Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters Part 33

and further, I did approve of those pa.s.sages wherein it was declared, that he "should have been denuded of being king, ruler, or magistrate, or having any power to act or to be obeyed as such:" as also, "we being under the standard of our Lord Jesus Christ, Captain of Salvation, do declare a war with such a tyrant and usurper, and all the men of his practices, as enemies to our Lord."

Accordingly, on hearing that the excommunicated and suffering society of the Cameronians were so near, I resolved, on receiving the soldier's information, and on account of that recited clause of the Sanquhar declaration, to league myself with them, and to fight in their avenging battles; for, like me, they had endured irremediable wrongs, injustice, and oppressions, from the persecutors, and for that cause had, like me, abjured the doomed and papistical race of the tyrannical Stuarts. With my son, therefore, I went toward Kilmarnock, in the hope and with the intent expressed; and though the road was five long miles, and though I had not spoken more to him all day, nor for days, and weeks, and months before, than I have set down herein, we yet continued to travel in silence.

The night was bleak, and the wind easterly, but the road was dry, and my thoughts were eager; and we hastened onward, and reached the widow's door, without the interchange of a word in all the way.

"Wha do ye want?" said my son, "for naebody hae lived here since the death of aunty."

I was smote upon the heart, by these few words, as it were with a stone; for it had not come into my mind to think of inquiring how long the eclipse of my reason had lasted, nor of what had happened among our friends in the interim. This shock, however, had a salutary effect in staying the haste which was still in my thoughts, and I conversed with my son more collectedly than I could have done before it, and he told me of many things very doleful to hear, but I was thankful to learn that the end of my brother's widow had been in peace, and not caused by any of those grievous unchances which darkened the latter days of so many of the pious in that epoch of the great displeasure.

But the disappointment of finding that Death had barred her door against us, made it needful to seek a resting-place in some public, and as it was not prudent to carry our blades and hilts into any such place of promiscuous resort, we went up the town, and hid them by the star-light in a field at a d.y.k.e-side, and then returning as wayfarers, we entered a public, and bespoke a bed for the night.

While we were sitting in that house by the kitchen fire, I bethought me of the Bible which my son had in his hand, and told him that it would do us good if he would read a chapter; but just as he was beginning, the mistress said,--

"Sirs, dinna expose yoursels; for wha kens but the enemy may come in upon you. It's an unco thing now-a-days to be seen reading the Bible in a change-house."

So, being thus admonished, I bade my son put away the Book, and we retired from the fireside and sat by oursels in the shadow of a corner; and well it was for us that we did so, and a providential thing that the worthy woman had been moved to give us the admonition; for we were not many minutes within the mirk and obscurity into which we had removed, when two dragoons, who had been skirring the country, like blood-hounds, in pursuit of Mr Cargill, came in and sat themselves down by the fire.

Being sorely tired with their day's hard riding, they were wroth and blasphemous against all the Covenanters for the trouble they gave them; and I thought when I heard them venting their bitterness, that they spoke as with the voice of the persecutors that were the true cause of the grievances whereof they complained; for no doubt it was a hateful thing to persons dressed in authority not to get their own way, yet I could not but wonder how it never came into the minds of such persons that if they had not trodden upon the worm it would never have turned.

As for the Cameronians they were at war with the house of Stuart, and having disowned King Charles, it was a thing to be looked for, that all of his sect and side would be their consistent enemies. So I was none troubled by what the soldiers said of them, but my spirit was chafed into the quick to hear the remorselessness of their enmity against all the Covenanters and presbyterians, respecting whom they swore with the hoa.r.s.eness of revenge, wis.h.i.+ng in such a frightful manner the whole of us in the depths of perdition, that I could no longer hear them without rebuking their cruel hatred and most foul impiety.

CHAPTER LXXVII

"What gars you, young man," said I to the fiercest of the two dragoons, an Englisher, "what gars you in that dreadful manner hate and blaspheme honest men, who would, if they were permitted, dwell in peace with all mankind?"

"Permitted!" cried he, turning round and placing his chair between me and the door, "and who does not permit them? Let them seek the way to heaven according to law, and no one will trouble them."

"The law, I'm thinking," replied I very mildly, "is mair likely to direct them to another place."

"Here's a fellow," cried the soldier, riotously laughing to his companion, "that calls the King's proclamation the devil's finger-post.

I say, friend, come a little nearer the light. Is your name Cargill?"

"No," replied I; and the light of the fire then happening to s.h.i.+ne bright in his face, my son laid his trembling hand on mine, and whispered to me with a faltering tongue,--

"O! it's one of the villains that burnt our house, and--"

What more he added I know not, for at the word I leapt from my seat, and rushed upon the soldier. His companion flew in between us; but the moment that the criminal saw my son, who also sprung forward, he uttered a fearful howl of horror, and darted out of the house.

The other soldier was surprised, but collected; and shutting the door, to prevent us from pursuing or escaping, said,--

"What the devil's this?"

"That's my father," said my son boldly, "Ringan Gilhaize of Quharist."

The dragoon looked at me for a moment, with concern in his countenance, and then replied, "I have heard of your name but I was not of the party.

It was a d.a.m.ned black job. But sit down, Ecclesfield will not be back.

He has ever since of a night been afraid of ghosts, and he's off as if he had seen one. So don't disturb yourself, but be cool."

I made no answer, nor could I; but I returned and sat down in the corner where we had been sitting, and my son, at the same time, took his place beside me, laying his hand on mine: and I heard his heart beating, but he too said not a word.

It happened that none of the people belonging to the house were present at the uproar; but hearing the noise, the mistress and the gudeman came rus.h.i.+ng ben. The soldier, who still stood calmly with his back to the door, nodded to them to come towards him, which they did, and he began to tell them something in a whisper. The landlord held up his hands and shook his head, and the mistress cried, with tears in her eyes, "No wonder! no wonder!"

"Had ye no better gang out and see for Ecclesfield?" said the landlord, with a significant look to the soldier.

The young man cast his eyes down, and seemed thoughtful.

"I may be blamed," said he.

"Gang but the house, gudewife, and bring the gardivine," resumed the gudeman; and I saw him touch her on the arm, and she immediately went again into the room whence they had issued. "Come into the fire, Jack Windsor, and sit down," continued he; and the soldier, with some reluctance, quitted the door, and took his seat between me and it, where Ecclesfield had been sitting.

"Ye ken, Jack," he resumed when they were seated, "that unless there are two of you present, ye canna put any man to the test, so that every body who has not been tested is free to go wheresoever it pleasures himsel."

The dragoon looked compa.s.sionately towards me; and the mistress coming in at the time with a case-bottle under her arm, and a green Dutch dram-gla.s.s in her hand, she filled it with brandy, and gave it to her husband.

"Here's to you, Jack Windsor," said the landlord, as he put the gla.s.s to his lips, "and I wish a' the English in England were as orderly and good-hearted as yoursel, Jack Windsor."

He then held the gla.s.s to the mistress, and she made it a lippy.

"Hae, Jack," said the landlord, "I'm sure, after your hard travail the day, ye'll no be the waur o' a dram."

"Curse the liquor," exclaimed the dragoon, "I'm not to be bribed by a dram."

"Nay," cried the landlord, "Gude forbid that I should be a briber,"

still holding the gla.s.s towards the soldier, who sat in a thoughtful posture, plainly swithering.

"That fellow Ecclesfield," said he, as it were to himself, "the game's up with him in this world."

"And in the next too, Jack Windsor, if he does na repent," replied the landlord; and the dragoon put forth his hand, and, taking the gla.s.s, drank off the brandy.

"It's a d.a.m.ned hard service this here in Scotland," said Windsor, holding the empty gla.s.s in his hand.

"'Deed is't, Jack," said the landlord, "and it canna be a pleasant thing to a warm-hearted lad like you, Jack Windsor, to be ravaging poor country folk, only because they hae gotten a bee in their bonnets about prelacy."

"d.a.m.n prelacy, says I," exclaimed the dragoon.

"Whisht, whisht, Jack," said the landlord; "but when a man's sae scomfisht as ye maun be the night after your skirring, a word o'

vexation canna be a great faut. Gudewife, fill Jack's gla.s.s again. Ye'll be a' the better o't, Jack;" and he took the gla.s.s from the dragoon's hand and held it to his wife, who again filled it to the flowing eye.

"I should think," said the dragoon, "that Ecclesfield cannot be far off.

He ought not to have run away till we had tested the strangers."

"Ah! Jack Windsor," replied the landlord, holding out the gla.s.s to him, "that's easy for you, an honest lad wi' a clear conscience, to say, but think o' what Ecclesfield was art and part in. Ye may thank your stars, Jack, that ye hae ne'er been guilty o' the foul things that he's wyted wi'. Are your father and mother living, Jack Windsor?"

"I hope so," said the dragoon; "but the old man was a little so so when I last heard of 'em."

"Aye, Jack," replied the landlord, "auld folks are failing subjects. Ye hae some brothers and sisters nae doubt? They maun be weel-looked an they're ony thing like you, Jack."