Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters Part 34

"I have but one sister," replied the dragoon, "and there's not a gooder girl in England, nor a lady in it that has the bloom of Sally Windsor."

"Ye're braw folk, you Englishers, and ye're happy folk, whilk is far better," said the landlord, presenting the second gla.s.s, which Jack drank off at once, and returned to the mistress, signifying with his hand that he wanted no more; upon which she retired with the gardivine, while the landlord continued, "it's weel for you in the south yonder, Jack, that your prelates do not hara.s.s honest folk."

"We have no prelates in England, thank G.o.d," said the dragoon; "we wouldn't have 'em; our parsons are other sort o' things."

"I thought ye had an host o' bishops, Jack," said the landlord.

"True, and good fellows some on 'em are; but though prelates be bishops, bishops ain't prelates, which makes a difference."

"And a blessed difference it is; for how would ye like to hear of your father's house being burnt and him in prison, and your bonny innocent sister?--Eh! is nae that Ecclesfield's foot clampering wi' his spurs at the door?"

The dragoon listened again, and looked thoughtful for a little time, and turned his eyes hastily towards the corner where we were sitting.

The landlord eyed him anxiously.

"Yes," cried the poor fellow, starting from his seat, and striking his closed right hand sharply into his left; "yes, I ought and I will;"

adding calmly to the landlord, "confound Ecclesfield, where the devil is he gone? I'll go see;" and he instantly went out.

The moment he had left the kitchen the landlord rose and said to us, "Flee, flee, and quit this dangerous town!"

Whereupon we rose hastily, and my son lifting the Bible, which he had laid in the darkness of the corner, we instanter left the house, and, notwithstanding the speed that was in our steps as we hurried up the street, I had a glimpse of the compa.s.sionate soldier standing at the corner of the house when we ran by.

Thus, in a very extraordinary manner, was the dreadful woe that had befallen me and mine most wonderfully made a mean, through the conscience of Ecclesfield, to effectuate our escape.

CHAPTER LXXVIII

On leaving the public we went straight to the place where our blades and belts lay, and took them up, and proceeded in an easterly direction. But I soon found that I was no longer the man I had once been; suffering and the fever of my frenzy had impaired my strength, and the weight of four-and-fifty years was on my back; so that I began to weary for a place of rest for the night, and I looked often around to discover the star of any window; but all was dark, and the bleak easterly wind searched my very bones; even my son, whose st.u.r.dy health and youthy blood made him abler to thole the night air, complained of the nipping cold.

Many a time yet, when I remember that night, do I think with wonder and reverence of our condition. An infirm, grey-haired man, with a deranged head and a broken heart, going forth amidst the winter's wind, with a little boy, not pa.s.sing thirteen years of age, to pull down from his throne the guarded King of three mighty kingdoms,--and we did it,--such was the doom of avenging justice, and such the pleasure of Heaven. But let me proceed to rehea.r.s.e the trials I was required to undergo before the accomplishment of that high predestination.

Weary, as I have said, very cold and disconsolate, we walked hirpling together for some time; at last we heard the rumbling of wheels before us, and my son running forward came back and told me it was a carrier. I hastened on, and with a great satisfaction found it was Robin Brown, the Ayr and Kilmarnock carrier. I had known him well for many years, and surely it was a providential thing that we met him in our distress, for he was the brother of a G.o.dly man, on whose head, while his family were around him, Claverhouse, with his own b.l.o.o.d.y hands, placed the glorious diadem of martyrdom.

He had been told what had befallen me and mine, and was greatly amazed to hear my voice, and that I was again come to myself; and he helped both my son and me into the cart; and, as he walked by the wheel, he told me of many things which had happened during my eclipse, and of the dreadful executions at Edinburgh, of the prisoners taken at Airsmoss, and how that papist James Stuart, Duke of York, the King's brother, was placed at the head of the Scottish councils, and was then rioting in the delights of cruelty, with the use of the torture and the thumbikins upon prisoners suspected, or accused of being honest to their vows and their religious profession. But my mind was unsettled, and his tale of calamity pa.s.sed over it like the east wind that blew that night so freezingly, cruel to the sense at the time, but of which the morrow showed no memorial.

I said nothing to Robin Brown of what my intent was, but that I was on my way to join the Cameronians, if I knew where they might be found; and he informed me, that after the raid of Airsmoss they had scattered themselves into the South Country, where, as Claverhouse had the chief command, the number of their friends was likely to be daily increased, by the natural issue of his cruelties, and that vindictive exasperation, which was a pa.s.sion and an affection of his mind for the discomfiture he had met with at Drumclog.

"But," said the worthy man, "I hope, Ringan Gilhaize, ye'll yet consider the step before ye tak it. Ye're no at this time in a condition o'

health to warsle wi' hards.h.i.+p, and your laddie there's owre young to be o' ony fek in the way o' war; for, ye ken, the Cameronians hae declar't war against the King, and, being few and far apart, they're hunted down in a' places."

"If I canna fight wi' men," replied my brave stripling, "I can help my father; but I'm no fear't. David was but a herd laddie, maybe nae aulder nor bigger than me, when he fell't the muckle Philistine wi' a stane."

I made no answer myself to Robin Brown's remonstrance, because my resolution was girded as it were with a gir of bra.s.s and adamant, and, therefore, to reason more or farther concerning aught but of the means to achieve my purpose, was a thing I could not abide. Only I said to him, that being weary, and not in my wonted health, I would try to compose myself to sleep, and he would waken me when he thought fit, for that I would not go with him to Glasgow, but shape our way towards the South Country. So I stretched myself out, and my dear son laid himself at my back, and the worthy man happing us with his plaid, we soon fell asleep.

When the cart stopped at the Kingswell, where Robin was in the usage of halting half an hour, he awoke us; and there being no strangers in the house we alighted, and going in, warmed ourselves at the fire.

Out of a compa.s.sion for me the mistress warmed and spiced a pint of ale; but instead of doing me any good, I had not long partaken of the same when I experienced a great coldness and a trembling in my limbs, in so much that I felt myself very ill, and prayed the kind woman to allow me to lie down in a bed; which she consented to do in a most charitable manner, causing her husband, who was a covenanted man, as I afterwards found, to rise out of his, and give me their own.

The cold and the tremblings were but the symptoms and beginnings of a sore malady, which soon rose to such a head that Robin Brown taiglet more than two hours for me; but still I grew worse and worse, and could not be removed for many days. On the fifth I was brought so nigh unto the gates of death that my son, who never left the bed-stock, thought at one time I had been released from my troubles. But I was reserved for the task that the Lord had in store for me, and from that time I began to recover; and nothing could exceed the tenderness wherewith I was treated by those Samaritan Christians, the landlord and his wife of the public at Kingswell. This distemper, however, left a great imbecility of body behind it; and I wondered whether it could be of providence to prevent me from going forward with my avenging purpose against Charles Stuart and his counsellors.

Being one day in this frame of dubiety, lying in the bed, and my son sitting at my pillow, I said to him, "Get THE BOOK and open, and read,"

which he accordingly did; and the first verse that he cast his eye upon was the twenty-fourth of the seventh chapter of Isaiah, "With arrows and with bows shall men come."

"Stop" said I, "and go to the window and see who are coming;" but when he went thither and looked out he could see no one far nor near. Yet still I heard the tramp of many feet, and I said to him, "a.s.suredly, Joseph, there are many persons coming towards this house, and I think they are not men of war, for their steps are loose, and they march not in the order of battle."

This I have thought was a wonderful sharpness of hearing with which I was for a season then gifted; for soon after a crowd of persons were discovered coming over the moor towards the house, and it proved to be Mr Cargill, with about some sixty of the Cameronians, who had been hunted from out their hiding-places in the south.

CHAPTER LXXIX

It is surely a most strange matter, that whenever I come to think and to write of the events of that period, and of my sickness at Kingswell, my thoughts relapse into infirmity, and all which then pa.s.sed move, as it were, before me in mist, disorderly and fantastical. But wherefore need I thus descant of my own estate, when so many things of the highest concernment are pressing upon my tablets for registration? Be it therefore enough that I mention here how much I was refreshed by the prayers of Mr Cargill, who was brought into my sick-chamber, where he wrestled with great efficacy for my recovery; and that after he had made an end, I felt so much strengthened that I caused myself to be raised from my bed and placed in a chair at the open window, that I might see the men who had been heartened from on high by the sense of their sufferings, to proclaim war against the man-sworn King, our common foe.

They were scattered before the house, to the number of more than fifty, some sitting on stones, others stretched on the heather, and a few walking about by themselves, ruminating on mournful fancies. Their appearance was a thought wild and raised,--their beards had not been shaven for many a day,--their apparel was also much rent, and they had all endured great misfortunes in their families and substance. Their homes had been made desolate; some had seen their sons put to death, and not a few the ruin of their innocent daughters and the virtuous wives of their bosoms,--all by the fruit of laws and edicts which had issued from the councils of Charles Stuart, and were enforced by men drunken with the authority of his arbitrary will.

But though my spirit clove to theirs, and was in unison with their intent, I could not but doubt of so poor a handful of forlorn men, though it be written, that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, and I called to my son to bring me the Book, that I might be instructed from the Word what I ought at that time to do; and when he had done so I opened it, and the twenty-second chapter of Genesis met my eye, and I was awed and trembled, and my heart was melted with sadness and an agonising grief. For the command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac his only son, whom he so loved, on the mountains in the land of Moriah, required of me to part with my son, and to send him with the Cameronians; and I prayed with a weeping spirit and the imploring silence of a parent's heart, that the Lord would be pleased not to put my faith to so great a trial.

I took the Book again, and I opened it a second time, and the command of the sacred oracle was presented to me in the fifth verse of the fifth chapter of Ecclesiastes,--

"Better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou shouldest vow and not pay."

But still the man and the father were powerful with my soul; and the weakness of disease was in me, and I called my son towards me, and I bowed my head upon his hands as he stood before me, and wept very bitterly, and pressed him to my bosom, and was loath to send him away.

He knew not what caused the struggle wherewith he saw me so moved, and he became touched with fear lest my reason was again going from me. But I dried my eyes, and told him it was not so, and that maybe I would be better if I could compose myself to read a chapter. So I again opened the volume, and the third command was in the twenty-sixth verse of the eight chapter of St Matthew,--

"Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?"

But still notwithstanding my rebellious heart would not consent;--and I cried, "I am a poor, infirm, desolate, and dest.i.tute man, and he is all that is left me. O that mine eyes were closed in death, and that this head, which sorrow and care and much misery have made untimely grey, were laid on its cold pillow, and the green curtain of the still kirk yard were drawn around me in my last long sleep."

Then again the softness of a mother's fondness came upon my heart, and I grasped the wondering stripling's hands in mine, and shook them, saying, "But it must be so. It is the Lord's will; thrice has he commanded, and I dare not rebel thrice."

"What has He commanded, father?" said the boy, "what is His will? for ye ken it maun be done."

"Read," said I, "the twenty-second chapter of Genesis."

"I ken't, father; it's about Abraham and wee Isaac; but though ye tak me into the land of Moriah, and up to the top of the hill, maybe a ram will be catched by the horns in a whin-bush for the burnt-offering, and ye'll no hae ony need to kill me."

At that moment Mr Cargill came again into the room to bid me farewell; but seeing my son standing with a tear of simplicity in his eye, and me in the weakness of my infirm estate weeping upon his hands, he stopped and inquired what then had so moved us; whereupon I looked towards him and said,--

"When I was taken with the malady that has thus changed the man in me to more than the gentleness of woman, ye ken, as I have already told you, we were bowne to seek your folk out and to fight on your side. But when I beheld your dejected and much-persecuted host, a doubt came to me, that surely it could not be that the Lord intended through them to bring about the deliverance of the land; and under this doubt as to what I should now do, and my limbs being moreover still in the fetters of sickness, I consulted the oracle of G.o.d."

"And what has been the answer?"

"It has instructed me to send my son with you. But O, it is a terrible probation."