The Standard Bearer. Crockett Samuel Rutherford
with cheese and butter wrapped in green leaves. But the little girl would not let me so much as look within.
“These are for my father,” she said; “my father is the greatest man in the whole world!”
“But who may your father be, little one?” I asked her, standing stock still on the green highway with the can in my hand. She was daintily arranging the cloak about her like a fine lady. She paused, and looked at me very grave and not a little indignant.
“That is not for you to know,” she said, with dignity; “follow me with the pail.”
So saying she stalked away with dignified carriage in the direction of the hill-top. A wild fear seized me. One of the two men I had seen fleeing might be the little girl’s father. Perhaps he into whose back – ah! at all hazards I must not let her go that way.
“Could we not rest awhile here,” I suggested, “here behind this bush? There are wicked men upon the hill, and they might take away the pail from us.”
“Then my father would kill them,” she said, shaking her head sagely, but never stopping a moment on her upward way. “Besides, my mother told me to take the pail to the hill-top and stand there in my red cloak till my father should come. But it was so hot and the pail so heavy that – ”
“That you cried?” I said as she stopped.
“Nay,” she answered with an offended look; “little ladies do not cry. I was only sorry out loud that my father should be kept waiting so long.”
“And your mother sent you all this way by yourself; was not that cruel of her?” I went on to try her.
“Little ragged boy,” she said, looking at me with a certain compassion, “you do not know what you are saying. I cannot, indeed, tell you who my father is, but I am Mary Gordon, and my mother is the Lady of Earlstoun.”
So I was speaking to the daughter of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, the most famous Covenanter in Scotland, and, next to my Lord Viscount of Kenmure, the chief landowner in our countryside.
“And have you come alone all the way from Earlstoun hither?” I asked in astonishment, for the distance was at least four or five miles and the road rough and ill-trodden.
“Nay,” she made answer, “not so. My mother set me so far upon the way, and now she waits for me by the bushes yonder, so that I must make haste and return. We came in a boat to your water-foot down there where the little bay is and the pretty white sand.”
And she pointed with her hand to where the peaty water of the moorland stream mingled with and stained the deep blue of the loch.
“Haste you, laddie,” she cried sharply a moment after; “my father is not a one to be kept waiting. He will be impatient and angry. And because he is so great a man his anger is hard to bide.”
“You must not go up to the hill-top,” I said, “for there are many bad men on the Bennan to-day, and they would perhaps kill you.”
“But my father is there,” said she, stopping and looking at me reproachfully. “I must go; my mother bade me.”
And haply at that moment I saw the entire company of soldiers, led by the man in the red coat, stringing down the farther side of the mountain in the line of flight by which the second fugitive had made good his escape. So I judged it might be as well to satisfy the lass and let her go on to the top. Indeed, short of laying hold of her by force, I knew not well how to hinder so instant and imperious a dame.
Besides, I thought that by a little generalship I would be able to keep her wide of the place where lay the poor body of the slain man.
So straight up the hill upon which I had seen such terrible things we went, Ashie and Gray slinking unwillingly and shamefacedly behind. And as I went I cast an eye to my flock. And it appeared strange to me that the lambs should still be feeding quietly and peacefully down there, cropping and straying on the green scattered pastures of Ardarroch. Yet in the interval all the world had changed to me.
We reached the summit.
“Here is the place I was to wait for my father,” said Mary Gordon. “I must arrange my hair, little boy, for my father loves to see me well-ordered, though he is indeed himself most careless in his attiring.”
She gave vent to a long sigh, as if her father’s delinquencies of toilette had proved a matter of lifelong sorrow to her.
“But then, you see, my father is a great man and does as he pleases.”
She put her hand to her brow and looked under the sun this way and that over the moor.
“There are so many evil men hereabout – your father may have gone down the further side to escape them,” I said. For I desired to withdraw her gaze from the northern verge of the tableland, where, as I well knew, lay a poor riven body, which, for all I knew, might be that of the little maid’s father, silent, shapeless, and for ever at rest.
“Let us go there, then, and wait,” she said, more placably and in more docile fashion than she had yet shown.
So we crossed the short crisp heather, and I walked between her and that which lay off upon our right hand, so that she should not see it.
But the dogs Ashie and Gray were almost too much for me. For they had gone straight to the body of the slain man, and Ashie, ill-conditioned brute, sat him down as a dog does when he bays the moon, and, stretching out his neck and head towards the sky, he gave vent to his feelings in a long howl of agony. Gray snuffed at the body, but contented herself with a sharp occasional snarl of angry protest.
“What is that the dogs have found over there?” said the little maid, looking round me.
“Some dead sheep or other; there are many of them about,” I answered, with shameless mendacity.
“Have your Bennan sheep brown coats?” she asked, innocently enough.
I looked and saw that the homespun of the man’s attire was plain to be seen. “My father has been here before me, and has cast his mantle over the sheep to keep the body from the sun and the flies.”
For which lie the Lord will, I trust, pardon me, considering the necessity and that I was but a lad.
At any rate the maid was satisfied, and we took our way to the northern edge of the Bennan top.
CHAPTER IV
MY SISTER ANNA
Wending our way through the tangle of brown morass and grey boulder, we arrived, the little maid and I, at the extremity of the spur which looks towards the north. Immediately beneath us, already filling in with the oozy peat, I saw the ploughing steps of the successful fugitive, where he had leaped and slid down the soft mossy slopes. There to the right was the harder path by which the dragoons had led their horses, jibbing and stumbling as they went. But all were now passed away, and the landscape from verge to verge was bare and empty save for a few scarlet dots bobbing and weaving athwart one another down on the lake-shore, as the soldiers drew near their camp. Even the clamorous peewits had returned, and were already sweeping and complaining foolishly overhead, doubtless telling each other the tale of how the noise and white-blowing smoke had frightened them from their eggs among the heather.
The little lass stood awhile and gazed about her.
“Certainly my father will see me now,” she said, cheerfully enough; “I am sure he will be looking, and then he will know that all is well when his little girl is here.”
And she looked as if she were ready to protect Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun against Lag and all his troopers. But after a little I saw an anxious look steal over her face.
“He is not coming. He does not see his little Mary!” she said, wistfully.
Then she ran to the top of the highest knoll, and taking off her red cloak she waved it, crying out, “Father, father, it is I – little Mary! Do not be afraid!”
A pair of screeching wildfowl swooped indignantly nearer, but no other voice replied. I feared that she might insist upon examining that which lay under the brown coat, for that