Master of Ballantrae | Page 7

the Master.
"We shall live to repent of this," says Mr. Henry, and flung out of the
hall.
As for Miss Alison, she caught up that piece of gold which had just
sent her lover to the wars, and flung it clean through the family shield
in the great painted window.
"If you loved me as well as I love you, you would have stayed," cried
she.
"'I could not love you, dear, so well, loved I not honour more,'" sang
the Master.
"Oh!" she cried, "you have no heart - I hope you may be killed!" and
she ran from the room, and in tears, to her own chamber.
It seems the Master turned to my lord with his most comical manner,
and says he, "This looks like a devil of a wife."
"I think you are a devil of a son to me," cried his father, "you that have

always been the favourite, to my shame be it spoken. Never a good
hour have I gotten of you, since you were born; no, never one good
hour," and repeated it again the third time. Whether it was the Master's
levity, or his insubordination, or Mr. Henry's word about the favourite
son, that had so much disturbed my lord, I do not know; but I incline to
think it was the last, for I have it by all accounts that Mr. Henry was
more made up to from that hour.
Altogether it was in pretty ill blood with his family that the Master rode
to the North; which was the more sorrowful for others to remember
when it seemed too late. By fear and favour he had scraped together
near upon a dozen men, principally tenants' sons; they were all pretty
full when they set forth, and rode up the hill by the old abbey, roaring
and singing, the white cockade in every hat. It was a desperate venture
for so small a company to cross the most of Scotland unsupported; and
(what made folk think so the more) even as that poor dozen was
clattering up the hill, a great ship of the king's navy, that could have
brought them under with a single boat, lay with her broad ensign
streaming in the bay. The next afternoon, having given the Master a fair
start, it was Mr. Henry's turn; and he rode off, all by himself, to offer
his sword and carry letters from his father to King George's
Government. Miss Alison was shut in her room, and did little but weep,
till both were gone; only she stitched the cockade upon the Master's hat,
and (as John Paul told me) it was wetted with tears when he carried it
down to him.
In all that followed, Mr. Henry and my old lord were true to their
bargain. That ever they accomplished anything is more than I could
learn; and that they were anyway strong on the king's side, more than
believe. But they kept the letter of loyalty, corresponded with my Lord
President, sat still at home, and had little or no commerce with the
Master while that business lasted. Nor was he, on his side, more
communicative. Miss Alison, indeed, was always sending him
expresses, but I do not know if she had many answers. Macconochie
rode for her once, and found the highlanders before Carlisle, and the
Master riding by the Prince's side in high favour; he took the letter (so
Macconochie tells), opened it, glanced it through with a mouth like a
man whistling, and stuck it in his belt, whence, on his horse passageing,
it fell unregarded to the ground. It was Macconochie who picked it up;

and he still kept it, and indeed I have seen it in his hands. News came to
Durrisdeer of course, by the common report, as it goes travelling
through a country, a thing always wonderful to me. By that means the
family learned more of the Master's favour with the Prince, and the
ground it was said to stand on: for by a strange condescension in a man
so proud - only that he was a man still more ambitious - he was said to
have crept into notability by truckling to the Irish. Sir Thomas Sullivan,
Colonel Burke and the rest, were his daily comrades, by which course
he withdrew himself from his own country-folk. All the small intrigues
he had a hand in fomenting; thwarted my Lord George upon a thousand
points; was always for the advice that seemed palatable to the Prince,
no matter if it was good or bad; and seems upon the whole (like the
gambler he was all through life) to have had less regard to the chances
of the campaign than to the greatness of favour he might aspire to, if,