Tales from Blackwood Volume Vii Part 14

"Ah, brother!" interposed Miss Alice, "that would have been all very well a short time ago, and it would have been delightful to see you with your henchman, and jellies, and downy-whistles--but 'tis too late now. Oh, brother! we are doomed to destruction. Copus will tell you what he has seen this very day."

"Why, what has he seen?--a ghost? they are wery superst.i.tious, and believe in the second sight."

"Oh, first sight is quite enough for us. I saw them myself, though they were at such a distance, I confess, I took them for a flock of sheep."

"Who?--what was it you saw?--speak, Copus." Thus adjured, our travelled friend, with a face from which the expression of alarm had not yet entirely subsided, commenced his narrative.

"This morning, sir, when we first changed 'osses, I gets off the rumble, sir, and leaves Mariar by herself. I goes into the small house while the cattle was a-coming--a lonely place, sir, in the midst of a moor, sir--and says I to the landlady, says I, 'here's a fine day,' says I.'

"'Make the most of it,' says she, 'you bid fair never to see another.'

"'You're wery purlite,' says I; 'I don't think I'm in a dying condition.'

"'You carry your death-sentence at your breast,' says she, in a hollow voice, like a drum with a hoa.r.s.eness.

"'What do you elude to,' says I?--and looking at my breast, sir, I seed nothing in life but this here watch-ribbon as you gived me, of your own tartan, you know, sir.

"'Why wear ye the badge of the doomed Ben-na-Groich?' says she; 'know you not that his web is spun?'

"'There you're misinformed,' says I, 'ma'am; they're all done by machinery.'

"'Fool,' says she, quite in a pa.s.sion, 'you've put yourself under a ruined wall, and will be crushed to the dust by the tumble.'

"'Wrong again,' says I, 'for master has had the whole building repaired.'

"'Blind mole, you will take no warning; perhaps because you don't believe--see there!' And when I looked in to where she pointed, sure enough I sees ten or a dozen stout chaps all a-sharping of their swords upon great grinding-stones, at the other end of the house.

"'What's all them fellows arter?' says I.

"'Blood,' says she.

"'Blood and wounds!' says I, 'I never heared such a woman. 'Clect, at Oxford, hearing of an old Roman Catholic lady they called the Civil, as spoke in that 'ere fas.h.i.+on, and was a dealer in books and stationery, but, cuss me, if you doesn't beat her hollow. Whose blood do you mean, ma'am?'

"'His who calls himself Ben-na-Groich.'"

"Oh, brother Thomas, did you ever hear of the like?" shuddered Miss Alice.

"A witch," said the gentleman thus appealed to, with a very unsuccessful effort to appear disdainful. "What more, Copus?--did she say anything else?"

"Lots more, but I've nearly forgotten it."

"How long did this detain you?"

"Oh, he kept us waiting three or four hours," interposed Miss Alice; "and when he came out, he couldn't have been more unsteady if he had been a-drinking."

"Yes, indeed, sir," added Maria, "his manners has been wery extraordinary ever since; he has been either singing songs or sleeping the whole way here."

"The interview was a very strange one. Did any one else see the ten or twelve men?" inquired the chief.

"I seed one of them, sir," replied Maria--"a tall, handsome gentleman, in a green frock coat. He went towards a horse that was tied near a stack of fuel, just at the moment Copus came out."

"Indeed? Did _you_ see him, Copus?"

"Oh yes. I saw a figure something as she describes it. He is the surest sign, the wild woman said, of something awful; they calls him Kickan-drubb."

"How strange!" repeated the chieftain, for the hundredth time--"a regular conspiracy, and n.o.body here to defend us. The old tiger down-stairs, Angus Mohr, would be the first to kill us if he could, and what is to become of us, Heaven only knows."

"Better let the horses stay at the door, sir; the carriage may be useful," suggested Copus.

"There's no time to be lost, indeed," replied the master; "but yet what would be the use of flying? We are safer here than on the road."

"No, no; let us go, brother Ben--brother Thomas, I mean--for do you know that Fash-na-Cairn has vowed he'll have your life?"

"Who the devil is Fash-na-Cairn? I never did him any harm."

"But his clan has been opposed to Ben-na-Groich for hundreds of years.

He'll murder _you_--and _me_!--oh dear! oh dear! he'll force me to be Mrs Fash-na-Cairn!" Here Miss Alice, overcome by her horrible imaginings, covered her face with her hands; but whether she wept or not history does not record.

"Will ye no let a poddy sleep, and be d--d till ye?" again screamed the shrill voice of Angus Mohr; "hoo mony mair o' ye southron prutes is coming yammering to the door?"

No answer, apparently, was given to this inquiry, for it was renewed with bitterer tones than before.

"Fat's a' this o't?--wi' swords and targets, an' the Stuart stripe in yer plaids. Are ye come to harry ta auld fat man? huigh! hurra! Cot, an Angus had a dirk himsell, he'd pit it up to the handle in ta fat cairl's wame."

While these words of encouragement or inquiry were issuing from the wrathful native, a hurry of steps was heard upon the stairs--the clank of steel, as if of the crossing of swords, sounded in the pa.s.sage, and with a shout, Fash-na-Cairn! Fash-na-Cairn! the parlour door was burst open, and six wild figures in the full Highland costume rushed in upon the deliberations of the new chieftain and his household. One of the party seized the arm of Aunt Alice; another, with a flat-sided blow of his claymore, laid our heroic friend Copus quietly on the floor; a third took Jane Somers by the hand as she sat retired in a corner of the room, and kept guard over her during the whole of the scene; while the others placed themselves opposite the astonished Ben-na-Groich himself, and pointed their weapons at his throat without saying a word.

"What do you want, gentlemen?" said that individual, with a tremor in his voice that revealed the conflict within. "I'll give you a cheque for as much as you require--fix your own price! What shall it be?"

"Revenge!" said a hollow voice, proceeding from the chief of the party. "I have you now in my power--the first time after a search of eight hundred years."

"What have I done? I never did you a mischief; if I did, I'm willing to pay damages, a.s.sessed by your own surveyor."

"Your ancestor, Fin of the crooked finger, stabbed my ancestor, Kenneth of the flat nose, as he dined with him in this hall in the reign of Fergus the First--give me back his blood."

"Can't, indeed--haven't a drop of it, or any one else's blood; but I will pay the worth of it--only spare my life."

"Fash-na-Cairn may spare, but on one condition--you have a sister."

"Oh no, indeed he hasn't, sir," said Miss Alice, "she died when she was quite a baby."

"Speak, dog," said the ruthless Fash-na-Cairn, kicking Copus as he lay on the carpet; "who is the sister of Ben-na-Groich?"

"That 'ere middle-aged lady with the red nose. That's our Miss Alice."

"She must be Fash-na-Cairn's bride, or the wolf's skin must cover Ben-na-Groich."

"Oh dear, oh dear," sighed the disconsolate lady, "will nothing do but that?"

"Even that won't save him--I see another maiden."