Old Mortality Part 5

"Well, beloved," answered Bothwell, "if thou be'st a whig, thou art a stout and a brave one, and so good even to thee--Hadst best take thy nag before the Cornet makes the round; for, I promise thee, he has stay'd less suspicious-looking persons."

The stranger seemed to think that the hint was not to be neglected; he flung down his reckoning, and going into the stable, saddled and brought out a powerful black horse, now recruited by rest and forage, and turning to Morton, observed, "I ride towards Milnwood, which I hear is your home; will you give me the advantage and protection of your company?"

"Certainly," said Morton; although there was something of gloomy and relentless severity in the man's manner from which his mind recoiled. His companions, after a courteous good-night, broke up and went off in different directions, some keeping them company for about a mile, until they dropped off one by one, and the travellers were left alone.

The company had not long left the Howff, as Blane's public-house was called, when the trumpets and kettle-drums sounded. The troopers got under arms in the market-place at this unexpected summons, while, with faces of anxiety and earnestness, Cornet Grahame, a kinsman of Claverhouse, and the Provost of the borough, followed by half-a-dozen soldiers, and town-officers with halberts, entered the apartment of Niel Blane.

"Guard the doors!" were the first words which the Cornet spoke; "let no man leave the house.--So, Bothwell, how comes this? Did you not hear them sound boot and saddle?"

"He was just going to quarters, sir," said his comrade; "he has had a bad fall."

"In a fray, I suppose?" said Grahame. "If you neglect duty in this way, your royal blood will hardly protect you."

"How have I neglected duty?" said Bothwell, sulkily.

"You should have been at quarters, Sergeant Bothwell," replied the officer; "you have lost a golden opportunity. Here are news come that the Archbishop of St Andrews has been strangely and foully a.s.sa.s.sinated by a body of the rebel whigs, who pursued and stopped his carriage on Magus-Muir, near the town of St Andrews, dragged him out, and dispatched him with their swords and daggers." [Note: The general account of this act of a.s.sa.s.sination is to be found in all histories of the period. A more particular narrative may be found in the words of one of the actors, James Russell, in the Appendix to Kirkton's History of the Church of Scotland, published by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esquire. 4to, Edinburgh, 1817.]

All stood aghast at the intelligence.

"Here are their descriptions," continued the Cornet, pulling out a proclamation, "the reward of a thousand merks is on each of their heads."

"The test, the test, and the qualification!" said Bothwell to Halliday; "I know the meaning now--Zounds, that we should not have stopt him! Go saddle our horses, Halliday.--Was there one of the men, Cornet, very stout and square-made, double-chested, thin in the flanks, hawk-nosed?"

"Stay, stay," said Cornet Grahame, "let me look at the paper.--Hackston of Rathillet, tall, thin, black-haired."

"That is not my man," said Bothwell.

"John Balfour, called Burley, aquiline nose, red-haired, five feet eight inches in height"--"It is he--it is the very man!" said Bothwell,--"skellies fearfully with one eye?"

"Right," continued Grahame, "rode a strong black horse, taken from the primate at the time of the murder."

"The very man," exclaimed Bothwell, "and the very horse! he was in this room not a quarter of an hour since."

A few hasty enquiries tended still more to confirm the opinion, that the reserved and stern stranger was Balfour of Burley, the actual commander of the band of a.s.sa.s.sins, who, in the fury of misguided zeal, had murdered the primate, whom they accidentally met, as they were searching for another person against whom they bore enmity. [Note: One Carmichael, sheriff-depute in Fife, who had been active in enforcing the penal measures against non-conformists. He was on the moors hunting, but receiving accidental information that a party was out in quest of him, he returned home, and escaped the fate designed for him, which befell his patron the Archbishop.] In their excited imagination the casual rencounter had the appearance of a providential interference, and they put to death the archbishop, with circ.u.mstances of great and cold-blooded cruelty, under the belief, that the Lord, as they expressed it, had delivered him into their hands.

[Note: Murderers of Archbishop Sharpe. The leader of this party was David Hackston, of Rathillet, a gentleman of ancient birth and good estate. He had been profligate in his younger days, but having been led from curiosity to attend the conventicles of the nonconforming clergy, he adopted their principles in the fullest extent. It appears, that Hackston had some personal quarrel with Archbishop Sharpe, which induced him to decline the command of the party when the slaughter was determined upon, fearing his acceptance might be ascribed to motives of personal enmity. He felt himself free in conscience, however, to be present; and when the archbishop, dragged from his carriage, crawled towards him on his knees for protection, he replied coldly, "Sir, I will never lay a finger on you." It is remarkable that Hackston, as well as a shepherd who was also present, but pa.s.sive, on the occasion, were the only two of the party of a.s.sa.s.sins who suffered death by the hands of the executioner.

On Hackston refusing the command, it was by universal suffrage conferred on John Balfour of Kinloch, called Burley, who was Hackston's brother-in-law. He is described "as a little man, squint-eyed, and of a very fierce aspect."--"He was," adds the same author, "by some reckoned none of the most religious; yet he was always reckoned zealous and honest-hearted, courageous in every enterprise, and a brave soldier, seldom any escaping that came into his hands. He was the princ.i.p.al actor in killing that arch-traitor to the Lord and his church, James Sharpe." See Scottish Worthies.

8vo. Leith, 1816. Page 522.]

"Horse, horse, and pursue, my lads!" exclaimed Cornet Grahame; "the murdering dog's head is worth its weight in gold."

CHAPTER V.

Arouse thee, youth!--it is no human call-- G.o.d's church is leaguer'd--haste to man the wall; Haste where the Redcross banners wave on high, Signal of honour'd death, or victory!

James Duff.

Morton and his companion had attained some distance from the town before either of them addressed the other. There was something, as we have observed, repulsive in the manner of the stranger, which prevented Morton from opening the conversation, and he himself seemed to have no desire to talk, until, on a sudden, he abruptly demanded, "What has your father's son to do with such profane mummeries as I find you this day engaged in?"

"I do my duty as a subject, and pursue my harmless recreations according to my own pleasure," replied Morton, somewhat offended.

"Is it your duty, think you, or that of any Christian young man, to bear arms in their cause who have poured out the blood of G.o.d's saints in the wilderness as if it had been water? or is it a lawful recreation to waste time in shooting at a bunch of feathers, and close your evening with winebibbing in public-houses and market-towns, when He that is mighty is come into the land with his fan in his hand, to purge the wheat from the chaff?"

"I suppose from your style of conversation," said Morton, "that you are one of those who have thought proper to stand out against the government.

I must remind you that you are unnecessarily using dangerous language in the presence of a mere stranger, and that the times do not render it safe for me to listen to it."

"Thou canst not help it, Henry Morton," said his companion; "thy Master has his uses for thee, and when he calls, thou must obey. Well wot I thou hast not heard the call of a true preacher, or thou hadst ere now been what thou wilt a.s.suredly one day become."

"We are of the presbyterian persuasion, like yourself," said Morton; for his uncle's family attended the ministry of one of those numerous presbyterian clergymen, who, complying with certain regulations, were licensed to preach without interruption from the government. This indulgence, as it was called, made a great schism among the presbyterians, and those who accepted of it were severely censured by the more rigid sectaries, who refused the proffered terms. The stranger, therefore, answered with great disdain to Morton's profession of faith.

"That is but an equivocation--a poor equivocation. Ye listen on the Sabbath to a cold, worldly, time-serving discourse, from one who forgets his high commission so much as to hold his apostleship by the favour of the courtiers and the false prelates, and ye call that hearing the word!

Of all the baits with which the devil has fished for souls in these days of blood and darkness, that Black Indulgence has been the most destructive. An awful dispensation it has been, a smiting of the shepherd and a scattering of the sheep upon the mountains--an uplifting of one Christian banner against another, and a fighting of the wars of darkness with the swords of the children of light!"

"My uncle," said Morton, "is of opinion, that we enjoy a reasonable freedom of conscience under the indulged clergymen, and I must necessarily be guided by his sentiments respecting the choice of a place of worship for his family."

"Your uncle," said the horseman, "is one of those to whom the least lamb in his own folds at Milnwood is dearer than the whole Christian flock. He is one that could willingly bend down to the golden-calf of Bethel, and would have fished for the dust thereof when it was ground to powder and cast upon the waters. Thy father was a man of another stamp."

"My father," replied Morton, "was indeed a brave and gallant man. And you may have heard, sir, that he fought for that royal family in whose name I was this day carrying arms."

"Ay; and had he lived to see these days, he would have cursed the hour he ever drew sword in their cause. But more of this hereafter--I promise thee full surely that thy hour will come, and then the words thou hast now heard will stick in thy bosom like barbed arrows. My road lies there."

He pointed towards a pa.s.s leading up into a wild extent of dreary and desolate hills; but as he was about to turn his horse's head into the rugged path, which led from the high-road in that direction, an old woman wrapped in a red cloak, who was sitting by the cross-way, arose, and approaching him, said, in a mysterious tone of voice, "If ye be of our ain folk, gangna up the pa.s.s the night for your lives. There is a lion in the path, that is there. The curate of Brotherstane and ten soldiers hae beset the pa.s.s, to hae the lives of ony of our puir wanderers that venture that gate to join wi' Hamilton and Dingwall."

"Have the persecuted folk drawn to any head among themselves?" demanded the stranger.

"About sixty or seventy horse and foot," said the old dame; "but, ewhow!

they are puirly armed, and wa.r.s.e fended wi' victual."

"G.o.d will help his own," said the horseman. "Which way shall I take to join them?"

"It's a mere impossibility this night," said the woman, "the troopers keep sae strict a guard; and they say there's strange news come frae the east, that makes them rage in their cruelty mair fierce than ever--Ye maun take shelter somegate for the night before ye get to the muirs, and keep yoursell in hiding till the grey o' the morning, and then you may find your way through the Drake Moss. When I heard the awfu' threatenings o' the oppressors, I e'en took my cloak about me, and sate down by the wayside, to warn ony of our puir scattered remnant that chanced to come this gate, before they fell into the nets of the spoilers."

"Have you a house near this?" said the stranger; "and can you give me hiding there?"

"I have," said the old woman, "a hut by the way-side, it may be a mile from hence; but four men of Belial, called dragoons, are lodged therein, to spoil my household goods at their pleasure, because I will not wait upon the thowless, thriftless, fissenless ministry of that carnal man, John Halftext, the curate."

"Good night, good woman, and thanks for thy counsel," said the stranger, as he rode away.

"The blessings of the promise upon you," returned the old dame; "may He keep you that can keep you."

"Amen!" said the traveller; "for where to hide my head this night, mortal skill cannot direct me."

"I am very sorry for your distress," said Morton; "and had I a house or place of shelter that could be called my own, I almost think I would risk the utmost rigour of the law rather than leave you in such a strait. But my uncle is so alarmed at the pains and penalties denounced by the laws against such as comfort, receive, or consort with intercommuned persons, that he has strictly forbidden all of us to hold any intercourse with them."

"It is no less than I expected," said the stranger; "nevertheless, I might be received without his knowledge;--a barn, a hay-loft, a cart-shed,--any place where I could stretch me down, would be to my habits like a tabernacle of silver set about with planks of cedar."