Chapter XVI

The Lad with the Silver Button: Across Morven

There is a regular ferry from Torosay to Kinlochaline on the mainland. The skipper of the boat was called Neil Roy Macrob; and since Macrob was one of the names of Alan’s clansmen, and Alan himself had sent me to that ferry, I was eager to come to private speech of Neil Roy.

In the crowded boat this was of course impossible, and the passage was a very slow affair. With the songs, and the sea-air, and the good-nature and spirit of all concerned, and the bright weather, the passage was a pretty thing to have seen.

But there was one melancholy part. In the mouth of Loch Aline we found a great sea-going ship at anchor. As we got a little nearer, it became plain she was a ship of merchandise; not only her decks, but the sea-beach also, were quite black with people, and skiffs were continually plying to and fro between them. Yet nearer, there began to come to our ears a great sound of mourning, the people on board and those on the shore crying and lamenting one to another so as to pierce the heart.

Then I understood this was an emigrant ship bound for the American colonies.

We put the ferry-boat alongside, and the exiles leaned over the bulwarks, weeping and reaching out their hands to my fellow-passengers, among whom they counted some near friends. The captain of the ship, who seemed near beside himself (and no great wonder) in the midst of this crying and confusion, came to the side and begged us to depart.

At Kinlochaline I got Neil Roy upon one side on the beach, and said I made sure he was one of Appin’s men.

‘And what for no?’ said he.

‘I am seeking somebody,’ said I; ‘and it comes in my mind that you will have news of him. Alan Breck Stewart is his name.’ And very foolishly, instead of showing him the button, I sought to pass a shilling in his hand.

At this he drew back. ‘I am very much affronted,’ he said; ‘and this is not the way that one shentlemanshould behave to another at all. The man you ask for is in France; but if he was in my sporran,’ says he, ‘and your belly full of shillings, I would not hurt a hair upon his body.’

I saw I had gone the wrong way to work, and without wasting time upon apologies, showed him the button lying in the hollow of my palm.

‘Aweel, aweel,’ said Neil; ‘and I think ye might have begun with that end of the stick, whatever! But if ye are the lad with the silver button, all is well, and I have the word to see that ye come safe. But if ye will pardon me to speak plainly,’ says he, ‘there is a name that you should never take into your mouth, and that is the name of Alan Breck; and there is a thing that ye would never do, and that is to offer your dirty money to a Hieland shentleman.’

It was not very easy to apologise; for I could scarce tell him (what was the truth) that I had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman until he told me so. Neil on his part had no wish to prolong his dealings with me, only to fulfil his orders and be done with it; and he made haste to give me my route. This was to lie the night in Kinlochaline in the public inn; to cross Morven the next day to Ardgour, and lie the night in the house of one John of the Claymore, who was warned that I might come; the third day, to be set across one loch at Corran and another at Balachulish, and then ask my way to the house of James of the Glens, at Aucharn in Duror of Appin. There was a good deal of ferrying, as you hear; the sea in all this part running deep into the mountains and winding about their roots.

The inn at Kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs were styed in, full of smoke, vermin, and silent Highlanders.

I overtook a little, stout, solemn man, walking very slowly with his toes turned out, sometimes reading in a book and sometimes marking the place with his finger, and dressed decently and plainly in something of a clerical style.

This I found to be another catechist, but of a different order from the blind man of Mull. His name was Henderland; he spoke with the broad south-country tongue; and besides common countryship, we soon found we had a more particular bond of interest. For my good friend, the minister of Essendean, had translated into the Gaelic in his by-time a number of hymns and pious books which Henderland used in his work, and held in great esteem.

We fell in company at once, our ways lying together as far as to Kingairloch. I told him as far in my affairs as I judged wise; as far, that is, as they were none of Alan’s; and gave Balachulish as the place I was travelling to, to meet a friend.

On his part, he told me much of his work and the people he worked among, and many other curiosities of the time and place. He seemed moderate; blaming Parliament in several points, and especially because they had framed the Act more severely against those who wore the dress than against those who carried weapons.

This moderation put it in my mind to question him of the Red Fox and the Appin tenants; questions which, I thought, would seem natural enough in the mouth of one travelling to that country.

He said it was a bad business. ‘It’s wonderful,’ said he, ‘where the tenants find the money, for their life is mere starvation. But these tenants are doubtless partly driven to it. James Stewart in Duror (that’s him they call James of the Glens) is half-brother to Ardshiel, the captain of the clan; and he is a man much looked up to, and drives very hard. And then there’s one they call Alan Breck —’

‘Ah!’ I cried, ‘what of him?’

‘Alan Breck is a bold, desperate customer, and well kent to be James’s right hand. His life is forfeit already; he would boggle at naething; and maybe, if a tenant-body was to hang back he would get a dirk in his wame.’

‘You make a poor story of it all, Mr. Henderland,’ said I. ‘If it is all fear upon both sides, I care to hear no more of it.’

‘Na,’ said Mr. Henderland, ‘but there’s love too, and self-denial that should put the like of you and me to shame. There’s something fine about it; no perhaps Christian, but humanly fine. – Ye’ll perhaps think I’ve been too long in the Hielands?’ he added, smiling to me.

I told him not at all; that I had seen much to admire among the Highlanders; and if he came to that, Mr. Campbell himself was a Highlander.

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘that’s true. It’s a fine blood.’

‘And what is the King’s agent about?’ I asked.

‘Colin Campbell?’ says Henderland. ‘Putting his head in a bees’ byke!’

‘He is to turn the tenants out by force, I hear?’ said I.

‘Yes,’ says he, ‘but the business has gone back and forth, as folk say. They tell me the first of the tenants are to flit tomorrow. It’s to begin at Duror under James’s very windows, which doesnae seem wise by my humble way of it.’

‘Do you think they’ll fight?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ says Henderland, ‘they’re disarmed – or supposed to be. But for all that, if I was his lady wife, I wouldnae be well pleased till I got him home again. They’re queer customers, the Appin Stewarts.’

I asked if they were worse than their neighbours.

‘No they,’ said he. ‘And that’s the worst part of it. For if Colin Roy can get his business done in Appin, he has it all to begin again in the next country, which they call Mamore, and which is one of the countries of the Camerons. He’s King’s Factor upon both, and it’s my belief that if he escapes the one lot, he’ll get his death by the other.’

Mr. Henderland after expressing his delight in my company proposed that I should make a short stage, and lie the night in his house a little beyond Kingairloch. To say truth, I was overjoyed; for I had no great desire for John of the Claymore. Accordingly we shook hands upon the bargain, and came in the afternoon to a small house, standing alone by the shore of the Linnhe Loch.

As soon as we had eaten he took a grave face and said he had a duty to perform by Mr. Campbell, and that was to inquire into my state of mind towards God. I was inclined to smile at him but he had not spoken long before he brought the tears into my eyes. There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people; but Mr. Henderland had their very speech upon his tongue. And though I was a good deal puffed up with my adventures and with having come off, as the saying is, with flying colours; yet he soon had me on my knees beside a simple, poor old man, and both proud and glad to be there.

Before we went to bed he offered me sixpence to help me on my way, at which excess of goodness I knew not what to do. But at last he was so earnest with me that I thought it the more mannerly part to let him have his way, and so left him poorer than myself.

Chapter XVII

The Death of the Red Fox

The next day Mr. Henderland found for me a man who had a boat of his own and was to cross the Linnhe Loch that afternoon into Appin, fishing. Him he prevailed on to take me, for he was one of his flock; and in this way I saved a long day’s travel and the price of the two public ferries I must otherwise have passed.

It was near noon before we set out. A little after we had started, the sun shone upon a little moving clump of scarlet close in along the water-side to the north. It was much of the same red as soldiers’ coats; every now and then, too, there came little sparks and lightnings, as though the sun had struck upon bright steel.

I asked my boatman what it should be, and he answered he supposed it was some of the red soldiers coming from Fort William into Appin, against the poor tenantry of the country. Well, it was a sad sight to me. At last we came so near the point of land at the entering in of Loch Leven that I begged to be set on shore. My boatman (who was an honest fellow and mindful of his promise to the catechist) would fain have carried me on to Balachulish; but as this was to take me farther from my secret destination, I insisted, and was set on shore at last under the wood of Lettermore in Alan’s country of Appin.

This was a wood of birches, growing on a steep, craggy side of a mountain that overhung the loch. I sat down to eat some oat-bread of Mr. Henderland’s and think upon my situation.

Here I was not only troubled by a cloud of stinging midges, but far more by the doubts of my mind. What I ought to do, why I was going to join myself with an outlaw and a would-be murderer like Alan, whether I should not be acting more like a man of sense to tramp back to the south country direct, by my own guidance and at my own charges.

As I was so sitting and thinking, a sound of men and horses came to me through the wood; and presently after, at a turning of the road, I saw four travellers come into view. The way was in this part so rough and narrow that they came single and led their horses by the reins. The first was a great, redheaded gentleman, of an imperious and flushed face, who carried his hat in his hand and fanned himself, for he was in a breathing heat. The second, by his decent black garb and white wig, I correctly took to be a lawyer. The third was a servant, and wore some part of his clothes in tartan, which showed that his master was of a Highland family, and either an outlaw or else in singular good odour with the Government, since the wearing of tartan was against the Act. If I had been better versed in these things, I would have known the tartan to be of the Argyle (or Campbell) colours. As for the fourth, who brought up the tail, I had seen his like before, and knew him at once to be a sheriff ’s officer.

I had no sooner seen these people coming than I made up my mind (for no reason that I can tell) to go through with my adventure; and when the first came alongside of me, I rose up from the bracken and asked him the way to Aucharn.

He stopped and looked at me, as I thought, a little oddly; and then, turning to the lawyer, ‘Mungo,’ said he, ‘there’s many a man would think this more of a warning than two pyats. Here am I on my road to Duror on the job ye ken; and here is a young lad starts up out of the bracken, and speers if I am on the way to Aucharn.’

‘And what seek ye in Aucharn?’ said Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, him they called the Red Fox; for he it was that I had stopped.

‘The man that lives there,’ said I.

‘James of the Glens,’ says Glenure, musingly; and then to the lawyer: ‘Is he gathering his people, think ye?

‘Anyway,’ says the lawyer, ‘we shall do better to bide where we are, and let the soldiers rally us.’

‘If you are concerned for me,’ said I, ‘I am neither of his people nor yours, but an honest subject of King George, owing no man and fearing no man.’

‘Why, very well said,’ replies the Factor. ‘But if I may make so bold as ask, what does this honest man so far from his country? and why does he come seeking the brother of Ardshiel? I have power here, I must tell you. I am King’s Factor upon several of these estates, and have twelve files of soldiers at my back.’

‘I have heard a waif word in the country,’ said I, a little nettled, ‘that you were a hard man to drive.’

He still kept looking at me, as if in doubt.

‘Well,’ said he, at last, ‘your tongue is bold; but I am no unfriend to plainness. If ye had asked me the way to the door of James Stewart on any other day but this, I would have set ye right and bidden ye God speed. But today – eh, Mungo?’ And he turned again to look at the lawyer.

But just as he turned there came the shot of a firelock from higher up the hill; and with the very sound of it Glenure fell upon the road.

‘O, I am dead!’ he cried, several times over.

The lawyer had caught him up and held him in his arms, the servant standing over and clasping his hands. And now the wounded man looked from one to another with scared eyes, and there was a change in his voice, that went to the heart. He gave a great sigh, his head rolled on his shoulder, and he passed away.

The lawyer said never a word, but his face was as sharp as a pen and as white as the dead man’s; the servant broke out into a great noise of crying and weeping, like a child; and I, on my side, stood staring at them in a kind of horror. The sheriff ’s officer had run back at the first sound of the shot, to hasten the coming of the soldiers.

At last the lawyer laid down the dead man in his blood upon the road. I believe it was his movement that brought me to my senses; for he had no sooner done so than I began to scramble up the hill, crying out, ‘The murderer! the murderer!’

The murderer was still moving away at no great distance. He was a big man, in a black coat, with metal buttons, and carried a long fowling-piece.

‘Here!’ I cried. ‘I see him!’

At that the murderer gave a little, quick look over his shoulder, and began to run. The next moment he was lost in a fringe of birches; and I saw him no more.

All this time I had been running, and had got a good way up, when a voice cried upon me to stand.

The lawyer and the sheriff ’s officer were standing just above the road, crying and waving on me to come back; and on their left, the red-coats, musket in hand, were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower wood.

‘Why should I come back?’ I cried. ‘Come you on!’

‘Ten pounds if ye take that lad!’ cried the lawyer. ‘He’s an accomplice. He was posted here to hold us in talk.’

At that word my heart came in my mouth with quite a new kind of terror. I was all amazed and helpless. The soldiers began to spread, some of them to run, and others to put up their pieces and cover me; and still I stood.

‘Jock in here among the trees,’ said a voice close by.

Indeed, I scarce knew what I was doing, but I obeyed; and as I did so, I heard the firelocks bang and the balls whistle in the birches.

Just inside the shelter of the trees I found Alan Breck standing, with a fishing-rod. He gave me no salutation; indeed it was no time for civilities; only ‘Come!’ says he, and set off running along the side of the mountain towards Balaehulish; and I, like a sheep, to follow him.

The pace was deadly: my heart seemed bursting against my ribs; and I had neither time to think nor breath to speak with. Only I remember seeing with wonder, that Alan every now and then would straighten himself to his full height and look back; and every time he did so, there came a great faraway cheering and crying of the soldiers.

Quarter of an hour later, Alan stopped, clapped down flat in the heather, and turned to me.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘it’s earnest. Do as I do, for your life.’

And at the same speed, but now with infinitely more precaution, we traced back again across the mountain-side by the same way that we had come, only perhaps higher; till at last Alan threw himself down in the upper wood of Lettermore, where I had found him at the first, and lay, with his face in the bracken, panting like a dog. My own sides so ached, my head so swam, my tongue so hung out of my mouth with heat and dryness, that I lay beside him like one dead.