CHAPTER XIX.
AN OLD SOLDIER'S STORY.
"If he was of Leven's," said the lieutenant.
"I told him your honour was."
"Then," said he, "I served three campaigns with him in
Flanders."—Tristram Shandy.
A last glance at his old friends before we go in pursuit of Quentin.
"I fear me," said the quartermaster, shaking his old yellow wig, which still survived, and letting a long stream of tobacco smoke escape from his mouth, as he and the dominie lingered over their toddy-jugs one evening in "the snuggery," "I fear me much that the Master's London debts and liabilities are more than his father, worthy man, reckons on, and that Rohallion, wood and haugh, hill and glen, main and farm-town, will all be made ducks and drakes of within a week after the old Lord is carried through the haunted gate and up the kirk loan yonder."
"Wae is me that I should hear this," said the dominie, sadly.
"I speak in confidence, dominie," said the quartermaster, laying his "yard of clay" lightly on the other's arm, and lowering his voice.
"Of course—of course. But how different hath the Master's life been from his father's! Wasting his patrimony among London bucks and bullies—among parasites and flatterers, even as Timon of Athens wasted his substance, till he was driven to seek sustenance by digging for the poorest roots of the earth."
"Our old Lord has ever acted wisely, dominie; when not on active service, he has ever been resident on his ain auld patrimonial property—wisely so, I say, for it beseems not that the great names of the land should die out of the memory of those who inhabit it; d—n all absentees, say I!"
And as the quartermaster buried his red nose in his toddy-jug, the concluding anathema became an indistinct mumble.
"Bankruptcy and disgrace are before the Master, I fear," he resumed with a sigh, as he snuffed the long candles, which were placed in square-footed holders of carved mahogany, mounted with silver rings on the stems; "war may save him for a time, but only if he leaves the Guards."
"War, say ye?"
"Yes—for if he owed sums that surpassed the national debt, his creditors could never touch him while under orders for foreign service."
"But at his home-coming?"
"Ay, there's the rub, dominie. A fine story it would be to have the Master of Rohallion—he, the heir of a line that never was disgraced—ever stainless and true—arrested by a dog of a bailiff—arrested, perhaps, at the head of his regiment, it might be after fighting the battles of his country! Zounds, dominie, it would be enough to make all the old oaks in Rohallion wood drop their leaves and die, as if a curse had come upon the land! It would break his father's heart, and, much as I love the family, I would rather that Cosmo was killed in action, than that he had to endure such disgrace, or that after facing the French, as I know he will do bravely (for there never came a coward of the Crawford line), he had to flee ignobly to Holyrood, and become an abbey laird, that he might snap his fingers at the laws of both Scotland and England, until, perhaps, he got the lands of Ardgour."
The dominie was truly grieved to hear such things, for he had all the old Scottish patriarchal love of the family, under whom his forefathers—stout men-at-arms in their time, had been trusted dependents, through long dark ages of war and tumult; so he drew a long sigh, took a deep draught from his toddy jug, and asked in a low voice—
"If aught were to happen unto the Master, how would the title go?"
"I scarcely ken, dominie; by the death of Ranulph Crawford in a foreign land, it would probably fall to some far-awa cousin, after the lands had been frittered among disputants in the Court of Session, and the auld patent that King James signed on a kettle-drum head, had been hacked to rags by a Committee of Privileges. Confound the law, say I, wi' a' my heart! However, the old Lord, Heaven bless him! is a hale man and strong yet, so let us not anticipate evils, which are sufficient for their own day."
"Four weeks—a whole month to-night, John, since we last saw Quentin," said the dominie, to change the subject.
"Poor Quentin!"
"As a bairn how bonnie he was—yea, beautiful as Absalom!"
The quartermaster sighed with impatience, it might be with a little air of disappointment, as he pushed his toddy-jug aside, and proceeded energetically to refill the bowl of his pipe. Why, thought he, has Quentin never written to me, according to his promise?
It was September now. The bearded grain that had been yellowing on the long corn-rigs of Rohallion was already gathered in; the harvest-kirn or home had been held in the great barn of the Home Farm, and the tawny stubbles gave the bared land a sterile aspect, till they disappeared as the plough turned up the shining furrows, where the black ravens flapped their wings, and the hoodie-crows sought for worms. The leaves were becoming brown and yellow as sienna tints spread over the copsewood, and the sound of the axe was heard at times, for now the husbandman looked forward to the closing year, and remembered the rhyming injunction:—
"Ere winter preventeth, while weather is good,
For galling of pasture get home with thy wood;
And carry out gravel to fill up a hole,
Both timber and furzen, the turf and the coal."
"Four weeks—ay, it is September now," said the quartermaster.
"And I fear me the lad will return no more."
"Say not so, dominie; he may come upon us when we least expect him."
"It may be, for, of a verity, life is full of strange coincidences."
"Strange, indeed! I have told you many a soldier's yarn, dominie; but did you ever hear of the strange meeting I had with an old man of the clan Donald?"
"Where—in the Highlands?"
"No, in America."
The dominie shook his head as a negative.
"Then fill your pipe, brew your toddy, draw your chair nearer the fire, and I'll tell you about it.
"Ye see, dominie, it was in the winter of '75, when Rohallion was lieutenant in the Light Company, and I but a corporal, that, with a detachment of ours, we joined Major Preston and Captain—afterwards the unfortunate Major—André in the stockaded fort of St. John, on the Richelieu River, in Lower Canada. In the fort were seven hundred rank and file, chiefly of the Cameronians and the 7th or Royal Fusiliers, and our orders were to defend the place to the last!
"We were soon attacked with great vigour by the American General Montgomery, at the head of Lord knows how many rebellious Yankees and yelling Indian devils; but like brave men we defended ourselves till the whole place was unroofed and riddled by shot and shell—defended ourselves, amid the snows of severe winter, on half-rations, and what was worse, on half-grog, till our ammunition was expended. Then, but not till then, we were compelled to surrender, and give up our arms, baggage, and everything to the foe.
"Disheartened by defeat, and denuded of everything but our regimentals, we were marched up the lakes by Ticonderoga. As I had no desire for remaining a prisoner during a war, the end of which none could foresee, and not being an officer, having no parole to break, I resolved to escape on the first available opportunity, and did so very simply, on the night-march along the borders of Lake George. There was a halt, during which I contrived to creep unseen into a thick furzy bush, and there I remained, scarcely daring to breathe, till the prisoners fell into their ranks an hour before daybreak, and surrounded by their escort of triumphant Yankees and Indians in their war paint, proceeded on their sad and heartless journey into the interior.
"After the poor fellows had departed and all was still, while the ashes of the watch-fires smouldered and reddened in every breath of wind that passed over the snowy waste—and keen and biting blasts they were, I can tell ye, dominie—I slipped out of my friendly bush, stealthily as a snake might have done, and crawled away on my hands and knees from the vicinity of the deserted halting-place, for I dreaded to encounter some straggler of the escort, and still more did I dread some rambling Indian, who would have swooped down upon me with his scalping knife, and I had not the slightest ambition to see my natural wig added to the other grizzly trophies on a warrior's hunting shirt.
"Arms I had none, and was scarcely clothed. I was hungry, weary, and, on finding myself alone, I began to reflect whether I had acted wisely in escaping to face individually the perils that awaited me, for my tattered red coat marked me as an enemy, and in the stern frost of an American winter, you may believe, it was not to be discarded or cast aside without a substitute. Such a garb increased my perils, and we all know what it cost poor Major André, of the Cameronians, when caught in his uniform within the American lines.
"The cold seemed to freeze my faculties, and vaguely endeavouring to retrace the way we had come, I hoped by some chance, and by the care of Providence, to reach the junction of the Sorrel or the Richelieu with the St. Lawrence, for there I knew that Colonel Maclean was posted with the royal regiment of Scottish Emigrants, but concerning how far I was from thence, and how I was to reach it, I knew no more than of what the man in the moon may be about at this moment.
"Vainly I toiled on till day dawned fully on the vast extent of snow-covered country. Then I found myself among the high and wooded hills that look down upon the bosom of the Hudson. Far in the distance lay Fort St. John which we had so long defended, and which had the Stars and Stripes where the Union Jack waved before. On the other hand, Lake George, a sheet of snow-covered ice, with all its isles, lay like a map at my feet, far down below.
"Cold, cold, ice, frost, snow, a biting wind everywhere! I sighed and shuddered with misery, and longed for any other garment than my fatal red coat, that I might approach a house or homestead, and crave a morsel of food, and permission, for a minute, to warm myself by the kitchen fire, but to make the attempt was too rash, and, though my prospects were not cheering, I had no desire to court a rifle-shot from some loophole or upper window.
"As I stumbled on by the skirts of a fir copse, which somewhat sheltered me from the biting north wind, and while the drowsy numbness of exhaustion was stealing over me, I heard a loud and sonorous voice commanding me to 'stop.' I turned and saw a man approaching me.
"His form was powerful and athletic, apparently, rather than tall, and he seemed about fifty years of age or more; very brown and weather-beaten in visage, and his hair was white as the snow around us. He had on a thick fur cap, the warm earlaps of which were tied under his chin; and over a yellow Indian hunting-shirt he wore a seaman's pea-jacket, with two rows of large white horn buttons in front. It was girt by a belt of untanned leather, in which were stuck a hunting-knife, a pair of brass-mounted pistols, and a rusty basket-hilted Highland broadsword. He was evidently one of the insurgents—'Mr. Washington's rebels,' as we named them. He carried a long rifle, and wore a pair of large deer-skin boots, that came well over his sturdy thighs, and were strapped to his waist-belt. His whole appearance and bearing indicated a state of bodily strength, hardihood, confidence, and warmth, all of which, at that particular moment, I greatly envied. With his right hand on the hammer and his left on the barrel of his rifle, as if about to cock it, he said, in a voice that was both sharp and deep in tone—
"'Stand, Englishman, if you would not be shot down, as many a time I have seen your countrymen shoot others, in cold blood.'
"'I don't think even death could make my blood colder than it is already,' said I, with chattering teeth; 'but you accuse us unjustly of outrage.'
"'Do I?' said he, with a fierce sneer; 'by your doings at Lexington, I don't think the Redcoats are much changed since I saw them in Lochaber.'
"'I am not an Englishman,' said I, glancing at the sword in his girdle.
"'Then, what the devil are you?' he asked, sharply.
"'I am a Scotsman, as I rather think you are,' I added, for he had a Skye-terrier look about the face that indicated a West Highlander.
"'Indeed,' said he, in an altered tone, placing the butt of his rifle on the ground, greatly to my satisfaction and general ease of mind; 'you are one of the force that defended Fort St. John, under Major Preston and Captain André?'
"'Yes.'
"'And how, then, are you here?'
"'I was a prisoner, but escaped; and so great is my misery, that I beg of you to make me a prisoner again, if you are in the American interest.'
"'By your yellow facings, you are not one of the King's Fusiliers.'
"'I am a 25th man,' said I.
"'A 25th man?' he repeated, coming nearer, and looking hastily about to see if we were observed, but all around the vast landscape seemed desolate and tenantless; 'I will screen and save you if I can, for the sake of the old country neither of us may ever see again; but, more than all, for the sake of the number on your buttons. Here, taste this first, and then follow me.'
"He drew a leather hunting-bottle from the pocket of his rough pea-jacket, and gave me a good dram of Jamaica rum, but for which, I am sure, I should have died there, for the cold was fast overpowering me.
"'So you are a 25th man?' said he, surveying me with considerable interest; 'well, for that reason, if it were for nothing else, I shall befriend you. Come this way.'
"I was too cold—too intensely miserable—to question his meaning, but accompanied him through the wood, by a narrow path where the snow lay deep, and where, in some places, it had fallen in such a manner over the broad, horizontal and interlaced branches of the pine trees as to form quite a covered passage, where the atmosphere felt mild—even warm, compared with the temperature elsewhere. After a time, we reached an open plateau, on the slope of the hills that look towards Lake George, where we found his hut, a comfortable and warm little dwelling, sheltered by stupendous pines, and built entirely of fir logs, dressed and squared by the hatchet, and pegged each down into the other through holes bored by an auger. It had a stone chimney, within which a smouldering fire soon shot up into a ruddy blaze as he cast a heap of crackling fir cones on it, and then added some dry birch billets, that roared and sputtered cheerily, and threw showers of sparks all over us.
"He gave me some food, broiled venison, hard biscuits, and a good can of Jamaica grog; and he also gave me that which I needed sorely—warm clothing, in the shape of an old frieze coat, lined with martin skins, in lieu of my poor, faded and tattered regimentals, which, for security's sake, we cast into the fire and burned.
"Three days I remained with the trapper or hunter, for such he seemed to be, and on the fourth, after having carefully reconnoitred all the neighbourhood, he announced his intention of conducting me to Colonel Maclean's outposts upon the Richelieu; and being now thoroughly refreshed, I was glad to hear the tidings.
"'I shall never forget your kindness to me,' said I; 'and I value it all the more, because you are one of those who are in arms against the king.'
"'It is maybe not the first time I have been so,' said he, with a deep smile puckering all his eyelids.
"'And you saved my life simply because I was a 25th man?'
"'Yes—because one of your regiment—it was Lord Leven's—no, Lord Semple's then—saved mine, at a harder pinch, some thirty years ago,' said he, gravely, as he marched on before me through the snow, with his long rifle sloped on his shoulder.
"'You have been a soldier, then?'
"'Like yourself, Lowlander, for I know you are southland bred by your tongue.'
"'In what regiment?' I asked.
"'In the clan regiment of Macdonald of Keppoch. Rest him, God!' he exclaimed, taking off his cap and looking upward, while his keen grey eyes glistened, it might be in the frosty wind, under his bushy eyebrows.
"'When was this—and where?'
"Can you be so dull as not to guess? It was in the ever-memorable and ever-glorious campaign under His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, whom heaven long preserve! It was in 1746, just thirty years ago. Look at these scars,' he added, showing me several sword wounds that were visible among his thick white hair. 'I got these at Culloden, from Bland's dragoons, when fighting for Scotland and King James VIII.'
"'You must be an old man?' said I.
"'Old,' he exclaimed; 'I am barely fifty—young enough to fight and ripe enough to die for my new home, this land of America, to which I was banished as a slave with many more of my clan and kindred.' He was now warming with his subject and the recollections of the past. 'There is,' he resumed, 'a pass in the hills here that reminds me of my native glen in Croy. Often I go there and sit on the 16th April, as the fatal day comes round, when outnumbered, three to one, by British and Hanoverians, the Highland swordsmen went down like grass on Culloden moor, before the withering fire of grape and musketry! Then the river that flows into Lake George seems the Nairn—the water of Alders; yonder open moorland seems the plain of Drummossie, and the distant farm among the pine-trees passes for Culloden House. Afar off in the distance the bastions of Ticonderoga become those of Fort George, that jut into the Moray Firth, and yonder wooded mountain, as yet without a name, seems to me like wild Dun-daviot; and then as with the eyes of a seer, it all comes before me again, that April day, with its terrible memories! Then,' he continued, with flashing eyes, as he pointed across the plain, 'then I seem to see the white battle-smoke rolling over the purple heather, and the far extended lines of the hell-doomed Cumberland reaching from Bland's scarlet horse on the right to the false Lord Ancrum's blue dragoons upon the left—these long and steady lines of infantry, Barrel's, Munro's, the Fusiliers, the Royals, and all the rest, in grim array, three ranks deep, the colours waving in the centre, the bayonets glittering in the sun. On the other,' his voice failed him, and almost with a sob, he continued, 'on the other hand, I see the handsome Prince, the idol of all our hearts, on his white horse, half shimmering through the smoke and morning mist, and then the loyal clans in all their tartans, with target and claymore: Murray on the right, and Perth on the left, in the centre Athol, Lochiel, Appin, Cluny, and Lovat, Keppoch, Glengarry, and others with wild Lord Lewis and old Glenbucket in the rear! Then once again from yonder pine forest I seem to hear the war-pipes playing the onset, and a thrill passes over me. I feel my sword in my hand"—he dashed down his rifle and drew his claymore—'I draw down my bonnet; I hear the wild cheer, the battle cry of Righ Hamish gu bragh! pass along the line, as with heads stooped and targets up, we burst like a thunderbolt through the first line of charged bayonets! In a moment it is dispersed and overborne—it is all dirk and claymore, cutting, hewing and stabbing. On yet, on—and whoop! we break through the second line; on yet, through the third, and the day may be our own! Its fire is deadly and concentrated; I am beside the aged and white-haired Keppoch, my chief—all our people have fallen back in dismay before the fire of musketry and the treachery of the Campbells, who turned our flank. Keppoch waves his bonnet; again I hear him cry My God! my God! have the children of my tribe forsaken me? Again the bullets seem, to pierce me, and we fall to the earth together—and so the wild vision passes away!'
"While pouring forth all this, the Highland exile seemed like one possessed, and in his powerful imagination, I have no doubt that while speaking, the present snow-clad landscape passed away, and in fancy he saw the moor and battle of Culloden all spreading like a bloody panorama before him. Until he sheathed his sword I was not without uneasiness lest he might fill up the measure of his wrath by cutting and carving on me.
"'At last it was all over,' he resumed quietly and sadly; 'and then came the butchery of the wounded by platoon firing and the desecration of the dead. Sorely wounded and faint with loss of blood, I found myself on the skirt of the field near the wall which the Campbells had broken down to enable the light dragoons to turn our right flank.
"'Weary with the battle of the past day, a soldier was leaning against the wall, screwing a fresh flint into the lock of his musket. On seeing me move, he mercifully gave me a mouthful of water from his wooden canteen, and bound up my head with a shred torn from my plaid. I then begged him to help me a little way out of the field, as I was the sole support of an aged mother, and must live if possible. The good fellow said it was as much as his life was worth, were it known that he had spared mine; but as he, too, had an old mother in the lowlands far away, for her sake he would run the risk of assisting me.
"'The morning was yet dark and we were unseen. He half carried, half dragged me for more than a mile, till we reached a thicket where I was in safety from the parties who were butchering the wounded. Some of these burned my mother's hut and bayonetted her on the threshold.
"'I offered the soldier the tassels of my sporran or the silver buttons of my waistcoat as a reward, but he proudly refused them. I then pressed upon him my snuff-mull, on the lid of which my initials were engraved——'
"'And he took it?' said I, eagerly.
"'He did, but with reluctance; and then I asked his name, that I might remember it in my gratitude——'
"'And he told you that he was John Girvan of Semple's Foot—the 25th,' said I.
"'Yes—yes; but how know you that?'
"'Because that friendly soldier was my father. He served against the Prince at Culloden (four Scotch regiments did so that day), and often have I heard him tell the story of how the mull came into his possession, and of the brave Highlander who adhered to old Keppoch when all the clans fell back before the mingled shock of horse and foot in front and flank!'
"'Your father!—that brave man your father? I thank God who has thus enabled me to repay to you the good deed done to me on that dark morning on Culloden Moor,' said the Highlander with deep emotion, as he shook my hand with great warmth.
"'Here is the mull,' said I, producing it, 'and you are welcome to a pinch from it again.'
"'It is indeed like an old friend's face,' said he, looking with interest at his initials, D. McD., graven on the silver top. 'I made and mounted it, in my mother's hut in Croy. Woe is me! How many changes have I seen since that day thirty years ago, when last I held it in my hand? And your father, soldier—I hope that brave and good man yet lives?'
"'Alas! no,' said I, sadly; 'he entered the Royals fifteen years after Culloden, and volunteered, as a serjeant, with the forlorn hope, at the storming of the Moro Castle. He fell in the breach, and the mull was found in his havresack by the men who buried him there.'
"The Highlander took off his cap and muttered a prayer, crossing himself the while very devoutly.
"'But for him,' said he, 'instead of being a lonely trapper here by the shore of Lake George, the heather bells of thirty summers had bloomed and withered over my grave on the fatal moor of Culloden; but God's blessed will be done.'
"After this unexpected meeting with one of whom I had so often heard my worthy father speak when I was but a bairn, we became quite as old friends, and parted with regret when we reached the outposts of the Royal Scottish Emigrants, close to which he guided me, and then took his departure to join General Montgomery, who deemed Donald Macdonald the chief of his marksmen.
"I never heard of him more; and as for the snuff-mull, I was robbed of it by some Germans, who cut the knapsack off my back as I lay wounded in the skirmish at Stoney Point, in the State of New York, in 1776; but this chance meeting with its original proprietor, shows us, dominie, what unexpected things come to pass in the world. Life, as I said, is full of strange coincidences, and we may meet with Quentin Kennedy or hear sure tidings of him, when least expected."
"I pray Heaven it may be so," sighed the dominie, over his empty toddy-jug, as he tied an ample yellow bandanna over his old three-cornered hat, and under his chin; and then assuming his cane, prepared to depart.
"Jack Andrews has brought your pony round to the private door; take care o' the Lollard's Linn, for the night is dark; and now for the deoch—the stirrup-cup."
"Whilk the Romans ever drank in honour of Mercury, as I do now—that he may bestow a sound night's sleep," said the dominie, smacking his lips as the dram went down.