guilty of no great dereliction of duty, in strictly following
the first order which his captain had given him, viz., to “stick by his side,” which
he at once resolved to do, as he saw him go off to look for something to support nature.
But the captain and his man had hardly got a quarter of a mile on the road to Inverness,
when they, with other stragglers, were called back by a mounted officer, who was sent,
with all speed, after them, to tell them that they must return, in order to march
immediately. The object of their march was that ill-conceived, worse managed, and
most unlucky expedition for a night attack on the Duke of Cumberland’s camp at Nairn,
which had that evening been so hastily planned. Hungry as they were they had no choice
but to obey, and accordingly they hurried to their standards. The word was given,
and after having been harassed by marching all night, without food or refreshment
of any kind, they at last got only near enough to Nairn [86]just to enable them to discover that day must infallibly break before they could reach
the enemy’s camp, and that consequently no surprise could possibly take place. Disheartened
by this failure, they were led back to their ground, where they arrived in so very
faint and jaded a condition, that even to go in search of food was beyond their strength,
so that they sank down in irregular groups over the field, and fell asleep for a time.
Awakened by hunger after a very brief slumber, they arose to forage. M’Taggart, and
some of his party, and John Smith amongst the rest, went prowling across the river
Nairn, which ran to the south of their position, and there they caught and killed
a sheep. They soon managed to kindle a fire, and to subdivide the animal into fragments,
but ere each man had time to broil his morsel, an alarm was given from their camp.
Like ravenous savages they tore up and devoured as much of the half raw flesh as haste
would allow them to swallow, and hurrying back, they reached their post about eight
o’clock in the morning, when they found that the Duke of Cumberland was approaching
with his army in full march.
[87]
The position chosen by the Prince as that where he was to make his stand on that memorable
day, the 16th of April, was by no means very wisely or very well selected. It was
a little way to the westward of that which his army had occupied on the previous day.
Somewhat in advance, and to the right of his ground, there stood the walls of an enclosure,
which the experienced eye of Lord George Murray soon enabled him to perceive, and
he was at once so convinced that they presented too advantageous a cover to the assailing
enemy, to be neglected by them, that he would fain have moved forward with a party
to have broken them down, had time remained to have enabled him to have effected his
purpose. But the Duke of Cumberland’s army was already in sight, advancing in three
columns, steadily over the heath, from Dalcross Castle, the tower of which was seen
rising towards its eastern extremity. The Highlanders were at this time dwindled to
a mere handful, and some of the best friends of the cause of the Stewarts who were
present, and perhaps even the young Prince himself, began to [88]believe that he had been traitorously deserted. But the alarm had no sooner been fully
spread by the clang of the pipes, and the shrill notes of the bugles, than small and
irregular streams of armed men, in various coloured tartans, were seen rushing towards
their common position, like mountain rills towards some Highland lake, and filling
up the vacant ranks with all manner of expedition. Many a brave fellow, who had gone
to look for something to satisfy the craving of an empty stomach, came hurrying back
with as great a void as he had carried away with him, because he preferred fighting
for him whom he conscientiously believed to be his king, to remaining ingloriously
to subdue that hunger which was absolutely consuming him. No one was wilfully absent
who could possibly contrive to be present, but yet the urgent demands of the demon
of starvation, to which many of them had yielded, had very considerably thinned their
numbers, and, in addition to this source of weakness, there was another obvious one,
arising from the physical strength of those who were present being wofully diminished
by the want they had endured, [89]and the fatigue they had undergone. But with all these disadvantages the heroic souls
of those who were on the field remained firm and resolute.
John Smith’s military knowledge was then too small to allow him to form any judgment
of the state of affairs, far less to enable him to carry off, or to describe, any
thing like the general arrangement of the order of battle on both sides. He could
not even tell very well what regiments his corps was posted with: he only knew this,
that according to the order he had received he stuck close to Captain M’Taggart. He
always remembered with enthusiasm, indeed, that the Prince rode through the ranks
with his attendants, doing all that he could to encourage his men, and that when he
passed by where John himself stood, he smiled on him like an angel, and bid him do
his duty like a man.
“Och, hoch!” cried John, with an exultation, which arose from the circumstance of
his not being in the least aware that every individual near him had, like him, flattered
himself that he was the person so distinguished.—“Fa wad hae soughts tat ta ponny
Princey wad hae [90]mindit on poor Shon Smiss? Fod, but she wad fichts for her till she was cut to collops!”
But John had little opportunity of fighting, though he appears to have borne plenty
of the brunt of the battle. There were two cannons placed in each space between the
battalions composing the first line of the Duke of Cumberland’s army, and these were
so well served as to create a fearful carnage among the Highland ranks. To this dreadful
discharge John Smith stood exposed, with men falling by dozens around him, mutilated
and mashed, and exhibiting death in all his most horrible forms, till, to use his
own very expressive words,—“She was bitin’ her ain lips for angher tat she could not
get at tem.” But before John could get at them, the English dragoons, who, under cover
of the walls of the enclosure I have mentioned, had advanced by the right of the Highland
army, finally broke through the fence, and getting in behind their first line, came
cutting and slashing on their backs, whilst the Campbells were attacking them in front,
and mowing them down like grass. Then, indeed, did the melée become desperate, [91]and then was it that John began to bestir himself in earnest. Throwing away his plaid,
and the little bundle that it contained, he dealt deadly blows with his broad-sword,
everywhere around him. He fought with the bravery and the perseverance of a hero.
At length his bonnet was knocked from his head, and although he was still possessed
with the most anxious desire to obey Captain M’Taggart’s order to stick to his side,
he was surprised on looking about him to find that there was no M’Taggart, no, nor
any one else left near him to stick to but enemies.
John Smith’s spirit was undaunted, so that, seeing he had no one else to stick to,
he now resolved to stick to his foes, to the last drop of life’s blood that was within
him. Furiously and fatally did he cut and thrust, and turn and cut and thrust again,
at all who opposed him; but he was so overwhelmed by opponents, that in the midst
of the blood, and wounds, and death which he was thus dealing in all directions, he
received a desperate sabre cut, which, descending on him from above, entirely across
[92]the crown of his bared head, felled him instantaneously to the ground, and stretched
him senseless among the heather, whilst a deluge of blood poured from the wound over
both his eyes.
When John began partially to recover, he rubbed the half-congealed blood from his
eyelids with the back of his left hand, and looking up and seeing that the ground
was somewhat clear around him, he griped his claymore firmly with his right hand,
and raising himself to his feet, he began to run as fast as his weak state would allow
him. He thought that he ran in the direction of Strath Nairn, and he ran whilst he
had the least strength to run, or the least power remaining in him. But his ideas
soon became confused, and the blood from the terrible gash athwart his head trickled
so fast into his eyes, that it was continually obscuring his vision. At length he
came to a large, deep irregular hollow hag, or ditch, in a piece of moss ground, which
had been cut out for peats, and there, his brain beginning to spin round, he sank
down into the moist bottom of it to die, and as the tide of life flowed fast from
him, he [93]was soon lost to all consciousness of the things or events of this world.
Whilst John was lying in this senseless state, he was recognised by one of the fugitives,
who, in making his own escape, chanced to pass by the edge of the ditch in the moss
where the poor man lay. This was a certain Donald Murdoch, who had long burned with
a hopeless flame for black-eyed Morag. With a satisfaction that seemed to make him
forget his present jeopardy in the contemplation of the death of his rival, he looked
down from the edge of the peat hag upon the pale and bloody corpse, and grinned with
a fiendish joy.
“Ha! there you lie!” cried he in bitter Gaelic soliloquy.—“The fiend a bit sorry am
I to see you so. You’ll fling or dance no more, else I’m mistaken.—Stay!—is not that
the bit of blue ribbon that Morag tied round his neck, the last time that we had a
dance in the barn? I’ll secure that, it may be of some use to me;” and so saying he
let himself down into the peat hag, hastily undid the piece of ribbon,—and [94]then continued his flight with all manner of expedition.
Following the downward course of the river Nairn, running at one time, and ducking
and diving into bushes, and behind walls at another, to avoid the stragglers who were
in pursuit, he by degrees gained some miles of distance from the fatal field, and
coming to a little brook, he ventured to halt for a moment, to quench his raging thirst.
As he lay gulping down the crystal fluid, he was startled by hearing his own name,
and by being addressed in Gaelic.
“Donald Murdoch!—Oh, Donald Murdoch, can you tell me is John Smith safe? Oh, those
fearful cannons how they thundered!—Oh, tell me, is John Smith safe?—Oh, tell me!
tell me!”
“Morag!” cried Donald, much surprised, but very much relieved to find that it was
no one whom he had any cause to be afraid of,—“Morag!—What brought you so far from
home on such a day as this?”
“Oh Donald!” replied Morag, “I came to [95]look after John Smith;—oh, grant that he be safe!”
“Safe enough, Morag,” replied Donald, galled by jealousy. “I’ll warrant nothing in
this world will harm him now.”
“What say you?” cried Morag. “Oh, tell me! tell me truly if he be safe?”
“I saw John Smith lying dead in a moss hole, his skull cleft by a dragoon’s sword,”
replied Donald with malicious coolness.
“What?” cried Morag, wringing her hands, “John Smith dead! But no! it is impossible!—and
you are a lying loon, that would try to deceive me, by telling me what I well enough
know you would wish to be true. God forgive you, Donald, for such cruel knavery!”
“Thanks to ye, Morag, for your civility,” replied Donald Murdoch calmly; “but if you
wont believe me, believe that bit of ribbon—see, the very bit of blue ribbon you tied
round John Smith’s neck, the night you last so slighted me at the dance in the barn.
See, it is partly died red in his life’s blood.”
“It is the ribbon!” cried Morag, snatching [96]it from his hand with excessive agitation, and kissing it over and over again, and
then bursting into tears. “Alas! alas! it must be too true! What will become of poor
Morag!—why did I not go with him! What is this world to poor desolate Morag now?—And
yet—he may be but wounded after all. It must be so—he cannot be killed. Where did
you leave him?—quick, tell me!—oh, tell me, Donald. Why do we tarry here? let us forward
and seek him!—there may be life in him yet, and whilst there is life there is hope.
Let me pass, Donald; I will fly to seek him!”
“I love you too well to let you pass on so foolish and dangerous an errand,” said
Donald, endeavouring to detain her. “I tell you that John Smith is dead; but you know,
Morag, you will always find a friend and a lover in me. So think no more——”
“I will pass, Donald,” cried Morag, interrupting him, and making a determined attempt
to rush past him.
“That you shall not,” replied Donald, catching her in his arms.
[97]
“Help, help!” cried Morag, struggling with all her might, and with great vigour too,
against his exertions to hold her.
At this moment the trampling of a horse was heard, and a mounted dragoon came cantering
down into the hollow. His sabre gleamed in the air—and Donald Murdoch fell headlong
down the bank into the little rill, his skull nearly cleft in two, and perfectly bereft
of life.
“A plague on the lousy Scot!” said the trooper, scanning the corpse of his victim
with a searching eye. “His life was not worth the taking, had it not been, that the
more of the rascally race that are put out of this world, the better for the honest
men that are to remain in it, and therefore it was in the way of my duty to cut him
down. There is nought on his beggarly carcase to benefit any one but the crows.—And
so the knave would have kissed thee against thy will, my bonny black-eyed wench. Well,
’tis no wonder thou shouldst have scorned that carotty-pated fellow; you showed your
taste in so doing, my dear: and now you shall be rewarded by having a somewhat better
sweetheart.[98]—Come!” continued he, alighting from his charger, and approaching the agitated and
panting girl—“Come, a kiss from the lips of beauty is the best reward for brave deeds;
and no one deserves this reward better than I do, for brave deeds have I this day
performed. Why do you not speak, my dear? Have you no Christian language to give me?
Can it be possible that these pretty pouting lips have no language but that of the
savages of this country?—Come, then, we must try the kissing language; I have always
found that to be well understood in all parts of the world.”
“Petter tak’ Tonald’s pig puss o’ money first,” said Morag, pointing down to the corpse
in the hollow.
“Ha! money saidst thou, my gay girl?” cried the trooper. “Who would have thought of
a purse of money being in the pouch of such a miserable rascally savage as that? But
the best apple may sometimes have the coarsest and most unpromising rhind; and so
that fellow, unseemly and wretched as he appears, may perchance have a well-lined
purse after all. If it be so, girl, I shall say that thy language is like the talk
of an angel. [99]Then do you hold the rein of this bridle, do you see, till I make sure of the coin
in the first place—best secure that, for no one can say what mischance may come; or
whether some comrade may not appear with a claim to go snacks with me. So lay hold
of the bridle, do you hear, and dont be afraid of old Canterbury, for the brute is
as quiet as a lamb.”
Morag took the bridle. The trooper descended the bank, and he had scarcely stooped
over the body to commence his search for the dead man’s supposed purse, when the active
girl, well accustomed to ride horses in all manner of ways, vaulted into the saddle,
and kicking her heels into Canterbury’s side, she was out of the hollow in a moment.
Looking over her shoulder, after she had gone some distance, she beheld the raging
dragoon puffing, storming, and swearing, and striding after her, with, what might
be called, that dignified sort of agility, to which he was enforced by the weighty
thraldom of his immense jack-boots. Bewildered by the terror and the anxiety of her
escape, she flew over the country, for some time, without knowing which [100]way she fled. At length she began to recover her recollection, so far as to enable
her to recur to the object which had prompted her to leave home. On the summit of
a knoll she checked her steed—surveyed the country,—and the whole tide of her feelings
returning upon her; she urged the animal furiously forward in the direction of the
fatal field of Culloden.
She had not proceeded far, when, on coming suddenly to the edge of a rough little
stoney ravine, she discovered five troopers refreshing themselves and their horses
from the little brook that had its course through the bottom. She reined back her
horse, with the intention of stealing round to some other point of passage; but as
she did so, a shout arose from the hollow of the dell.—She had been perceived. In
an instant the mounted riders rushed, one after another, out of the ravine, and she
had no chance of escape left her, but to ride as hard as the beast that carried her
could fly, in the very opposite direction to that which she had hitherto pursued,
for there was no other course of flight left open to her.
[101]
The five troopers were now in full chase after Morag, shouting out as they rode, and
urging on their horses to the top of their speed. The ground, though rough, stony,
and furzy, was for the most part firm enough, and the poor girl, now driven from that
purpose to which her strong attachment to John Smith had so powerfully impelled her,
and being distracted by her griefs and her fears, spared not the animal she rode,
but forced him, by every means she could employ, either by hands, limbs, or voice,
to the utmost exertion of every muscle.
“Lord, how she does ride!” said one trooper to the others; “I wish that she beant
some of them witches, as, they say, be bred in this here uncanny country of Scotland.”
“Bless you no, man,” said another; “them devils as you speak of ride on broomsticks.
Now, I’se much mistaken an’ that be not Tom Dickenson’s horse Canterbury.”
“Zounds, I believe you are right, Hall,” said another man; “but that beant no proof
that she aint a witch, for nothing but a she-devil, [102]wot can ride on a broom, could ride ould Canterbury in that ’ere fashion, I say.”
“Witch or devil, my boys, let us ketch her if we can,” shouted another.—“Hurrah! hurrah!”
“Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” re-echoed the others, burying their spurs in their horses’
sides, and bending forward, and grinning with very eagerness.
For several miles Morag kept the full distance she had at first gained on her pursuers,
but having got into a road, fenced by a rough stone wall upon one side, and a broad
and very deep ditch on the other, the troopers, if possible, doubled their speed,
in the full conviction that they must now very soon come up with her, and capture
her. Still Morag flew,—but as she every moment cast her eyes over one or other of
her shoulders, she was terrified to see that the troopers were visibly gaining upon
her. The road before her turned suddenly at an angle,—and she had no sooner doubled
it, than, there, to her unspeakable horror—in the very midst of the way—stood Tom
Dickenson, the [103]dismounted dragoon from whom she had taken the very charger, called Canterbury, which
she then rode. The time of the action of what followed was very brief. For an instant
she reined up her horse till he was thrown back on his haunches.—Tom Dickenson’s sword-blade
glittered in the sun.
“By the god of war, but I have you now!” cried he in a fury.
The triumphant shouts of Morag’s pursuers increased, as they neared her, and beheld
the position in which she was now placed. No weapon had she, but the large pair of
scissors that hung dangling from her side, in company with her pincushion. In desperation
she grasped the sharp-pointed implement dagger fashion, and directed old Canterbury’s
head towards the ditch. Dickenson saw her intention, and wishing to counteract it,
he rushed to the edge of the ditch. The hand of Morag which held the scissors descended
on the flank of the horse, and in defiance of his master, who stood in his way, and
the gleaming weapon with which he threatened him, old Canterbury, goaded [104]by the pain of the sharp wound inflicted on him, sprang towards the leap with a wild
energy, and despite of the cut, which deprived him of an ear, and sheared a large
slice of the skin off one side of his neck, he plunged the unlucky Tom Dickenson backwards,
swash into the water, and carried his burden fairly over the ditch.
Morag tarried not to look behind her, until she had scoured across a piece of moorish
pasture land, and then casting her eyes over one shoulder, she perceived that only
two of the troopers had cleared the ditch, and that the others had either failed in
doing so, or were engaged in hauling their half-drowned comrade out of it. The two
men who had taken the leap, however, were again hard after her, shouting as before,
and evidently gaining upon her. The moment she perceived this, she dashed into a wide
piece of mossy, boggy ground, a description of soil with which she was well acquainted.
There the chase became intricate and complicated. Now her pursuers were so near to
her, as to believe that they were on the very point of seizing her, and again some
[105]impassable obstacle would throw them quite out, and give her the advantage of them.
Various were the slips and plunges which the horses made; but ere she had threaded
through three-fourths of the snares which she met with, she had the satisfaction of
beholding one of the riders who followed her, fairly unhorsed, and hauling at the
bridle of his beast, the head and neck of which alone appeared from the slough, in
which the rest of the poor animal was engulfed. The man called loudly to his comrade,
but he was too keenly intent on the pursuit, to give heed to him. The hard ground
was near at hand, and he pushed on after Morag, who was now making towards it. She
reached it, and again she plied the points of her scissors on the heaving flanks of
old Canterbury. But she became sensible that his pace was fast flagging,—and that
the trooper was rapidly gaining on her. In despair she made towards a small patch
of natural wood.—She was already within a short distance of it. But the blowing and
snorting of the horse behind her, and the blaspheming of his rider, came every instant
[106]more distinctly upon her ear. Some fifty or an hundred yards only now lay between
her and the wood. Again, in desperation, she gave the point of the scissors to her
steed—when, all at once he stopped—staggered—and, faint with fatigue and loss of blood,
old Canterbury fell forward headlong on the grass.
“Hurrah!” cried the trooper, who was close at his heels, “witch or no witch, I think
I’ll grapple with thee now.”
He threw himself from his heaving horse, and rushed towards Morag. But she was already
on her legs, and scouring away like a hare for the covert. Jack-booted, and otherwise
encumbered as he was, the bulky trooper strode after her like a second Goliah of Gath,
devouring the way with as much expedition as he could possibly use. But Morag’s speed
was like that of the wind, and he beheld her dive in among the underwood before he
had covered half the distance.
“A very witch in rayal arnest!” exclaimed the trooper, slackening his pace in dismay
and disappointment. And then turning towards his [107]comrade, who, having by this time succeeded in extricating his horse from the slough,
was now coming cantering towards him, “Hollo, Bill!” shouted he, “I’ve run the blasted
witch home here.—Come away, man, do; for if so be that she dont arth like a badger,
or furnish herself with a new horse to her own fancy out of one of ’em ’ere broom
bushes, this covert aint so large but we must sartinly find her. So come along, man,
and be active.”
But we must now return to poor John Smith, whom we have too long left for dead in
the bottom of a peat-hag. The cold and astringent moss-water flowing about his head,
by degrees checked the effusion of his blood, and at length he began to revive.
When his senses returned to him, he gathered himself up, and leaning his back against
the perpendicular face of the peat bank above him, he drank a little water from the
hollow of his hand, and then washed away the clotted blood from his eyes. The first
object that broke upon his newly recovered vision was an English trooper riding furiously
up to him, with his [108]brandished sword. John was immediately persuaded that he was a doomed man, for he
felt that, in his case, resistance was altogether out of the question. He threw himself
on his back in the bottom of the broad deep cut in the peat-hag. The trooper came
up, and having no time to dismount, he stooped from his saddle and made one or two
ineffectual cuts at the poor man. The horse shyed at John’s bloody head as it was
raised in terror from the peat-hag, and then the animal reared back as he felt the
soft mossy ground sinking under him. The trooper was determined,—got angry, and spurred
the beast forward, but the horse became obstinate and restive. At length the trooper
succeeded in bringing him up again to the edge of the peat-hag; but just as he was
craning his neck over its brink, John, roused by desperation, pricked the creature’s
nose with the point of his claymore. It so happened that he accidentally did this,
at the very instant that the irascible trooper was giving his horse a dig with his
spurs, and the consequence of these double, though antagonist stimulis, was, that
the brute made a [109]desperate spring, and carried himself and his rider clean over the hag-ditch, John
Smith and all, and then he ran off with his master through the broken moss-ground,
scattering the heaps of drying peats to right and left, until horse and man were rolled
over and over into the plashy bog.
Uninjured, except as to his gay clothes and accoutrements, which were speedily dyed
of a rich chocolate hue, the trooper arose in a rage, and could he have by any means
safely left his horse so as to have secured his not running away, he would have charged
the dying man on foot, and so he would have very speedily sacrificed him; but dreading
to lose his charger if he should abandon him, he mounted him again, and was in the
act of returning to the attack, with the determination of putting John to death, at
all hazards, either by steel or by lead, when he was arrested by the voice of his
officer, who was then passing along a road tract, at some little distance, with a
few of his troop, and who called out to him in a loud authoritative tone, “Come away
you, Jem Barnard! Why dont you follow [110]the living? Why waste time by cutting at the dying or dead?”
On hearing this command, the trooper uttered a half-smothered curse, and unwillingly
turned to ride after his comrades, throwing back bitter execrations on John Smith
as he went. John’s tongue was otherwise employed. He used it for the better purpose
of returning thanks to that Almighty Providence who had thus so wonderfully protected
him.
After this pious mental exercise, John thought that he felt himself somewhat better.
He made a feeble effort to rise, but it was altogether abortive. The blood still continued
to flow from his head—he began to feel very faint, and a raging thirst attacked him.
Turning himself round in the peat-hag, he contrived to lap up a considerable quantity
of the moss water, which, however muddy and distasteful it might be, refreshed him
so much as to give him strength sufficient to raise himself up a little, so as to
enable him to extend the circuit of his view. He had now a moment’s leisure to look
about him, and to consider, as well as the confusion of his ideas would [111]allow him, what he had best to do. But what was his surprise and dismay to see, that
although many were yet flying in all directions, and many more pursuing after them,
whole battalions of the enemy still remained unbroken in the vicinity of the field
of battle, and that some were marching up, in close order, both to the right and left
of him. There was but little time left him for farther consideration, as one of these
battalions was so near to him, that he saw, from the course it was holding, that it
must soon march directly over the spot where he was. The first thought that struck
him was that his best plan would be to lie down and feign that he was dead. But it
immediately afterwards occurred to him that a thrust from some curious or malicious
person, who might be the bearer of one of those bayonets, which already glittered
in his eyes, might do his business even more effectually than the sword of the trooper
might have done. He became convinced that he had nothing left for it but to run. But
although he was now somewhat revived, and that the dread of death gave new strength
to exhausted nature, he felt persuaded [112]of the truth, that if his wound should continue to bleed, as it had already again
began to do, his race could not be a long one in any sense of the word, even if he
should have the wonderful luck to escape the chance of its being shortened by the
sword, bayonet, or bullet of an enemy. To give himself some small chance of life,
John, though he was no surgeon, would have fain tried some means of stanching the
blood, but he lacked all manner of materials for any such operation, and he could
only try to cover the wound very ineffectually with both hands, whilst the red stream
continued to run down through his fingers. At length, necessity, that great mother
of invention, and wisest of all teachers, enabled him to hit off in a moment, a remedy,
which, as it was the best he could have possibly adopted in his present difficult
and distressing situation, might perhaps, even on an occasion where no such embarrassment
exists, be found as valuable and effective as any other which the most favourable
circumstances could afford, or the most consummate skill devise. Stooping down, he
picked up a large mass of [113]peaty turf, of nearly a foot square, and two or three inches thick. This had been
regularly cut by the peat-diggers, but having tumbled by chance into the bottom of
the peat-hag, it had been there lying soaking till the soft unctuous matter of which
it was composed was completely saturated with water like a sponge. John proceeded
upon no certain ratio medicandi, except this, that as his life’s blood was manifestly welling fast away from him,
he thought that the wet peat would stop the flow of it, and as his head was in a burning
fever, every fibre of his scalp seemed to call out for the immediate application of
its cold and moist surface. John seized it then with avidity, and clapping it instantly
on his head, with the black soft oleaginous side of it next to the wound, and the
heathery top of it outwards, he pressed it down with great care all over his skull,
and then quickly secured it fast, by tying a coarse red handkerchief over it, the
ends of which he fastened very carefully under his chin. The outward appearance of
this strange uncouth head-gear may be easily imagined, with the heather-bush [114]rising everywhere around his head over the red tier that bound it on, and surmounting
a countenance so rueful and bloody; but the effect within was so wonderfully refreshing
and invigorating, that he felt himself almost immediately restored to comparative
strength. He started to his feet; and, being yet uncertain as to which way he should
run, he raised his head slowly over the peat-hag to reconnoitre.
Now, it happened, that, at this very moment, a couple of English foot soldiers came
straggling along, thirsting for more slaughter, and prowling about for prey and plunder.
Ere John was aware of their proximity to him, they were within a few yards of the
peat-hag. As he raised his head, he beheld them approaching with their muskets and
their bayonets reeking with gore. Believing himself to be now utterly lost, a deep
groan of despair escaped from him. The soldiers had halted suddenly on beholding the
bloody face and neck of what scarcely seemed to be a human being, with a huge overgrown
forest of heather on the head instead of hair, appearing, as it were by magic, out
of the very [115]earth. They started back, and stood for an instant transfixed to the spot by superstitious
fear.
“Waunds, Gilbert, wot is that?” cried one, his eyes staring at John with horror.
Seeing, that as he was now discovered, his only chance lay in working upon that dread
which he saw that he had already excited, John first gradually drew down his head
below the bank, and then again raised it slowly and portentously, and uttered another
groan more deep and ghostly and prolonged than the first. The effect was instantaneous.
“Oh Lord! oh Lord! one of them Highland warlocks of the bog, wot dewours men, women,
and children!” cried Gilbert. “Fly—fly, Warner, for dear life!”
Off he ran, and his comrade staid not to question farther, but darted away after him,
and John had the satisfaction to see the two heroes, from whom he had looked for nothing
but sudden death, scouring away over the field, and hardly daring to look behind them.
John Smith was considerably emboldened by [116]the discovery that his appearance was so formidable to his foes. He again applied
himself to the consideration of the question as to which way it was best for him to
fly. He cast his eyes all over the field of action around him; and, much to his satisfaction,
he perceived that the officer at the head of the red regiment of Englishmen, which
had previously given him so much alarm, had been so very obliging as to determine
this difficult question for him. Some movement of the flying clans, who had retreated
on Strath Nairn, had induced the officer to alter his line of march; and, in a very
short time, John had the happiness of seeing himself very much in the rear of the
red battalion, instead of being immediately in its front, as he had formerly been.
Looking to the north-eastward, he perceived that all was comparatively clear and quiet,
so far as he could see. There were now no longer any regular masses of men on the
field, neither were there any signs of flight or pursuit in that direction. A few
stragglers were to be seen, it is true, moving about, like evil spirits among the
killed, and [117]perhaps performing the office of messengers of death to the wounded. Strange, indeed,
was the change that had taken place, upon that which had been so lately a scene of
stormy and desperate conflict. A few large birds of prey were soaring high in air,
in eager contemplation of that banquet which had been so liberally spread for them
on the plain by ferocious man. But, in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot where
John Smith was, the terrified pewit had already settled down again with confidence
on her nest, the robin had again begun to chirp, and to direct his sharp eye towards
the earth in search of worms; and the lark was again heaving herself up into the sky,
giving forth her innocent song as she rose,—all apparently utterly unconscious that
any such terrible and bloody turmoil had taken place between different sections of
the human race. John therefore made up his mind at once; and, scrambling out of the
peat-hag, he darted away over the moor, and flying like a ghost across the very middle
of the field of battle, through the heaps of dead and dying, to the utter terror and
discomfiture [118]of those wolves and hyenas in the shape of men—aye, and of women too—who were preying,
as well upon those who had life, as upon those who were lifeless, he scattered them
to right and left in terror at his appalling appearance, and dived amid the thick
woods of Culloden.
Having once found shelter among the trees, John stopped to breathe awhile, and then
he again set forward to unravel his way. It so happened, that, as he proceeded, he
chanced to come upon the very spot where he had feasted with MacTaggart and his comrades
on his mistress the Pensassenach’s sow, and the other good things which the Highlanders
had taken from her. The gnawing demon of hunger that possessed him, inserted his fell
fangs more furiously into his stomach, from very association with the scene. What
would he not have now given for the smallest morsel of that goodly beast, the long
and ample side of which arose upon his mind’s eyes, as he had beheld her carcase hanging
from the bough of a tree, previous to the rapid subdivision which it underwent. [119]Alas! the very thought of it was now an unreal mockery. Yet he could not help looking
anxiously around, though in vain, among the extinguished remains of the fires of the
bivouacs; and he figured to himself the joy and comfort and refreshment he would have
experienced, if his eyes could have lighted even on a half-broiled fragment of one
of the pettitoes, which he might have picked at as he fled. John’s eyes were so intently
turned to the ground, that he saw not the unfortunate Mr. Dallas, who still dangled
from the bough of the fir tree above him.
Whilst John was poking about in this manner, earnestly turning over the ashes, and
looking amongst them as if he had been in search of a pin, he suddenly heard the tramp
of horses at some little distance. The sound was evidently coming towards him; and
he could distinguish men’s voices. He cast his eyes eagerly around him, to discover
some ready place of concealment; and now, for the first time, he caught sight of the
wasted figure of Mr. Dallas, swinging at some distance above him, with the dull [120]glassy eyeballs apparently fixed upon him. His heart sank within him; for the corpse
of the wretched man seemed to typify his own immediate fate. He was paralyzed for
a moment. But the sound drew nearer; and, spying a holly-tree with a reasonably tall
stem, and a very thick and bushy head, which happened to grow most fortunately near
him, he ran towards it, reached up his hands, seized hold of its lower branches, and,
weak though he was, the energy of self-preservation enabled him very quickly to coil
himself up amongst its dense foliage, where he sat as still as death, and scarcely
allowing himself to breathe. The holly-tree stood by the side of a horse-track that
led through the wood, and which crossed the small open space where most of the fires
of Captain M’Taggart’s bivouac had been kindled. Two troopers came riding leisurely
up through the wood along it, their horses considerably jaded by the work of the day.
“Ha!” said one of them to the other, reining up his steed as he spoke, just on entering
the open space,—“What have we here, Jack?”
[121]
“I should not wonder now if ’em ’ere should be the remains of the fires of some of
them rebel rascals,” said Jack, with wonderful acuteness. “Them is a proper set of
waggabones, to be sure. How we did lick the rascals! Didn’t we, Bob?”
“To be sure we did, Jack,” replied Bob.
“But you and I aint made much on it, arter all. I wish the captain at the devil—so
I do—for sendin’ us a unting arter that officer he was a wanting to ketch.”
“Aye,” said Jack; “so do I, from the bottom of my soul. But if we had ketcht him,
I think we should ’a gained a prize, seeing that he wur walued at twenty golden pieces
by his Highness the Duke. Whoy, who the plague could he be? Not the chap they calls
Prince Charles Stuart himself surelye? I should think that his carcase would fetch
a deal more money.”
“A deal more money indeed!” said Bob.
“Lord bless thee, I would not sell my share of him for an underd. But why may we not
ketch him yet, Jack? Look sharp; do—and [122]see if you can spy ere an oak in this wood, with a head so royal as to hide this Prince
Charles Stuart in it, as that ’ere one did King Charley the Second arter the great
battle of Worcester. Zounds! what a fortin you and I should make, an’ we could only
ketch him!”
“Pooh!” replied Jack, moving so close to the little holly, that his head and that
of John Smith were within two yards of each other—“Pooh man! there beant no oaks bigger
than this here holly, in all this blasted, cold, and wretched country.” And, at the
same time, he gave its bushy head a thwack with the flat of his sword that set every
leaf of it in motion, and John’s heart, body, muscles, and nerves, shaking in sympathy
with them.
“Beg your pardon,” said Bob. “I was in a great big wood yesterday—that same, I mean,
that spreads abroad all over the country, above that ’ere ould castle wot they calls
Cawdor Castle. And sitch oak trees as I seed there! My heyes, some on ’em had heads
as would cover half a troop! But, hark ye, Jack! Is [123]there no tree, think ye, fit to have a man in’t but an oak? Dost not think that a
good stout fir-tree now might support a man?”
“Oh,” replied Jack, “surelye, surelye. This here holly, for instance, might hide a
man in its head;”—and, as he said so, he gave the holly another thwack, that, for
a few moments, banished every drop of blood from the heart of John Smith. “But your
oak is your only tree for concealing your King or your Prince; for, as the old rhyme
has it,
‘The royal oak is not a joke.’
As for your firs, they may be well enough for affording a refuge to your men of smaller
mark.”
“Then you don’t think that ’ere feller, wot hangs from yonder fir tree, can be a King
or a Prince, do you, Jack?” demanded Bob, laughing heartily at his own joke.
“My heyes!” exclaimed Jack, rubbing his optics, and looking earnestly for some time
at the corpse of Mr. Dallas; “sure I cannot be mistaken? As I’m a soldier, that ’ere
is the very face, figure, clothes, and, above all, short [124]leg and queer shoe, of the identical feller wot sould me an ould watch, wot was of
no use, because you know it never went, and therefore it stands to reason that it
could only tell the hour twice in the twenty-four. I say surelye, surelye, that ’ere
is the very feller as sould me this here ould useless watch, for a bran new great
goer. Well, if it be’ant some satisfaction to see the feller hanging there, my name
aint Jack Blunt!”
“Them rascally rebels has robbed and murdered the poor wretch,” said Bob.
“Well,” replied Jack, “I am a right soft arted Christine; and therefore most surelye
do I forgive ’em for that same hact, if they’d never ha’ done no worse. But come Bob,
my boy; an’ we would be ketching kings or princes, I doubt we mun be stirrin’.”
“Aye, aye, that’s true—let’s be joggin’,” replied Bob.
You may believe, gentlemen, that it was with no small satisfaction that John Smith
beheld them apply their spurs to the sides of their weary animals. He listened to
their departing [125]footsteps until they were beyond the reach of his hearing; and then, conscious as
he felt himself, that he was in much too weak a state to have maintained an unequal
combat against two fresh and vigorous men, with the most distant chance of success,
he put up a fervent ejaculation of thankfulness for their departure, and his own safety.
He was in the act of preparing himself to drop from the tree, that he might continue
his flight, and was just putting down his legs from amid the thick foliage, when he
met with a new alarm, that compelled him to draw them up again with great expedition.
Some one on foot now came singing along up the path, and John had hardly more than
time to conceal himself again, when he beheld the person enter upon the open space,
near the holly tree where he was perched. And a very remarkable and striking personage
he was. He wore an old, soiled, torn, and tarnished regimental coat, which, though
now divested of every shred of the lace that had once adorned it, seemed to have once
belonged to an English officer; and this was put on over a tattered [126]Highland kilt, from beneath which his raw-boned limbs and long horny feet appeared
uncased by any covering. A dirty canvas shirt was all that showed itself where a waistcoat should have been, and that was
all loose at the collar, fully exhibiting a thin, long, scraggy neck, that supported
a head of extraordinary dimensions, and of the strangest malconformation, having a
countenance, in which the appearance of the goggle eyes alone, would have been enough
to have satisfied the most transient observer of the insanity of the individual to
whom they belonged. An old worn-out drummer’s cap completed his costume. He came dancing
along, with a large piece of cheese held up before him with both hands, and he went
on, singing, hoarsely and vehemently,—
“Troll de roll loll—troll de loll lay;
If I could catch a reybell, I would him flay—
Troll de roll lay—troll de roll lum—
And out of his skin I wud make a big drum.
Ho! ho; ho; that wud be foine. But stay; I mun halt here, and sit doon, and munch
up mye cheese that I took so cleverly from that [127]ould woman.—Ho! ho! ho! ho!—How nice it is to follow the sodgers! Take what we like—take
what we like!—Ho! ho!—This is livin’ like a man! They ca’ed me daft Jock in the streets
o’ Perth; but our sarjeant says as hoo that I’m to be made a captain noo.—Ho! ho!—A
captain! and to have a lang swurd by my side!—Ho! ho! ho!—I’ll be grand, very grand—and
I’ll fecht, and cut off the heads o’ the reybel loons!—Ho! ho! ho!
Troll de roll loll—troll de roll lay—
If I could catch a reybell I wud him——”
“Hoch!”—roared out John Smith, his patience being now quite exhausted, by the thought
that his chance of escaping with life was thus to be rendered doubly precarious, by
the provoking delay of this idiot.—“Hoch!” roared he again, in a yet more tremendous
voice, whilst at the same time he thrust his head—and nothing but his turf-covered
head—with his bloody countenance, partially streaked with the tiny streams of the
inky liquid that had oozed from the peat, and run down here and there [128]over his face;—this horrible head, I say, John thrust forth from the foliage, and
glared fearfully at the appalled songster, who stopped dead in the midst of his stave.
“Ah—a-ach—ha—a-ah—ha!” cried the poor idiot, in a prolonged scream of terror that
echoed through the wood, and off he flew, and was out of sight in a moment.
John Smith lost not another instant of time. Dropping down from the tree, he hastily
picked up a small fragment of the cheese which the idiot had let fall in his terror
and confusion, and this he devoured with inconceivable rapacity. But although this
refreshed him a little, it stirred up his hunger to a most agonizing degree, so that
if he had had no other cause for running, he would have run from the very internal
torment he was enduring. Dashing down through the thickest of the brakes of the wood,
so as to avoid observation as much as possible, he at last traversed the whole extent
of it in a north-easterly direction, and gained the low open country beyond it, whence
he urged on his way, until he fell into that very line of road, in the [129]parish of Petty, which he had so lately marched over in an opposite direction, and
under circumstances so different, with Captain M’Taggart and his company, on the afternoon
of the 14th, just two days before.
Remembering the whole particulars of that march, and the cheers and the benedictions
with which they had been every where greeted, John Smith flattered himself that he
had now got into a country of friends, and that he had only to show himself at any
of their doors, wounded, weary, an’ hungered and athirst, as he was, to ensure the
most charitable, compassionate, and hospitable reception. But, in so calculating,
John was ignorant of the versatility and worthlessness of popular applause. He forgot
that when he was passing to Culloden, with the bold Captain M’Taggart and his company,
they had been looked upon as heroes marching to conquest; whilst he was now to be
viewed as a wretched runaway from a lost field. But he still more forgot, that the
same bloody, haggard countenance, and horrible head-gear, which had been already so
great a protection to him by terrifying [130]his enemies, could not have much chance of favourably recommending him to his friends.
John stumped on along the road, therefore, with comparative cheerfulness, arising
from the prospect which he now had of speedy relief. At some little distance before
him, he observed a nice, trig-looking country girl, trudging away barefoot, in the
same direction he was travelling. He hurried on to overtake her, in order to learn
from her where he was most likely to have his raging hunger relieved. The girl heard
his footstep coming up behind her, whilst she was yet some twenty paces a-head of
him;—she turned suddenly round to see who the person was that was about to join her,
and beholding the terrible spectre-looking figure which John presented, she uttered
a piercing shriek, and darted off along the highway, with a speed that nothing but
intense dread could have produced. Altogether forgetful of the probable cause of her
alarm, John imagined that it must proceed from fear of the Duke of Cumberland’s men,
and, with this idea in his head, he ran after her as fast as his weak state of body
would allow him, [131]earnestly vociferating to her to stop. But the more he ran, and the more he shouted,
just so much the more ran and screamed the terrified young woman. Another girl was
seated, with a boy, on the grassy slope of a broomy hillock, immediately over the
road, tending three cows and a few sheep. Seeing the first girl running in the way
she was doing, they hurried to the road side to enquire the cause of her alarm, but
ere they had time to ask, or she to answer, she shot past them, and the hideous figure
of John Smith appeared. Horror-struck, and so bewildered that they hardly knew what
they were doing, both girl and boy leaped into the road, and fled along it. A little
farther on, two labourers were engaged digging a ditch, in a mossy hollow below the
road. Curiosity to know what was the cause of all this shrieking and running, induced
these men to hasten up to the road-side. But ere they had half reached it, they beheld
John coming, and turning with sudden dismay, they scampered off across the fields,
never stopping to draw breath till they reached their own homes. John [132]minded them not,—but fancying that he was gaining on the three fugitives before him,
and perceiving a small hamlet of cottages a little way on, he redoubled his exertions.
Some dozen of persons, men, women, and children, were assembled about a well, at what
we in Scotland would call the town-end. They were talking earnestly over the many,
and most contradictory rumours, that had reached them of the events of that day’s
battle, their rustic and unwarlike souls having been so sunk, with the trepidation
occasioned by the distant sound of the heavy cannonade, that they as yet hardly dared
to speak but in whispers. Suddenly the shrieking of the three young persons came upon
their ears. They pricked them up in alarm, and turned every eye along the road. The
shrieking increased, and the two girls and the boy appeared, with the formidable figure
of John Smith in pursuit of them.
“The Duke’s men! the Duke’s men! with the devil at their head!” cried the wise man
of the hamlet in Gaelic. “Run! or we’re all dead and murdered!”
[133]
In an instant every human head of them had disappeared, each having burrowed under
its own proper earthen hovel, with as much expedition as would be displayed by the
rabbits of a warren, when scared by a Highland terrier. So instantaneously, and so
securely, was every little door fastened, that it was with some difficulty that the
three fugitives found places of shelter, and that too, not until their shrieks had
been multiplied ten-fold. When John Smith came up, panting and blowing like a stranded
porpus, all was snug, and the little hamlet so silent, that if he had not caught a
glimpse of the people alive, he might have supposed that they were all dead.
John knocked at the first door he came to.—Not a sound was returned but the angry
barking of a cur. He tried the next—and the next—and the next—all with like success;—at
last he knocked at one, whence came a low, tremulous voice, more of ejaculation than
intended for the ear of any one without, and speaking in Gaelic.
“Lord be about us!—Defend us from Satan, and from all his evil spirits and works!”
“Give me a morsel of bread, and a cup of [134]water, for mercy’s sake!” said John, poking his head close against a small pane of
dirty glass in the mud wall, that served for a window.
“Avoid thee, evil spirit!” said the same voice.—“Avoid thee, Satan!—O deliver us from
Satan!—Deliver us from the Prince of Darkness and all his wicked angels!”
“Have mercy upon me, and give me but a bit of bread, and a drop of water, for the
sake of Christ your Saviour!” cried John earnestly again.
“Avoid, I say, blasphemer!” replied the voice, with more energy than before. “Name
not vainly the name of my Saviour, enemy as thou art to him and his. Begone, and tempt
us not!”
John Smith was preparing to answer and to explain, and to defend himself from these
absurd and unjust imputations against him, when he heard the sound of a bolt drawn
in the hovel immediately behind him. Full of hope that some good and charitable Christian
within, melted by his pitiful petitions, had come to the resolution of opening his
door to relieve him, he turned hastily round. But what was his mortification, [135]when, instead of seeing the door opened, he beheld the small wooden shutter of an
unglazed hole in the wall, slowly and silently pushed outwards on its hinges, until
it fell aside, and then the muzzle of a rusty fowling-piece was gradually projected,
levelled, and pointed at him. John waited not to allow him who held it to perfect
his aim. He sprang instantly aside towards the wall, and fortunately, the tardy performance
of the old and ill constructed lock enabled him to do so, just in time to clear the
way for the shower of swan-shot which the gun discharged in a diagonal line across
the way. Luckily for John, he had thus no opportunity of judging of the weight of
the charge in his own person, but he was made sufficiently aware that it was quite
potent enough, by its effects on an unfortunate sheep-dog, that happened to be at
that moment lying peaceably gnawing a bone on the top of a dunghill, some fifty yards
down the road, on the opposite side of the way to that where the hovel stood from
which the shot had been fired. The poor animal sprang up, and gave a loud and sharp
yelp, when he received the [136]shot, and then followed a long and dismal howl, after which he rolled over on his
back and died. After such a hint as this, John staid not to make farther experiments
on the hospitality of the little place, but, getting out at the farther end of its
street with all manner of expedition, he slowly proceeded on his way, weary, faint,
and heart-sunken.
Just as sunset was approaching, he came to the door of a small single cottage, hard
by the way-side. There he knocked gently, without saying a word.
“Who is there?” asked a soft woman’s voice in Gaelic, from within.
“A poor man like to die with hunger and thirst,” replied John in the same language.
“For the love of God give me a piece of bread, and a drink of water.”
“You shant want that,” said the good Samaritan woman within, who promptly came to
undo the door.
“Heaven reward you!” said John fervently, as she was fumbling with the key in the
key-hole, and with an astonishing rapidity of movement [137]in his ideas, he felt, by anticipation, as if he was already devouring the food he
had asked for.
“Preserve us, what’s that?” cried the woman, the moment the half-opened door had enabled
her to catch a glimpse of his fearful head and bloody features.
The door was shut and locked in an instant; and whether it was that the poor young
lonely widow, for such she was, had fainted or not, or whether she had felt so frightened
for herself and her young child, that she dared not to speak, all John’s farther attempts
to procure an answer from her were fruitless. It was probably from the cruel and unexpected
disappointment that he here had met with, just at the time when his hopes of relief
had been highest, that his faintness came more overpoweringly upon him. He tottered
away from the widow’s door, with his head swimming strangely round, and he had not
proceeded above two or three dozen of steps, when he sank down on a green bank by
the side of the road, where he lay almost unconscious as to what had befallen him.
He had not lain long there, when the tender [138]hearted widow, who had reconnoitred him well through a single pane of glass in the
gable end of her house, began to have her fears overcome by her compassion. Seeing
that he was now at some distance from her dwelling, she ventured again to open her
door, and perceiving that he did not stir, she retired for a minute, and then reappeared
with a bottle of milk and two barley cakes, with which she crept timorously, and therefore
slowly and cautiously, along the road. Her step became slower and slower, as, with
fear and trembling, she drew near to John. At last, when within three or four yards
of him, she halted, and, looking back, as if to measure the distance that divided
her from her own door, she turned towards him, and ventured to address him.
“Here, poor man,” said she, setting down the cakes and the bottle of milk on the bank.
“Here is some refreshment for you.”
John Smith raised his eyes languidly as her words reached him, and spying the food
she had brought him, he started up and proceeded to seize upon it with an energy which
no one could have believed was yet left in him; and, as the benevolent [139]widow was flying back with a beating heart to her cottage, she heard his thanks and
benedictions coming thickly and loudly after her. John devoured the barley cakes,
and drank the milk, and felt wonderfully refreshed, and then, placing the bottle on
the bank in view of the cottage, he knelt down and offered up his thanks to God for
his mercy, and prayed for blessings on the head of her who had relieved him. He then
arose, and having waved his hand two or three times towards the cottage in token of
his gratitude, he proceeded with some degree of spirit on his journey. I may here
remark, gentlemen, that however those worthies who denied John admittance to their
houses may have passed the night, I may venture to pronounce, and that with some probability
of truth too, that the sleep of that virtuous young widow, with her innocent child
in her arms, was as sweet and refreshing as the purity and balminess of her previous
reflections could make it.
John Smith had not gone far on his way till the sun went down; but, as the moon was
up, and he knew his road sufficiently well, he continued [140]to trudge on without fear, until he approached the old walls of an ancient church,
the burying yard of which had an ugly reputation for being haunted, and then he began
to walk with somewhat more circumspection. As he drew nearer to it, he halted under
the shadow of a bank, and stood for a time somewhat aghast, for, in the open part
of the grave-yard, between the church and the high-road, he beheld three figures standing
in the moonlight which then prevailed. At first John quaked with fear, lest they should
prove to be some of the uncanny spirits which were said to frequent the place. But
he soon became reassured, by observing enough of them and of their motions to convince
him that they were men of flesh and blood, yea, and Highlanders too, like himself.
As John Smith had no fear of mortal man, he would have at once advanced. But there
was something so suspicious in the manner in which the three fellows hung over the
wall, as if they were watching the public road, that he became at once convinced that
they were lying in wait for a prey; and although he had nothing [141]to lose, he did not feel quite assured as to the manner in which they might be disposed
to accost him; and in his present weak state, he felt prudence to be the better part
of valour. Availing himself of the concealment of the bank, therefore, until he had
entered a small opening in the churchyard wall, he crept quietly across a dark part
of the churchyard itself, by which means he got into the deep shadow that fell with
great breadth all along the church wall, between the moon and the three figures who
were watching the road, and who consequently had their backs to the old building.
Having succeeded in accomplishing this, John was stealing slowly and silently along
the wall, with the hope of passing by them, altogether unnoticed, when, as ill luck
would have it, one of them chanced to turn round, so as dimly to descry his figure.
“What the devil is that gliding along yonder?” cried the man, in Gaelic, and in a
voice that betrayed considerable fear.
“Halt you there!” cried another, who was somewhat bolder. “Halt, I say, and give an
account of yourself.”
[142]
John saw that there was now no mode of escaping the danger but by boldly bearding
it. He halted therefore, but still keeping deep within the shade, he drew out his
claymore, and placed his back to the church wall to prepare for defence.
“Ha! steel!” cried the third fellow; “I heard it clash on the stones of the wall,
and I saw it bring a flash of fire out of them too. Come, come, goodman, whoever you
are—come out here, and give us your claymore.”
“He that will have it, must come and take it by the point,” said John, in Gaelic,
and in a stern, hoarse, hollow voice; “and he had better have iron gloves on, or he
will find it too hot for his palms.”
“What the devil does he mean?” said the first.
“We’ll detain you as a runaway rebel,” said the third.
“The boldest of men could not detain me,” replied John, now recognising the last speaker,
by the moonlight on his face, as well as by his voice. “But for a base traitor like
you, Neil MacCallum, better were it for you to be lying [143]dead, like your brave brother, among the slain on Drummosie Moor, than to encounter
me here in this churchyard, at such an hour as this!”
“In the name of wonder, how knows he my name?” exclaimed MacCallum in a voice that
quavered considerably.
“Oh, Neil! Neil!” cried the first speaker, in great dismay, “it is no man! it is something
most uncanny: For the love of God, parley with it no farther!”
“Pshaw—nonsense!” exclaimed the second speaker. “Its a man, and nothing else. Let
us all rush upon him at once. Surely, if he were the devil himself, three of us ought
to be a match for him.”
“I am the devil himself!” cried John Smith in a terrible voice, and at the same time
stalking slowly forth from the shadow, with the bloody blade of his claymore before
him, he strode into the moonlight, which at once fully disclosed his hideous head-gear
and ghastly features, to which at the same time it gave a tenfold effect of horror.
“Oh, the devil!—the devil!—the devil!” [144]cried the fellows, the moment they thus beheld him; and, overpowered by their terror,
they rushed forward towards the churchyard wall, and threw themselves over it pell-mell,
tumbling higgledy-piggledy into the road, and scampering out of sight and out of hearing
in a moment, leaving John Smith sole master of the field.
In the midst of all his miseries, John could not help laughing heartily at the suddenness
of their retreat. But gravity of mood came quickly over him again, when he heard his
laugh re-echoed—he knew not how, as it were in a tone of mockery, from the old church
walls. He began to recollect where he was, and he half repented that he had so indiscreetly
used the name of Satan in the manner he had done.
“The Lord be about us!” ejaculated John most fervently, whilst his knees smote against
each other violently, and his jaws were stretched to a fearful extent.
He felt that the shorter time he tarried in that uncanny place the better it would
be for his comfort; and, accordingly, he began to move forward as quickly as he could
towards a wicket gate, [145]which he well knew gave exit to the footpath at the other end of the churchyard.
John, now proceeding at what might rather be called an anxious pace than a quick one,
had very nearly reached the wicket, when his eye caught a tall white figure, standing
within a few yards of it, and posted close by the path which he must necessarily pursue.
The moonshine enabled him to see a terrible face, with a huge mouth; and, so far as
his recollection of his own natural physiognomy went, derived as it was from his shavings
on Saturday nights ever since his chin had required a razor, he felt persuaded that
the countenance before him was a fac-simile of his own. It was, moreover, very ghastly,
and very bloody. His eyes fixed themselves upon it with unconquerable dismay, and
he shook throughout every nerve, like the trembling poplar. But that which most astonished
and terrified him, as he gazed on this apparition, was, the strange circumstance,
that he could distinctly perceive, that it had already assumed a head-gear precisely
similar to the very remarkable one which he had been so recently compelled [146]from necessity to adopt. On the summit of its crown appeared a huge sod, with all
its native plants upon it, and these waved to and fro before him with something like
portentous omen. John felt as if he had only fled from the battle-field of Culloden
to meet both death and burial in this most unchancy churchyard, and if his knees smote
each other before, they now increased their reciprocal antagonist action in a degree
that was tenfold more striking. John felt persuaded beyond a doubt, that the devil
had been permitted thus to assume his own appearance, and to come thus personally
to reprove him for the indiscreet use which he had made of his name. Sudden death
seemed to be about to fall on him. The grave appeared to be about to open to receive
his wounded and worn-out body. But these were evils which, at that dreadful moment,
John hardly recognized, for the jaws of the Evil Spirit himself seemed to him to be
slowly and terribly expanding themselves to swallow up his sinful soul. Fain would
John have fled, but he was rivetted to the spot. No way suggested itself to his distracted
mind by which he could escape, and he [147]well knew that he had no way that led homewards to that spot where he looked for concealment
and safety, save that which went directly by the dreaded object before him. For some
time he stood trembling and staring, in a cold sweat, until at length, overpowered
by his feelings, he dropped upon his knees, and began putting up such snatches of
prayer to Heaven, for help against the powers of darkness, as his fears allowed him
to utter.
As John thus sat on his knees, praying and quaking, his animal courage so far returned
to him as to permit him to observe that the object of his terror remained unchanged
and immovable. At length his mind recovered itself to such an extent, as to enable
him to revert to that night of misery which he had so recently experienced, in beholding
that which he had believed to be the spirit of Dallas the packman, and remembering
how that matter had been cleared up by the appearance of daylight, he began to reason
with himself as to the possibility of this being a somewhat similar case. Having thus
so far reduced his fears within the control of his [148]reason, he summoned up resolution to raise himself from his knees, and to advance
one step nearer to the phantom which had so long triumphed over the courage that was
within him. And, seeing that, notwithstanding this movement of his, it still maintained
its position, and uttered no sound, he ventured to take a second step—and then a third
step, until the truth, and the whole truth, began gradually to dawn upon his eyes
and his mind, and then, at last, he discovered, to his very great relief, that the
horrible and much-dreaded demon whose appearance had so disturbed and discomposed
his nervous system, was no other than a tall old tombstone, with a head so fearfully
chisselled on the top of it, as might have left it a very doubtful matter, even in
the day-time, for any one, however learned in such pieces of art, to have determined
whether the rustic sculptor had intended it for a death’s-head or a cherubim. Some
idle artist of the brush, in passing by that way with a pot full of red paint, prepared
for giving a temporary glory to a new cart about to be turned out from a neighbouring
[149]wright’s shop, had paused as he passed by, and exhausted the full extent of his small
talents in communicating to the countenance that bloody appearance, the effect of
which had so much appalled John Smith, and some waggish schoolboy had finished the
figure, by tearing up a sod covered with plants of various kinds, and clapping it
on its top, so as thereby very much to augment its artificial terrors. John Smith
drew a long breath of inconceivable relief on making this discovery, and then darting
through the wicket, he pursued his journey with as much expedition as his weakness
and fatigue permitted him to use.
John walked on for some hour or twain with very determined resolution, but at length
the great loss of blood he had experienced, brought on so unconquerable a drowsiness,
that he felt he must have a little rest, were it but for a few minutes, even if his
taking it should be at the risk of his life. John was never wont to be very particular
as to the place where he made his bed, but on the present occasion it happened, probably
from the blood-vessels of his body having been so much drained, that he had a most
unpleasant [150]chill upon him. He felt as if ice itself was shooting and crystallizing through every
vein and artery within him. Then the night had become somewhat raw, and he had left
his plaid, which is a Highlander’s second house, on the fatal field of battle. Under
all these circumstances, John was seized with a resistless desire to enjoy the luxury
of sleep for a short time, under the shelter of a roof, and in the vicinity of a good
peat fire. Calling to mind that there was an humble turf-built cottage in a hollow
a little way farther on, by the side of a small rushy, mossy stream, he made the best
of his way towards it.
The house consisted of three small apartments, one in the middle of it, opposite to
the outer door, and one at either end, which had their entrances from that in the
centre. When John came to the brow of the bank that looked down upon this humble dwelling,
he was by no means sorry to perceive that the middle apartment had a good blazing
fire in it, as he could easily see through the window and outer door, which last chanced
to be invitingly open. John, altogether forgetful of his [151]uncouth and terrific appearance, lost not a moment in availing himself of this lucky
circumstance. But he had no sooner presented his awful spectral form and visage within
the threshold, than he spread instantaneous terror over the group assembled within.
“Oh, a ghost! a ghost!” cried out in Gaelic a pale-faced girl of some eight or nine
years of age, as she dropped on her knees, shaken by terror in every limb and feature.
“Oh, the devil! the devil!” roared an old man and woman, who also sank down before
John, bellowing out like frightened cattle. “Och, och! we shall all be swallowed up
quick by the Evil One!”
“Fear nothing,” said John Smith, in a mild tone, and in the same tongue. “I am but
a poor wounded and wearied man. I only want to lie down and rest me a little, if you
will be so charitable as to grant me leave.”
“Wounded!” said the old man, rising from his knees, somewhat reassured; “where were
you wounded?”
“In the head here,” said John, with a stare [152]that again somewhat disconcerted the old man; “and if it had not been for this peat
that I clapped on my skull, I believe my very brains would have been all out of me.”
“Mercy on us, where got ye such a mischance as that?” exclaimed the old woman.
“At Culloden, I’ll be sworn,” said the old man.
“Aye, aye, it was at Culloden,” replied John. “But, if ye be Christians, give me a
drink of warm milk and water, to put away this shivering thirst that is on me, and
let me lie down in a warm bed for half an hour.”
“Och aye, poor man, ye shall not want a drop of warm milk and water, and such a bed
as we can give you,” said the old woman, moving about to prepare the drink for him.
“Thank ye—thank ye!” said John, much refreshed and comforted by swallowing the thin
but hot potation. And then following the old man into the inner apartment on the right
hand, he sank down in a darksome nook of it, on a pallet among straw, and covering
himself up, turf, nightcap and all, under a coarse blanket, [153]he was sound asleep before the old man had withdrawn the light, and shut the door
of his clay chamber.
“Oh that our boys were back again safe and sound!” cried the old woman, wringing her
hands.
“Safe and sound I fear we cannot expect them to be, Janet,” replied the old man. “But
oh that we had them back again, though it was to see them wounded as badly as that
poor fellow! Much do I fear that they are both corpses on Drummossie Moor.”
“What will become of us!” cried the old woman, weeping bitterly; “what will become
of this poor motherless lassie now, if her father be gone?”
But, leaving this aged couple to complain, and John Smith to enjoy his repose, we
must now return to poor Morag, whom, as you may recollect, gentlemen, we left hunted
into covert by the two dragoons who had so closely pursued her. The patch of natural
wood into which she dived was not large. It chiefly consisted of oaks and birches,
which, though they had grown to a considerable size in certain parts, so that their
[154]wide-spreading heads had kept the knolls on which their stems stood, altogether free
from the incumbrance of any kind of brushwood,—had yet in most places risen up thinner
and smaller, leaving ample room and air around them to support thickets of the tallest
broom and juniper bushes.
It chanced that Morag was not altogether unacquainted with the nature of the place,
having at one time, in earlier life, been hired to tend the cows of a farmer at no
great distance from it. She was well aware that a rill, which had its origin in the
higher grounds at some distance, came wimpling into the upper part of the wood, and
thence, during its descent over the sloping surface of the ground, from its having
met with certain obstructions, or from some other cause, it had worn itself a channel
through the soft soil, to the depth of some six feet or so, but which was yet so narrow,
that the ferns and bushes growing out of the undermined sods that fringed the edges
of it, almost entirely covered it with one continued tangled and matted arch. Towards
this rill Morag endeavoured to make her way [155]through the tall broom, and, as she was doing so, she heard the dismounted trooper,
who had by this time entered the wood after her, calling to his comrade, who sat mounted
outside:
“Bill! do you padderowl round the wood, and keep a sharp look out that she don’t bolt
without your seeing her. I’ll follow arter her here, and try if I can’t lay my hands
on her; and if I do but chance to light on her, be she witch or devil, I’ll drag her
out of her covert by the scruff of the neck.”
Morag heard no more than this.—She pressed forward towards the bed of the rill, and
having reached it, she stopped, like a chased doe, one moment to listen, and hearing
that the curses, as well as the crashing of the jack-boots of her pursuer, as yet
indicated that he was still at some distance behind her, and evidently much entangled
in his progress, she carefully shed the pendulous plants of the ferns asunder, and
then slid herself gently down into the hollow channel. There finding her feet safely
planted on the bottom, she cautiously and silently groped her way along the downward
course of the rill, [156]through the dark and confined passage which it had worn out for its tiny stream. In
this way she soon came to the lower edge of the wood, where the hollow channel became
deeper, and where it assumed more of the character of a ravine, but where it was still
skirted with occasional oaks, mingled with thickets of birches, hazels, and furze
bushes.
Morag was about to emerge from the obscurity of this subterranean arch, into the more
open light, when, as she looked out, she beheld the mounted trooper standing on his
stirrups on the top of the bank, eagerly gazing around him in all directions. The
furze there grew too thick and high for him to be able to force his way down to the
bottom of the ravine, even if he had accidently observed her. But his eyes were directed
to higher and more distant objects, and seeing that she had been as yet unperceived,
she instantly drew so far back, as to be beyond all reach of his observation,—whilst
she could perfectly well watch him, so long as he maintained his present position.
She listened for the crashing strides of him who was engaged in searching the wood
for her. For a time [157]they came faint and distant to her ear, but, by degrees, they began to come nearer,—and
then again the sound would alternately diminish and increase, as he turned away in
some other direction, fighting through the opposing boughs, and then came beating
his way back again, in the same manner, with many a round oath. At length she heard
him raging forward in the direction of the rill, at some forty yards above the place
where she was, blaspheming as he went.
“Ten thousand devils!” cried he; “such a place as this I never se’ed in all my life
afore. If my heyes beant nearly whipt out of my head with them ’ere blasted broom
shafts, my name aint Tom Wetherby! Dang it, there again! that whip has peeled the
very skin off my cheek, and made both my heyes run over with water like mill-sluices—I
wonder at all where this she-devil can be hidden? Curse her! Do you think, Bill, that
she can raaly have ridden off through the hair, as they do say they do? But for a
matter of that, she may be here somewhere after all, for my heyes be so dimmed, that,
dang me an’ I could see her if she were to rise up afore my very face. [158]How they do smart with pain! Oh! Lord, where am I going?” cried he, as he went smack
down through the ferns and brush into the concealed bed of the rill, and was laid
prostrate on his back in the narrow clayey bottom of it, in such a position that it
defied him to rise.
“Hollo Bill!” cried he, from the bowels of the earth, in a voice which reached his
comrade as if he had spoken with a pillow on his mouth, but which rang with terrible
distinctness down the hollow natural tube to the spot where Morag was concealed. “Hollo!—help!—help!”
“What a murrain is the matter with ye?” cried Bill, very much astonished.
“I’ve fallen plump into the witches’ den!—into the very bottomless pit!—Hollo!—hollo!
Help!—help!” cried the fallen trooper from the abyss.
“How the plague am I to get to ye if so be the pit be bottomless?” cried Bill, in
a drawling tone, that did not argue much promise of any zealous exertion of effective
aid on the part of the speaker.
“Curse ye, come along quickly, or I shall be [159]smothered in this here infernal, dark, outlandish place,” cried Tom Wetherby.
“Well,—well,” replied Bill, with the same long-drawn tone of philosophic indifference,
“I’m a coming—I’m a coming. But you must keep chaunting out from the bottom of that
bottomless pit of yours, do you hear, Tom, else I shall never find you in that ’ere
wilderness. And how the devil I am to get into it is more than I know.”
The dragoon turned his horse very leisurely away, to look for some place where he
could best quit his saddle, in order to make good his entrance on foot into the thicket.
The moment the quick eyes of Morag perceived that he had disappeared from his station
on the brow of the bank, she crept forth from her concealment, and keeping her way
down through the shallow stream, that her footsteps might leave no prints behind them,
she stole off, until she was beyond all hearing of the two dragoons. Then it was that
Morag began to ply her utmost speed, and, after following the ravine until it expanded
into a small and partially wooded glen, she hurried [160]on through it, until at length she found herself emerging on the lower and more open
country. Afraid of being seen, she made a long circuitous sweep through some rough
broomy waste ground of considerable extent, towards a distant hummock, with the shape
of which she was familiar, and having thus gained a part of the country with which
she was acquainted, though it was still very distant from her present home, she hailed
the descent of the shades of night with great satisfaction.
Under their protection she proceeded on her way with great alacrity, and without apprehension,
though with a torn heart, that made her every now and then stop to give full vent
to her grief for John Smith, of whose death she had so little reason to doubt, from
all the circumstances she had heard. At length, fatigue came so powerfully upon her,
that she was not sorry to perceive, as she was about to descend into a hollow, the
light of a cheerful fire, that blazed through the window of a turf-built cottage,
and was reflected on the surface of a rushy stream, that ran lazily through the bottom
near to it. [161]The door was shut, but Morag descended the path that led towards it, and knocked without
scruple.
An old man and woman came immediately to open it, and looked out eagerly, as if for
some one whose coming they had expected, and disappointment seemed to cloud their
brows, when they found only her who was a stranger to them. Morag, addressing them
in Gaelic, entreated for leave to rest herself for half an hour by their fireside.
She was admitted, after some hesitation and whispering between them, after which she
craved a morsel of oaten cake, and a draught of water. A little girl, of some eight
or nine years old, waited not to know her granny’s will, but ran to a cupboard for
the cake; and brought it to her, and then hastened to fill a bowl with water from
a pitcher that stood in a corner. The old couple would have fain pumped out of Morag
something of her history, and they put many questions to her for that purpose. But
she was too shrewd for them, and all they could gather from her was, that she had
been away seeing her friends a long way off, and that she had first rode, and then
walked so far, that she [162]was glad of a little rest, and a morsel to allay her hunger, after which she would
be enabled to continue her journey, with many thanks to them for their hospitality.
Morag had not sat there for many minutes, when there came a rap to the door. The old
man sprang up to open it, and immediately three Highlanders appeared, full armed with
claymores and dirks, but very much jaded and soiled with travel. Morag retired into
a corner.
“Och, Ian! Ian!”—“Och, Hamish! Hamish!” cried the old couple, embracing two of them,
who appeared to be their sons; and, “Oh, father! father!” cried the little girl, springing
into Ian’s arms.
“Tuts, don’t be foolish, Kirstock!” cried Ian, in a surly tone, as he shook off the
little girl; “What’s the use of all this nonsense, father?—Better for you to be getting
something for us and our comrade MacCallum here to drink. We are almost famished for
want;” and with that he threw himself into the old man’s wooden arm-chair.
“Aye, aye, father,” said Hamish, occupying [163]the seat where his mother had sat, and motioning to MacCallum to take that which Morag
had just left; “we have had a sad tramp away from the battle. Would we had never gone
near it! Aye, and we got such a fright into the bargain.”
“Fright!” cried the old man much excited; “Surely, surely, my sons are not cowards!—Much
as I love you, boys, I would rather that you had both died than run away.”
“Oh!” said MacCallum, now joining in the conversation, “we all three fought like lions
in the battle. But it requires nerves harder than steel to look upon the Devil, and
if ever he was seen on earth, we saw him this precious night.”
“Preserve us all!” said the old woman; “what was he like?”
“Never mind what he was like, mother,” said Ian gruffly; “let us have some of your
bread and cheese, and a drop of Uisge-beatha to put some heart in us.”
“You shall have all that I have to give you, boys,” said the old man; “but that is
not much. I would have fain given a sup out of the bottle to the poor wounded man
that came in [164]here, a little time ago; but I bethought me that you might want it all, and so we
sent him to his bed with a cup of warm milk and water.”
“Bed, did you say?” cried Ian. “What! one of Prince Charley’s men?”
“Surely, surely!” said the old man. “Troth, I should have been any thing but fond
of letting in any one else but a man who had fought on the same side with yourselves.”
“Don’t speak of our having fought on Charley’s side, father,” said Ian; “that’s not
to be boasted of now. The fruits of fighting for him have been nothing but danger
and starvation, so far as we have gathered them; and now we have no prospect before
us but the risk of hanging. Methinks you would have shewn more wisdom if you had sent
this fellow away from your door. To have us three hunted men here, is enough to make
the place too hot, without bringing in another to add to the fire.”
“Never mind, Ian,” said MacCallum; “why may we not make our own of him? You know very
well that John MacAllister told us that he could make our peace, and save our lives,
if [165]we could only prove our loyalty to the King, by bringing in a rebel or two.”
“Very true,” said Hamish; “and an excellent advice it was.”
“Most excellent,” said Ian; “and if we act wisely, and as I advise, this fellow shall
be our first peace-offering.”
“Oh, boys, boys!” cried the old man; “would you buy your own lives by treachery of
so black a die?”
“Oh, life is sweet!” cried the old woman—“and the lives of my bairns——”
“Hold your foolish tongue, woman!” interrupted the old man. “No, no, boys! I’ll never
consent to it.”
“Oh life is sweet! life is sweet!” cried the old woman again; “and the lives of both
my bonny boys—the life of Ian, the father of this poor lassie!——”
“Oh, my father’s life!” whimpered the little girl.
“This is no place to talk of such things,” said the old man, leading the way into
the apartment at the opposite end of the house, to that where [166]John Smith was sleeping, and followed by all but Morag, who, having slipped towards
the door, to listen after he had closed it, heard him say, “What made you speak that
way before the stranger lass?”
“Who and what is she at all?” demanded Ian.
“A poor tired lass, weary with the long way she has been to see her friends,” said
the old woman; “but she’ll be gone very soon.”
“If she does not go of her own accord, we must take strong measures with her too,”
said Ian.
“God forgive you, boys, what would you do?” said the old man. “Let not the Devil tempt
you thus. Would you bring foul treason upon this humble, but hitherto spotless shed
of mine, by violating the sacred rights of hospitality to a woman, and by giving up
a man to an ignominious death, who, upon the faith of it, is now soundly sleeping
under my roof, in the other end of the house? Fye, fye, boys! I tell you plainly I
will be a party to no such wickedness.”
“So you would rather be a party to assist in [167]hanging Hamish and me, your own flesh and blood?” said Ian. “But you need be no party
to either; for we shall take all the guilt of this fellow’s death upon ourselves.”
“You shall never do this foul treason, if I can prevent it,” said the old man, with
determination.
“Poof!” said Ian, “how could you prevent us?”
“By rousing the man to defend himself,” said the father rather unguardedly.
“Ha! say you so?” cried Ian. “What! would you rouse up an armed man to fight against
your own children? Then must we take means to prevent your so doing.”
“Oh, Ian!” cried the old woman. “Oh, Hamish! Oh, boys! boys!”
“What! what! what boys!” cried the old man with great excitement, whilst there was
a sound of feet as of a struggle. “Would you lay your impious hands upon your own
father?”
“Oh, don’t hurt poor granny!” cried the little girl, in the bitterest tone of grief.
“Be quiet, I tell you, Kirstock!” cried Ian, [168]in an angry tone. “Hold out of my way, mother! We’ll do him no harm! we are only going
to bind him that he may not interfere.”
“Boys, boys!” cried the old man; “you have been tempted by the Devil! There is no
wonder that you should have seen him once to-night; and I should not wonder if he
was to appear to you again, for you seem resolved to be his children, and not mine.”
“Sit down—sit down quietly in this chair,” said Ian; “sit down, I say quietly, and
let MacCallum put the rope about you. By the great oath you had better!”
“Oh, boys!” cried the old woman; “Och, Hamish! Och, Ian.”
Morag hardly waited to hear so much of this dialogue as I have given, when she resolved
to be the means, if possible, of saving the life of the poor wounded man, whom the
wretches had thus determined so traitorously to give up to the tender mercies of the
Duke of Cumberland. She had her hand upon the door of the chamber where he slept,
in order to go in and rouse him, when she remembered that, in this way, her own [169]safety was almost certain to be compromised. She therefore immediately adopted a plan,
which she considered might be equally effectual for her purpose as regarded the stranger,
whilst it would leave to herself some chance of escape. Slipping on tiptoe to the
outer door, she quietly opened it, and, letting herself out, she moved quickly round
the house, towards a little window belonging to the room at that end of it, where
she knew the wounded man was lying. It consisted of two small panes of glass, placed
in a frame that moved inwards upon hinges. She put her ear to it, but no sound reached
her save that of deep snoring. Morag pushed gently against the frame, and it yielded
to the pressure. Having inserted her head, and looked eagerly about, in the hope of
descrying the sleeper, by the partial stream of moonlight that was admitted into the
place, she could discover nothing but the heap of straw in the bedstead in a dark
corner, where, wrapped in a blanket, he lay so buried as to be altogether invisible.
She called to him, at first in a low voice, and afterwards in a somewhat louder tone,
till at length she awaked him.
[170]
“Who is there?” demanded he in Gaelic.
“Rise! rise, and escape!” said she, in a low but distinct voice, and in the same language;
“Your liberty! your life is in danger! Up, up, and fly from this house!” Having said
this, she retreated her head a little from the window, to watch the effect of her
warning, so that the moon shone brightly upon her countenance, and completely illuminated
every feature of it.
There was a quick rustling noise among the straw, and then she heard the slow heavy
step of the man within. Suddenly a head was thrust out of the window, and the moonbeam
falling fully upon it, disclosed to the terrified eyes of Morag, the features of John
Smith—pale, bloody, and death-like, with all the fearful appendages which he bore,
the whole combination being such as to leave not a doubt in her mind that she beheld
his ghost. With one shrill scream, which she could not control, she vanished in a
moment from before the window. John Smith, filled in his turn with superstitious awe,
as well as with the strangeness of the manner [171]in which he had been roused from the deep sleep into which he had been plunged,—and
struck by the well known though hollow voice in which he had been addressed—the solemn
warning which he had received, and, above all, the distinct, though most unaccountable
appearance of Morag, with whose features he was so perfectly acquainted—together with
the wild and sudden manner in which the vision had departed—all tended to convince
him that the whole was a supernatural visitation. For some moments his powers of action
were suspended; but steps and voices in the outer apartment speedily recalled his
presence of mind. He drew his claymore, summoned up his resolution, and banging up
the door with one kick of his foot, he took a single stride into the middle of the
floor. The fire was still blazing, and it threw on his terrible figure the full benefit
of its light. The three villains having tied the old man into his chair, and locked
him and his wife and grandchild into the place where their conference was held, had
been at that moment preparing to steal in upon the sleeping stranger. Suddenly they
beheld the same apparition which they had seen in the churchyard, [172]burst from the very room which they were about to enter. The threatening words of
the old man recurred to them all.
“Oh, the devil! the devil! the devil!” cried the terrified group, and bearing back
upon one another, they tripped, and, in one moment, all their heels were dancing the
strangest possible figures in the air, to the music of their own mingled screams and
yells. You will easily believe, gentlemen, that John Smith tarried not a moment to
inquire after their bruises, but pushing up the outer door, and slapping it to after
him, he again pursued his way towards the farm of the Pensassenach.
Winged by her fears, and in dreadful apprehension that the ghost of John Smith was
still following her, Morag flew with an unnatural swiftness and impetus. She was quite
unconscious of noticing any of the familiar objects by the way; yet, by a species
of instinct, she reached home, in so short a time, that she could hardly believe her
own senses. But still in dreadful fear of the ghost, she thundered at the door, and
roared out to her mistress for admittance. The kind-hearted Pensassenach had been
[173]sitting up in a state of the cruellest anxiety regarding Morag, of whose intended
expedition she had received no inkling, nor had she been informed of her departure,
until long after she was gone. She no sooner heard her voice, and her knock, than
she hastened to admit her.
“Foolish girl that you are!” said she, “I am thankful to see you alive. My stars and
garters, what a draggled figure you are!—But come away into this room here, and let
me hear all you have to tell me about the battle. The rebels were defeated, were they
not?—eh?—Why, what is the matter with the girl? she pants as if she was dying. Sit
down, sit down, child, and compose yourself; you look for all the world as if you
had seen a ghost.”
“Och, och, memm!—och, hoch!” replied the girl very much appalled, that her mistress
should thus, as she thought, so immediately see the truth written in her very face.
“Och, hoch! an’ a ghaist Morag has surely seen. Has ta ghaist put her mark upon her
face?—Och, hoch! she’ll ne’er won ower wi’t!”
“The poor girl’s head has been turned by the [174]horrible scenes of carnage she has witnessed,” said the Pensassenach.
“Och, hoch!” said Morag, with her hands on her knees, and rocking to and fro with
nervous agitation; “terrible sights! terrible sights, surely, surely!”
“Here, my poor Morag,” said the Pensassenach, after she had dropped into a cup a small
quantity of some liquid nostrum of her own, from a phial, hastily taken from a little
medicine chest, and added some water to it, “drink this, my good girl!”
“Och, hoch!” said Morag, after she had swallowed it; “she thinks she sees ta ghaist
yet.”
“What ghost did you see?” demanded the Pensassenach.
“Och, hoch! Och, hoch, memm!” replied Morag, trembling more than ever; “Shon Smiss
ghaist; Shon Smiss, as sure as Morag is in life, an’ ta leddy stannin’ in ta body
tare afore her e’en.”
“John Smith’s ghost!” cried the Pensassenach. “Pooh, nonsense! But again I ask you,
how went the battle? The rumour is, that the [175]rebels have been signally defeated, and all cut to pieces.”
“Och, hoch! is tat true?” said Morag, weeping. “Och, hoch, poor Shon Smiss!”
“Did you not see the rout?” demanded the Pensassenach. “Did you not witness the battle,
and behold the glorious triumph of the royal army?”
“Och, hoch, no!” replied the girl. “Morag saw nae pattals, nor naesin’ but hearin’ terrible shots o’ guns, an’ twa or
sree red cotted sodgers tat pursued her for her life.”
“Well, well!” replied the Pensassenach; “Come now! tell me your whole history.”
Morag’s nerves being now somewhat composed, she gave her mistress as clear an outline
as she could, of all that had befallen her. The Pensassenach dropped some tears, to
mingle with those which Morag shed, when she recounted the evidence of John Smith’s
death, which she felt to be but too probably true. But when she came to talk of the
ghost, she did all she could to laugh the girl out of her fears, insisting with her
that she had been deceived by terror [176]and weakness, and seeing how much the poor girl was worn out, she desired her to take
some refreshment, and to go to bed directly; and she had no sooner retired, than the
Pensassenach prepared to follow her example.
Morag, overcome with the immense fatigue she had undergone, had not strength left
to undo much more than half her dress, when she dropped down on her bed, and fell
over into a slumber. She had been lying in this state for fully half an hour or more,
during part of which she had been dreaming of John Smith, mixed up with many a strange
incident, with all of which his slaughter, and his pale countenance and bloody figure
were invariably connected, when she was awaked by a tapping at the window of her apartment,
which was upon the ground floor. She looked up and stared, but the moon was by this
time gone down, and all without was dark as pitch.
“Morag! Morag!” cried John Smith, who knowing well where she slept, went naturally
to her window to get her to come round and give him admission to the house, and yet
at the same [177]time half doubting, after the strange visitation which he had had, from what he believed
to be her wraith, that he could hardly expect to find her alive. “Morag! Morag!” cried he again in
his faint hollow voice.
“Och, Lord have mercy upon me, there it is!” cried Morag, in her native tongue, and
shaking from head to foot with terror. “Who is there?”
“Its me, your own Ian,” cried John, in a tender tone. “Let me in, Morag, for the love
of God!”
“Och, Ian, Ian!” cried Morag. “Och, Ian, my darling dear Ian! are you sure that it
is really yourself in real flesh and blood?—for I have got such a fright already this
night. But if it really and truly be you, go round to the door and I’ll be with you
in a minute. Och, och, the Lord be praised, if it really be him after all!”
Trembling, and agitated with the numerous contrary emotions of hope, fear, and joy,
by which she was assailed, Morag sprang out of bed, lighted her lamp, hurried on just
enough of her [178]clothes as might make her decent in the eyes of her lover, and with her bosom heaving,
and her heart beating, as if it would have burst through her side, she ran to unlock
the outer door. Her lamp flashed on the fearful figure without. She again beheld the
horrible spectre which had so recently terrified her, and believing that it was John
Smith’s ghost which she saw, and that it had followed her home to corroborate the
fatal tidings she had heard regarding his death, which had been already so much strengthened
by her dreams, she uttered a piercing shriek, and fainted away on the floor. The shriek
alarmed the Pensassenach, who was not yet in bed. Hastily throwing a wrapper over
her deshabille, she seized her candle, and proceeded down stairs with all speed, and
was led by John’s voice of lamentation to the kitchen, whither he had carried Morag
in his arms, and where the lady found him tearing his hair, or rather the heathery
turf which then appeared to be doing duty for it, in the very extremity of mental
agony. It is strange how the same things, seen under different aspects and circumstances,
will produce the [179]most opposite effects. There being nothing now about John Smith, or his actions, that
did not savour of humanity, but his extraordinary head-dress, the Pensassenach had
no doubt that it was the real bodily man that she saw before her, she perceived nothing
but what was powerfully ludicrous in his strange costume, the absurdity of which was
heightened by his agonizing motions and attitudes, and exclamations of intense anxiety
about Morag, whose fainting-fit gave no uneasiness to a woman of her experience. The
Pensassenach laughed heartily, and then hurried away for a bunch of feathers to burn
under Morag’s nose, by which means she quickly brought her out of her swoon, and by
a little explanation she speedily restored her to the full possession of her reason.
This accomplished, the Pensassenach entirely forgot John Smith’s wretched appearance,
in the eagerness of her inquiries regarding the result of the engagement.
“How went the battle, John?” demanded she. “We heard the guns, but the cannonade did
not last long. The victory was soon gained, and it was with the right cause, was it
not?”
[180]
“Woe, woe! Oich, oich!” cried John, in a melancholy tone, and shaking his head in
utter despair. “Oich, oich, her head is sore, sore.”
“Very true, very true!” cried the compassionate Pensassenach. “I had forgotten you
altogether, shame on me! Ah! poor fellow, how bloody you are about the face! You must
be grievously wounded.”
“Troth she be tat,” said John Smith. “She has gotten a wicked slash on ta croon, tat
maist spleeted her skull. An’ she wad hae peen dead lang or noo an it had na peen
for tiss ponny peat plaister tat she putten tilt. Morag tak’ her awa’ noo, for she
has toon her turn, and somesing lighter may serve.”
“Och, hoch, hoch, tat is fearsome,” said Morag, after she had removed the clod from
John’s head. “She mak’s Morag sick ta vera sight o’t.”
“Oich, but tat be easy noo,” said John. “Hech, she was joost like an if she had been
carryin’ a’ ta hill o’ Lethen Bar on her head.”
“Poor fellow, poor fellow!” cried the Pensassenach, “that is a fearful cut indeed.
But [181]I don’t think the skull is fractured. How and where did you get this fearful wound?”
“Fare mony a petter man’s got more,” replied John, yielding up his head into the affectionate
hands of Morag, who was now so far recovered as to be able to look more narrowly at
it.
“Oich, oich, fat a head!” cried the affectionate and feeling girl, shuddering and
growing pale, and then bursting into an agony of tears, as she looked upon his gaping
wound. “Oich, oich, she’ll never do good more! She canna leeve ava, ava!”
“Tut, tut!” cried John, with a ghastly smile, that was meant to reassure Morag. “Fat
nonsense, tat Morag pe speak! An’ she pe traivel a’ ta way hame so far, fat for wad
she pe deein’ noo tat she is at hame?”
“Alas, poor fellow!” said the Pensassenach, as she was directing Morag to bind up
his head, “I wish I may be able to make this your home. After all our losses and sufferings
for our loyalty by those marauding rascals, three days ago, we shall next run the
risk of being punished for harbouring a rebel. But no [182]matter. Happen what may, you have large claims upon me, John, and as long as Morag
can conceal you here you shall be safe. You have been so short a time away that few
people can be aware of it, and still fewer can know the cause of your absence.”
What the Pensassenach said was true, for as most of her people had run away when the
Highland party appeared, there were few who certainly knew the cause of John Smith’s
absence, and those few who did know were not very likely to tell any thing about it.
Trusting to this, she gave out that she had sent him after the rebels, to keep an
eye on her husband’s horses, and to endeavour to recover them if he could, and that,
in making this attempt, he had received his wound. To give the better colour to this
story, she called her people together, and offered a handsome reward to such of them
as would go immediately and try to find and bring back the horses, telling them that
John Smith could describe to them whereabouts they were most likely to fall in with
them, he having, at one time, actually got possession of most of [183]them, but that they had escaped from him, having been scared away by the thundering
of the artillery. But not a man of them would venture upon such a search among the
gibbets, where, as they were told, so many of their murdered countrymen were still
hanging, and where, without much inquiry or ceremony, any one who might go on such
an errand might be tucked up to swing in company with them. Every hour increased this
terror, by bringing accounts of fresh executions, and indeed the fears of the Pensassenach’s
men turned out to be by no means groundless, for it is a truth but too well known,
that many innocent servants who were sent to seek their master’s horses never returned.
The Pensassenach did not suffer for her kindness in thus protecting John Smith; and
she and her husband were ultimately no losers from the havoc which the Highlanders
committed on their farm. Their damage was reported to the Duke of Cumberland, and
the lady’s conduct having been highly extolled, as that of a very loyal Englishwoman,
who had been thus persecuted for the open expression of her sentiments, [184]the most ample remuneration was assigned to her by the government.
John Smith, nursed as he was by Morag, soon recovered. After he was quite restored
to health, he only waited until he could scrape a little money together to enable
him to furnish a cottage, ere he should make her his wife. The penetration of the
Pensassenach soon enabled her to discover how matters stood between them, and she
found means to make all smooth for them in the manner which was most flattering to
John, that is, by presenting him with a very handsome purse of money, as a reward
for the eminent services he had rendered her. John was so proud of the purse that
he did not know whether most to value it or the gold pieces it contained, and much
as he loved Morag, and eager as he was for their union, he had some doubt whether
he could ever bring himself to part, even with one of those pretty pieces which he
so respected for the Pensassenach’s sake. And, alas, as it so happened, he was never
called upon to spend them as it was intended they should have been spent. Fain would
I have [185]made my story end happily, gentlemen; but, as I am narrating a piece of actual history,
I must be verawcious. John had made all preparation for their marriage, when, alas,
Morag was seized with some acute complaint about the region of the heart and lungs,
which all the medical attendants that the Pensassenach could command could not fathom
or relieve. John watched her with the tenderest and most unremitting solicitude. But
it pleased God that his unwearied care of her, should not be blessed with the same
happy result, which hers had been with regard to him, for after a long and lingering
illness, poor Morag died on the very day she should have been his bride. The probability
was, that the unheard of fatigue of body, and agitation of mind, which she underwent
during her heroic expedition in search of her lover, had produced some fatal organic
change within her.
John Smith was inconsolable for the loss of Morag. For some time he was more like
a walking clod than a man. Even the kind attempts of his master and mistress to rouse
him were unavailing. When at length he was able [186]to go about his usual duties on the farm, to do which his honest regard for his employer’s
interest stimulated him, he suffered so much mental agony from the painful recollections
which every object around him suggested to his mind, that he felt he could no longer
go rationally about his master’s affairs. Being at last convinced that he was in danger
of falling into utter and hopeless despair, he came to the resolution of enlisting
in the army, and having once formed this determination, he went through a very touching
scene of parting with the kind Pensassenach and her husband, and shouldering his small
kitt, he went and joined the gallant Forty-Second, then the Black Watch. He served
with distinguished approbation in all the actions in which that brave corps was in
his time engaged. He was made a serjeant at Bunker’s Hill; and after time had in some
degree assuaged his affliction, he married a very active, intelligent, and economical
woman, with whose aid he undertook to keep the regimental mess. John could neither
read nor write, and he always spoke English imperfectly. But his clever wife [187]enabled him to carry on the business for so many years, with so much credit to himself,
and so successfully, that he ultimately retired with her at an advanced period of
life, with the enjoyment of his pension, and such an accumulation of fortune as made
him perfectly comfortable.
I knew John well. He was a warm-hearted man, and always remarkable for his uprightness
and integrity, and especially for a strict determination to keep his word, whatever
it might cost him so to do. As an instance of this, I may mention, that having on
one occasion had a serious illness, in which he was given up by the doctor, he made
a will, in which he left many small legacies to poor people. John recovered, but he
thought it his duty to keep his word, and he paid the legacies. To me, and to my brother,
who lived in one of his houses while we were at the school of Nairn, he acted the
part of a kind friend and guardian. He was perhaps too kind and indulgent to us, indeed.
No one dared to him to impute a fault to us, even when we were guilty. I remember
that he had a large garden, well stocked with fruit [188]trees, and gooseberry bushes. Often has the good old man sent me into it, to steal
fruit for myself and brother, whilst he watched at the door, lest his wife might surprise
and detect me. Many is the time that I have listened to him, with boyish wonder, as,
with lightning in his eye, he fought over again his battles of Culloden, Bunker’s
Hill, and Ticonderoga.
As John had no children, his intended heir was a nephew. His greatest desire in life
was to marry him to a grand-daughter of his old departed benefactress, the Pensassenach.
He offered to settle his whole fortune, which was not small, on the young lady, if
she would only marry his nephew; and John’s wife did all in her power to back up the
proposal. But although the nephew was a good, well-doing lad, he was not the man to
take the young woman’s fancy; and so the match never took place.
[189]
