who had kept my hand, fearing, I think, that we might have to run for it again round the circle of shade, plucked me sharply over to see what they were doing.
They were opening a grave, singing catches as their picks grated on the stones. I shivered a little, and a great fear of what we were about to see came over me. I think if May Maxwell had not gripped me by the hand I had fairly run for it.
The man we had first seen came out of the tomb and took a look at the sky. Another stretched himself till I heard his joints crack, and said ‘Hech How!’ as though he were sleepy. Whereat the others railed on him, calling him ‘lazy vagabond.’
Then all of them turned their ears towards the moors as though they listened for something of importance.
‘Do the Maxwells ride tonight?’ asked one.
‘Wheesh,’ said another. ‘Listen!’
This he said in so awe-stricken a tone that I also was struck with fear, and listened till my flesh crept.
From the waste came the baying of a hound – long, fitful, and very eerie.
There was a visible, uneasy stir among the men.
‘Let us be gone,’ said another, making for the wall; ‘’tis the Loathly Dogs. The Black Deil hunts himsel’ the nicht. I’m gaun hame.’
‘Stop!’ cried one with authority (I think the man that was called Gil). ‘I’ll put an ounce of lead through your vitals gin ye dinna stand in your tracks.’
But the others stayed neither for threat nor lead.
‘It’ll be waur for ye gin the Ghaistly. Hounds get a grip o’ your shins, Gil, my man. They draw men quick to hell!’
So at the word there seized the company a great fear, and they took to their heels, every man hastening to the wall. Then from the other side there was a noise of mounting steeds, and a great clattering of stirrup-irons.
May Mischief came nearer to me, and I heard her breath come in little broken gasps, like a rabbit that is taken in a net and lies beating its life out in your hands. At which I felt a man for the sole time that night.
Butnot for long, for I declare that what we saw in the next moment brought us both to our knees, praying silently for mercy. Over the wall at the corner farthest from us there came a fearsome pair. First a great grey dog, that hunted with its head down and bayed as it went. Behind it lumbered a still more horrible beast, great as an ox, grim and shaggy also, but withal clearly monstrous and not of the earth, with broad, flat feet that made no noise, and a demon mark in scarlet upon its side, which told that the foul fiend himself that night followed the chase. May Mischief clung to my arm, and I thought she had swooned away. But the beasts passed some way beneath us, like spirits that flit by without noise, save for the ghostly baying which made one sweat with fear.
As the sounds broke farther from us that were in the graveyard the horsemen dispersed in a wild access of terror. We could hear them belabouring their horses and riding broadcast over the fields, crying tempestuously to each other as they went. And down the wind the bay of the ghostly hunters died away.
May Maxwell and I stood so a long while ere we could loose from one another. We only held hands and continued to look, and that strangely. I wanted to thank her in words but could not, for something came into my throat and dried my mouth. I dropped her hand suddenly. Yet as I searched for words, dividing the mind between gratitude and coltishness, not one could I find in my time of need.
May Maxwell stood a little while silent before me, her hands fallen at her side, looking down as though expecting something. I could not think what. And then she took the skirt of her dress in her hand, dusted and smoothed it a moment, and so began to move slowly away. But I stood fixed like a halbert.
Then I knew by the dancing light in her eyes that something was coming that would make me like her worse than ever, yet I could not help it. What with my lonely life on Isle Rathan I was as empty of words as a drum of tune.
‘Guid e’en to ye,’ she said, dropping me a curtsy; ‘virtue is its ain reward, I ken. It’s virtuous to do a sheep a good turn, but a kennin’ uninterestin’. Guid e’en to ye, Sheep!’
With that she turned and left me speechless, holding by the wall. Yet I have thought of many things since which I might have said – clever things too.
May Mischief walked very stately and dignified across the moonlight, and passed the open grave which the riders had made as though she did not care a button for it. At the gap in the wall she turned (looking mighty pretty and sweet, I do allow), nodded her head three times, and said solemnly, ‘Baa!’
As I rowed home in the gloaming of the morning, when the full flood-tide of daylight was drowning the light of the moon, I decided within myself that I hated the girl worse than ever. Whatever she had done for me, I could never forgive her for making a mock of me.
‘Sheep,’ quoth she, and again ‘Baa!’ It was unbearable. Yet I remembered how she looked as she said it, and the manner in which she nodded her head, which, as I tell you, was vastly pretty.
1 May, the old Scots diminutive for Mary, was pronounced, not like the name of the month, but Mei – the German ei, a characteristic sound which occurs also in ‘gye,’ ‘stey,’ &c.
JUST WHY MY father called me Patrick I have never yet been able to make out. His own name was John, which, had he thought of it in time, was a good name enough for me. It may have been part of his humorsomeness, for indeed he used to say, ‘I have little to leave you, Patrick, but this auld ramshackle house on the Isle Rathan and your excellent name. You will be far on in life, my boy, before you begin to bless me for christening you Patrick Heron, but when you begin you will not cease till the day of your death.’
I am now in the thirty-seventh year of my age, yet have I not so begun to bless my father – at least not for the reason indicated.
My father, John Heron of Isle Rathan, on the Solway shore, was never a strong man all the days of him. But he married a lass from the hills who brought him no tocher, but, what was better, a strong dower of sense and good health. She died, soon after I was born, of the plague which came to Dumfries in the Black Year, and from that day my father was left alone with me in the old house on the Isle of Rathan. John Heron was the laird of a barren heritage, for Rathan is but a little isle – indeed only an isle when the tide is flowing. Except in the very slackest of the neaps there is always twice a day a long track of shells and shingle out from the tail of its bank. This track is, moreover, somewhat dangerous, for Solway tide flows swift and the sands are shifting and treacherous. So we went and came for the most part by boat, save when I or some of the lads were venturesome, as afterwards when I got well acquaint with Mary Maxwell, whom I have already called May Mischief, in the days of a lad’s first mid-summer madness.
Here on the Isle of Rathan my father taught me English and Latin, Euclid’s science of lines and how to reason with them for oneself. He ever loved the mathematic, because he said even God Almighty works by geometry.
