John Splendid | Page 4

shutter, hanging ajee on one hinge, was thrown open
against the harled wall of the house. In my doublet-pocket there were
some carabeen bullets, and taking one out, I let bang at the old woman's
little lozens. There was a splinter of glass, and I waited to see if any one
should come out to find who had done the damage. My trick was in
vain; no one came. Old Kate, as I found next day, was dead since
Martinmas, and her house was empty.
Still the moaning sound came from the town-head, and I went slowly
riding in its direction. It grew clearer and yet uncannier as I sped on,
and mixed with the sough of it I could hear at last the clink of chains.
"What in God's name have I here?" said I to myself, turning round Islay
Campbell's corner, and yonder was my answer!
The town gibbets were throng indeed! Two corpses swung in the wind,
like net bows on a drying-pole, going from side to side, making the
woeful sough and clink of chains, and the dunt I had heard when the
wind dropped.
I grued more at the sound of the soughing than at the sight of the
hanged fellows, for I've seen the Fell Sergeant in too many ugly
fashions to be much put about at a hanging match. But it was such a
poor home-coming! It told me as plain as could be, what I had heard
rumours of in the low country, riding round from the port of Leith, that
the land was uneasy, and that pit and gallows were bye-ordinar busy at
the gates of our castle. When I left for my last session at Glascow
College, the countryside was quiet as a village green, never a raider nor
a reiver in the land, and so poor the Doomster's trade (Black George)
that he took to the shoeing of horses.
"There must be something wicked in the times, and cheatery rampant
indeed," I thought, "when the common gibbet of Inneraora has a
drunkard's convoy on either hand to prop it up."

But it was no time for meditation. Through the rags of plaiding on the
chains went the wind again so eerily that I bound to be off, and I put
my horse to it, bye the town-head and up the two miles to Glen Shira. I
was sore and galled sitting on the saddle; my weariness hung at the
back of my legs and shoulders like an ague, and there was never a man
in this world came home to his native place so eager for taking supper
and sleep as young Elrigmore.
What I expected at my father's door I am not going to set down here. I
went from it a fool, with not one grace about me but the love of my
good mother, and the punishment I had for my hot and foolish cantrip
was many a wae night on foreign fields, vexed to the core for the sore
heart I had left at home.
My mind, for all my weariness, was full of many things, and shame
above all, as I made for my father's house. The horse had never seen
Glen Shira, but it smelt the comfort of the stable and whinnied
cheerfully as I pulled up at the gate. There was but one window to the
gable-end of Elrigmore, and it was something of a surprise to me to
find a light in it, for our people were not overly rich in these days, and
candle or cruisie was wont to be doused at bedtime. More was my
surprise when, leading my horse round to the front, feeling my way in
the dark by memory, I found the oak door open and my father, dressed,
standing in the light of it.
A young sgalag came running to the reins, and handing them to him, I
stepped into the light of the door, my bonnet in my hand.
"Step in, sir, caird or gentleman," said my father--looking more bent at
the shoulder than twelve years before.
I went under the door-lintel, and stood a little abashed before him.
"Colin! Colin!" he cried in the Gaelic "Did I not ken it was you?" and
he put his two hands on my shoulders.
"It is Colin sure enough, father dear," I said, slipping readily enough
into the mother tongue they did their best to get out of me at Glascow

College. "Is he welcome in this door?" and the weariness weighed me
down at the hip and bowed my very legs.
He gripped me tight at the elbows, and looked me hungrily in the face.
"If you had a murdered man's head in your oxter, Colin," said he, "you
were still my son. Colin, Colin! come ben