The Standard Bearer

It was about noon when the sentinels reported that the Sheriff and his hundred horsemen had crossed Dee water, and were advancing by rapid stages.

Now it was Jonita’s plan to draw together the women also – for what purpose we did not see. But since she had summoned them herself it was not for any of us young men to say her nay.

So by the green roadside, a mile from the manse and kirk, Jonita had her hundred and fifty or more women assembled, old and young, mothers of families and wrinkled grandmothers thereof, young maidens with the blushes on their cheeks and the snood yet unloosed about their hair.

Faith, spite of the grandmothers, many a lad of us would have desired to be of that company that day! But Alexander-Jonita would have none of us. We were to keep the castle, so she commanded, with gun and sword. We were to sit in our trenches about the kirk, and let the women be our advance guard.

So when the trampling of horses was heard from the southward, and the cavalcade came to the narrows of the way, “Halt!” cried Alexander-Jonita suddenly. And leaping out of the thicket like a young roe of the mountains, she seized the Sheriff’s bridle rein. At the same moment her hundred and fifty women trooped out and stood ranked and silent right across the path of the horsemen.

“What do ye here? Let go, besom!” cried the Sheriff.

“Go back to those that sent ye, Sheriff,” commanded Alexander-Jonita, “for an’ ye will put out our minister, ye must ride over us and wet the feet of your horses in our women’s blood.”

“Out upon you, lass! Let men do their work!” cried the Sheriff, who was a jolly, rollicking man, and, moreover, as all knew, like most sheriffs, not unkindly disposed to the sex.

“Leave you our minister alone to do his work. I warrant he will not meddle with you,” answered Alexander-Jonita.

“Faith, but you are a well-plucked one!” cried the Sheriff, looking down with admiration on her, “but now out of the way with you, for I must forward with my work.”

“Sir,” said the lass, “ye may turn where ye are, and ride back whence ye came, for we will by no means let you proceed one step nearer to the kirk of Balmaghie this day!”

“Forward!” cried the Sheriff, loudly, to his men, thinking to intimidate the women.

“Stand firm, lasses!” cried Alexander-Jonita, clinging to the Sheriff’s bridle-rein.

And the company of yeomanry stood still, for, being mostly householders and fathers of families, they could not bring themselves to charge a company of women, as it might be their own wives and daughters.

“Forward!” cried the Sheriff again.

“Aye, forward, gallant cavaliers!” cried Alexander-Jonita, “forward, and ye shall have great honour, Sheriff! More famous than my Lord Marlborough shall be ye. Ride us down. Put your horses to their speed. Be assured we will not flinch!”

Time and again the Sheriff tried, now threatening and now cajoling; but equally to no purpose.

At last he grew tired.

“This is a thankless job,” he said, turning him about; “let them send their soldiers. I am not obliged to fight for it.”

And so with a “right about” and a wave of the hand he took his valiant horsemen off by the way they came.

And as they went they say that many a youth turned him on his saddle to cast a longing look upon Alexander-Jonita, who stood there tall and straight in the place where she had so boldly confronted the Sheriff.

Then the women sang a psalm, while Alexander-Jonita, leaping on a horse, rode a musket-shot behind the retiring force, till she had seen them safely across the river at the fords of Glenlochar, and so finally out of the parish bounds.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE ELDERS OF THE HILL FOLK

(The Narrative taken up again by Quintin MacClellan.)

It was long before I could see clearly the way I should go, after that dismal day and night of which I have told the tale.

It seemed as if there was no goodness on the earth, no use in my work, no right or excellency in the battle I had fought and the sacrifice I had made. Ought I not even now to give way? Surely God had not meant a man so poor in spirit, so easily cast down to hold aloft the standard of his ancient kirk.

But nevertheless, here before me and around me, a present duty, were my parish and my poor folk, so brave and loyal and steadfast. Could I forsake them? Daily I heard tidings of their struggling with the arm of flesh, though I now judge that Hob, in some fear of my disapproval, would not venture to tell me all.

Yet I misdoubted that I had brought my folk into a trouble which might in the event prove a grievous enough one for them.

But a kind Providence watched over them and me. For even when it came to the stormiest, the wind ceased and there was a blissful breathing time of quietness and peace.

Also there was that happened about this time which brought us at least for a time assurance and security within our borders.

It was, as I remember it, a gurly night in late September, the wind coming in gusts and swirling flaws from every quarter, very evidently blowing up for a storm.

Hob had come in silently and set him down by the fire. He was peeling a willow wand for his basket-weaving and looking into the embers. I could hear Martha Little, our sharp-tongued servant lass, clattering among her pots and pans in the kitchen. As for me I was among my books, deep in Greek, which to my shame I had been somewhat neglecting of late.

Suddenly there came a loud knocking at the outer door.

I looked at my plaid hung up to dry, and bethought me who might be ill and in want of my ministrations upon such a threatening night.

I could hear Martha go to the door, and the low murmur of voices without.

Then the door of the chamber opened and I saw the faces and forms of half-a-dozen men in the passage.

“It has come at last,” thought I, for I expected that it might be the Sheriff and his men come to expel me from the kindly shelter of the manse. And though I should have submitted, I knew well that there would be bloodshed on the morrow among my poor folk.

But it turned out far otherwise.

The first who entered into the house-place was a tall, thin, darkish man, with a white pallor of face and rigid fallen-in temples. His eyes were fiery as burning coals, deep set under his bushy eyebrows. Following him came Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun and in the lee of his mighty form three or four others – douce, grave, hodden-grey men every one of them, earnest of eye and quiet of carriage.

Hob went out, unobserved as was his modest wont, and I motioned them with courtesy and observance to such seats as my little study afforded.

As usual there were stools everywhere, with books upon them, and I observed with what careful scrupulosity the men laid these upon the table before sitting down. A Hebrew Bible lay open on the desk, and one after another stooped over it with an eager look of reverence.

I waited for them to speak.

It was the tall dark man who first broke silence.

“Reverend sir,” he said, “what my name is, it skills me not to tell. Enough that I am a man that has suffered much from the strivings of fleshly thorns, from the persecutions of ungodly man. But now I am charged with a mission and a message.

“You have been cast out of the Kirk for adherence to the ancient way. Yet you have upheld in weakness and the frailty of mortal man the banner of the older Covenant. You are not ignorant that there are still societies and general meetings of the Suffering Remnant of men who have never declined, as you yourself have done, from the plain way of conscience and righteousness.

“Yet the man doth not live who doeth good and sinneth not. So because we desire a minister, we would offer you the strong sustaining hand. Though you be not able at once to unite with us, nor for the present to take upon you our strait and heavy testimony, yet because you have been faithful to your lights we will stand by you and see that no man hinder or molest you.”

And the others, beginning with Sir Alexander Gordon, said likewise, “We will support you!”

Then I knew that these men were the leaders and elders among the Hill Folk, and the ancient reverence to which I was born took hold on me. For I had been brought up among them as a lad, and my mother had spoken to me constantly of their great piety and abounding steadfastness in the day of trouble. These were they who had never tangled themselves with any entrapping engagements. They alone were no seceders, for they had never entered any State Church.

With a great price had I obtained this freedom, but these men were free-born.