The Standard Bearer

“Then take me to my Auntie Jean,” she persisted, catching at my hand pettishly, and then throwing it from her, “and my mother will come for me in the morning.”

“But where does your Auntie Jean live?”

“How can I tell – it is such a long way?” she answered. “It is in a house in the middle of a loch!”

Now this could only mean in the old tower of Lochinvar. But that was a yet longer and more difficult road than to the Earlstoun, and the line of sentries up the Bennan side barred our progress as completely as ever.

Nevertheless there was something attractive in the little maid’s idea. For that ancient strength, alone among all the neighbouring houses, sheltered no band of troopers. Kenmure, Earlstoun, Gordonston, and even our own little farm town of Ardarroch were all manned and watched, but the half-ruinous block-house of Lochinvar set in the midst of its moorland loch had been left untenanted. Its owner, Walter Gordon, the famous swordsman, was in exile abroad, so they said, and the place, save for a room or two, totally disrupted and broken down.

There was, therefore, no safer refuge for little Mary, if indeed her aunt dwelt there and we could find our way. Suddenly, as we looked about, an idea came to me, and, what is not so common, the means of carrying it out.

The sheepfolds (or “buchts”) in which we were hiding were walled in with rough stones from the hill, piled so as to form dry dykes, high and strong, and the entrances were defended by heavy wooden gates swung upon posts driven deep into the ground. The gates lifted away easily from their hinges. Two or three of these would make a secure enough raft if I could only fasten them together. And even as I set about to find ways and means, I was conscious of a change. A strange elation took me at the heart, and ran through my veins like unaccustomed wine.

I was no longer the careless herd laddie. I had entered life. I knew the penalty of failure. The man in the brown coat lying prone on his face up there above me on the crest of the Bennan quite clearly and sufficiently pointed that moral.

So, with the little girl close behind me, I searched both sets of “buchts” from end to end. I found three gates which could be easily detached from their posts. These I dismounted one after another.

How, then, was I to get them to the water’s edge, for they were far too heavy for my puny strength? I could only break a limb from a tree and draw them down to the loch shore on that, even as I had often helped my father to bring home his faggots of firewood from the hill upon a carr, or trail-cart of brushwood.

So we set off for the wood to break our branch. It was not long before I had one of beech lying upon the ground, with all its wealth of rustling leaves upon it. But the snap I made in breaking it off from the tree would certainly have betrayed us, had I not been cautious to keep a sufficient breadth of wood between us and our surly sentry.

Trailing this behind us we came again to the “ewe-buchts.”

It was now no difficult job to transport the raft of gates down to the water. I gave Mary Gordon a branch to tug at, which made her happier than anything I had done since Anna committed her to my care, for she pleased herself with thinking that she did the whole work.

I was almost on the point of using a hay-rope to bind them together as the best I could do, when I remembered that in the corner of our own “buchts” my father kept some well-tarred hempen cord, which I had seen him place there only the day before he had been compelled to go into hiding. If it chanced not to be removed, without doubt it would prove the very thing.

I found it where he had laid it, in the little shelf-press rudely constructed in the wall of four blocks of stone split into faces. There was little enough of it when I rove it out, but I thought I could make shift with it. It was, at any rate, far better than miles of hay-rope.

With this I tied the bars closely together by the corners and cross-bars, and presently had built up a very commodious raft indeed, though one more than a trifle heavy. It was some time before I hit upon a plan of launching my top-heavy craft. With the loose “stob” of a gatepost I managed to lever the crank construction to the edge of a sloping bank down which she slid so quickly that I had to set my heels into the grass and hold back with all my might.

But a moment after, without a splash more than a wild duck might make, the raft floated high above the water. With the end of the rope in my hand I climbed on board, but soon found that with my weight the top “liggate” of my craft was within an inch of the water. Clearly, then, it could not keep both of us dry.

But this troubled me little. I had not lived all my life on the shores of a loch to be afraid of swimming behind a raft on a midsummer night. For among other ploys Hob and I would often play at a sort of tilting or tournament, sitting astride of logs and trying to knock each other off into the water in the warm summer shallows.

So I placed the little girl upon the raft, cautioning her that as she hoped to see her mother again, she must in no circumstances make the least noise nor yet move from the centre of the raft where I had placed her. Soon she had begun to take an interest in the adventure, and had forgotten her weariness. She did not, however, again speak of her mother, but said that she was ready to “go for a sail” with me if I was quite sure that on the other side she should see her aunt. And this, speaking somewhat hastily, I promised without condition.

CHAPTER VI

ACROSS THE MOONLIGHT

For just then I became aware of a quickly growing light behind the eastern hills. It was the moon rising. I had not thought of this, and for a moment I was disconcerted. I knew that she would doubtless throw a sharp light upon the water, and that from the shore the raft would be as easily seen black against the broad and shining silver streak as if the time had been midday instead of midnight.

Then I remembered the branch which I had brought with me from the wood. I thrust the butt of it through the bars of the gates, and so disposed the leaves that from the shore they made at once a perfect shelter and a secure hiding-place for Mary, who sat there in state upon the raft, proud of going such an adventurous voyage, and perhaps also not a little elated to be up so late.

Being already stripped to the shirt and small clothes, I took off the former also, and dropped silently into the water behind the raft. I found the water warm, for the hot sun of June had beat upon it all the long day. A chill wind had sprung up within the last hour, and the wavelets broke on my back and upon the raft at my chin with a little jabble of sound. But it blew upon the leaves of the branch which acted as a sail and sent us so quickly northward that I had to swim sideways in order to keep in the right line of our voyaging.

The moon rose as we left the shallows of the shore. She looked coldly and blankly at us over the black Parton moors on the other side. But all the same she did us a mighty ill turn. For I knew that in her light the raft would be apparent to every one on the bank where the soldiers lay.

I dived instantly and came up on the side furthest from the land. There I held the raft so that the branch would keep its thickest cover towards the sentry.

I could see him now, pacing to and fro in the moonlight across the grey turf and strip of white sand. He was plain to be seen against the shining beach, and his helmet sometimes flashed momentarily against the dark line of the woods behind. So that I knew how plainly he in his turn must be able to see us, as we crossed the broad silver stream of moonlight upon the water.

A camp fire glowed sullenly red among the trees, from which I gathered that the commander of the soldiers was very much in earnest indeed, in his resolve to catch his man. For it was but seldom that any of the red soldiers would consent to lie out at night, preferring instead to quarter themselves upon the people, to harry their houses and gear, insult their women folk, and requiring to be called “your Honour” at every other word.

Meanwhile, the wind was doing its work, if not swiftly, at least with deliberate and unhalting steadiness. Mary sat like a statue under the green bough, and smiled at the dancing ripples. She looked very beautiful to see, aye, and winsome too, with my shirt-collar turned up about her ears and the empty sleeves hanging down on either side.

But I had small time to observe such like, for soon we were crossing the bright water in front of the soldier.

He had paced down to the water’s edge and now stood looking out towards us, leaning upon his musket. I could see the tails of his military coat blow back in the chill wind from the hills. He hugged himself as if he had been a-cold. Yet he stood looking so long that I feared he might suspect something. But after all it was only that he was a contemplative man, and that the object on the water was as good as anything else to fix his eyes upon. At any rate, all he did see was a floating branch being driven northward with the wind.

Presently, to my immense relief, he shouldered his piece and tramped away up towards the woods.

I drew a long breath, and swimming on my back I pushed the raft across the lake with my head.

Yet it seemed an age before we took ground on the further side, and I could carry the brave little maid ashore. She dropped almost instantly asleep on my shoulder.

“Have you given Matt his supper?” was her last speech. I thought Matt must be some pet dog of her’s. In time, however, I found that he was a certain green caterpillar which she kept in a wooden box and fed upon cabbage leaves.

After this there came a long and weary tramp with many rests, and the infinite weariness of carrying the sleeping maid. She grew heavier and heavier every moment as I stumbled over the rough moor, so that my back was well nigh broken before I came to the verge of the little lake with the tower of Lochinvar in the midst of it.

Here, in the dawning light, I laid her down under a bush of bog-myrtle, and swimming to the castle hand over hand I clamoured at the door.

For a time none answered, and I got a sharp, chilling fear in my stomach that I had brought the maid to a house uninhabited, but at long and last a window shot up and a voice hailed me.

“Who knocks so early at the door of Lochinvar?

“Who are you that speers?” I returned, giving question for question in the Scots manner.

A kindly mellow voice laughed.

“Surely only an honest country lad would have answered thus,” said the voice; “but since the times are evil, tell me who’s bairn ye may be?”

So with that, somewhat reassured, I told very briefly for what cause I had come.

The window shut down again, and in a few minutes I heard a foot within coming slowly along a stone passage. Bolts withdrew, and the door was opened, creaking and squealing upon unaccustomed hinges.

A pleasant-faced old lady, wrapped about in a travelling cloak of blue frieze, stood there. She had a white nightcap on her head, frilled and goffered much more elaborately than my mother’s at Ardarroch.

“Ye have brought Sandy Gordon’s daughter to me. Her faither and her mother are taken, ye tell me. God help them!” she exclaimed.

So I told her that I knew not as to her father’s taking with any certainty, for he might have been slain for aught I knew. I told her also the terrible thing I had been witness to on the top of Bennan, and the word of the lad in brown when he cried for Margaret. She set her hand to her heart.

“Poor lads,” she said, and again, “poor misguided lads!”

I thought in my heart that that was a strange way to speak of the martyrs, but it was not for a boy like me to make any objection.

The woman undid the boat which swung by a chain at the northern side of the castle secure within a little breakwater of hewn stone. We rowed across to the loch’s edge, and there, in the first ruddy glow of the rising sun, with colour on her lips and her lashes lying long and dark upon her cheek, was the little Mistress Mary, safe under her bush of bog-myrtle, looking lovely as a fairy, aye, or the queen of the fairies herself.