Foes

Foes, by Mary Johnston

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Title: Foes
Author: Mary Johnston

Release Date: August 20, 2005 [eBook #16554]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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* * * * * * *
Books by

Mary Johnston
Foes Sir Mortimer
Harper & Brothers, New York [Established 1817]
* * * * * * *
FOES
A Novel
by
MARY JOHNSTON
Author of "To Have and to Hold" "Audrey" "Lewis Rand" "Sir
Mortimer" "The Long Roll"
Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London
1918

[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
Said Mother Binning: "Whiles I spin and whiles I dream. A bonny day
like this I look."
English Strickland, tutor at Glenfernie House, looked, too, at the
feathery glen, vivid in June sunshine. The ash-tree before Mother
Binning's cot overhung a pool of the little river. Below, the water
brawled and leaped from ledge to ledge, but here at the head of the glen
it ran smooth and still. A rose-bush grew by the door and a hen and her
chicks crossed in the sun. English Strickland, who had been fishing, sat
on the door-stone and talked to Mother Binning, sitting within with her

wheel beside her.
"What is it, Mother, to have the second sight?"
"It's to see behind the here and now. Why're ye asking?"
"I wish I could buy it or slave for it!" said Strickland. "Over and over
again I really need to see behind the here and now!"
"Aye. It's needed mair really than folk think. It's no' to be had by
buying nor slaving. How are the laird and the leddy?"
"Why, well. Tell me," said Strickland, "some of the things you've seen
with second sight."
"It taks inner ears for inner things."
"How do you know I haven't them?"
"Maybe 'tis so. Ye're liked well enough."
Mother Binning looked at the dappling water and the June trees and the
bright blue sky. It was a day to loosen tongue.
"I'll tell you ane thing I saw. It's mair than twenty years since James
Stewart, that was son of him who fled, wad get Scotland and England
again intil his hand. So the laddie came frae overseas, and made stir and
trouble enough, I tell ye!... Now I'll show you what I saw, I that was a
young woman then, and washing my wean's claes in the water there.
The month was September, and the year seventeen fifteen. Mind you,
nane hereabouts knew yet of thae goings-on!... I sat back on my heels,
with Jock's sark in my hand, and a lav'rock was singing, and whiles I
listened the pool grew still. And first it was blue glass under blue sky,
and I sat caught. And then it was curled cloud or milk, and then it was
nae color at all. And then I saw, and 'twas as though what I saw was
around me. There was a town nane like Glenfernie, and a country of
mountains, and a water no' like this one. There pressed a thrang of folk,
and they were Hieland men and Lowland men, but mair Hieland than

Lowland, and there were chiefs and chieftains and Lowland lords, and
there were pipers. I heard naught, but it was as though bright shadows
were around me. There was a height like a Good People's mount, and a
braw fine-clad lord speaking and reading frae a paper, and by him a
surpliced man to gie a prayer, and there was a banner pole, and it went
up high, and it had a gowd ball atop. The braw lord stopped speaking,
and all the Hielandmen and Lowlandmen drew and held up and
brandished their claymores and swords. The flash ran around like the
levin. I kenned that they shouted, all thae gay shadows! I saw the
pipers' cheeks fill with wind, and the bags of the pipes fill. Then ane
drew on a fine silken rope, and up the pole there went a braw silken
banner, and it sailed out in the wind. And there was mair shouting and
brandishing. But what think ye might next befall? That gowden ball,
gowden like the sun before it drops, that topped the pole, it fell! I
marked it fall, and the heads dodge, and it rolled upon the ground....
And then all went out like a candle that you blaw upon. I was kneeling
by