Salute to Adventurers | Page 8

dizzy head, and horses trampling around me, I had a
glimpse of Muckle John with a pistol at his nose, and the sorrel
curveting and plunging in a panic. Then I bethought myself of saving
my bones, and crawled out of the mellay behind the sheepfold.
Presently I realized that this was the salvation I had been seeking. Gib
was being pinioned, and two of the riders were speaking with the girl.
The women hung together like hens in a storm, while the dragoons laid
about them with the flat of their swords. There was one poor creature
came running my way, and after her followed on foot a long fellow,
who made clutches at her hair. He caught her with ease, and proceeded
to bind her hands with great brutality.
"Ye beldame," he said, with many oaths, "I'll pare your talons for ye."
Now I, who a minute before had been in danger from this very crew,
was smitten with a sudden compunction. Except for Muckle John, they

were so pitifully feeble, a pack of humble, elderly folk, worn out with
fasting and marching and ill weather. I had been sickened by their crazy
devotions, but I was more sickened by this man's barbarity. It was the
woman, too, who had given me food the night before.
So I stepped out, and bade the man release her.
He was a huge, sunburned ruffian, and for answer aimed a clour at my
head. "Take that, my mannie," he said. "I'll learn ye to follow the
petticoats."
His scorn put me into a fury, in which anger at his brutishness and the
presence of the girl on the sorrel moved my pride to a piece of naked
folly. I flew at his throat, and since I had stood on a little eminence, the
force of my assault toppled him over. My victory lasted scarcely a
minute. He flung me from him like a feather, then picked me up and
laid on to me with the flat of his sword.
"Ye thrawn jackanapes," he cried, as he beat me. "Ye'll pay dear for
playing your pranks wi' John Donald."
I was a child in his mighty grasp, besides having no breath left in me to
resist. He tied my hands and legs, haled me to his horse, and flung me
sack-like over the crupper. There was no more shamefaced lad in the
world than me at that moment, for coming out of the din I heard a girl's
light laughter.
CHAPTER III.
THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH.
"Never daunton youth" was, I remember, a saying of my grandmother's;
but it was the most dauntoned youth in Scotland that now jogged over
the moor to the Edinburgh highroad. I had a swimming head, and a
hard crupper to grate my ribs at every movement, and my captor would
shift me about with as little gentleness as if I had been a bag of oats for
his horse's feed. But it was the ignominy of the business that kept me
on the brink of tears. First, I was believed to be one of the maniac

company of the Sweet-Singers, whom my soul abhorred; item, I had
been worsted by a trooper with shameful ease, so that my manhood
cried out against me. Lastly, I had cut the sorriest figure in the eyes of
that proud girl. For a moment I had been bold, and fancied myself her
saviour, but all I had got by it was her mocking laughter.
They took us down from the hill to the highroad a little north of Linton
village, where I was dumped on the ground, my legs untied, and my
hands strapped to a stirrup leather. The women were given a country
cart to ride in, and the men, including Muckle John, had to run each by
a trooper's leg. The girl on the sorrel had gone, and so had the maid
Janet, for I could not see her among the dishevelled wretches in the cart.
The thought of that girl filled me with bitter animosity. She must have
known that I was none of Gib's company, for had I not risked my life at
the muzzle of his pistol? I had taken her part as bravely as I knew how,
but she had left me to be dragged to Edinburgh without a word. Women
had never come much my way, but I had a boy's distrust of the sex; and
as I plodded along the highroad, with every now and then a cuff from a
trooper's fist to cheer me, I had hard thoughts of their heartlessness.
We were a pitiful company as, in the bright autumn sun, we came in by
the village of Liberton, to where the reek of Edinburgh rose straight
into the windless weather. The women