The Yeoman Adventurer
I should think, you looked stone-dead. Then you just opened your eyes, but
closed them before I dared speak, and lay so at least another hour. You
have given me such a fright, sir, that, now you are up and about again,
I'm beginning to feel I have a grievance against you."
"I'm sorry, madam," said I, very soberly.
"Now you're laughing at me, sir," was the brisk reply.
The word made me shiver. "Laughing"--over Jack's body! Margaret was in
her stride back to her mistress-ship again yet her eye changed instantly
with her mood when she saw me wince. Indeed, her mind flashed after my
mind like a hawk after a pigeon, but I dodged the trouble by looking
casually around to examine our whereabouts.
We were following a track down a dip in an open moorland. Across the
shallow valley, and climbing the slope ahead of us, was another small body
of Highlanders, whom I took to be our scouting party. The sun was a dim
blob in the sky, and I saw from its position that our direction was
easterly. A joyous hail from behind made me spin round, whereupon I saw
the Colonel on Sultan and the young Chief on the sorrel turning the brow
behind us. It took them a few minutes to trot down to us, and before they
reached us four more wild warriors, our rear-guard apparently, came in
view. One of them was my son of Anak, astride Margaret's mare, and so
looking more gigantesque than ever.
"Good morning, commander!" was the Colonel's greeting. "Slids! But I'm
glad to see you on your feet again. How's the head?"
"It still bumbles a bit," said I, "but, truth to tell, I'm thinking more
of my breakfast than my head. I'm as empty as a drum."
"It's a guid prognostick to feel hungry after sic a crack o' the head,"
said the chieftain, smiling, and I thought with a twinge what a handsome,
wholesome sight he made.
"I'm another drum," said the Colonel, "but deuce take me, Oliver, if I
know how we're to be filled. Madge would have us start off with you at
once, quite rightly too, and we'd neither bite nor sup before we took the
road."
"And where were you taking me?" cried I.
"To the doctor's," explained the Colonel. "There's one in a village
tucked away somewhere among these hills, and we've a lad on ahead to guide
us. Colonel Ker, who commands the Highlanders who rescued us, gave us our
friend here, Captain Maclachlan in the Prince's army, and a great
chieftain among his own people"--here the chief and I bowed to one another--"and
a dozen or so of his stout men as an escort. Two plaids were knitted
into a litter, a log of a man named Wheatman was bundled into it, and off
we started breakfastless, as I said before."
"I'm very grateful to you, Mistress Margaret," said I.
"Don't be silly!" she answered very sharply. "It is no praise to tell me
I acted with common decency. And you weren't bundled in!"
"I was not praising you, madam," I retorted, quick as ever to return like
for like. "I was thanking you, and I venture, with respect, to thank you
again."
"Bother old Bloggs!" she said, suddenly all of a glow.
"Bloggs? Who's Bloggs?" asked the Colonel, plainly enjoying the fun.
"A rascally schoolmaster," she explained, "who flogged Oliver into a
precision of speech which I find most trying. But I must not miscall the
dear old man, for I stole his supper."
"I wish he'd flogged him into precision on a staircase," said the
Colonel. "Damme, I am hungry."
"I'm thinking there'll be a dub of water in the bottom yonder," said the
chieftain, "and Mistress Waynflete shall, if she will, take her first meal
Highland fashion."
As I firmly declined to be carried another yard, the Highlanders unmade
my litter and resumed their plaids. In the trough of the valley we found a
streamlet of clear sweet water, and our repast consisted of a handful of
oatmeal, of which every clansman carried a supply in a linen bag, stirred
in a horn of water. It was not our Staffordshire notion of a breakfast,
but it was better than nothing.
"Water-brose is a guid enough thing at a pinch," said Maclachlan to
Margaret, "guid enough to take a big loon like yon Donald to London and
back."
Donald, it appeared, liked an addition to it, notwithstanding his chief's
praise of it, for he was taking a long pull from a leather bottle. This,
he explained, was usquebaugh, "ta watter of life," and the spice of poetry
in the description tempted the Colonel and me to try a dram. The Colonel
probably had had worse drink in his time, but even he made no comment. I
would almost as lief have had a blank charge fired into my mouth.
While we all took our brose, and Maclachlan squired Margaret, the Colonel
told me how it had happened that the Highlanders chanced to come to our
rescue in the very nick of time. My own trouble is to get my tale straight
and simple, and I have no intention of making a hard task harder by trying
to interweave with the threads of my own story a poor history of these
important days. Mr. Volunteer Ray saw much more of these things than ever
I did, and the curious reader may turn to his fat, little, brown volume
for particulars. He was on the other side, and is too partial for a
perfect historiographer, but the account of things is there, and
reasonably well done too. But as what happened to Margaret, the Colonel,
and me, happened because of the campaign of the rival armies, I must boil
down what the Colonel told me if I am to make my tale clear. The Colonel,
to his credit, as I think, was so enthusiastic over all matters military
that he was rather long-winded in his account, and, in like fashion with
our housewifely Kate, it behoves me, so to speak, to make a jar of jelly
out of a pan of fruit, which is easier done with crab-apples than words.
According to the Colonel, one of the master maxims of the military art
is, "Find out what the enemy thinks you are going to do, and then don't do
it." My Lord George Murray, the Prince's chief adviser in military
matters, had acted on this plan, and had given the go-by to the Duke of
Cumberland in grand style. At Macclesfield, the traveller to London had
choice of two high roads, one through Leek and Derby, and the other
through Congleton and Stafford. Leaving the Prince at Macclesfield with
the bulk of his men, Murray had pushed with a big force as far as
Congleton on the Stafford road, and the news of his advance had made
Cumberland withdraw all his northerly outposts to his head-quarters at
Stone. It was the last body of horse, routed out of Congleton, which we
had watched from the pines last night, racing in fear and disorder back to
the main of their army. Before daybreak Murray had sent on a force of
Highlanders under Colonel Ker towards Newcastle, to maintain the illusion
that the Stafford road was the one the Prince would take, and the vanguard
of this force, under Maclachlan, had saved us at the "Red Bull." Murray
himself was marching from Congleton across country to Leek, while the
Prince was marching thither also from Macclesfield. Murray would be there
first, and did not mean to wait for the Prince, but to push on as far as
possible towards Derby. We, too, were bound for Leek, where we should be
safe at last, and the end of the Colonel's explanation came, not because
he had said all he could have said, but because Donald was yelling to the
clansmen in preparation for our retaking the road.
Maclachlan accepted with alacrity an offer I made to go ahead and join
our advance. He ordered Donald to accompany me, giving as his reason: "For
he kens the English fine when the spirit of understanding is on him, and
ye'll easy get it on him by raxing him a crack in the wame, same as ye did
back yonder at the yill-house."
The Highlander maintained the expression of a wooden doll throughout this
explanation, but, as I leaped hard after him across the brook, I overtook
a grin on his face that promised well for my future entertainment.
"She pe recovert," he said. "Tat was a foine shump."
Before I could reply Margaret was upon us.
"The mare is quite frisky. She thinks me a mere _fardello_ after
Donald. You're sure you're all right, Oliver?"
"So near right, madam, that I beg you not to worry about me further,"
said I.
"Worry about you or worry you?"
It hurt me to have her go so chilly all of a sudden, but I replied
frankly, "Both. It does indeed worry me to have you breakfastless in these
wilds through my doings."
"Yes," she said, smiling down on me, "I ken fine the distinction between
water-brose and ham and eggs."
"We are still in Staffordshire," I said cheerily, "and I'll go ahead and
see what I can do for you. Now, Donald, your best foot first!"
He and I started ahead again, leaving her waiting for the rest of the
party, detained by some explanation on the Colonel's part of the military
aspects of the lie of the land.
"There's a wheen foine leddies wi' ta Prince, Got bless him," said
Donald, "but when yon carline gets amangst 'em she'll pe like a muircock
amangst a thrang o' craws. She'll ding 'em a'."
I expected that Donald would cherish ill will to me for my blow, but in
this I was wrong. So far from bearing me a grudge, he quite obviously
liked me for it. He had a fist, or nief, as he called it, nearly as big as
a leg of lamb, and almost the first thing he did when we were alone was to
hold it out, huge, dirty, and hairy, and put it alongside mine. He
scratched his rough head in his perplexity.
"At Gladsmuir," he said, "'er nainsell did take ten Southron loons wi'
'er own hant, wi' nobody to help 'er, an' now one callant had dinged 'er
clean senseless wi' nothin' but a bairn's nief."
"It wasn't clean fighting, Donald," said I. "Nothing but a sort of trick.
If you were to hit me fair and square I should snap in two like a carrot.
Tell me how you captured the ten men!"
It was a longish story, at any rate as he told it, in quaint uncertain
English, intermixed with spates of his own Gaelic as he got excited over
the account of his prowess. One of them was an officer, and Donald
finished up by ferreting out of his meal-bag a magnificent gold watch,
lawful prize from his point of view, taken out of the officer's fob.
"Ta tam t'ing was alife when I raxed 'er out of 'is poke," he said, "but
'er went dead sune after. She can 'ave 'er for a shillin'."
He had no idea, nor could I make him understand, what it was and what
purpose it served. When it had run down for want of winding, to his simple
mind it had 'died.' He pushed it into my hand as indifferently as if it
had been a turnip, and I promised to pay him at Leek, for my pockets were
empty again and Margaret had the bag.
"'Er nainsell wad rather 'ave a new pair o' progues," said he. "And what
for does anybody want a thing tat goes dead to tell ta time wi'? T'ere's
ta sun and ta stars, tat never go dead."
As we walked rapidly we overtook our party soon after settling the matter
of the watch. The plough-lad who had been pressed as guide told me we were
near the road to Leek, and I let him return. We dropped down to a rough
road running our way, and a mile or so along it the roofs of a village
came in sight, and we halted till the main body came up.
"What is it, Oliver?" asked the Colonel.
"Breakfast, sir," said I.
We marched into the village in military array. At our head strode Donald,
stout of heart and mighty of hand, with two pipers skirling away at his
heels, and the clansmen stepping it out bravely two abreast behind them.
Margaret came next, with me at her mare's head, and the Colonel and
Maclachlan brought up the rear.
Our arrival created as much stir as an earthquake. The Highlanders, in
twos and threes, swarmed into the houses and ordered their unwilling hosts
to prepare them a meal. That it was war I was engaged in was, for the