Chapter XXV

In Balquhidder

At the door of the first house we came to, Alan knocked, which was of no very safe enterprise in such a part of the Highlands as the Braes of Balquhidder. No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call ‘chiefless folk,’ driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith by the advance of the Campbells.

Chance served us very well; for it was a household of Maclarens that we found, where Alan was not only welcome for his name’s sake but known by reputation. Here then I was got to bed without delay, and a doctor fetched, who found me in a sorry plight. But whether because he was a very good doctor, or I a very young, strong man, I lay bedridden for no more than a week, and before a month I was able to take the road again with a good heart.

All this time Alan would not leave me though I often pressed him. He hid by day in a hole of the braes under a little wood; and at night, when the coast was clear, would come into the house to visit me. I need not say if I was pleased to see him; Mrs. Maclaren, our hostess, thought nothing good enough for such a guest; and as Duncan Dhu (which was the name of our host) had a pair of pipes in his house, and was much of a lover of music, this time of my recovery was quite a festival, and we commonly turned night into day.

The soldiers let us be. What was much more astonishing, no magistrate came near me, and there was no question put of whence I came or whither I was going. Yet my presence was known before I left to all the people in Balquhidder and the adjacent parts; many coming about the house on visits and these (after the custom of the country) spreading the news among their neighbours. The bills, too, had now been printed. Duncan Dhu and the rest that knew that I had come there in Alan’s company, could have entertained no doubt of who I was; and many others must have had their guess. For though I had changed my clothes, I could not change my age or person. Other folk keep a secret among two or three near friends, and somehow it leaks out; but among these clansmen, it is told to a whole countryside, and they will keep it for a century.

There was but one thing happened worth narrating; and that is the visit I had of Robin Oig. He was sought upon all sides on a charge of carrying a young woman from Balfron and marrying her (as was alleged) by force; yet he stepped about Balquhidder like a gentleman in his own walled policy.

Duncan had time to pass me word of who it was; and we looked at one another in concern. You should understand, it was then close upon the time of Alan’s coming; the two were little likely to agree; and yet if we sent word or sought to make a signal, it was sure to arouse suspicion.

He came in with a great show of civility, but like a man among inferiors; took off his bonnet to Mrs. Maclaren, but clapped it on his head again to speak to Duncan; and leaving thus set himself (as he would have thought) in a proper light, came to my bedside and bowed.

‘I am given to know, sir,’ says he, ‘that your name is Balfour.’

‘They call me David Balfour,’ said I, ‘at your service.’

‘What I am come to say, sir,’ he went on, ‘is this. In the year ’45, my brother raised a part of the “Gregara” and marched six companies to strike a stroke for the good side; and the surgeon that marched with our clan and cured my brother’s leg when it was broken in the brush at Preston Pans, was a gentleman of the same name precisely as yourself. He was brother to Balfour of Baith; and if you are in any reasonable degree of nearness one of that gentleman’s kin, I have come to put myself and my people at your command.’

You are to remember that I knew no more of my descent than any cadger’s dog; my uncle, to be sure, had prated of some of our high connections, but nothing to the present purpose; and there was nothing left me but that bitter disgrace of owning that I could not tell.

Robin told me shortly he was sorry he had put himself about, turned his back upon me without a sign of salutation, and as he went towards the door, I could hear him telling Duncan that I was ‘only some kinless loon that didn’t know his own father.’ Angry as I was at these words, and ashamed of my own ignorance, I could scarce keep from smiling that a man who was under the lash of the law (and was indeed hanged some three years later) should be so nice as to the descent of his acquaintances.

Just in the door, he met Alan coming in; and the two drew back and looked at each other like strange dogs.

‘Mr. Stewart, I am thinking,’ says Robin.

‘Troth, Mr. Macgregor, it’s not a name to be ashamed of,’ answered Alan.

‘I did not know ye were in my country, sir,’ says Robin.

‘It sticks in my mind that I am in the country of my friends the Maclarens,’ says Alan.

‘That’s a kittle point,’ returned the other. ‘There may be two words to say to that. But I think I will have heard that you are a man of your sword?’

‘Unless ye were born deaf, Mr. Macgregor, ye will have heard a good deal more than that,’ says Alan. ‘I am not the only man that can draw steel in Appin; and when my kinsman and captain, Ardshiel, had a talk with a gentleman of your name, not so many years back, I could never hear that the Macgregor had the best of it.’

‘Do ye mean my father, sir?’ says Robin.

‘Well, I wouldnae wonder,’ said Alan. ‘The gentleman I have in my mind had the ill-taste to clap Campbell to his name.’

‘My father was an old man,’ returned Robin. ‘The match was unequal. You and me would make a better pair, sir.’

‘I was thinking that,’ said Alan.

I was half out of bed, and Duncan had been hanging at the elbow of these fighting cocks, ready to intervene upon the least occasion. But when that word was uttered, it was a case of now or never; and Duncan, with something of a white face to be sure, thrust himself between.

‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘I will have been thinking of a very different matter, whateffer. Here are my pipes, and here are you two gentlemen who are baith acclaimed pipers. It’s an auld dispute which one of ye’s the best. Here will be a braw chance to settle it.’

‘Why, sir,’ says Alan, ‘I think I will have heard some sough of the sort. Have ye music, as folk say? Are ye a bit of a piper?’

‘I can pipe like a Macrimmon!’ cries Robin.

‘It is easy to try that,’ says Alan.

Duncan Dhu made haste to bring out the pair of pipes that was his principal possession, and to set before his guests a mutton-ham and a bottle of that drink which they call Athole brose, and which is made of old whiskey, strained honey and sweet cream, slowly beaten together in the right order and proportion. The two enemies were still on the very breach of a quarrel; but down they sat, one upon each side of the peat fire, with a mighty show of politeness.

Each ate a small portion of the ham and drank a glass of the brose to Mrs. Maclaren; and then after a great number of civilities, Robin took the pipes and played a little spring in a very ranting manner.

‘Ay, ye can, blow,’ said Alan; and taking the instrument from his rival, he first played the same spring in a manner identical with Robin’s; and then wandered into variations, which, as he went on, he decorated with a perfect flight of grace-notes, such as pipers love, and call the ‘warblers.’

I had been pleased with Robin’s playing, Alan’s ravished me.

‘That’s no very bad, Mr. Stewart,’ said the rival, ‘but ye show a poor device in your warblers.’

‘Me!’ cried Alan, the blood starting to his face. ‘I give ye the lie.’

‘Do ye own yourself beaten at the pipes, then,’ said Robin, ‘that ye seek to change them for the sword?’

‘I take back the lie. I appeal to Duncan.’

‘Indeed, ye need appeal to naebody,’ said Robin. ‘Ye’re a far better judge: for it’s a God’s truth that you’re a very creditable piper for a Stewart. Hand me the pipes.’

Alan did as he asked; and Robin proceeded to imitate and correct some part of Alan’s variations, which it seemed that he remembered perfectly.

‘Ay, ye have music,’ said Alan, gloomily.

‘And now be the judge yourself, Mr. Stewart,’ said Robin; and taking up the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that I was amazed to hear him.

As for Alan, his face grew dark and hot, and he sat and gnawed his fingers, like a man under some deep aff ront. ‘Enough!’ he cried. ‘Ye can blow the pipes – make the most of that.’ And he made as if to rise.

But Robin only held out his hand as if to ask for silence, and struck into the slow measure of a pibroch. It was a fine piece of music in itself, and nobly played; but it seems, besides, it was a piece peculiar to the Appin Stewarts and a chief favourite with Alan. The first notes were scarce out, before there came a change in his face; when the time quickened, he seemed to grow restless in his seat; and long before that piece was at an end, the last signs of his anger died from him, and he had no thought but for the music.

‘Robin Oig,’ he said, when it was done, ‘ye are a great piper. Ye have mair music in your sporran than I have in my head! And though it still sticks in my mind that I could maybe show ye another of it with the cold steel, I warn ye beforehand – it’ll no be fair! It would go against my heart to haggle a man that can blow the pipes as you can!’

Thereupon that quarrel was made up; all night long the brose was going and the pipes changing hands; and the day had come pretty bright, and the three men were none the better for what they had been taking, before Robin as much as thought upon the road.