Lochinvar: A Novel

The small cow joined the herd, and was soon racing up the long glen towards the north. But the incident was not ended, for before they had gone far over the heather a woman came tearing down the hill-side, and flinging herself down at Keppoch's feet, she clasped him by the legs and kissed the hem of his tartan in an agony of supplication.

"Some blood-feud," thought Wat, as he listened to the frenzied outpouring of appeal. Keppoch stood awkwardly enough, listening at first frowningly, and then with some signs of yielding in his brow, the sight of which made the woman yet more earnest.

After a moment's thought he looked up and cried some direction to the clansmen who followed the cattle ahead of them. The little red cow was turned and came uncertainly along the glen, sometimes roaring back to the herd and at other times casting up her head to look for her own well-noted landmarks. As soon, however, as she saw the woman, the cow ran to her like a dog and nuzzled a wet foam-flecked mouth into her mistress's bosom.

The woman again clasped Keppoch's hand, kissing it over and over and calling down blessings upon him. Then right briskly she took the heather, skipping along the side of the hill with a light well-accustomed foot, the little red cow following her as closely as a dog, leaping runnels of water and skirting perilous screes on the way to her native pastures.

"What might all this be?" asked Scarlett.

Keppoch looked rather shamefaced, like a man expecting to do a good deed by stealth who suddenly finds it fame.

"Och," said he, "it was just a widow woman that had a bit coo, and some o' my lads met the coo. And the coo it cam' after them, and the widow woman she cam' after the coo; and then, puir body, she asked me if I was a Christian man, and I said, 'No; I was a McDonald.' And she said that so was she. So because she was a McDonald, I gied the puir woman back her coo. It wasna a guid coo, ony way. But she was very gratefu'. She said she was gaun to be mairried again, and that the man – an Appin Stewart, greedy hound! – wadna hae her without the coo."

CHAPTER XLIV

GREAT DUNDEE

At Keppoch the months passed slowly enough for our two exiles. They heard no news from the south – of Barra nothing, no word of Kate McGhie. The country about them was in a constant ferment – gatherings here and there on behalf of King James; false reports about the doings of the Hamiltonians and Conventiclers in Edinburgh; reports that the Westland Whigs were marching to exterminate the lads of the glens, in revenge for the doings of the Highland Host. They had sworn (so the tale ran) to take back to Ayrshire and Galloway the booty of the "Seventy-nine," which still constituted the best part of the plenishings of most Highland cottages to the north of the lands of Breadalbane and McCallum More.

It was hard to wait in blank ignorance; but Wat knew that his best hope of coming to his own again, and so to the winning of his love, was to abide the chances of war, and by good service to the king to deserve the restoration of his fiefs and heritages.

Luckily for the two outlaws, no French officers came to Keppoch, nor any, indeed, who knew either Scarlett or Wat, otherwise their lives had not been worth an hour's purchase. But as week after week went by, they became great favorites with McDonald, and were taken on several occasions to see Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiell – a wise, silent, benignant man, who at first said little, but contented himself with watching them silently and subtly from under his eyebrows.

"I remember your father," he said, suddenly flashing a look on Wat.

"You remember my father?" repeated Wat, eagerly; "I did not know he had ever been in the Highlands."

"Nor was he," said Lochiell; "it was in Edinburgh, when his head was cocked up on the Nether Bow, that I mind him – and a fine, wiselike; honest-seeming head it was."

The young man straightened himself fiercely, suspecting an intention to insult him.

"Na, na," said Lochiell, smilingly; "that's where every honest man's head ought to land at the last. James Graham's was there afore your father's, and mine, I doubt not, will follow one day. But they will send Keppoch's black puddock-stool tied up in a poke to fricht the bairns of Inverness."

"Ye are acquaint with my Lord Dundee, they tell me?" was Lochiell's next question.

"Aye," said Wat, "and well acquaint – though I know not how he would receive me now. Yet many a time have I ridden blithely enough at his side when I was a lad, until I had the misfortune to be outlawed and attainted by the Privy Council – "

"What was that for – not ony maitter o' religion and godliness, I hope? Nae sic Whiggery about a brisk lad like you, surely?" said Keppoch.

"It was for the small matter of sticking a sword into a man or two belonging to my Lord Duke of Wellwood," interrupted Scarlett, "and maybe for helping his Grace himself to an ounce of lead – "

"Hoot!" cried Keppoch, "John Graham will never steer ye for ony sic cause. He is great on the drill and discipline, but as to the richtin' o' a bit private misunderstanding, that surely is every gentleman's ain business."

"That was not the view the Council took of the matter," said Wat, smiling.

"Oh, they wad doubtless be o' the ither man's clan, or his connections and well-wishers in some shape – ye couldna blame them. They wad do the best they could for their side, nae doot," answered Keppoch.

And Lochiell listened to all with a gravely smiling face, like a man well pleased.

At Keppoch there was one day a muster and a show of weapons, after which came sword-play and fighting with the Lochaber axe, assault with targe and without targe – all of which Wat and Scarlett watched with infinite zest and unwearied amusement.

When it was well over, and all the champions from the glens had performed before the chief and Lochiell (who were then in great amity), Keppoch invited Wat to try a bout with him. Wat professed his inexperience with the heavier blade of the claymore, but asked to be permitted to retain his own lighter and finer "Andrea" – which, indeed, had scarcely ever left his side since he recovered it in the locker of the boat from which he had been cast ashore on the isle of Fiara.

So before long, weapon in hand, the huge black chieftain faced Lochinvar, towering over him like a son of Anak, his very sword casting a shadow like a weaver's beam.

They saluted in form and fell-to.

Clash! The blades met, and almost immediately Keppoch swept his sword in a full cut at Wat's shoulder. The young man measured his distance, stepped aside, and the next moment his Andrea pricked Keppoch's side below the arm. It was a mere touch with the point, but had the blade stood a handbreadth in the giant's body, as it might have done, the sons of Ian would have needed another chief.

Coll o' the Cows was more than a little astonished; but thinking the matter some accidental chance which could not be repeated, he professed his readiness to proceed.

"Man," cried Lochiell, who had been attentively watching the combat, "not Coll o' the Cows, but Coll o' the Corbies ye would have been if that laddie had liked. For oh, man, ye would hae been deid as Dugald More, and the clan looking for a tree to hang the young man on by this time."

With this most disabling thought in his mind to warn him from a too complete victory, Wat once more guarded, and for a long time contented himself with keeping off the furious strokes of the chief's assault, as easily, to all appearance, as a roof turns aside the pelting of a summer shower. Then, as Keppoch took breath a moment, his first fury having worn itself out, Wat attacked in his turn, and, puzzling his opponent, as was his wont, with the lightning swiftness of his thrust and recovery, caught his claymore deftly near the hilt, and in a moment it was flying out of his fingers.

Keppoch gazed after his weapon with as much surprise as if a hand had been reached out of the blue sky to snatch it from his grasp.

"God!" he cried, "but ye are a most mighty sworder – ne'er a one like ye within the Highland line. Who was your master at the play?"

Wat pointed to where old Jack Scarlett sat smiling complacently beside Lochiell.

"There is my teacher," he said, "and at my best I am but a bairn with a windlestraw in my master's hands."

Scarlett wagged his beard at Keppoch's evident consternation.

"No, no," he said, "I am old and stiff. Do not believe him. Why, lad, ye beat me the last time I tried ye with that same trick, though indeed I myself had taught it ye at the first."

"But I was vexed for the lad," he added under his breath, "and maybe I did not just try my best."

Of course after this nothing would serve the chiefs but that Wat and Scarlett must fight a long bout with the blunted point, which presently they did amid tremendous excitement.

"Oich! Oich!" shouted the clansmen, jumping in the air and yelling at every good stroke and lightning parry.

"Bone o' Dugald More – what heevenly fechtin'!" cried Keppoch. "I declare I am like to greet – me that hasna grat since the year sixty, when Ian Mackintosh of Auchnacarra died afore I could kill him. Oh, for the like o' you twa to lead a foray intil the country of the Lochiell Camerons —I mean the Appin Stewarts, foul fa' them! We wad gang in the daytime. For oh! it wad be a peety that sic bonny sword-play should be wasted in killing folk in the nicht season."

And the tears actually streamed from the eye of Black Colin as he watched the swords clash and click, meeting each other sweetly and willingly like trysted lovers.

"This is worth a' the kye frae Achnasheen to Glen Urquhart," he cried. "Ah, that was a stroke! 'Tis better than ganging to a kirk!"

More than once Wat nearly got home. But old Jack, standing a little stiffly on his legs and biting at a bit of sour-grass, always turned the point an inch aside at the critical moment. At last came the opening, and the master's return flew like lightning. Wat's blade was forced upward in spite of his lowered wrist, and lo! Scarlett's point stood against the third button of his coat as steadily as a master in a school points at the blackboard with his ferule.

A great shout went up from the throng. The hands of both combatants were shaken. Keppoch's defeat was avenged. Such swordsmanship had never before been seen by any son of Ian. The reputation of both master and pupil was made on the spot. Lochiell and Keppoch vied with each other in civilities, and the event became a daily one – but after this with a pair of foils, which the master-at-arms deftly manufactured.

In many such ways the months passed, and the spring came again with delicate green kindling along the watercourses, as the birch began to cast her tresses to the winds, and the grass tufts fought hard with the conquering heather.

But upon a day late in the month of May the party at Keppoch was broken by a sudden definite call. Three horsemen rode up to the door one blazing noontide. Scarlett and Keppoch were playing cards, the chief eagerly and noisily, Scarlett with the dogged use-and-wont of a hundred camps. Wat Gordon was cleaning his arms and accoutrements in the hall; for though they two had landed with little save the swords by their sides – now, thanks to their quality as swordsmen, and also somewhat to the weight of the gold in Wat's belt (which had so nearly been the death of him in the Suck of Suliscanna), they had been equipped with all the necessities of war.

The first of the three riders who entered into the hall of Keppoch was no other than my Lord Dundee. He looked thirty years older than when Wat had seen him last riding by in the gloaming to the house of Balmaghie – grayer, more wearied, sadder, too, with his face drawn and pale in spite of the sun and the wind.