wet-sole, or running footman, and such others as the more vain of our Highland gentry at the time ever insisted on travelling about with, all stout junky men of middle size, bearded to the brows, wearing flat blue bonnets with a pervenke plant for badge on the sides of them, on their feet deerskin brogues with the hair out, the rest of their costume all belted tartan, and with arms clattering about them. With that proud pretence which is common in our people when in strange unfamiliar occasions—and I would be the last to dispraise it—they went about by no means braggardly but with the aspect of men who had better streets and more shops to show at home; surprised at nothing in their alert moments, but now and again forgetting their dignity and looking into little shop-windows with the wonder of bairns and great gabbling together, till MacLachlan fluted on his whistle, and they came, like good hounds, to heel.
All day the town hummed with Gaelic and the round bellowing of cattle. It was clear warm weather, never a breath of wind to stir the gilding trees behind the burgh. At ebb-tide the sea-beach whitened and smoked in the sun, and the hot air quivered over the stones and the crisping wrack. In such a season the bustling town in the heart of the stem Highlands seemed a fever spot. Children came boldly up to us for fairings or gifts, and they strayed—the scamps!—behind the droves and thumped manfully on the buttocks of the cattle. A constant stream of men passed in and out at the change-house closes and about the Fisherland tenements, where seafarers and drovers together sang the maddest love-ditties in the voices of roaring bulls; beating the while with their feet on the floor in our foolish Gaelic fashion, or, as one could see through open windows, rugging and riving at the corners of a plaid spread between them—a trick, I daresay, picked up from women, who at the waulking or washing of woollen cloth new spun, pull out the fabric to tunes suited to such occasions.
I spent most of the day with John Splendid and one Tearlach Fraser, on old comrade, and as luck, good or ill, would have it, the small hours of morning were on me before I thought of going home. By dusk the bulk of the strangers left the town by the highroads, among them the MacNicolls, who had only by the cunning of several friends (Splendid as busy as any) been kept from coming to blows with the MacLachlan tail. Earlier in the day, by a galley or wherry, the MacLachlans also had left, but not the young laird, who put up for the night at the house of Provost Brown.
The three of us I have mentioned sat at last playing cartes in the ferry-house, where a good glass could be had and more tidiness than most of the hostelries in the place could boast of. By the stroke of midnight we were the only customers left in the house, and when, an hour after, I made the move to set out for Glen Shira, John Splendid yoked on me as if my sobriety were a crime.
“Wait, man, wait, and I’ll give you a convoy up the way,” he would say, never thinking of the road he had himself to go down to Coillebhraid.
And aye it grew late and the night more still. There would be a foot going by at first at short intervals, sometimes a staggering one and a voice growling to itself in Gaelic; and anon the wayfarers were no more, the world outside in a black and solemn silence. The man who kept the ferry-house was often enough in the custom of staying up all night to meet belated boats from Kilcatrine; we were gentrice and good customers, so he composed himself in a lug chair and dovered in a little room opening off ours, while we sat fingering the book. Our voices as we called the cartes seemed now and then to me like a discourtesy to the peace and order of the night.
“I must go,” said I a second time.
“Another one game,” cried John Splendid. He had been winning every bout, but with a reluctance that shone honestly on his face, and I knew it was to give Tearlach and me a chance to better our reputation that he would have us hang on.
“You have hard luck indeed,” he would say. Or, “You played that trick as few could do it” Or, “Am not I in the key to-night? there’s less craft than luck here.” And he played even slovenly once or twice, flushing, we could read, lest we should see the stratagem. At these times, by the curious way of chance, he won more surely than ever.
“I must be going,” I said again. And this time I put the cartes bye, firmly determined that my usual easy and pliant mood in fair company would be my own enemy no more.
“Another chappin of ale,” said he. “Tearlach, get Elrigmore to bide another bit. Tuts, the night’s but young, the chap of two and a fine clear clean air with a wind behind you for Shira Glen.”
“Wheest!” said Tearlach of a sudden, and he put up a hand.
There was a skliffing of feet on the road outside—many feet and wary, with men’s voices in a whisper caught at the teeth—a sound at that hour full of menace. Only a moment and then all was by.
“There’s something strange here!” said John Splendid, “let’s out and see.” He put round his rapier more on the groin, and gave a jerk at the narrow belt creasing his fair-day crimson vest For me I had only the dirk to speak of, for the sgian dubh at my leg was a silver toy, and Tearlach, being a burgh man, had no arm at all. He lay hold on an oaken shinty stick that hung on the wall, property of the ferry-house landlord’s son.
Out we went in the direction of the footsteps, round Gillemor’s corner and the jail, past the Fencibles’ arm-room and into the main street of the town, that held no light in door or window. There would have been moon, but a black wrack of clouds filled the heavens. From the kirk corner we could hear a hushed tumult down at the Provost’s close-mouth.
“Pikes and pistols!” cried Splendid. “Is it not as I said? yonder’s your MacNicolls for you.”
In a flash I thought of Mistress Betty with her hair down, roused by the marauding crew, and I ran hurriedly down the street shouting the burgh’s slogan, “Slochd!”
“Damn the man’s hurry!” said John Splendid, trotting at my heels, and with Tearlach too he gave lungs to the shout.
“Slochd!” I cried, and “Slochd!” they cried, and the whole town clanged like a bell. Windows opened here and there, and out popped heads, and then—
“Murder and thieves!” we cried stoutly again.
“Is’t the Athole dogs?” asked some one in bad English from a window, but we did not bide to tell him.
“Slochd! slochd! club and steel!” more nimble burghers cried, jumping out at closes in our rear, and following with neither hose nor brogue, but the kilt thrown at one toss on the haunch and some weapon in hand. And the whole wide street was stark awake.
The MacNicolls must have numbered fully threescore. They had only made a pretence (we learned again) of leaving the town, and had hung on the riverside till they fancied their attempt at seizing Maclachlan was secure from the interference of the townfolk. They were packed in a mass in the close and on the stair, and the foremost were solemnly battering at the night door at the top of the first flight of stairs, crying, “Fuil airson fuil!—blood for blood, out with young Lachie!”
We fell to on the rearmost with a will, first of all with the bare fist, for half of this midnight army were my own neighbours in Glen Shira, peaceable men in ordinary affairs, kirk-goers, law-abiders, though maybe a little common in the quality, and between them and the mustering burghers there was no feud. For a while we fought it dourly in the darkness with the fingers at the throat or the fist in the face, or wrestled warmly on the plain-stones, or laid out, such as had staves, with good vigour on the bonneted heads. Into the close we could not—soon I saw it—push our way, for the enemy filled it—a dense mass of tartan—stinking with peat and oozing with the day’s debauchery.
“We’ll have him out, if it’s in bits,” they said,
