The Men of the Moss-Hags Part 38

The imp seemed to have gotten the words at some field-preaching.

"Think ye I didna warn her?" he went on. "My braw chiels, ye hae gotten your warnin' this nicht! Meddle na wi' Yon, neither dare Him to His face lest He be angry. For juist like Gibbie killin' a speckly taed, Yon can set His heel on ye!"

He stroked the hair off the dead woman's brow with a hand like a hairy claw.

"Aye, an' ye were na sic an ill mither to me, though ye selled yoursel'

to Ye-Ken-Wha! Whatna steer there is up there aboot the soul o' ae puir auld body. Hear till it----"

And he waved his hands to the four airts of heaven, and called us to hearken to the hills shaking themselves to pieces. "Siccan a steer aboot a puir f.e.c.kless auld woman gaun to her ain ill place! I wonder Yon is no' shamed o' himsel'!"

And the twisted man-thing put his hands to his brow and pressed the palms upon his eyes, as if to shut out the unceasing pulsing of the lightning and the roar of the anger of G.o.d breaking like sea upon the mountains.

"Sae muckle squandered for sae little--an' after a' but little pleasure in the thing! I dinna see what there is in the Black Man's service to mak' siccan a brag aboot. Gin ye sup tasty kail wi' him in the forenicht, he aye caa's roond wi' the lawin' i' the mornin'!

"Losh! Losh! Sae muckle for sae little. I declare I will cut oot the three marks that my mither made on me, and gang doon to Peden at the Shalloch. I want na mair sic wark as this! Na, though I was born wi' the Black Man's livery on me!

"Preserve us!" he cried. "This is as fearsome as that year there was nae meat in the hoose, and Gash Gibbie brocht some back, and aye brocht it, and brocht it even as it was needed. And Kate o' the Corp-licht, she readied it and asked nae quastions. But only tearin' belly-hunger gied us strength to eat that awesome meat. An' a' the neighbours died o'

starvation at Tonskeen and the Star an' the bonny Hill o' the Buss--a'

but Gib an' his mither, their leevin' lanes. But yae nicht Yon sent Gibbie's sin to find him oot; or maybe the Black Thing in the Hole gat lowse, because it was his hour.

"And at ony rate puir Gibbie gat a terrible fricht that nicht.

"Wad ye like to hear? Aweel, puir Gibbie was lying on his bed up that stair, an' what think ye there cam' to him?"

He paused and looked at us with a countenance so blanched and terrible that almost we turned and ran. For the lightning played upon it till it seemed to glow with unholy light, and that not from without but from within. It was the most terrifying thing to be alone with such a monstrous living creature, and such a dead woman in the lonesome place he had called the "Nick of the Deid Wife." What with the chattering of our teeth, the agitation of our spirits, and the flicker of the fire, the old dead witch seemed actually to rise and nod at us.

"So Gash Gibbie, puir man, lay and listened in his naked bed, for he had gotten his fill that nicht, though a' the lave were hungry--an' that o'

his ain providin'. But as he lay sleepless, he heard a step come to the door, the sneck lifted itsel', an' a foot that wasna his mither's came into the pa.s.sage, _dunt-duntin'_ like a lameter hirplin' on two staves!

"An' then there cam' a hard footstep on the stair, and a rattle o'

fearsome-like sounds, as the thing cam' up the ladder. Gibbie kenned na what it micht be. An' when the door opened an' the man wi' the wooden feet cam' in--preserve me, but he was a weary-lookin' tyke.

"'Whaur came ye frae?' says puir Gash Gibbie.

"'Frae the Grave!' says he. He hadna muckle to say, but his e'en war like fiery gimblets in his head.

"'What mak's your e'en bones sae white an' deep?'

"'The Grave!' says he. He hadna muckle to say, but he spak' aye mair dour and wearisome than ever.

"'What mak's ye lauch sae wide at puir Gibbie?'

"'The Grave!' says he. He hadna muckle to say, but syne he steppit nearer nearer to the bedside.

"'What made that great muckle hole in your side?'

"'You made it!' cried the ghaist, loupin' at Gibbie's throat; an' puir Gib kenned nae mair."

And even as the monster shouted out the last words--the words of the spectre of his cannibal vision--Gash Gibbie seemed to us to dilate and lean forward to spring upon us. The wild-fire reeled about as though the very elements were drunken, and Wat and I fairly turned and fled, shouting insanely with terror as we ran--leaving the silent stricken witch with the face of blood, and the misshapen elf, her h.e.l.l's brood progeny, raving and shouting on the hillside--these two alone at midnight in the "Nick of the Deid Wife."

"Aye, rin, rin," we heard him call after us. "Rin fast, and Yon will maybe no' catch ye--till it is your hour!"

And truly Wat and I did run in earnest, stumbling and crying out in our terror--now falling and now getting up, then falling to the running again without a single reasonable word. But as we came hot-foot over the Rig of Lochricaur, we seemed to run into the sheeted rain. For where we had been hitherto, only the blue dry fire had ringed us, but here we ran into a downpour as though the fountains of the deep of heaven had broken up and were falling in a white spate upon the world.

We were wet, weary, and terrified, more than we had ever been in our lives, before we reached the hermitage of the cave of Macaterick. There we found the women waiting for us, listening fearfully to the roar of the storm without, and hearkening in the lown blinks to Auld Anton Lennox praying--while the lightning seemed to run into the cave, and shine on the blade of the sword he held gripped in his right hand. So we stripped our wet clothes, and lay in the outer place all the night, where there was a fire of red peats, while the women withdrew themselves into their inner sanctuary. I could see the anxiety in their eyes when we came in, for they could not but discern the ghastly terror in our faces. But without any agreement between ourselves, Wat and I silently resolved that we should not acquaint any of the party with the hideous judgments of that night, to which we had been eye-witnesses.

CHAPTER XLIV.

A DESIRABLE GENERAL MEETING.

The next morning dawned colder and more chilly. The catch of the autumn of the year was in the air, and it nipped shrewdly till the sun looked over the hills in the east. This was to be the great day of the Societies' general meeting, which had been summoned in the wilds of Shalloch-on-Minnoch.[10]

[Footnote 10: Now, because men so readily forget, I may repeat how that the United Societies had grown in strength since Ayrsmoss, and now needed only a head to make a stand for the cause. It was a strange way of the Providence of G.o.d, that it should come about that these little meetings for prayer in remote places of the land, should grow to be so mighty a power for the pulling down of strongholds. At this time, though every appearance in arms had been put down at Pentland, at Bothwell, and at Ayrsmoss, yet the Blue Banner itself had never been put down. And even now many a Malignant in the south and west trembled at the great and terrible name of the "Seven Thousand."

The proclamations of the Societies, which were affixed to every kirk door and market cross in the south, caused many a persecutor and evil-wisher to quake and be silent. And the word that G.o.d was building for Himself a folk on the hills of Scotland reached even to the Low Countries, and kept the Prince of Orange and his counsellors watching with eager eyes those things which were done by the Remnant over seas, till the appointed hour should come. Heading and hanging would not last for ever, and such is the binding power of persecution that for each one cut off by prison, or the hangman's cord, ten were sworn in to do the will of the Societies. Till this present time most fatal dissension and division among themselves had been their undoing. But there was one coming, now a willow wand of a student of Groningen in Holland, who should teach the Societies to be a wall of fire about their faith and their land.

To their conventions came commissioners from all parts of Scotland, but mainly from the southern and western shires, as well as from the Merse, and out of the bounds of Fife.]

Though the morn had dawned caller, with a white rime of frost lying on the gra.s.s and for a little s.p.a.ce making grey the leaves of the trees, the day of the great conventicle was one of great and lowering heat. My mother was set to go--and Kate McGhie also. Wat must needs therefore accompany them, and I had a letter from Groningen which I behoved to read. With Anton Lennox, stout of heart even in his sickness, abode my la.s.s, Maisie Lennox--of whom (though I looked to be back on the morrow) I took leave with reluctance and with a heavy and sinking heart.

For us who were used to making a herd's track across the hills, it was not a long step over the moors from Macaterick to the foot of the Craigfacie of Shalloch, where the General Meeting of the Societies was to take place. But it was a harder matter for my mother.

She needed help over every little brink of a peat brow, and as we pa.s.sed Tonskeen, where there is a herd's house in the wild, far from man and very quiet with G.o.d, I ran to get her a staff, which the shepherd's good wife gladly gave. For there was little that would be refused to a wanderer in these parts, when on his way to the Societies' Meeting.[11]

[Footnote 11: So grateful and inspiring were these gatherings, that many went to their death recalling the grace and beauty of these meetings--"desirable general meetings"--they were in deed and sooth, at least as I remember them.--(W. G., Afton, 1702.)]

Soon we left the strange, unsmiling face of Loch Macaterick behind, and took our way towards the rocky clint, up which we had to climb. We went by the rocks that are called the Rig of Carclach, where there is a pa.s.s less steep than in other places, up to the long wild moor of the Shalloch-on-Minnoch. It was a weary job getting my mother up the steep face of the gairy, for she had so many nick-nacks to carry, and so many observes to make.

But when we got to the broad plain top of the Shalloch Hill it was easier to go forward, though at first the ground was boggy, so that we took off our stockings and walked on the driest part. We left the burn of Knocklach on our left--playing at keek-bogle among the heather and bent--now standing stagnant in pools, now rindling clear over slaty stones, and again disappearing altogether underground like a hunted Covenanter.

As soon as we came over the brow of the hill, we could see the folk gathering. It was wonderful to watch them. Groups of little black dots moved across the green meadows in which the farmsteading of the Shalloch-on-Minnoch was set--a cheery little house, well thatched, and with a pew of blue smoke blowing from its chimney, telling of warm hearts within. Over the short brown heather of the tops the groups of wanderers came, even as we were doing ourselves--past the lonely copse at the Rowantree, by the hillside track from Straiton, up the little runlet banks where the heather was blushing purple, they wended their ways, all setting towards one place in the hollow. There already was gathered a black cloud of folk under the rickle of stones that runs slidingly down from the steep brow of Craigfacie.

As we drew nearer we could see the notable Session Stone, a broad flat stone overhanging the little pourie burn that tinkles and lingers among the slaty rocks, now shining bone-white in the glare of the autumn sun.

I never saw a fairer place, for the heights about are good for sheep, and all the other hills distant and withdrawn. It has not, indeed, the eye-taking glorious beauty of the glen of Trool, but nevertheless it looked a very Sabbath land of benediction and peace that day of the great Societies' Meeting.

Upon the Session Stone the elders were already greeting one another, mostly white-headed men with dinted and furrowed faces, bowed and broken by long sojourning among the moss-hags and the caves.

When we came to the place we found the folk gathering for prayer, before the conference of the chosen delegates of the societies. The women sat on plaids that had been folded for comfort. Opposite the Session Stone was a wide heathery amphitheatre, where, as on tiers of seats, rows of men and women could sit and listen to the preachers. The burnie's voice filled up the breaks in the speech, as it ran small and black with the drought, under the hollow of the bank. For, as is usual upon our moors, the rain and storm of the night had not reached this side of the hill.

I sat down on a lichened stone and looked at the grave, well-armed men who gathered fast about the Session Stone, and on the delegates' side of the water. It was a fitting place for such a gathering, for only from the lonely brown hills above could the little cup of Conventicle be seen, nestling in the lap of the hill. And on all the moor tops that looked every way, couching torpid and drowsed in the hot sun, were to be seen the sentinels--pacing the heather like watchmen going round and telling the towers of Zion, the sun flashing on their pikes and musket barrels as they turned sharply, like men well-disciplined.

The only opening was to the south-west, but even there nothing but the distant hills of Colmonell looked in, blue and serene. Down in the hollow there was a glint of melancholy Loch Moan, lying all abroad among its green wet heather and stretches of yellow bent.

What struck me as most surprising in this a.s.sembly was the entire absence of anything like concealment. From every quarter, up from the green meadows of the Minnoch Valley, over the scaurs of the Straiton hills, down past the craigs of Craigfacie, over from the deep howe of Carsphairn, streams of men came walking and riding. The sun glinted on their war-gear. Had there been a trooper within miles, upon any of the circle of the hills, the dimples of light could not have been missed.