Highland Legends. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder
to detain her; “why dost thou look so sad? By this light, such as it is, it would seem as if the tear-drop had been in that blue eye of thine. My worthy Angus could never have caused this? He loves thee too well ever to give pain to so soft and confiding a heart as thine.”
“Angus never could wilfully give me pain,” said the maiden earnestly, and throwing down her eyes, and blushing deeply as she said so.
“Ha!” said Macfarlane, in a playful manner, “now I think on’t, yours may have been the tears of repentance, seeing that you most wickedly have seduced my trusty master herdsman from his duty this evening, and that he hath left his people and his beasts to take care of one another, that he might come over the hill here to whisper soft things into thine ear, under the clustering woodbine, that wreathes itself through the holly there, and fills the air thus with its delicious perfume.”
“My good lord, I would humbly acknowledge my fault, and crave your pardon,” replied Angus; “I must confess that I did leave the lads and the cattle to come to keep tryst here with Ellen. But albeit that she had some small share of blame in this, her tears fell not from compunction for any such fault. Say, shall I tell the cause, Ellen?—They fell because of a strange vision which her old Aunt Margery saw last night.”
“A vision!” exclaimed Macfarlane seriously; “tell me, Ellen, what did she see?”
“It was last night, my lord,” replied Ellen, “that my Aunt Margery came over to my mother’s cottage to settle some matters regarding—a—a—I mean, to speak with my mother of some little family affairs, which kept her better than an hour after nightfall, when, as she was crossing the hill again in her way home, she suddenly beheld a red glowing gleam in the sky, and turning to look behind her, the whole of the forest below seemed to be on fire. She rubbed her eyes in her astonishment, and when she looked again the vision had disappeared.”
“Strange!” said Macfarlane seriously.
“But this was not all,” continued Ellen, with increased earnestness of manner, and shuddering as she spoke, “for by the light that still gleamed in the sky, she beheld a dark object at some distance from her on the heath. It moved towards the spot where she was. Trembling with fear, she stood aside to observe it, and on it continued to come, gliding without sound. A single stream of faint light fell upon it from a broken part of the sky, and showed the figure and the features of—of—of you, Macfarlane.”
“What, my figure! my features!” exclaimed the laird, in a disturbed tone; and then, commanding himself, he quietly added, “Awell, and saw she aught else?”
“She did, my lord,” added Ellen, much agitated, “for, borne over your right shoulder she beheld a human corse; the head was hanging down, and the pale fixed features were those of—of—my betrothed husband!” Overpowered by her feelings, Ellen sank down on a mossy bank, and wept bitterly.
“Let not these gloomy fancies enter your head at a time like this, Ellen,” said Macfarlane, roused by her sobbing from the fit of gloomy abstraction into which her narration had thrown him. “If not altogether an unaccountable and unreal freak of imagination, it can be interpreted no otherwise than felicitously for you. The burning forest is but a type of the extent and the warmth of your mutual affection, and the dead figure of Angus only shadows forth the fact that your love will endure with life itself.”
“There needed not such a vision to tell us these truths,” said Angus energetically.
“Yet do we often see matters as palpable as these, as wonderfully vouched for by supernatural means,” said the chief. “Get thee home then, Ellen; and do thou see her safe, Angus, and let her not suffer her young mind to brood on such dreary and distressing phantasies as seem now to fill it. Be yours the joyous anticipations of the bride and bridegroom three days before they are made one for ever. Ere three days go round your indissoluble union shall be blessed by the happiest influence of the warm sunshine of your chief’s substantial favour. Meanwhile, may good angels guard you both!—Good night.”
With these words, Macfarlane sought his way home, musing as he went, impressed, more than he even wished to own to himself, with the strange tale he had heard, and when he could contrive to rid himself of it, turning in his thoughts from time to time certain benevolent schemes which suggested themselves to him for the liberal establishment of Angus and his bride.
The next day’s sun had hardly reddened the eastern sky, so as to exhibit the huge dark mass of Ben Lomond with a sharp and well-defined outline on its glowing surface, when the herdsmen of the Laird of Macfarlane arose and left their huts, with the intention of driving their cattle across the dewy pastures back to the slopes of the mountains. The thick summer mist still hung over the lower grounds; and the men wandered about hallooing to each other whilst employed in actively looking for the animals of which they had the charge. They had left them the previous evening feeding in numerous groups among herbage of the most luxuriant description. They were well aware that it was much too fragrant not to tie them, by the sweetest and securest of all tethers, to the vicinity of those spots where they had been collected in herds; and they were quite sure that the animals never would have left them voluntarily. But all their shouting and all their searching appeared to be unsuccessful, and the more unsuccessful they were likely to be the more were their exertions increased. All was clamour, confusion, and uncertainty, till sunrise had somewhat dispelled the mist that had hitherto rolled its dense and silent waves over the bottom of the valley; and then one herdsman more active and intelligent than the rest, having climbed the mountain that sends forth its root to form the boundary between the enchanting mazes of the beautiful oak and birch-fringed lakes of Ballochan and the long stretch of Loch Lomond’s inland sea, and having looked up Glen Falloch, and far and wide around him to the full extent that his eyes could reach—
“We are harried!” shouted he in Gaelic to his anxiously inquiring comrades below. “Not a horn of them is to be seen! I can perceive a large herd of deer afar off yonder, clustered together in the open forest glade, but not a horn or hide of cow, ox, quey, or stirk, do I see within all the space that my eyes can light upon; and unless the muckle stone, the Clach-nan-Tairbh, down below there has covered them, as tradition tells us it covered the two wild bulls, when the fury of their battle was said to have been so great as to shake it down from the very craig upon them, our beasts are harried every cloot o’ them!”
“My curses on the catterans that took them then!” exclaimed Angus Macfarlane, the master of the herdsmen—“and my especial curses, too, because they have thus harried them the very night when I chanced to be wandering! But if they are above the surface of the earth we must find them; so come, lads, look about ye sharply.”
Like an eager pack of hounds newly uncoupled, who have been taught by the huntsman’s well-understood voice that a fresh scent is at hand, the herdsmen now went dodging about, looking for the track of those who had so adroitly driven off a creagh so very numerous and so immensely valuable. Long experience and much practice in such matters soon enabled Angus to discover the country towards which the freshest hoof-prints pointed, and in a short time the whole band were in full and hot pursuit of the reavers.
“They are Lochaber men, I’ll warrant me!” said Angus, whose sagacity and acuteness left him seldom mistaken; and guessing shrewdly at the route they would probably take, he resolved to follow them cautiously with his assistants, that he might dog their footsteps and spy out their motions, whilst he sent one back as a messenger to the Laird of Macfarlane, to report to him the daring robbery that had been committed on him.
If you have been able to conceive the calm that settled upon Macfarlane’s mind when the placidity of the previous evening had brought it so much into harmony with all the surrounding objects of nature, that it might almost have been said to have reflected the unruffled image of Loch Lomond itself, you may easily imagine that the intelligence which he now received operated on him as some whirlwind would have done on the peaceful bosom of the lake. The eyes of the dark-browed chief kindled up into a blaze of rage, and shot forth red lightnings, and his soul was lashed into a sudden and furious storm ere the messenger had time to unfold half of his information.
“What! all harried, said you?—Bid the pipers play the