Lochinvar: A Novel

He greeted Keppoch courteously but without great cordiality, glanced his eye once over Jack Scarlett, and seemed to take his quality in a moment – gravely saluting the good soldier of any rank and all ranks. Then he looked about him slowly.

"Why, Lochinvar!" he cried, astonished, "what wind hath blown you here – not recruiting for the Prince of Orange, I hope, nor yet trying to cut my favor with Keppoch?"

"Nay," said Wat, "but, if an outlaw and an exile may, ready as ever to fight to the death for King James."

"Why, well said," answered my Lord Dundee, smiling, "yet, if I remember rightly, I think you owed his Majesty not so much favor."

"In the matter of the Privy Council and my Lord Wellwood?" said Wat, shrugging his shoulders. "As to that, I took my risks like another. And if I had to pay the piper – why, it was at least no one but myself who called the tune."

"Not my lady – my late Lady Wellwood, I mean?" said Dundee, glancing at him with the pale ghost of mirthfulness on his face.

Wat shook his head.

"Of my own choice I took the barred road, and wherefore should I complain that I had to settle the lawing when I came to the toll-gates? But at least I am glad that you bear me no grudge, my lord," said Wat, "for doubtless, after all, it was a matter of the king's justice."

"Grudge!" cried one of those who were with the viscount, "it had been a God's blessing if you had stood your weapon a hand-breadth out on the other side of his Grace of Wellwood when you were about it."

Whereupon, with no further word, Dundee and Keppoch retired to confer apart; and that night, when the viscount rode away from the house, his three followers had become four. For Wat Gordon rode by his side as in old days on the braes of Garryhorn before any of these things befell. But Jack Scarlett abode still with Keppoch and Lochiell to help them to bring their clansmen into the field.

CHAPTER XLV

KILLIEKRANKIE

The July morning wakened broad and fair. The swifts circled in widening sweeps about the castle of Blair. Wat Gordon slept in the hall, wrapped in his plaid – a gift from Keppoch. The McDonald lay that night with his own men out on the lea, but many of the younger chiefs of Dundee's levy, McLean of Duart and Donald of Sleat, were also encamped round the hall.

It was after four of the clock when a hand touched Wat's shoulder. He looked up alert on the instant with the trained wakefulness of the soldier. His eyes met those of the Lord Dundee, who, without a word, strode slowly up the stairs.

Wat rose and followed his general, making his toilet with a single shake of the plaid over his shoulder. Presently they stood together on the battlements, where Dundee leaned his elbow on the highest part of the wall and looked to the east. The sun was just rising between Ben-y-Gloe and Ben-y-Vrackie.

Dundee stood a long time looking round him before he spoke. Wat kept in the background, standing modestly by the edge of the tiles, where they went crow-stepping up to the rigging. He dared not intrude upon the thoughts or plans of his commander.

At last Dundee pointed with his hand, sweeping it over the sward beneath, which was black with Highlanders, all squadded according to their clans. Most of them still lay in their plaids, scattered broadcast as if they had been slain on the field of battle, with their claymores held in their arms as a mother holds a favorite child. But here and there a few early foragers were already busy gathering birch and dwarf oak to build the morning camp-fires, while down by the river, where the lowland cavalry were picketed, many blue columns of smoke arose.

"A bonny sight!" said the general, slowly. "Aye, a bonny sight! Three thousand men that are men, and not a feared heart nor an unwilling blade among them. And yet," he added, a little sadly, "if I were away, all that would break and vanish like yon white cloud crawling on the shoulder of Ben Vrackie."

He pointed to where the morning mist was trailing itself in quickly dissolving wreaths and vanishing wisps over the mountain.

"Aye, like the mist they came, and like the mist they will go – if I be not here the morrow's morn to lead them. Lochiell is wise indeed. He would command us all with skill and fortitude. But then, how Glen Garry and Keppoch would cock their bonnets at that! Sandy McLean there might hold the clansmen and take them to Edinburgh, yet Sandy is not chief even of his own clan, but an apple-cheeked lad, who thinks only of taking the eyes of maidens. Grown babes all of them – yet men whom I have welded into a weapon of strength to fight the king's warfare."

"Think you the enemy will attack us this day?" said Wat, with the deference of a young soldier to an elder, whose favor, though great, may not be presumed upon.

"They will come, indeed," said the general, "but it is we that shall attack. I would it had been a day or two later. For the Western men are not come in, and Lochiell hath not yet half his tail behind him. Nevertheless, 'twill serve. Mackay I mind of old – in the Dutch provinces – a good drill-sergeant that fights by the book; but a brave man – yes, a very brave man."

For as an unquestioned beauty is the first to acknowledge beauty in others, so John Graham could readily allow courage to his opponents.

Yet this morning a constant melancholy seemed to overspread the beautiful countenance that had been the desire of women, the fear or adoration of men. In his converse with Lochinvar not a trace remained of that haughtiness which had so often distinguished his dealings with other men, nor yet of that relentlessness which he himself had so often mistaken for the firmness of military necessity.

Wat's bosom swelled within him as he looked on that host of plaided men. He seemed to see Scotland swept to the Solway, and the king coming home in triumph to his own again. The old tower of Lochinvar rose up before him. He thought proudly of building up again the broken-down walls, and for his love's sake setting the lordship of Lochinvar once more among its peers. It would be passing sweet to walk with her by the hill-side and look down upon their home, with the banner once again floating at the staff, and the hum of serving-men about it.

"It is indeed a most noble sight!" he cried, in rapture.

Dundee glanced at him, and marked the heightened color of the lad with kindly, tolerant favor. He thought he spoke of the mustered clans.

"Aye, glorious – truly," said he. "But build not on sand. Ere ten days be past, if these lads of the mist find not plunder, Clan Ronald will be off to spoil Clan Cameron, and Keppoch, the Wild Cat, will be at the throat of Clan Mackintosh. I have welded me a weapon which, tempered to the turning of a steel blade this morning, may be but a handful of sand when the wind blows off the sea by to-morrow at this time."

He stood silent a while, and his face grew fixed and stern as when he gave orders in battle.

"To-day I draw sword for a king that dared not draw sword for himself – for a house that has ever used its mistresses well and its soldiers ill. Let us make no mistake. You and I, Wat, go out this day on a great venture, and on our heads it is. We have a true soldier to fight. For you and I have seen William of Orange, and in this the day of our distress we shall have no help from our friends, save these three hundred Irish kerns with their bent pikes and their bows and arrows, no better than bairns that shoot crows among the corn."

He shrugged his shoulders and lifted his graceful body erect.

"So be it! After all, it is not my business. Enough for me that I do the king's will and walk straightly among so many that go crookedly. To-night I will end it if I can, and drive the Dutchman to his own place. But if not – why, then, it shall end me. I know, I know," he went on, quickly, as if Walter had reminded him of something, "I have a wife and a bairn down there. I am a man as other men. I would fain see Jean Cochrane, clad in white, passing here and there among the walks of the garden, gathering flowers, and the youngling toddling about her feet – were it but for once, before this night I bid the war-pipes blow at the setting of the sun."

He turned towards the lands of the south where he had earned much hatred and deadly fear.

"It may be, as they say, that I have ridden overharshly on the king's service, and trodden on some whom I might have lifted with my hand. But, God wot, it was ever the king's service and not mine own! I ever judged it better that there should be a little timeous bloodletting than that a whole people should perish. But now I see that the king and I were not wise. For a war that stirs up folk's religion never comes to an end. And, for all the good I did, I might just as well never have set foot in Galloway or the south. But enough; 'tis over now, and there remains – three thousand claymores and an empty title! Well, we shall find out to-day whether kings are indeed anointed, as they say. Ah, Wat, the sun is high, the light broad and fair on Athol braes. But ere it fades, you and I may find out many things that priest and presbyter could not unriddle to us."

He made as if to descend from the castle wall, but took a second thought.

"Bid the bugle sound!" he ordered, quickly changing his tone. "Invite the chiefs to a council. Send Dunfermline to me – and go yourself and get some breakfast."

* * * * *

It was almost at the way-going of the day. The sons of the mist crouched low among the heather and watched the Saxon soldiers struggling up through the dark and narrow glen. King William's men were weary and sore driven, for they had been there under the sun's fierce assault since noon that day.

So near were the clansmen to their foes that they could distinguish the uniform and accoutrement of each regiment as it straggled slowly out under the eyes of the general and formed on the little green shelf overhanging the deep cleft of the Garry.

Wat stood with Dundee upon the crest of the hill above. The general had fallen silent, but a look of eager expectancy lit his face.

"I have them," he said, low, to himself; "it is coming right. We shall balance accounts with the Dutchman ere it be dark."

To him came Keppoch, pale to the lips with rage.

"This is no war, my lord-general," he said, "they are through the pass and you hold us here in check! Why, with the rocks of the hill-side my single clan could have annihilated them – swept them in heaps into the black pools of the Garry."

My Lord Dundee smiled a tolerant smile, as a mother might at the ignorance of a wayward, fretful child.

"Bide ye, Keppoch," he said, kindly, "ye shall have your fill of that work – but we must not make two mouthfuls of this Orange. Our advantage is great enough. We shall meet them on plain field, and, ere we be done with them, ye shall walk across the Garry upon their dead bodies, bootless and in dry socks, if it please you."

Presently the Lowland army had dribbled itself completely out of the pass and stood ranked, regiment by regiment, awaiting the onset. Mackay had done all that skill and silence could do in such a desperate case, for the men of the mountains had all the choice of the ground and of the time for attack.

Clan by clan Dundee set his men on the hill crests, solidly phalanxed, but with wide gaps between the divisions – a noble array of great names and mighty chiefs – McLean, Clan Ranald, Clan Cameron, Glengarry, Stewarts of Athol and Appin, men of the king's name from east and west. Well might Dundee have forgotten his melancholy mood of the morning.

The sun touched the western hills, halved itself, and sank like a swiftly dying flame. The blue shadows strode eastward with a rush. The gray mist began to fill the deep glen of the Garry.

"Ready!" cried the general.

The war-pipes blared. The plaided men gave a shout that drowned the pibrochs, and the clans were ready for the charge.