ben the hoose an’ get the kitchen reddit up – just awa in-by wi’ ye, d’ye hear?’
Jessie-Mary obeyed sullenly. The kitchen window was half open and she paused beside it before beginning to clear the table and set out the evening meal. A cupboard close to her hand held the cheese and bannocks but she did not turn its key. Her listless look fell upon the planet that was coming out of the approaching twilight and taking definiteness above a mass of dark tree-tops framed in by the window sash. She had small conscious joy in such sights, for the pleasures given by these are the outcome of a higher civilisation than she had yet attained. But even to her, the point of serene silver, hung in the translucent field of sky, had a remote, wordless peace. She stood staring, her arms dropped at her sides.
The shrill tones of her mistress came to her ear; she was telling Peter, who stood outside, the history of her loss. Lamentation for the Black Spanish hen mingled with the recital of Jessie-Mary’s carelessness, the villainy of serving-lasses as a body, the height in price of young poultry stock. like many more valuable beings, the froward bird was assuming after death an importance she had never known in life.
A high-pitched exclamation came from Peter’s lips.
‘Ye needna speir owre muckle for her,’ he said, ‘she’s roastit by this time. There’s a lad doon the loan kens mair aboot her nor ony ither body!’
‘Michty-me!’ cried Mrs. Muirhead.
‘Aye, a’m tellin’ ye,’ continued he, ‘the warst-lookin’ great deevil that iver ye saw yet. He gie’d me impidence, aye did he, but a didna tak’ muckle o’ that. “Anither word,” says I, “an’ ye’ll get the best thrashin’ that iver ye got.” He hadna vera muckle tae say after that, I warrant ye!’
Seldom had Mrs. Muirhead been so much disturbed. Her voice rose to unusual heights as she discussed the matter; the local policeman must be fetched at once, she declared; and, as she adjured her son to start for his house without delay, Jessie-Mary could hear the young man’s refusal to move a step before he had had his tea. She was recalled to her work by this and began hurriedly to set out the meal.
As she sat, a few minutes later, taking her own share at the farther end of the table, the subject was still uppermost, and by the time she rose mother and son were fiercely divided; for Peter, who had taken off his boots and was comfortable, refused to stir till the following morning. The hen had been missing three days, he said, and the thief was still in his place; it was not likely he would run that night. And the constable’s cottage was over a mile off. The household dispersed in wrath.
In the hour when midnight grew into morning, Jessie-Mary closed the cottage door behind her and stole out among the silent trees. The pine-scent came up from under her feet as she trod and down from the blackness overhead. The moon, which had risen late, was near her setting, and the light of the little sickle just showed her the direction in which she should go. In and out of the shadows she went, her goal the clearing among the whins in the debatable land. As the steeple of distant Montrose, slumbering calmly between the marshes and the sea, rang one, she slipped out of the bushes and, going into the tent, awakened the sleeping man.
IT WAS SOME time before the two came out of the shelter, and the first cock was crowing as the pony was roused and led from his tether under the tilted shafts. The sail-cloth was taken down and a medley of pots and pans and odd-looking implements thrown into the cart; the wheels were noiseless on the soft sod of the loaning as, by twists and turns, they thrust their way along the overgrown path.
Day broke on the figures of a man and woman who descended the slope of the fields towards the road. The man walked first.
And, in the debatable land among the brambles, a few black feathers blew on the morning wind.
DALMAIN VILLAGE lies a few miles from Forfar town in that part of western Angus where the land runs up in great undulations from Strathmore towards the Grampians; and it is tucked away, deep down in a trough between a couple of these solid waves. A narrow burn slips westward to the Isla through this particular trough with the roughest of rough country roads alongside it. The two together pass in front of a small collection of low cottages which forms the village. There is just room, and no more, for the little hamlet, and from their southern windows the dwellers in the kirkton of Dalmain can see their kirk perched on the bank above them where the shoulder of the next wave rises in their faces. In the dusky evenings of late autumn it looks like a resident ghost with its dead white sides glimmering through the trees that surround it. It is the quietest place imaginable, and no doubt it was quieter still in the days of which I am writing; for the ‘forty-five’, with its agonies and anxieties, had passed by nearly forty years back; and though the beadle was still lame from a sword-cut, the old man’s limp was all that was left to show any trace of that convulsion of Scotland to the outward eye.
It was on one of these October afternoons of 1784 that two men sat talking in Dalmain manse; one was the minister, Mr. Laidlaw, and the other was an Englishman who had arrived a few hours earlier. The latter had never seen his host before, and had crossed the Tweed a few days before, for the first time. He had just started upon the business which had brought him from Northumberland and the stir of Newcastle into this – to him – remotest of all possible places.
The minister was a plain, elderly man with pursed lips which gave him the look of being a duller person than he actually was, and his companion, a good many years the younger of the two, alarmed him by his unfamiliar accent. The Englishman had a pleasant, alert expression. He was leaning over the table at which both were sitting, one on either side.
‘I know that his name was Moir,’ he was saying, ‘and that is all I know, except that they were seen together in Glen Aird soon after Culloden, and that my cousin Musgrave was badly wounded in the side. I have discovered from the records of his regiment that there was a Moir in it, a native of Dalmain. I can only guess that this man is the same. No doubt I have set out on a wild-goose chase, sir, but I thought it might be worth while to make the experiment of coming here.’
‘It is a matter of an inheritance, you say,’ said Mr. Laidlaw, pursing his lips more than ever and raising his eyebrows, ‘I got that from your letter, I think?’
‘It is. We are a Jacobite family, though we are not Scots – there are many such in the north of England – and this officer in the Prince’s army, whom, of course, I never saw, made my father his heir. He had nothing to leave, as a matter of fact,’ he added, smiling.
‘Then, sir, I would remark that it is not very easy to see your difficulty,’ observed Laidlaw drily.
‘There’s an answer to that. It has only lately been discovered that he had an interest in a foreign business which has never paid until now. His share of the profits should come to me, as my father is dead and I am his only surviving child. But it appears that I cannot claim the money until my cousin Musgrave’s death is legally proven. It is barely possible that he is still alive, for it is about forty years since he disappeared, and he has made no sign, though his wife was living until six months ago.’
‘He would be an old man too, no doubt?’
‘He would be nearing eighty by this time.’
There was a pause.
‘You tell me there are still some of the Moir family left in this parish,’ continued the Englishman.
Laidlaw cleared his throat. ‘I doubt you may not find much to help you,’ he
