Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea
Kenneth glanced towards Archie.
“He just looked,” he answered, “as Archie is looking now, as if waiting a chance to bolt.”
This was a very mischievous speech, but Kenneth could not refrain from saying what he thought.
“Poor boy?” said Jessie, as if she had been Archie’s mother; “he appears to be very frightened. What beautiful hair he has! It is just like mine.”
This was true, only Jesssie’s was longer and not bleached. Kenneth sat looking half wonderingly at Jessie, longer than politeness would dictate.
“What are you thinking about?” said Jessie.
“I was thinking,” said Kenneth, candidly, “I’d give all the world to be able to talk English in the pretty way you do.”
“Some day,” Jessie said to her governess, “we will go and see the sheep, Miss Gale. Remember that place. Put it down in your notes. We are to see a fairy knoll and a smugglers’ cave. It will be so delightful.”
“We go to London soon for the winter,” said Miss Gale, “but will come and see you, Kenneth, in spring or summer.”
“Miss Gale,” insisted the imperious Jessie, “I haven’t seen you use your tablets.”
So Miss Gale smilingly took her tablets out and noted the engagement to visit the sheep and see the fairy knoll.
“He has a flute,” said Archie, with sudden determination not to sit mute all the time; “make him play.”
And Kenneth had to play, just the same old melodies that the Scotch so dearly love; but as he played there came so sweet and sad an expression into English Jessie’s face, that Kenneth would have played for hours to please her.
When he had done, she went and looked at Miss Gale’s tablets.
“Thank you,” she said, “dear Miss Gale, but just under there write, ‘Flute.’”
So the word “Flute” was added. It was something for the child to think about while in London, a treat to look forward to, a long summer’s day to be spent among the heather, among the sheep, a fairy glen, a real fairy knoll, and dreamy music from a flute.
No sooner was Archie round the corner of the hedge and out of sight of the parson’s window, than he gave a wild whoop, like an Apache Indian, and ran off.
Kenneth came up with him before long. Not quite up with him, though, because Archie was high, high up in the sky, at an old magpie’s nest. The magpie was done with it, and Archie was tearing it down.
“The nasty old chick-chicking thing!” he explained to Kenneth; “for two years running she has used the same old nest, and it wasna hers to begin wi’, but a hoody-craw’s.”
Away went the boys together. They had a long day before them, and meant to make use of it. They were as happy as boys could be who could do as they pleased and go where they pleased, and had bread and cheese to eat when hungry.
Very practical naturalists were Kenneth and Archie. They knew nothing whatever of nomenclature, they could not have told you the Latin name of any of the hundred and one strange wild creatures they met every day in their wanderings over mountain and moorland, but about the habits of those creatures there was nothing they could not have told you.
They could have led you to the home of the red deer and moor-cock. They knew the tricks and the manners of every bird that built in hedgerow or furze bush, in thicket of spruce or pine-top or larch, in the hay or the heather or the growing corn, among sedges by the sides of lonely lochs or tarns, in banks or holes by the side of the stream, in hillock or stony cairn, or far up the mountain’s side almost at the snow line itself.
They knew every bird by its name (in Scotch), by its eggs, by its nest, either in shape or in lining, and they knew where to look for every nest.
Remember this, and I’m proud to mention it, these boys never destroyed a nest nor an egg.
They knew all about animals that couldn’t fly also, and oh! their name is legion. They knew or could pretty well guess, when they came across any of these, what the particular little animal, whether field-mouse, squirrel, polecat, or vole, was about, and what it was after, whether food for the young at home, or a warm bit of moss for extra comfort in the nest, or twigs, rushes, dry weeds, or hay for building purposes.
There was no deceiving Kenneth or Archie, nor Kooran and Shot, for the matter of that. But the wild creatures knew the boys, and often objected to have their nests examined, and even tried to deceive them.
For example, the hedgehog one evening in the gloaming was caught in the very act of hauling away an immensely long earthworm. The hoggie didn’t curl up, but sat down and made pretence to eat it. But Archie knew the nest was not far away.
The fox had a home in the middle of the pine wood and had young there, and do what she would, the old mother fox could not get the puppies to keep to the hole and lie in bed all day. They would come out and play and tumble in the clearing, in such a funny ridiculous way. Once Archie was coming up towards this clearing, and the puppies were all out, for father fox was from home looking after chickens, and as soon as mother fox carried one into the hole in her mouth and went back for another, it came laughing and frolicking out again. So half distracted the mother went slily to meet Archie, and pretended she was nearly dead, and went away in a different direction from the clearing, and dragged one leg behind her in a way that made Archie certain he could catch her. Of course when mother fox had Archie far enough away she disappeared. But Archie came back next night, and the same trick did not succeed again, so he found the puppy foxes and used to play with them for hours at a time in the clearing.
The lapwings have a trick in spring-time of pretending they have a broken wing when you go near the nest. They fall down in front of you, and pretend they can’t get away fast, and you run to catch them and forget all about the nest. This is a very clever trick, and has deceived many, but Archie used to shake his yellow hair and laugh at the lapwing.
“It is too thin,” Archie would say. “I’m not a town’s boy.”
And he would go straight away and find the nest, with the buff and black speckled eggs, on the top of the bare sunny hillock where in a hole – not worth the name of nest – lappie had laid them.
It was too late in the season now to look for birds’ nests, but they saw to-day a lot of old nests that they had not found the summer before, for the trees were now getting bare and thin in foliage.
When tired roaming about in the wilds, the two boys sat down and had dinner.
Then they crossed the wide moorland to Nancy’s lonely cottage.
Nancy was delighted to see them. She said they must be hungry. But the boys assured her that they were not, because they had had plenty of bread and cheese. But Nancy put down her knitting and warmed some heather ale for them, and sweetened it, and switched two new-laid eggs, and mixed those in it, and made the boys drink the harmless and delicious beverage.
Then she took up her knitting again, and click, click, clickety-click, went the wires the while she told them strange old-world stories and tales of fairies and kelpies.
The boys were entranced, and it was nearly dark when they left Nancy’s cottage and betook themselves to the glen. Kooran was very pleased to see them back, and helped them to fold the sheep; then the whole four – that is, Kenneth and Archie and Kooran and Shot – went up the fairy glen to the fairy knoll and the smugglers’ cave.
Kenneth lit the lamp; then he lit a fire out of doors and hung over a pot from a tripod, quite gipsy fashion.
Kenneth was a capital cook, and made a rabbit stew that a king might have eaten. So both boys supped royally, and the dogs had the bones.
Then the things were cleared away, and down lay Archie on the dais, to listen to Kenneth reading the “Tales of the Borders.”
On the whole, they had spent a most delightful day of it. But it was only one of many, for Saturday was Kenneth’s own day, and Archie was his constant companion.
And so the autumn wore away among these, peaceful glens. The days grew shorter and shorter, the frosts fell morning and night, and winds moaned through trees leafless and bare. The sheep were folded now in fields on the lower lands, and Kenneth had more time for his studies. But every evening found Archie and him in their cave in the fairy knoll.
Chapter Six
Kenneth
Scene: Glen Alva in a winter garb. A morning in December. A glorious morning and yet how great a change from the day before. For on the west coast of Scotland changes do come soon and sudden.
Last night, ere gloaming fell, Kenneth had stood at his mother’s cottage door for hours watching the sunset and the weird but splendid after-glow.
The sun had gone down rosy red and large behind a grey-blue bank of rock-and-tower clouds that bounded the horizon above the hills. But so strange and beautiful was the colour that soon spread over the firmament, with its tints of lavender, yellow, pink, and pale sea-green, that even Kenneth’s mother must hold up her hands and cry, —
“Oh! dear laddie, a sky like that, I fear, bodes no good to the glen.”
For uppermost in every one’s mind in Glen Alva, at the present time, was the threatened eviction.
Then, just one hour afterwards, the pink colour had disappeared from the sky, and the yellow had changed to one of the reddest, fieriest orange hues ever eyes had looked upon; while away farther round towards the north the sky was an ocean of darkest green. The trees, ashes and elms, that bordered a field adjoining the kail-yard, stood strangely out against this glow; every branchlet and twig seemed traced in ink – the blackest of the black.
Above this orange, or rather through its upper edge, where it went melting into the zenith’s blue, the stars glimmered green.
But looking earthward, all around the hills and fields were dark and bare, for winter had not yet donned her mantle of snow.
And now Kenneth has come out of doors almost before the sun is risen, for there are fowls to be fed, and rabbits and guinea-pigs, and the cow herself to be seen to, before he takes his own breakfast and starts to meet Dugald to enjoy a day among the hills.
What a change! The hoar frost has been falling gently all the livelong night. The good fairies seem to have been at work while others slept, changing the world to what he now sees it, and so silently too. And this is what strikes Kenneth as so wonderful: while shrub, and tree, and weeds, and grass, and heather, are transformed, as it were, into powdered ice, there is neither loss of shape nor form; not a branch bends down; not a leaf or twig is out of place. And the very commonest of objects, too, are turned to marvels of beauty.
The trees point heavenwards with fingers of coral. But to look lower down. Surely there could be no romance or beauty about a cabbage leaf. Glance at these then fringed all round with needles and spiculae inches long; the leaf itself is a shimmering green, dusted over with a frosty down. The wire-netting around the poultry run, and the cobwebs that depend from outhouse eaves, are shiny silver lace-work all. A glorious morning, a wondrous scene; why, even the humble clothes line is changed into a white and feathery cable, and the tufts of grass that grow on the pathways are tufts of grass no longer, but radiant bunches of snow-white feathers.
Adown the glen, where Kenneth wanders at last, everything around him is of the same magical beauty, a beauty that is increased tenfold when he reaches the woods. Here, too, all is silence, only the murmur of the rippling stream, or the peevish twitter of birds, or the complaining notes of a throstle as she flies outwards from a thicket, scattering the silvery powder all around her.
But down here in the wood, through the dazzling white of the pine trees, the cypresses, and spruces and holly, comes a shade, a shimmer of green, brighter among the pines themselves, darker among the ivy that clings to their stems. And the seed balls on the ivy itself are globes of feathery snow, and every spine on the holly leaves is a fairy plume.
Hark! the sound of ringing footsteps on frost-hard road, and a manly merry voice singing, —
“Cam’ ye by Athol, lad wi’ the philibeg,Down by the Tummel and banks o’ the Garry?Saw ye the lad wi’ his bonnet and white cockade,Leaving his mountains to follow Prince Charlie?”– And next moment, gun on shoulder, sturdy Dugald the keeper stalks round the corner.
“The top of the mornin’ to ye, man,” said Dugald. “Have you seen Archie?”
“No, not yet.”
But even as they spoke Archie, bare-headed as usual, is seen coming up from the side of the stream, with a string of beautiful mountain trout in his hand.
He climbed up through the icy ferns, leapt the fence, and stood before them.
“I set twenty lines last night,” he said, in joyful accents, “and caught thirteen trout.”
Back the trio went to Mrs McAlpine’s cottage, and those fish were fried for breakfast, with nut-brown tea, cream, and butter and cakes; and if there be anything in this world better for breakfast than mountain trout fresh from a stream, I trust some kind soul will send me a hamper of it.
What a day of it they had among the hills, to be sure!
Young as he was, Kenneth had a gun, while Archie did duty as ghillie; they went miles and miles away up among the mountains where the heather grew high as their waists – Kenneth’s waist and Dugald’s, I mean; it was often over Archie’s head. But they came out of this darkness at last, and shook the snow off their jackets and kilts, and walked on over the moorland.
Gorcocks stretched their red necks and stared at them in wonder. Ptarmigans, too cold to fly, ran and hid in the heather, the black cock and the grey hen often flew past them with a wild whirr-r-r, while far above, circling round and round in the blue sunny sky, was the bird of Jove himself.
But it was not the gorcock, nor black cock, nor the ptarmigan, nor the great golden eagle itself they were after, but the white or mountain hare.
And the sport was good. They took time to dine, though, for the air was bracing and keen; then they shot again till nearly sunset, and Kenneth’s cheek flushed redder than usual as Dugald praised him for his skill as a marksman. But at the same time Dugald praised himself indirectly, for he added, “But no thanks to you, lad; sure, haven’t you had Dugald McCrane himself to teach you this many a long day?”
Archie was wonderfully strong, but he couldn’t carry half the hares, so Dugald and Kenneth had to help him as well as carry their own and their guns, and even Shot carried a white hare all the way to the glen below.
“Of course,” said Kenneth, “you’ll come up the glen, Dugald, to our cottage, and let us show my mother our game; she will be so pleased.”
“’Deed, and I will, then,” replied Dugald, “and there will be a pair of hares for the old lady, too, and one for Nancy the witch – goodness be about us – for the laird wrote me to say if I killed more than a dozen and a half to-day, I was to do what I liked with the rest.”
“Dear old laird!” said Kenneth; “why doesn’t he come down from London and stay among his people? We all love him so much.”
“Ah! Kennie, he has ruined himself, like mony mair Highland lairds, by stoppin’ in the big city, and it’s myself that is sorry. But see, wha comes here?”
It was a tall stranger, dressed in knickerbockers, a broad-brimmed soft felt hat, and a surtout coat, a very ridiculous association of garments.
He carried a gun over his shoulder, and two beautiful Irish setters walked behind him. Both dogs were lame.
“Hullo, fellows!” he said. “Glad I’ve met some one at last. How far have I to walk to the little inn at the klakkin?”
Dugald threw down his game-bag, so did the others their burdens. No one was sorry to rest a bit, so they leant against the dyke and quietly surveyed the stranger. Meanwhile Shot was standing defiantly in front of the setters.
Shot wanted to know if either of these dogs would oblige him by fighting, singly or the two at once. But they did not seem inclined to accept the challenge.
“My good fellow,” said the stranger, “when you have stared sufficiently to satisfy you, perhaps you will be good enough to answer my question.”
“Well,” said Dugald, “I’m staring because it’s astonished I am.”
“You’d be more astonished if you knew who I am. But never mind. I’ve been travelling all day among these tiresome hills and only managed to kill one brown hare. I was told at the inn that the white hares were in hundreds.”
“Very likely,” said Dugald, “but it’s no’ in the glen you’ll find them.
“You’re two miles from the clachan,” continued Dugald. “I’m McGregor’s keeper – his chief keeper. I’ll trouble you, sir, to show your permit.”
“You’re a saucy fellow. I’m the future owner of these glens and all the estate, and lord of Castle Alva.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. You’re neither lord nor laird yet. Your permit, please. I believe nobody since two students poached all over the hills here and called themselves friends of the laird’s.”
“As to my permit, fellow, I did not trouble to bring it from C – .”
“Then you’ll consider yourself my prisoner till you can produce it.”
The stranger was a man about forty-five, tall and wiry and haughty. He looked at Dugald up and down for a moment.
“Dare you, fellow?” he shouted.
Dugald quietly laid down his gun and threw off his jacket. He then took off his scarf, and stretched it out in front of the stranger. It measured fully a yard and a half.
“I’ve tied the hands and feet of a poacher before,” he said, “a bigger man than you. And I mean to do my duty by you.”
“Dugald,” said Kenneth, “this gentleman may really be what he says.”
“Let him come quietly, then,” replied Dugald. “No stranger that ever walked will lead Dugald McCrane into trouble again. Is it going to surrender you are, sir? Consider while I count ten. One – two – three – ”
“Enough, enough. I’m your prisoner, fellow. It is very ridiculous. Perhaps you’ll live to rue this day. Come on with me to the inn.”
Dugald laughed.
“Not just yet,” he answered; “it’s the other way; you come with me.”
The stranger bit his lip and frowned.
Then he put his hand in his pocket and produced a gold piece.
“This is yours,” he said, “if you come at once.”
Fire seemed to flash from Dugald’s eyes. He clenched his fists convulsively, and looked for a moment as if he meant to spring at the stranger’s neck.
“Put up your bawbees,” he said at length. “If Highlanders are poor, they are also proud, and the gold isn’t dug yet that would tempt Dugald McCrane to neglect his duty. And if the auld laird himsel’ was standing there, he’d tell you it’s the truth I’m speaking. Right about face, my man, and march with us to the glen-head, or it may be the worse for you.”
The stranger gave a sigh and a sickly kind of smile, but he shouldered his gun and prepared to follow.
“One minute,” said Dugald, for Kenneth had beckoned him aside.
Kenneth and he conversed for a moment; then Dugald returned.
“You look tired,” he said, shortly; “we’ll go your road. Archie,” he continued, “pick the ice-balls from the feet of those twa poor dogs. Your dogs, sir, are but little used to our Hielan’ hills.”
“And indeed, my fine fellow,” replied the stranger, “am but little used to your Highland manners, but grateful to you, young sir,” – he was addressing Kenneth – “for saving me a longer journey than needful.”
In half an hour’s time the future laird of Alva, for it was no other, found himself a prisoner at the little inn of the clachan. This for a night; next day he produced a letter from McGregor himself – he had despatched a messenger to C – for it – which quite satisfied Dugald McCrane.
Dugald was satisfied of something else as well, namely, that he had done his duty without exceeding it.
Kenneth and Dugald visited Nancy Dobbell’s next day and told her the story.
“Och! och!” she said, “it will be a sore day for the folks of the clachan, when a stranger steps into the shoes of poor auld Laird McGregor.
“But a cloud is rising o’er the hills, my laddies; there will be little more peace in Glen Alva. A cloud is rising o’er the hills, and that cloud will burst, and wreck and ruin will fall on the poor people. My dreams have told me this many and many a day since. Heigho! but Nancy’s time is wearin’ through. She’ll never live to see it.”
Kenneth took the old thin hand that lay in her lap in both his, and looked into her face, while the tears gathered in his eyes.
He was going to say something. But he did not dare trust himself to speak. He simply petted the poor wrinkled hand.
Is Campbell the poet right, I wonder?
“Does the sunset of life give us mystical lore?Do coming events cast their shadows before?”Chapter Seven
The Death of Poor Nancy
“I’m wearin’ awa’, Jean,Like snaw-wreaths in thaw, Jean;I’m wearin’ awa’To the Land o’ the Leal.”Old Song.Scene: Kenneth at home in his mother’s humble cot. A fire of peats and wood burning on the low hearth. Kenneth’s mother reading the good Book with spectacles on her eyes. Kenneth leading also at the other side of the fire. Above the mantelpiece a black iron oil lamp is burning, with old-fashioned wicks made from peeled and dried rushes. Between the pair, his head on his paws, Kooran is lying. He is asleep, and probably dreaming of the sheep that he cannot get to enter the “fauld,” for he is emitting little sharp cheeping barks, as dogs often do when they dream.
Kenneth gets up at last and reaches down his plaid and crook.
“Dear laddie,” says his mother, “you’re surely not going out to-night!”
Kooran jumps up and shakes himself.
“Yes, mother; I must,” is the quiet reply. “I had a strange dream about poor Nancy last night. She has been ill, you know, and I haven’t called for three days.”
“But in such a night, laddie! Listen to the wind! Hear how the snow and the hail are beating on the window!”
Kenneth did listen.
It was indeed a fearful night.
The wind was sighing and crying through every cranny of the window, and shaking the sash; it was howling round the chimney, and wailing through the keyhole of the door.
Snow was sifting in underneath the door, too, and lying along the floor like a stripe of light.
Kenneth drew his plaid closer round him.
“I must go, mother,” he said; “I could not sleep to-night if I didn’t.
“Don’t be uneasy about me even if I don’t return till morning. I may stay all night at Dugald’s.”
When Kenneth opened the door he was almost driven back with the force of the wind, and almost suffocated with the soft, powdery, drifting snow. But he closed the door quickly after him and marched boldly on down the glen, rolling the end of his plaid about his neck, and at times having even to breathe through a single fold of it to prevent suffocation.
It was now well on in January. There had been but little snow all the winter, but this storm came on sharp and sudden. All day gigantic masses of cloud had been driving hurriedly over the sky on the wings of an easterly wind; the ground was as hard as adamant, and towards sunset the snow had begun to fall. But it took no time to settle on the bare ground; it was blown on and heaped wherever there was a bit of shelter from the fierce east wind. So it lay under the hedges and dykes, and on the lee-side of trees, and deep down in the ravines, and under banks and rocks, and across the road here and there in rifts like frozen waves of the ocean.
The wind howled terribly across the moorland. There was a moon, but it gave little light.
Kooran knew, however, where his master was going, and went feathering on in front, stopping now and then to turn round and give a little sharp encouraging bark to his sturdy young master.
Kenneth was all aglow when he reached Nancy’s hut, and his face wet and hot. His hair and the fringes of the plaid and even his eyebrows were covered with ice.
He shook the plaid and his bonnet, and folded the former under the porch for Kooran to lie on. Then he opened the latch and entered.
All was dark. Not a blink of fire was on the hearth, and long white lines across the floor showed him where the snow had been sifting in through the holes that did duty as windows. Kenneth’s heart suddenly felt as cold and heavy as lead.
“Nancy,” he cried, “Nancy, oh! Nancy.”
