Highland Legends. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder
stain this good sword of mine with dishonour, nor do I choose that it should be the means of cheating the gallows of what so justly belongs to it. Gather thyself up, then, as thou mayest, and take thy way to Dulnan side; for, by all that is good, if thou dost show thine ugly visage again to me, like a grim ghost on the moor, I’ll not miss thy big body as I did that of the stray stag, but I’ll open a door in it wide enough to allow thy rascally soul to issue forth and to join its kindred malignant spirits of the swamp and the fen.”
With these words Ewan threw his gun over his shoulder, and set out in search of the stray heifer. It was some time before he found her, and a still longer time after he had found her before he caught her, and after he had caught her it was but the commencement of a most toilsome night with her, ere he could compel her, tired as she was, to travel through bog and mire to the place of her destination. But be this as it may, Ewan saw that the reaver’s word was made good—next morning the dun quey was seen grazing with the rest of the herd on the farm of the Aitnoch. Nobody could tell how she came there; but the eagerness with which she plucked at the pasture, and her jaded and draggled appearance, afforded sufficient evidence of the length and nature of the night journey she had been compelled to perform.
It was not very long after this that Mr. Russel happened accidentally to have ridden up to his farm here one morning, and, as he was engaged in moving about looking at his stock, his attention was attracted by a long drove of cattle, which he observed straggling up yonder opposite bank of the Dorback branch of the river Divie, to the eastward there, evidently with the intention of crossing at a ford a little way above. At first sight there appeared to be little remarkable in this, for he well knew that to be a common track, travelled by all whose route lay through this country, stretching up the south side of the Findhorn. But the drovers and their herd had no sooner passed the Dorback, and gained its western bank, and begun to advance in a direction pointing towards the course of the Findhorn, than Mr. Russel recognised the same Highland party and the same bold leader from whom he had so recently recovered his own cattle. Some of the men who were about him were led, from certain circumstances, to know that the drove of beasts which they now saw had been carried off from Gordonston, the seat of Sir Robert Gordon, about thirty miles distant in the Laigh of Moray. Mr. Russel was in habits of friendship with Sir Robert, and he quickly came to the resolution that he should allow no such hostile and predatory act to be done to him if he could help it, and above all that he should not facilitate it by permitting a passage for the robbers and their booty through his territory. He was here not only in the midst of his own people, but he was, moreover, in the very centre of Lord Moray’s estate of Brae-Moray, of which he had the entire management, and accordingly he resolved to avail himself of these circumstances, and he determined immediately to arrest them. With this intention he hastily collected all the dependants who were within his reach, and, before the robbers came up with their booty, he found himself at the head of double their number of well-armed men.
When the party arrived within hearing, Mr. Russel hailed the leader, and at once plainly told him that he could not stand by and suffer the cattle of his friend Sir Robert Gordon to be thus harried, far less could he tamely permit them to be thus driven through his farm. He therefore called upon the robber to halt, assuring him that if he offered to advance with his party, or to persist in driving the cattle one step farther, it should be at his own peril, and he must take the consequences; for that nothing but force should compel him to give them way.
“Mr. Russel!” cried the leader, stepping before the rest with a haughty air, “this is not what I expected from you after what has already passed between us. You stopped and recovered your own beasts, and nobody could blame you; but, sir, it is not like a gentleman to offer to hinder me from taking cattle from anybody else.”
“My principles are very different,” said Mr. Russel, with great coolness.
“I tell you again,” cried the little man, “that you will be acting unjustly if you persevere, and that you have no right to do so.”
“I am determined to persevere notwithstanding,” said Mr. Russel, with great strength of emphasis and firmness of expression.
“Then, sir, I must caution you that you had better take care what you do,” said the Highlander.
“I am prepared for all consequences,” said Mr. Russel.
“Well, well, sir,” said the Highlander frowning, “we cannot help it; you are in your own kingdom here, and you must have your own way; but, I bid you take heed—you’ll rue this yet—look well to yourself.” So saying, he called to his followers in Gaelic, who, with much apparent dissatisfaction, abandoned the cattle, and the whole party took the road to the hills, muttering dark threats and half-smothered imprecations against Mr. Russel.
These denunciations were little heeded, and were probably soon forgotten by him against whom they were uttered, or if they were remembered at all it was only to produce greater vigilance on the part of those who had the charge of his stock. But it so happened that, during the course of the ensuing winter, some express business, connected with his charge of Lord Moray’s affairs, carried Mr. Russel to Edinburgh. When he was on his return homewards, he arrived late one stormy and tempestuous night at the solitary inn of Dalnacaerdoch, situated, as everybody knows, at the southern extremity of that part of the great Highland road leading through the savage pass of Drumouachter. Seeing that it was quite hopeless to think of prosecuting his journey that night in such weather, he took a hasty supper and went to bed, with the resolution of rising as early next day as the lack of light at that season would permit.
He was accordingly up in the morning, and in the saddle before he could well see his horse’s ears, and he set out through the snow for the inn of Dalwhinnie, situated at the northern end of the pass, attended only by a single servant. He had not proceeded far into the wild and savage part of that solitary scene, where high poles, painted black, are erected along the edge of the road to serve as beacons during winter, to prevent travellers from deviating from the road and being engulphed in the snow-wreaths, when by the light of the dawn, he descried a man, at some two or three hundred yards’ distance, who came riding towards him. As he came onwards, Mr. Russel had time to remark that he exhibited a thin spare figure which was enveloped in a long dark brown cloak or greatcoat. He rode one of the loose made garrons of the country, of a dirty mouse colour, having no saddle, and no other bridle than a halter made of small birchen twigs, twisted into a sort of rope, called by the common people a woodie. In spite of himself, the recollection of the Highland reaver and his angry threats darted across Mr. Russel’s mind; and he was somewhat alarmed at first, when he observed that he who approached carried in his hand, poised by the middle, a very long fowling-piece, of that ancient character and description which gave our ancestors excellent hope of killing a wild duck sitting in the water half-way across a lake of half a mile broad. Mr. Russel instinctively pulled out his pistols and examined their locks, and he made his servant do the same by his; but the inequality of such weapons, compared with that which I have this moment described, was only thereby rendered the more woefully apparent to both of them. Mr. Russel rode slowly but resolutely on however, with his eyes intently watching every motion of him who came, and who was now drawing nearer and nearer to them. The stranger himself seemed to advance cautiously; but no sooner had he come close enough to enable him to recognise a human countenance, than he pushed up his shying steed by the application of ardent and repeated kicks; and, when he had at length succeeded in compelling him forward, to Mr. Russel’s no inconsiderable relief, he recognised in him—the landlord of the inn of Dalwhinnie!
“Keep us a’, I’m glad I ha’e forgathered wi’ ye in time, Mr. Russel!” he exclaimed in a south country tone and dialect, and without waiting for the ordinary preliminary salutations.
“Why, what’s the matter?” demanded Mr. Russel.
“Matter!” replied the man; “a matter o’ murder, gif I’m no far mistane.”
“Mercy on me! Who has been murdered?” cried Mr. Russel.
“I didna say that ony body was murdered,” answered the man; “but, an ye persevere on your road through the pass, I’m thinkin’ that somebody will be murdered.”
“What makes you fancy so?” asked