John Splendid | Page 2

quay-head not lean over the gun'les of their skiffs and say, "There goes
young Elrigmore from Colleging, well-knit in troth, and a pretty lad"? I
could hear (all in my daydream in yon place of dingy benches) the old
women about the well at the town Cross say, "Oh laochain! thou art
come back from the Galldach, and Glascow College; what a thousand
curious things thou must know, and what wisdom thou must have, but
never a change on thine affability to the old and to the poor!" But it was
not till I had run away from Glascow College, and shut the boards for
good and all, as I thought, on my humane letters and history, and gone
with cousin Gavin to the German wars in Mackay's Corps of true
Highlanders, that I added a manlier thought to my thinking of the day
when I should come home to my native place. I've seen me in the camp
at night, dog-wearied after stoury marching on their cursed foreign
roads, keeping my eyes open and the sleep at an arm's-length, that I
might think of Shira Glen. Whatever they may say of me or mine, they
can never deny but I had the right fond heart for my own countryside,
and I have fought men for speaking of its pride and poverty--their
ignorance, their folly!--for what did they ken of the Highland spirit? I
would be lying in the lap of the night, and my Ferrara sword rolled in
my plaid as a pillow for my head, fancying myself--all those long wars
over, march, siege, and sack--riding on a good horse down the pass of
Aora and through the arches into the old town. Then, it was not the

fishermen or the old women I thought of, but the girls, and the winking
stars above me were their eyes, glinting merrily and kindly on a stout
young gentleman soldier with jack and morion, sword at haunch, spur
at heel, and a name for bravado never a home-biding laird in our parish
had, burgh or landward. I would sit on my horse so, the chest well out,
the back curved, the knees straight, one gauntlet off to let my white
hand wave a salute when needed, and none of all the pretty ones would
be able to say Elrigmore thought another one the sweetest Oh! I tell
you we learnt many arts in the Lowland wars, more than they teach
Master of Art in the old biggin' in the Hie Street of Glascow.
One day, at a place called Nordlingen near the Mid Franken, binding a
wound Gavin got in the sword-arm, I said, "What's your wish at this
moment, cousin?"
He looked at me with a melting eye, and the flush hove to his face.
"'Fore God, Colin," said he, "I would give my twelve months' wage to
stand below the lintel of my mother's door and hear her say 'Darling
scamp!'"
"If you had your wish, Gavin, when and how would you go into
Inneraora town after those weary years away?"
"Man, I've made that up long syne," said he, and the tear was at his
cheek. "Let me go into it cannily at night-fall from the Cromalt end,
when the boys and girls were dancing on the green to the pipes at the
end of a harvest-day. Them in a reel, with none of the abulziements of
war about me, but a plain civil lad like the rest, I would join in the
strathspey and kiss two or three of the girls ere ever they jaloused a
stranger was among them."
Poor Gavin, good Gavin! he came home no way at all to his mother and
his mountains; but here was I, with some of his wish for my fortune,
riding cannily into Inneraora town in the dark.
It is wonderful how travel, even in a marching company of cavaliers of
fortune, gives scope to the mind. When I set foot, twelve years before

this night I speak of, on the gabert that carried me down to Dunbarton
on my way to the Humanities classes, I could have sworn I was leaving
a burgh most large and wonderful. The town houses of old Stonefield,
Craignish, Craignure, Asknish, and the other cadets of Clan Campbell,
had such a strong and genteel look; the windows, all but a very few,
had glass in every lozen, every shutter had a hole to let in the morning
light, and each door had its little ford of stones running across the
gutter that sped down the street, smelling fishily a bit, on its way to the
shore. For me, in those days, each close that pierced the tall lands was
as wide and high as a mountain eas, the street itself seemed broad and
substantial,