Three Boys Part 66

"And you let that poor boy go out over the mountain to lose himself among the rocks and moss, knowing that he could not find his way?"

"Oh ay!" said Scoodrach coolly.

"And that he might lose his life?"

"Oh ay."

"You young villain! how dared you do this? You've murdered him, perhaps."

"Oh ay; she hopes she has."

"What!" roared The Mackhai. "You did it on purpose, then?"

"Ay," cried Scoodrach, flashing up, and, dashing the bonnet he held defiantly on the carpet, he stamped upon it. "And she'd kill any mon who tried to rob ta bonnie young Chief Kenneth of her rights!"

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS.

It was in a dull, half-stunned way that Max walked straight out through the castle gate, and away down the rocky slope toward the sh.o.r.es of the little bay.

"Is it all true?" he asked himself. "Is it all true?" And then drearily he kept on muttering, "I can't stay here now--I can't stay here now."

He had walked on for about a mile, when he turned to look back for a farewell glance at the castle, when he found Scoodrach close at his heels, glaring at him in a peculiar way, which slightly startled Max, but he returned the gaze boldly, and then, with a confused idea of walking on till he could reach some inn, when there was nothing of the kind for forty or fifty miles, he asked the young gillie if that was the way for Glasgow.

Scoodrach's face lit up with satisfaction as he said it was; and, when Max went right on, the Highland lad stopped back watching him for a time, and then, laughing silently to himself, returned to stand in the shadow and glare at the bailiff and his men; while Max trudged on, with the sense of being mentally stunned increasing, but not so rapidly as the growing feeling of misery and shame within his breast.

Rocky path, moist sheep-track, steep climb, sharp descent into boggy hollow; then up over a hill, with a glance at the sunny sea; and then on and on, in and out among the everlasting hills, which lapped fold upon fold, all grey crag and heather, and one valley so like another, and the ins and outs and turns so many, that, but for the light in the west, it would have been hard to tell the direction in which he tramped on and on, as near as he could divine straight away for Glasgow and the south.

"I must get home," he muttered dreamily, as he tramped on. "Oh, the shame of it!" he burst out. "Father! father! how could you do such a thing as this?"

There was a wild cry close at hand, and a curlew rose, and then a flock of lapwings, to flit round and round, uttering their peevish calls; but Max saw nothing but the scene at the castle, heard nothing but The Mackhai's bitter words, and he tramped onward and onward into the wilderness of mountain and moss, onward into the night.

There are people who would laugh at the idea of an active lad being lost in the mountains. To them it seems, as they travel comfortably along by rail or coach, impossible that any one could go perilously astray among "those little hills."

Let them try it, and discover their ignorance, as they learn the immensity of the wild s.p.a.ces in Scotland and Wales, and how valley succeeds valley, hill comes down to hill, with so great a resemblance one to the other, that in a short time the brain is overwhelmed by a mist of confusion, and that greatest of horrors,--one not known, fortunately, to many,--the horror of feeling lost, robs the sufferer of power to act calmly and consistently, and he goes farther and farther astray, and often into perils which may end in death.

Max Blande wandered on, looking inward nearly all the time, and backward at the scenes of the past day, so that it was not long before he had diverged from the beaten track and was trudging on over the short gra.s.s and among the heather. Then great corners of crags and loose stones rose in his way, forcing him to turn to right or left to get by. Then he would come close up to some precipitous, unclimbable face of the hill, and strike away again, to find his course perhaps stopped by a patch of pale green moss dotted with cotton rushes, among which his feet sank, and the water splashed with suggestions of his sinking completely in if he persevered.

But he kept on, now in one direction, now in another, striving to keep straight, with the one idea in his mind to get right away from Dunroe, and certainly increasing the distance, but in a weary, devious way, till he seemed to wake up all at once to the fact that it was growing dark, and that a thick mist was gradually creeping round him, and he was growing wet, as well as so faint and weary that he could hardly plod along.

Max stopped short by a block of stone, against which he struck, and only saved himself from falling by stretching out his hands.

The stone suggested resting for a few minutes, and he sat down and listened, but the silence was awful. No cry of bird or bleat of sheep fell upon his ear, and the mist and darkness had in a few minutes so shut him in that he could distinguish nothing half a dozen yards away.

The sensation of restfulness was, however, pleasant; and he sat there for some time, trying to think of his plans, but in a confused way, for the incidents that had taken place at Dunroe would intrude as soon as he began to make plans.

"How stupid I am!" he cried, suddenly starting up with a shiver of cold, for the damp mist seemed to chill him, and for the first time he awoke to the fact that his feet and legs were saturated. "I must get on to some hotel, and to-morrow make for the nearest station, and go home."

Just then, for a moment, it occurred to him that he had left everything at Dunroe; but his thoughts went off in another direction, and then in another and another, finally resting upon the idea of the possibility of getting to the nearest station.

But where was the nearest station? Stirling. The line to Oban had not been made in those days; and now Max began to grow confused, as he recalled the fact that there was only one railway line running through the Western Highlands, and whether that were to the north, south, east, or west, he could not tell.

Neither at that hour could he tell which way these quarters lay. All he knew was that he was in a thick mist somewhere in the mountains, high up or low down in one of the hollows, and that if he stirred from where he stood, he must literally feel his way.

For a moment the idea came upon him that he had better stop till daylight, but just then a peculiar m.u.f.fled cry smote his ears, and a thrill of terror ran through him as he felt that it would be impossible to sit there all through the long hours of the night in the cold and darkness. So he started at once, the cry he had heard influencing his direction, for he struck off the opposite way.

He made very slow progress, but at the end of a few minutes he knew that he was descending a rapid slope, and he went stumbling on through tall heather which was laden with moisture. Every now and then, too, he struck against some stone, but he persevered, for he fancied that the mist was rather less thick as he descended.

Then he tripped, and went headlong into the drenched heather, and struggled up with the feeling of confusion increasing as he stood trying to pierce the gloom.

Mist and darkness everywhere, and he once more went on downward, but diagonally, as it had grown now almost too steep to go straight down the slope; and so on for the next half-hour, when, as he leaned forward and took a step, he went down suddenly, and before he could save himself he was falling through s.p.a.ce, his imagination suggesting an immense depth, but in two or three moments he touched bottom, and went rolling and scrambling among loose shingly stones for quite a hundred feet before he finally stopped.

He got up slowly and painfully, half stunned and sore, but he was not much hurt, for only the first few feet of his fall had been perpendicular; and once more he stood thinking in the darkness, and fighting with the fear and confusion which like mental gloom and mist oppressed his brain.

Only one idea dominated all others, and that one was that he must not stand still.

Starting once more, it was with ground still rapidly descending, and now he went very slowly and cautiously, feeling his way step by step among the loose scree, lest he should come upon another perpendicular descent, though even here the place was so steep that the stones he dislodged slid rattling down over one another for some distance before all was again still.

He must have gone on like this for nearly an hour before he felt that he was upon more level ground, but it was terribly broken up and enc.u.mbered with great ma.s.ses of stone, among which he had painfully to thread his way.

Once again he found himself walking into a patch of moss, and he felt the soft growth giving way, till he was knee-deep, and it was only by a sudden scramble backwards that he was able to get free.

Then he went on and on again amidst the profound darkness, feeling his way among stones and scrubby growth more and more wearily each minute, till he was brought sharp up by a curious, croaking cry.

The lately learned knowledge, however, came that this must be a moor-hen; but the fact of such a bird being near did not suggest that he must be close to water, and in consequence he had not gone much farther before he found himself splashing along the edge of some mountain loch or pool, whose bottom where he stood seemed to be smooth pebbles.

He stooped down in a dull, despairing way, plunged his hand beneath the surface, and drew out one of the biggest stones he could find, to hurl straight before him, and, as he listened, it fell into water which gave forth a dull, echoing splash, suggestive of depth and overhanging rocks.

He tried again and again, after backing cautiously, as he thought, out of the deep direction, but only to find the water grow deeper, till, to his horror, he found it nearly to his middle. The despairing plunge, however, that he took, led him into shallows once more; but every stone he threw fell into deep water, till he jerked one to his left, and this fell on stones.

Taking that direction, he pursued his level way over a shingly beach, with the impression upon him that he must be journeying along a deep glen with high rocks on either side, and one of the little lochs which he had often seen in these narrow straths, filling up the princ.i.p.al part of the hollow.

Once or twice he found his feet splashing in water, but by bearing to the left he found himself again on the dry pebbles, and in this way, save for a few heavy ma.s.ses in his path, he skirted what he rightly concluded was a mountain loch, though whereabouts he could not tell.

Gaining a little courage as he realised all this, he ventured once upon a shout, in the hope that it might be heard, but he did not repeat it, for he stopped awe-stricken as his cry was repeated away to his left, then on his right, and again and again, to go murmuring off as if a host of the spirits of the air were mocking his peril.

But a little thought taught him that his surmise was right, and that he was slowly making his way along a narrow glen, whose towering walls had the property of reflecting back any sound; and, though he dared not raise his voice again, he picked up the first heavy stone against which he kicked, and hurled it from him with all his might.

A terribly dull, hollow, sullen plunge was the result, telling of the great depth of the water, and this sound was taken up, to go echoing and whispering away into the distance till it died out, and then seemed to begin again in a low, dull roar, which puzzled him as he listened.

Just then it seemed to him that a warm breath of air came upon his cheek, and this grew stronger, and the dull roar more plain. Then it did not seem so dark, and he realised that a breeze was coming softly up the glen, meeting him and wafting the wet mist away.

There was no doubt of this, and, though it was intensely dark where he stood, it was a transparent darkness, through which he could see the starry sky, forming as it were an arch of golden points starting on either side from great walls of rock a thousand feet above the level of the loch. This loch, in spite of the darkness, he could plainly see now, reflecting from its level surface, which stretched away into the darkness, the bright points of the light above.

Max stood thinking, and listened to the dull roar. He had been long enough in the Highlands now to know that this was not the continuation of the echoes he had raised, but the murmur of falling water, either of some mountain torrent pouring into the lake, or by a reverse process the lake emptying its superabundant water into the rocky bed of a stream, which would go bubbling and foaming down to the sea.