Red Cap Tales, Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North

II. ROB ROY AT LAST

During this harangue Frank's mysterious guide had been gradually edging toward the door, and showing signs of slipping away. But even when looking carefully over Mr. Owen's papers, the keen eyes of the magistrate detected the movement.

"Shut the door, Stanchells, and keep it locked!" he cried.

The Highlander took three or four steps across the room, muttered an execration in Gaelic, and then with an air of careless defiance set himself down on a table and proceeded to whistle a stave with all possible assurance.

The Bailie soon arranged Mr. Owen's affairs. He would become his bail himself, and promised to secure his liberation early next morning. Then he took the lantern from his servant Mattie, and, holding it up, proceeded to examine the stern, set countenance of Frank's guide. That stout-hearted Celt did not move a muscle under the inspection, but with his arms folded carelessly, his heel beating time to the lilt of his whistled strathspey, he came very near to deceiving the acuteness of his investigator.

"Eh—ah—no—it cannot be. It is! Eh, ye born deevil, ye robber—ye catheran! Can this be you?"

"E'en as ye see me, Bailie!" was the short response.

"Ye cheat-the-gallows, ye reiving villain—what think you is the value of your head now!" cried the Bailie.

"Umph! Fairly weighed and Dutch measure," came the answer, "it might weigh down one provost's, four bailies', a town-clerk's, six deacons', besides stent-masters'—!"

"Tell over your sins," interrupted Mr. Nicol Jarvie, "and prepare ye, for if I speak the word—"

"But ye will not speak the word," said the Highlander, coolly.

"And why should I not?" said the Bailie, "answer me that—why should I not?"

"For three sufficient reasons, Bailie Jarvie," he retorted, "first, for auld langsyne. Second, for the sake of the auld wife ayont the fire at Stuckavrallachan, that made some mixture of our bloods—to my shame be it spoken that I should have a cousin a weaver. And lastly, Bailie, because if I saw a sign of your betraying me, I would plaster the wall there with your brains, long before any hand of man could rescue you!"

"Ye are a bold, desperate villain, sir," retorted the undaunted Bailie, "and ye ken that I ken ye to be so—but that were it only my own risk, I would not hesitate a moment."

"I ken well," said the other, "ye have gentle blood in your veins, and I would be loath to hurt my own kinsman. But I go out of here free as I came in, or the very walls of Glasgow tolbooth shall tell the tale these ten years to come!"

"Well, well," said Mr. Jarvie, "after all, blood is thicker than water. Kinsfolk should not see faults to which strangers are blind. And, as you say, it would be sore news to the auld wife below the Ben, that you, ye Hieland limmer, had knockit out my brains, or that I had got you strung up in a halter. But, among other things, where is the good thousand pound Scots that I lent you, and when am I to be seeing it?"

"Where is it?" said the unknown, grimly, "why, where last year's snow is, I trow!"

"And that's on the tap o' Schehallion, ye Hieland dog," said Mr. Jarvie, "and I look for payment from ye where ye stand."

"Ay," said the Highlander, unmoved, "but I carry neither snow nor silver in my sporran. Ye will get it, Bailie—just when the King enjoys his ain again, as the auld sang says!"

Then the magistrate turned to Frank.

"And who may this be?" he demanded, "some reiver ye hae listed, Rob? He looks as if he had a bold heart for the highway, and a neck that was made express for the hangman's rope!"

"This," said Owen, horrified at the Bailie's easy prediction as to the fate of his young master, "this is Mr. Francis Osbaldistone, only son of the head of our house—"

"Ay, I have heard of him," said the Bailie, still more contemptuously, "he that ran away and turned play-actor, through pure dislike to the work an honest man should live by!"

"Indeed," said the Highlander, "I had some respect for the callant even before I kenned what was in him. But now I honour him for his contempt of weavers and spinners, and sic-like mechanical persons."

"Ye are mad, Rob," said the Bailie, "mad as a March hare—though wherefore a hare should be madder in the month of March than at Martinmas is more than I can well say. But this young birkie here, that ye are hounding the fastest way to the gallows—tell me, will all his stage-plays and his poetries, or your broad oaths and drawn dirks tell him where Rashleigh Osbaldistone is? Or Macbeth and all his kernes and galloglasses, and your own to boot, procure him the five thousand pounds to answer the bills that must fall due ten days hence—were they all sold by auction at Glasgow Cross—basket hilts, Andrea Ferraras, leathern targets, brogues, brechan, and sporrans?"

"Ten days!" said Frank, instinctively drawing Diana Vernon's letter out of his pocket. The time had elapsed, and he was now free to open it.

A thin sealed enclosure fell out, and the wandering airs of the prison wafted it to Bailie Jarvie's feet. He lifted it and at once handed it to the Highlander, who, after glancing at the address, proceeded calmly to open it.

Frank tried vainly to interpose.

"You must first satisfy me that the letter is intended for you, before I can allow you to read it," he said.

"Make yourself easy, Mr. Osbaldistone," answered the Highlander, looking directly at him for the first time, "remember Justice Inglewood, Clerk Jobson, Mr. Morris—above all, remember your very humble servant, Robert Campbell, and the beautiful Diana Vernon."

The vague resemblance which had been haunting Frank ever since he had heard this man's voice was now at once made plain. The cloak being dropped and the man's face turned full upon him, he saw that it was indeed the same Highland drover who had borne unexpected testimony in his favour when he was in danger of his life in the house of Mr. Justice Inglewood.

"It is a difficult cast she has given me to play," said the Highlander, looking at Die Vernon's letter, "but I daresay I shall be able to serve you. Only you must come and visit me in my own country. I cannot hope to aid you on the paving stones of Glasgow. And you, Bailie, if you will come up with this young gentleman as far as the Clachan of Aberfoil, I will pay you the thousand pounds Scots that I owe you."

"Such a journey ill becomes my place," said the Bailie, doubtfully, "but if I did come, would you really and soothfully pay me the siller?"

"I swear to you," said the Highlander, "by him that sleeps beneath the grey stane at Inch Cailleach!

"But," he continued, "I must be budging. For the air of the Glasgow tolbooth is no that over salutary to a Highland constitution."

"Ohon," said the Bailie, "that I should be art and part in an escape from justice—it will be a disgrace to me all the days of my life! Aweel, we have all our backslidings to answer for. Stanchells, open the door!"

The head jailor stared at the two visitors who had gotten into Mr. Owen's cell without his leave, but he was reassured by the Bailie's careless "Friends of mine, Stanchells, friends of mine!"

The party descended to the lower vestibule, and there called more than once for Dougal, but without effect.

Whereupon Campbell observed, with a quiet smile, that "if Dougal was the lad he kenned him, he would scarce wait to be thanked for his share of that night's work, but would now be full trot for the pass of Ballamaha—"

"And am I myself," cried the angry Bailie, "to be locked up in the tolbooth all night? Send for fore-hammers, sledge-hammers, pincers! Send for Deacon Yettlin, the smith. And as for that Hieland blackguard, he shall hang as high as Haman—"

"When ye catch him," said Campbell, gravely, "but wait, surely the jail door is not locked!"

And so it turned out.

"He has some glimmerings of sense, that Dougal creature," added the Highlander; "he kenned that an open door might have served me at a pinch!"

So saying he sprang into the darkness, and soon the street resounded to low signal whistles, uttered and instantly replied to.

"Hear to the Hieland deevils," said Mr. Jarvie; "they think themselves already on the skirts of Ben Lomond! But what's this?"

There was a clash of iron at his feet, and stooping to the causeway cobbles, the Bailie lifted the keys of the jail which Dougal had carried away in his flight.

"Indeed," he said, "and that's just as well. For they cost the burgh siller, and there might have been some talk in the council about the loss of them, that I would little like to have heard. It would not be the first time they had cast up my kin to me, if Bailie Grahame and some others should get wind of this night's work."

The next morning at the Bailie's hospitable table, Frank Osbaldistone met Mr. Owen—but altogether another Owen from him of the tolbooth—neat, formal, and well brushed as ever, though still in the lowest of spirits about the misfortunes of the house.

They had not long begun when Frank, who could be brusque enough upon occasion, startled the Bailie by the question, "And pray, by the bye, Mr. Nicol Jarvie, who is this Mr. Robert Campbell whom I met last night?"

The question, abruptly put, seemed to knock the worthy Bailie all of a heap. He stammered and repeated it over and over, as if he had no answer ready.

"Wha's Mr. Robert Campbell? Ahem—ahay—! Wha's Mr. Robert Campbell, quo' he?"

"Yes," repeated the young Englishman, "I mean who and what is he?"

"Why, he's—ahay! He's—ahem! Where did you meet Mr. Robert Campbell, as you call him yourself?"

"I met him by chance," Frank answered promptly, "some months ago, in the north of England."

"Then, Mr. Osbaldistone," said the Bailie, doggedly, "ye ken just as much about him as I do!"

"I should suppose not, Mr. Jarvie," said Frank, "since you are, it seems, both his relation and his friend!"

"There is doubtless some cousinship between us," said the Bailie, with reluctance, "but I have seen little of Rob since he left the cattle-dealing. He was hardly used by those who might have treated him better, poor fellow."

More than this for the moment Frank could not extract from Mr. Jarvie, and indeed his father's affairs were naturally the first consideration. As Frank could not help with their business matters and arrangements, the Bailie dismissed him without ceremony, telling him that he might go up to the College Yards, where he would find some that could speak Greek and Latin, but that he must be back at one o'clock "preceesely" to partake of the Bailie's family leg of mutton and additional tup's head.

It was while Frank Osbaldistone was pacing to and fro in the College Yards, that, from behind a hedge, he saw three men talking together. At first he could hardly believe his eyes. For one of them, the very sight of whom caused a disagreeable thrill to pass through his body, was none other than Rashleigh himself, while the other two were Morris and Mr. MacVittie,—the very three men who could do him the most harm in the world.

At the end of the avenue MacVittie and Morris left the gardens, while Rashleigh returned alone, apparently pacing the walk in deep meditation. Frank suddenly appeared before him, and challenged him to give up the deeds and titles he had stolen from his father.

Rashleigh, whom no surprise could stir out of his cool native audacity, answered that it would be better for his cousin to go and amuse himself in his world of poetical imagination, and to leave the business of life to men who understood and could conduct it.

Words grew hotter and hotter between the two young men, till Rashleigh, stung by a reference to Diana Vernon, bade Frank follow him to a secluded place where he would be able to chastise him for his boyish insolence.

Accordingly Frank followed him, keeping a keen watch on his adversary lest he should attempt any treachery. And it was well that he did so. For Rashleigh's sword was at his breast before he had time to draw, or even to lay down his cloak, and he only saved his life by springing a pace or two backward in all haste.

In the matter of fence, Frank found Rashleigh quite his match—his own superior skill being counterbalanced by Rashleigh's longer and more manageable sword and by his great personal strength and ferocity. He fought, indeed, more like a fiend than a man. Every thrust was meant to kill, and the combat had all the appearance of being to the death.

At last Frank stumbled accidentally, and Rashleigh's sword passed through his coat and out at the back, just grazing his side, whereupon Frank, seizing the hilt of his antagonist's sword, shortened his grip and was on the point of running him through the body. But the death-grapple was put an end to in the nick of time, by the intervention of Campbell, who suddenly appeared out of the bushes and threw himself between them. Rashleigh demanded fiercely of the Highlander how he dared to interfere where his honour was concerned.

But Campbell, with a whistle of his broadsword about his head, reminded him that so far as "daring" went, he was ready to make mincemeat of the pair of them. But though this cooled Rashleigh's temper at once, it was far from appeasing Frank, who swore that he would keep hold of his cousin till he had given up all he had stolen from his father.

"You hear!" said Rashleigh to Campbell; "he rushes upon his fate. On his own head be it!"

But the Highlander would not permit the young man to be ill treated, only for standing up for his own father. He took hold of Frank, however, and by a gigantic effort he caused him to release Rashleigh's coat which he had seized in his anger.

"Let go his collar, Mr. Francis," he commanded. "What he says is true. Ye are more in danger of the magistrate in this place than what he is. Take the bent, Mr. Rashleigh. Make one pair of legs worth two pair of hands. You have done that before now."

Rashleigh, with a last threat of future revenge, took up his sword, wiped it, put it back in its sheath, and disappeared in the bushes.

In spite of his struggles the Highlander held Frank till it was vain for him to pursue Rashleigh, and then Campbell had some advice to give him.

"Let him alone," he said. "I tell you, man, he has the old trap set for you. And here I cannot give you the same help that I did in the house of Justice Inglewood. Now go your ways home, like a good bairn. Keep out of the sight of Rashleigh, and Morris, and that MacVittie animal. Mind the Clachan of Aberfoil, and by the word of a gentleman I will not see you wronged."

On his way back Frank had his slight wound dressed by a surgeon and apothecary in the neighbourhood, who refused to believe his explanation about the button of his adversary's foil slipping.

"There never was button on the foil that made this!" he said. "Ah, young blood—young blood! But fear not—we surgeons are a secret generation!"

And so dismissed, Frank soon found his way back to Mr. Jarvie's family leg of mutton and tup's head, only a few minutes after the appointed stroke of one.

III. THE BAILIE FIGHTS WITH FIRE

When Frank Osbaldistone, the Bailie, and Andrew Fairservice, set forward toward the Highlands, their way lay for the first stage over barren wastes, with the blue line of the Grampian Hills continually before their eyes.

Andrew had as usual tried to cheat his master by getting rid of his own pony and buying another on Frank's account. But the Bailie soon caused Andrew to recover his old horse on the penalty of being at once haled off to prison.

Night came on before the little party of three arrived at the inn of the Clachan of Aberfoil, having previously crossed the infant Forth by an ancient bridge, high and narrow.

The inn was a mere hovel, but the windows were cheerfully lighted up. There was a sound of revelry within that promised good cheer to hungry men, and the party were on the point of entering, when Andrew Fairservice showed them a peeled wand which was set across the half-open door.

"That means," he said, "that some of their great men are birling at the wine within, and will little like to be disturbed."

It proved to be even so. The landlady was most anxious to keep them out. They could get rest and shelter, she promised them, within seven Scottish miles—that is to say, within at least double that number of English ones. Her house was taken up, and the gentlemen in possession would ill like to be intruded on by strangers. Better gang farther than fare worse.

But Frank, being an Englishman and hungry for his dinner, was ready to do battle against all odds in order to get it.

The interior of the inn of Aberfoil was low and dark. The smoke of the fire hung and eddied under the gloomy roof about five feet from the ground. But underneath all was kept clear by the currents of air that rushed about the house when the wind blew through the wicker door and the miserable walls of stone plastered with mud.

Three men were sitting at an oak table near the fire. Two of these were in Highland dress, the first small and dark, with a quick and irritable expression of countenance. He wore the "trews" of tartan, which in itself showed him a man of consideration. The other Highlander was a tall, strong man, with the national freckled face and high cheekbones. The tartan he wore had more of red in it than that of the other. The third was in Lowland dress, a bold, stout-looking man, in a showily laced riding-dress and a huge cocked hat. His sword and a pair of pistols lay on the table before him.

All three were drinking huge draughts of the Highland drink called "Usquebagh," and they spoke loudly and eagerly one to the other, now in Gaelic, now in English. A third Highlander, wrapped in his plaid and with his face hidden, lay on the floor, apparently asleep.

The three gentlemen were at first unconscious of the invasion. They continued their loud conversation, and it was not until Frank Osbaldistone called the landlady that they paused and looked at them, apparently stricken dumb by his audacity.

"You make yourself at home," said the lesser Celt, in very good English, which however he spoke with an air of haughty disdain.

"I usually do, sir," said Frank, "when I come into a house of public entertainment."

"And did she not see," demanded the taller man, "by the white wand at the door, that gentlemans had taken up the public house on their ain business?"

"I do not pretend to understand the customs of this country," said Frank, with firmness, "but I have yet to learn how any three persons are entitled to exclude all other travellers from the only place of shelter and refreshment for miles around."

The Bailie here offered a stoup of brandy as an appropriate means of establishing a good understanding, but the three natives proceeded to snuff the air and work themselves up into a passion with the evident intention of ending the quarrel by a fray.

"We are three to three," said the lesser Highlander, glancing his eyes at the intruding party. "If ye be pretty men, draw!"

And so saying, he drew his own broadsword and advanced upon Frank. The young Englishman, knowing the superiority of his rapier to the claymore, especially in the confined space, was in no fear as to the issue of the combat. But when the gigantic Highlander advanced upon the worthy magistrate of Glasgow, after trying in vain once or twice to draw his father's shabble, as he called it, from its sheath,—a weapon which had last seen the light at Bothwell Bridge,—the Bailie seized as a substitute the red-hot coulter of a plough, which had been sticking in the fire. At the very first pass he set the Highlander's plaid on fire, and thereafter compelled him to keep a respectful distance. Andrew Fairservice had, of course, vanished at the very first symptoms of a storm, but the Lowlander, disappointed of an antagonist, drew honourably off and took no share in the fight. Nevertheless the Bailie, built for more peaceful pursuits, was quickly getting the worst of it, when from the floor started up the sleeping Highlander, crying, "Hersel' has eaten the town bread at the Cross of Glasgow, and by her troth, she will fight for Bailie Jarvie at the Clachan of Aberfoil!"

And seconding words with blows, he fell upon his tall countryman. As both were armed with targes made of wood and studded with brass, the combat was more remarkable for noise and clatter than for serious damage. And it was not long before the Lowlander cried out, taking upon himself the office of peacemaker: "Hold your hands, gentlemen—enough done, enough done! The strangers have shown themselves men of honour, and have given reasonable satisfaction."

There was no wish to continue the fray, save perhaps on the part of the Bailie's antagonist, who demanded to know who was going to pay for the hole burnt in his bonnie plaid, through which, he declared, any one might put a kail-pot.

But the Bailie, pleased with himself for having shown spirit, declared that the Highlander should have a new plaid, especially woven, of his own clan-colours. And he added that if he could find the worthy lad who had taken his quarrel upon himself, he would bestow upon him a gill of aqua-vitæ.

But the Highlander who had been so ready on the Bailie's behalf was now nowhere to be found. The supper was brought in presently, as if the landlady had only been waiting for the end of the fray in order to serve the repast.

The Bailie had from the first recognised the Lowlander as one to whom the deacon his father had lent money, and with whose family there were many ties of cordiality and confidence. So while the friendly converse was thus proceeding indoors, Frank went out to find Andrew Fairservice, and on his way the landlady gave him a folded scrap of paper, saying that she was glad to be rid of it—what with Saxons, soldiers, and robbers—life was not worth living on the Highland line!

By the light of a torch Frank read as follows, "For the honoured hands of Mr. F. O., a Saxon young gentleman—These!"

The letter proved to be from Campbell, and informed Frank that as there were night hawks abroad, he must hold no communication with any one lest it should lead to future trouble. The person who gave him the letter might be trusted, but that in the meantime it would be well to avoid a meeting with "R. M. C."

Frank was much disappointed at this deferring of the hope of aiding his father, by recovering the papers and titles which Rashleigh had stolen. But still there was no help for it. And so, after dragging Andrew out of the corner of the shed, where he was hidden behind a barrel of feathers, he returned to the inn.

Here he found the Bailie high in dispute with his quondam friend, the Lowlander Galbraith. The quarrel concerned the Duke of Argyle and the Clan Campbell, but most of all a certain freebooter of the name of Rob Roy, who, as it now appeared, they were all assembled to pursue and make an end of.

North and east the passes were being held. The westland clans were out. Southward Major Galbraith was in command of a body of Lennox horse, and to a certainty Rob Roy would swing in a rope by the morrow's morn.

Scarcely were the words spoken when the ordered tramp of infantry on the march was heard, and an officer, followed by two or three files of soldiers, entered the apartment. It gave Frank a thrill of pleasure to remark his English accent, after the Scotch which he had been listening to ever since he left Osbaldistone Hall.

But he liked somewhat less what he was next to hear. The English officer had received instructions to place under arrest two persons, one young and the other elderly, travelling together. It seemed to him that Frank and the Bailie answered fairly well to this description.

In spite of the protests and threats of the honourable magistrate, he ordered them both to follow him in his advance into the Highland country, upon which he was immediately to set out.

The letter which Frank had received from the landlady of the inn, being found upon him, was held to be evidence that he had been in treasonable correspondence with Rob Roy, whose usual initials, indeed, were at the bottom of the note. Next the shock-headed Highlander who had taken the Bailie's quarrel upon him, having been captured, was brought before the officer, and commanded, on pain of being instantly hanged, to lead them to the place where he had left the Mac-Gregor. After long persuasion, some of it of the roughest sort, poor Dougal consented for five guineas to act as guide to the party of soldiers under Captain Thornton—for such was the name of the English officer.

This sinful compliance of Dougal's angered the Bailie so much that he cried to the soldiers to take Dougal away, because now he deserved hanging for his treachery more than ever.

This drew the retort from the Corporal who was acting as hangman, that if it were the Bailie who was going to be hanged, he would be in no such desperate hurry!

But Dougal promised to be faithful, and in a few minutes the English officer had paid the reckonings of the three gentlemen whom Frank had found drinking at the inn of Aberfoil. The hot and smoky atmosphere of the miserable inn was exchanged for the wide hill breezes. But on their passage through the villages the hatred of the natives, mostly women and children, for the "red soldiers" broke forth into shrill cursing. Andrew Fairservice, who alone of the three understood Gaelic, grew pale with terror at the threats which were lavished upon them.

"And the worst of all is," he said, trembling, "that the owercome o' their sang is that we are to gang up the glen and see what we are to get."