Inchbracken Part 9

'We have only to get a very little higher now to have wind enough,'

said Roderick, doubling the shawl on his arm. 'See Mr. Wallowby's handkerchief up there how it blows about. If you will accept a little a.s.sistance over this steep place, you will soon reach the cooler level.'

'Sophia!' continued the mother, 'I believe that guide will break a bottle, or something, the way he swings the basket about. Pray bid him take care or we shall have a dry luncheon to eat when we get to the top of the hill,--there will be no water up there. It makes me quite nervous to look at him.'

So Sophia was despatched in advance while the older lady made a leisurely survey of the prospect at her feet.

'A beautiful place Inchbracken, with its woods spreading out beyond the island and rolling away into the distance, and the steeple of Kilrundle church rising from among them. Dives with his good things, and Lazarus with his evil things! You must feel thankful to have chosen the better part, Mr. Roderick.'

'I feel no misgiving about my choice whatever, but I hope there is no reason to look on General Drysdale as another Dives. Difference in people's circ.u.mstances, shows things in so different a light.'

'Ah! my young friend, charity is good, but it must be according to knowledge.'

'But, Mrs. Sangster, the General is a most worthy man, a kind master and a good landlord, and an honourable gentleman.'

'I will not say, Mr. Roderick, that his hands are red with the blood of the saints, because it has not been left in his power to take the lives of the Lord's people; but he has been very bitter against the Free Church. We may fairly include him among the persecutors, driving us forth to worship G.o.d according to our conscience, on the bare hill-side, and refusing us a stance to build our church on any part of his property. Now, I have always said, that that open place facing Inchbracken gate is where our new church should stand. There it could testify before the very walls of the Erastian temple, instead of being huddled away in the corner of widow Forester's kale-yard.'

'But how would you like a Roman Catholic or even an Episcopal Chapel set down opposite your own gate at Auchlippie?'

'Mr. Roderick! Popery and Prelacy! To hear you evening our true scriptural protesting Free Church to the Babylonish apostacy, with their white gowns, and their organs, and their traditions of men! I fear there's a leaven of lat.i.tudinarianism among you younger men. You should follow the staunch old lights like Mr. Dowlas, to steady your principles. How you can recall the doings of Archbishop Sharp, and speak lightly of Episcopacy, is what I can't comprehend!'

They had now reached the last steep ascent which ended on the summit.

This left the old lady no spare breath to hold forth, and she was glad to catch hold of Roderick's arm to a.s.sist in pulling herself up the nearly vertical slope. The wind-swept cairn at the top was at length reached, and, notwithstanding her late complaints, Mrs. Sangster was forced to shelter herself from the keen breeze, under its lee, and to resume the shawl she had discarded.

Craig Findochart rises high over the surrounding hills especially towards the east. On that side they gradually diminish and die away in the belt of cultivation that borders the sea. To the north is a narrow glen running down into a fertile strath well-wooded and watered by a river of some size; beyond, the lofty Highland mountains toss their battered summits in the air, a very sea of emulously-surging peaks.

Westward it is mountainous again but more various. The eye travels far up more than one winding strath, while glancing lakes shine out every here and there among the greys and purples of mountain and moor.

Southward the view is narrower and loses itself in haze, a greyness which rises indistinctly from the distant country, but when once fairly launched in heaven, swells and curls and rears itself into vast white battlements of cloud, and drifts before the wind shining and luminous, like some great iceberg in a transparent sea.

Having surveyed the view, the party sought such shelter from the chilling breeze as was attainable, on the leeward slope, and proceeded to rest and refresh themselves, after their fatigues; the old lady, with some elation at having climbed the hill as cleverly as the youngest, doing the honours of her provision basket with garrulous hospitality, while the others reclined on the scanty herbage with infinite zeal. The warmth gained by exercise withstood the sharp upper air, whose biting keenness felt only bracing and exhilarating to those toilers upward from the airless heat below; but after half an hour they had parted with the surplus heat gained by exertion, and began to feel distinctly cold. There seemed a failing too in the brightness of the light, except over the distant sea, which still glittered crisp and bright in unclouded sunshine. A wan greyness seemed to be stealing over the landscape, not as when pa.s.sing clouds dapple the view with well defined blocks of shadow, but rather a diffused withdrawal of warmth and light all undefined and vague, but ever deepening like the stealthy advances of sickness or death upon a living thing. Looking upwards they now for the first time observe great vaporous arms and wreaths extending over their heads and stretching out towards the still bright heavens in the north-east. Turning round they find the outlook completely obliterated. The shining cloud-ma.s.ses of an hour before in the south-west have drifted down upon them, and are now nothing but curling wreaths of cold damp mist, seething and twisting, but ever downward and onward. They seem scarcely to have descried overhead its first advancing arms ere it has descended on them and lapped them from the world in cold damp greyness, above, below, and all around them. From far down the hill ascends the report of a gun, and by and by another, telling them that others besides themselves are on the mountain, and that they are still upon firm ground; but for that they might be anywhere or nowhere, the mist hems them in utterly, the very ground they stand on becomes indistinct, and they stretch their arms to touch each other and make sure they are not each alone.

They gather close together standing perfectly still, a step in any direction may precipitate them they know not whither, and the damp clammy vapour creeps close about them soaking hair and clothing, and chilling them to the bone.

'It is only a cloud and will soon pa.s.s,' some one says; so they agree it will be safer to wait than to attempt a descent not knowing where their next step may carry them. They huddle closely together and watch and shiver; at one moment it seems growing lighter overhead, and glimmerings of the bright sky shine through, but anon a surging wreath drifts up, and the promising rift closes in again denser than before.

For more than an hour they stood thus afraid to move, stiffening and shivering in the cold. The day was pa.s.sing, but the mist showed no sign of rising; on the contrary it grew thicker and more wetting, and the idea of spending the night where they were, began to present itself as a possibility unless they made a bold venture to move. To die of cold where they were, appeared a certainty if they remained, while there was at least a hope of escape, in tempting the uncertain dangers of the descent.

Wallowby being a stranger was told to keep hold of the guide, and Sophia was entrusted to their joint care. Mary and Peter having both some knowledge of the hills and the country followed next, while Roderick who had often shot over the ground, undertook to pilot the old lady. The three groups were to keep together as well as they could, and by constant shouting they hoped to keep within each other's ken.

With infinite care, groping and feeling around at every step, they commenced to descend, the grey obscurity swallowing them up, and concealing each group from the others. The voices seemed m.u.f.fled by the fog, but they enabled them still to hold together.

Down they went, stumbling over loose stones, clambering down rocks and slipping among the heather now dripping with moisture, Mrs. Sangster vowing it should be her last expedition of the kind, if ever she got safe to 'bigget land' again.

'Hold more to the left!' shouted the guide, an injunction which Mrs.

Sangster hastened to obey, though still very far from the point it was meant to apply to and thereby found herself on a steep rock face, where she was compelled to turn round, and grasping the heather bushes above, to step gingerly backwards, down into the unknown.

'Oh! Mr. Roderick, this is awful!'

'Another step and you will come to level foothold again.'

'Oh! but I can't; I am caught in something. There it goes--and now I have lost my gold spy-gla.s.s, something has caught the chain and broken it. Oh, Mr. Roderick! will you help me to find it! I shall never be able to read my psalm-book on Sunday, if I lose it. Oh dear! oh dear!

what an old fool I have been. Skemmeling over Findochart like a nine-year old!'

Roderick shouted to the others to wait, but the cry lost itself in the mist, or was misunderstood. The voices from below came up fainter and fainter, and finally they were heard no more.

The search for the 'spy-gla.s.s' occupied some time, and all their attention, but eventually it was found within a foot or two of where they stood, and it was not till then that they discovered they were alone on the hillside. Roderick shouted till he was hoa.r.s.e, but there came no response, and it became evident they must shift for themselves.

'Most disgraceful conduct! such heartlessness! To think that Peter Sangster, my own son, whom I have sat up with, and nursed through measles and hooping-cough, till my back was like to break, should drag his old mother up here among the clouds, and then desert her!' and here the old lady began to whimper, but took care to make the 'spy-gla.s.s' secure in some inner receptacle of her dress.

Roderick suggested that it was getting late, and that by making haste they might yet overtake the runaways.

'I hope we may. But who knows? They may have fallen over a precipice, and be lying maimed and mangled at the bottom. Oh dear! it may be days before they are found. My poor Sophia! that would have looked so well riding about Manchester in her own carriage! She may have broken her neck, or disfigured herself for life! lying bruised and bleeding on a heap of stones. And the crows come and pick at people, they tell me, when they are too much hurt to drive them away. Oh dear, oh dear!

Her active mind conjured up every imaginable horror, till, distracted by the pictures of her own invention, she lifted up her voice and wept sore.

Roderick stood by powerless, and eventually silent. Each word of consolation served but to start her imagination on a new track of suggestions more frightful than the last, so he held his peace and waited. Tears brought relief in time, and now fear for herself took the place of more fanciful terrors.

'Oh, come away, Roderick!' she cried, 'what are you standing there for?--glowering at nothing! Come away!'

The descent proceeded. And now they were on an extended flat, undulating in all directions, and lying between the steep ascent to the summit and the declivity which sloped to the next level below.

Without the guidance afforded by continuous descent, they found very soon that they had completely lost their way, and could form no idea of what direction they were moving in.

'I thought you had often shot over this hill, and knew it well, Roderick Brown, or I would never have trusted myself in your hands; but it seems to me you know nothing about it. I'm thinkin' we may wander about here all night, for anything _you_ can do to bring us home. So I am just going to sit down till the Lord sends us help!

Home! I'll never see home again; and a sorrowful woman I am, that I ever set out on this fool's errand!'

'We must do as I have had to do more than once before, Mrs. Sangster, when I got befogged in the hills, follow a stream of running water--the first we can find. The water will find its way down somewhere, and will bring us to a house eventually, though it may take us through some difficult places.'

A burn was by-and-by found, and they set themselves to follow its course wherever that might lead, like the clue by which some devious labyrinth is disentangled. It led through swampy places sometimes, and sometimes tumbled downward among rocks and under high banks, but they were already so wet that walking in its bed where the sides were too craggy and difficult made small difference, and after clambering downwards for more than an hour, they were rejoiced by the barking of a dog some distance below them.

'Do you hear that? Mrs. Sangster; I think we are nearing a habitation at last!'

Mrs. Sangster drew a long breath, and stood upright to listen; letting go her hold of the bushes by whose help she was scrambling down in the bed of the burn. The rock she stood on was slippery. On changing her poise her feet slid from under her, and with a scream, and a clattering of stones, she shot forward and downward upon her companion, landing them both in a pool of water.

'Oh, Roderick Brown! You'll be the death of me! How dare you try your cantrips on a woman old enough to be your mother? Dragging me through bogs and down precipices, and ducking me in burns till I haven't a dry st.i.tch on my back, or an easy bone in my body! I'll have ye up before the presbytery for a graceless loon! Oh, laddie! never mind what I say. My head's just going round and round, I think I'm demented! Lay me on the bank to drip--and let me die in peace! I can go no further.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She shot forward and downward upon her companion, landing them both in a pool of water." Page 88.]

'Nonsense, Mrs. Sangster. Just a few steps more! We must be very close to some shieling now. I declare I can smell the peat reek in the air!

Here is a footpath going down the hill--come! let us follow it.'

'Give me your hand, then, for I do not think I have courage left to stand alone, far less walk. Oh! What an experience!'

They reached a shepherd's cottage in a few minutes more, where the wife of Stephen Boague, surrounded by dogs and children, came out to receive them. Roderick was not sorry to hand over his charge to the good woman's care, but he would not linger himself, he must hasten to the inn, though that was three miles off, to learn if the others had not arrived there, and if not to send searchers up the mountain after them. The mist had changed into a drizzling rain, but he was already too wet to feel it, and too anxious for the others to have any thought for himself.

CHAPTER XII.