Sir Thomas Dick Lauder

“ The door opened, and a young man entered, whose fatigued and soiled appearance showed that he had come off a long journey.
“Donald Campbell of Inverawe!” cried George, in utter astonishment; and the young men were instantly in one another’s arms. “My dear fellow, what strange chance has brought you hither?”
“I come to throw myself on your honour,” said Donald. “I come to throw myself on the honour of him whom I have ever held to be my dearest friend;—on the honour of one who has never failed me hitherto, and who, if I mistake not, will not fail me now. ”

“ Hearing him admire your dog so much, I thought it would be a kind act from me to you, my old friend, just to ride back quietly, and give you a hint of it. ‘I thought I had the best dogs in all Scotland,’ said the Earl, ‘but that dog of Inchrory’s beats them all clean. He is worth them all put together. He is a prince among dogs, as his master is a prince among men. Where could you find a master worthy of such a dog but Inchrory himself—the best fellow I have met with in all this country.’ ”
“Did the Earl of Fife say that?” cried Inchrory. ”

“ John inwardly chuckled at the thought of having thus got so easily and so perfectly the command of her motions. But a sudden onset from the Highlanders speedily dispersed the remainder of her progeny; and the pursuers naturally scattered themselves to follow after individual grunters, so that the race was seen to rage over all parts of the field. This distracted the attention of the old sow, and she went cantering about, hither and thither, like a frantic creature, until, by degrees, she found herself at the very farthest end of the bog. ”

“ The door never can stand such kicks as these. I see it yielding. Murder! murder! murder!”
“Tamm her nane sel’, but she has no more time for nonsense!” cried John, in a voice that seemed to betoken the climax of fury, and with that he drove the whole weight of his body, with the force of a battering-ram, against the door, forcing it out from its hinges, and tumbling it, and the chest of drawers, and the huge trunk, into the very middle of the room, with a violence that burst them open, and scattered their contents in all directions. ”

“ Again the spectre dropped the fold of the filmy plaid that covered the bosom, and displayed the yawning gash, which continued to pour out rivers of blood. The spectacle was horrible, and Inverawe’s very arteries were frozen up. Again it spoke in a deep hollow tone, whilst its lips moved not.
“Inverawe! My first visit has been fruitless!—Once more I come to warn you that blood must flow for blood. No longer shield the murderer! Force me not to appear again, when all warning will be vain!” ”

“ We are already aware that you are stanch to the righteous cause of the true Prince. Now is the time for you to raise yourself in the world, by joining his royal standard. Come, then, and lend us your powerful aid in placing our lawful King upon the throne of his ancestors!—Come along with us, and I shall forthwith introduce you to Prince Charles, who may yet make a lord of you before you die.”
John Smith was, in truth, all that M’Taggart had called him, being a handsome, good looking man, as brave as a lion, and not altogether devoid of a certain natural ambition. ”

“ Again he rubbed his eyes, and looked; but again he looked into impenetrable night.
“It was a dream,” thought, rather than said, Inverawe; “a horrible dream—but nevertheless it was a dream—curious in its coincidences, but not unnatural. Nay, it was most natural, that the strangest adventure of my past life, should be recalled by the yet stranger occurrences of this night, and that both should thus link themselves confusedly and irrationally together during sleep. Pshaw! It is absurd for a rational man to think of this illusion more. I’ll to sleep again.” ”

“ Springing before the Eagle Eye, the young Inverawe prepared himself to receive the meditated stroke—warded it skilfully off,—and then following in on his foe with a thrust, he penetrated him right through the breast, with a wound that was instantaneously mortal. The Eagle Eye was now as sensible that he owed his life to young Donald, as Donald could have been that his had been preserved by the Indian warrior. ”

“ John was immediately persuaded that he was a doomed man, for he felt that, in his case, resistance was altogether out of the question. He threw himself on his back in the bottom of the broad deep cut in the peat-hag. The trooper came up, and having no time to dismount, he stooped from his saddle and made one or two ineffectual cuts at the poor man. The horse shyed at John’s bloody head as it was raised in terror from the peat-hag, and then the animal reared back as he felt the soft mossy ground sinking under him. ”

“ After such a hint as this, John staid not to make farther experiments on the hospitality of the little place, but, getting out at the farther end of its street with all manner of expedition, he slowly proceeded on his way, weary, faint, and heart-sunken.
Just as sunset was approaching, he came to the door of a small single cottage, hard by the way-side. There he knocked gently, without saying a word.
“Who is there?” asked a soft woman’s voice in Gaelic, from within.
“A poor man like to die with hunger and thirst,” replied John in the same language. ”

“ God in his mercy help and protect your poor mother!”
“Speak not thus, my dearest friend!” said Colonel Grant, making an effort to command himself, and hastening to support and comfort the wounded man; “trust me you will yet do well. You must live for your poor wife’s sake.”
“No!” replied Inverawe, with deep solemnity. “My hour is come. In vain was it that your kind friendship, and that of the brave Abercromby, succeeded in deceiving me,—for I have seen him—I have seen him terribly,—and this is Ticonderoga!” ”

“ The train of carts and horses, with the plunder, were driven on—the order of march was formed. John, after a severe struggle with his heart, rent himself away from the arms of Morag, and followed M’Taggart, without daring to speak, or to look behind him; whilst the poor girl, bereft of her support, fell upon the green—where she lay beating her breast and tearing her hair in utter despair, till the sound of the distant pipe died away, and the presence of some of her fellow-servants brought her back to her reason. ”

“ He fought with the bravery and the perseverance of a hero. At length his bonnet was knocked from his head, and although he was still possessed with the most anxious desire to obey Captain M’Taggart’s order to stick to his side, he was surprised on looking about him to find that there was no M’Taggart, no, nor any one else left near him to stick to but enemies.
John Smith’s spirit was undaunted, so that, seeing he had no one else to stick to, he now resolved to stick to his foes, to the last drop of life’s blood that was within him. ”

“ They were talking earnestly over the many, and most contradictory rumours, that had reached them of the events of that day’s battle, their rustic and unwarlike souls having been so sunk, with the trepidation occasioned by the distant sound of the heavy cannonade, that they as yet hardly dared to speak but in whispers. Suddenly the shrieking of the three young persons came upon their ears. They pricked them up in alarm, and turned every eye along the road. The shrieking increased, and the two girls and the boy appeared, with the formidable figure of John Smith in pursuit of them. ”

“ As he was just about to be overpowered by their united pressure upon him, a ball from a rifle stretched one of them lifeless before him, and in an instant afterwards, the Eagle Eye, whose accurate aim had directed it to its deadly errand, was flourishing his tomahawk over the head of another of his foes. It fell upon him—the skull was split open—the man rolled down on the ground a ghastly corpse; and the third, that was left opposed to young Inverawe, began to give way in terror before him. ”

“ William Dallas, the packman, whom he had left so ingeniously inserted into the sack, and deposited in the Pensassenach’s lint-pot. Though the gag was gone, the mouth was wide open, and the large, protruded, and glazed eye-balls, glared fearfully upon him. Though the light was not sufficient to display the figure correctly, John’s fancy made him vividly behold the sack. He would have spoken if he could; but he felt that the apparition of a murdered man was floating before him. ”

“ Morag!—Morag, girl! run! call out all the men! My stars, how unfortunate it is that MacArthur is from home! How he would rejoice! Call all the men, I say!”
“Fat vas she cryin’ aboot?” said Morag, hurrying to answer her call.
“Run and call all the men, I tell you, girl!” cried the Pensassenach, bustling about, all life and activity, and her indisposition entirely forgotten. “Call all the men I say; and John Smith in particular. I want John Smith here immediately. What glorious news! There wont be a rascally rebel knave of them left in the whole country. And my brother John coming too! ”

“ War had not been long commenced against the poultry, when the large sow, alarmed by the murders she beheld going on around her, and terrified by the loud hurrahs of the plunderers, as well as scared by the sudden striking up of the bagpipes, took to flight in good time, and made straight for the eye of the killogie, at the head of her troop. The quick-sighted John Smith at once perceived the risk which his mistress, the Pensassenach, ran, of being discovered, by the animals making this attempt to find shelter there. ”

“ That cairn, too!—may not that be a cairn which marks the spot where—where—where some murder has been done? Can you assure me that no ghosts ever haunt this wild place?”
“The soul that is free from all consciousness of guilt may hold patient, solitary, and fearless converse with ghost or goblin, even on such a wild mountain side as this,” said Inverawe, somewhat impatiently. “But surely you cannot expect that my hospitality to you should require my sharing this mountain concealment with you? ”

“ But he had no sooner presented his awful spectral form and visage within the threshold, than he spread instantaneous terror over the group assembled within.
“Oh, a ghost! a ghost!” cried out in Gaelic a pale-faced girl of some eight or nine years of age, as she dropped on her knees, shaken by terror in every limb and feature.
“Oh, the devil! the devil!” roared an old man and woman, who also sank down before John, bellowing out like frightened cattle. “Och, och! we shall all be swallowed up quick by the Evil One!” ”

“ This last visitation of the apparition, accompanied as it was by a denunciation so terrible, had a yet more overwhelming effect upon Inverawe than either of those that preceded it. Bereft of all power over himself, he lay, conscious of existence it is true, but utterly incapable of commanding thought, much less of exercising action. Ere he could rally his intellect, or his nervous energy, the spectre was gone; and the apartment was dark. ”

“ Rounding a huge fallen mass of rock, which lay poised on the very edge of the precipice, they came suddenly on a ravine, or rift, in the face of the cliff above, on climbing a few paces up which, they discovered the low, arched mouth of a cave, whence issued a faint gleam of light, and an odour of smoke. His guide stooped under the projection of the cliff that hung over it, and let himself down through the narrow entrance. Inverawe followed his example without fear, and found himself in a cavern of an irregular form, from ten to twenty feet in diameter. ”

“ Many is the time that I have listened to him, with boyish wonder, as, with lightning in his eye, he fought over again his battles of Culloden, Bunker’s Hill, and Ticonderoga.
As John had no children, his intended heir was a nephew. His greatest desire in life was to marry him to a grand-daughter of his old departed benefactress, the Pensassenach. He offered to settle his whole fortune, which was not small, on the young lady, if she would only marry his nephew; and John’s wife did all in her power to back up the proposal. ”

“ There being nothing now about John Smith, or his actions, that did not savour of humanity, but his extraordinary head-dress, the Pensassenach had no doubt that it was the real bodily man that she saw before her, she perceived nothing but what was powerfully ludicrous in his strange costume, the absurdity of which was heightened by his agonizing motions and attitudes, and exclamations of intense anxiety about Morag, whose fainting-fit gave no uneasiness to a woman of her experience. ”

“ At a little distance below, a bog, with its attendant pools of dark moss-water, which shine amidst the black chaotic mass around them, and look blue by their reflection of the sky—with a half-ruined and roofless killogie, or kiln for drying corn and malt, standing on a sloping bank at no great distance from them. ”