Jaunty Jock and Other Stories. Munro Neil

Barrisdale’s reputation to be claiming such paltry common virtues as those you have named to charm the ear of an unknown lady in a mask. They credit ye with Latin and French, and say ye cut a dash whiles in London – oh la! a wonnerfu’ man entirely! – but upon my word, I never thought to get a catechist in my Hielan cateran.”

      “Here’s a comedy,” thought he, looking across the room to his cousin. “How in the world did you discover me?” he asked her; “did my cousin – ”

      “He did,” said she, “and he told me not to mention it; but you see, I take the privilege of my sex.”

      “I cannot but be flattered at your interest, ma’am, I’m sure, and I hope you will not let the thing go further so long as I’m in Edinburgh. Now that I’m discovered, I’m wae to be back to my ruffian gang,” said he, with a quizzing air. “I must have a most tremendous reputation, and I would not wonder if you could go over all my history.”

      “I daresay I know the worst of it.”

      “Do you? Faith! it’s more than I do myself; might I ask you to be jogging my memory?”

      “When I come to think of it,” said she, “the very virtues that you claim are what in the rough bounds of the Hielans may well manifest themselves in fashions that hereabouts in lalland towns we clap men into jyle for.”

      “Indeed, I should not wonder, ma’am,” said he; “what’s counted a crime in one parish, even in the Hielans, is often looked on as a Christian act in others not a glen removed.”

      “You talk of tolerance, Barrisdale; was it that made you hide in Ben Alder for a twelvemonth the man that shot Breadalbane’s factor?”

      “He was a very old man, the factor, Miss Duthie,” said he glibly. “He would have died in another winter, anyway, by all appearances, and not half so handsomely as with a bullet. And the poor fellow who shot him – you would not have us send a man with a wife and ten of a family to the gallows?”

      “Lord!” cried the lady, affecting to be out of patience. “You are a rebel too, my father tells me, and all for having back those Papist Stuarts and putting the dear King away out of the country. Is that a sample of your love for your fellowmen?”

      “Logic,” thought Macdonald, “is not a branch that’s taught with the virginals and tambouring in lawyers’ families.” “Well, ma’am,” said he, “could you blame me? I have been in France a while myself, and I ken the kind of drink they have to drink there; I would not poison dogs with it. I would have Jamie back for no other reason than to save what relics of his stomach may be to the fore. What’s that but love for my fellows?”

      “Was it that made you fight with the London gentleman and send him – poor soul – to his Maker at five o’clock on a cold winter morning?”

      “It’s a small world. Who would have thought the gossip of that trivial affair would have travelled to an Edinburgh assembly? Sure you would not have had me put off the occasion till the summer weather; we were both warm enough at the time, I assure you, or that black folly they call a duel had never been engaged in.”

      “You have the name of – of – I hate to mention it,” said the lady, now grown eager and biting her under lip.

      “Oh, out with it! out with it! Crown Counsel should never be blate, ma’am; on my word, the talent for cross-examination would seem to run in the family.”

      “Blackmail and – ” said she in a whisper.

      “One at a time!” said Macdonald. “That’s the prose way of putting it; up north we put it differently. You call it robbery; we call it rent. Some charge the rent by the pennyland or the acre; we charge it by the sound night’s sleep, and the man who rents immunity from his cattle from Barrisdale gets as good value for his money as the man who rents some acres of dirt from Appin.”

      Madam worked her fan industriously – now she was on his heels, and could not spare so plain a mercenary. “You steal cattle,” was her next charge.

      “Steal! ma’am,” said Barrisdale, with a frown. “It is not the bonniest word; up north we call it togail– lifting. It is an odd world, mistress, and every man of us has to do some sort of lifting for a living – if not in the glen, then in the market-place, where the act is covered in a fine confusion. If we lift a creach now and then in Barrisdale there are other clans that lift from us, and at the season’s end no one is much the worse, and there has been much frolic and diversion.”

      “On the same reasoning, then, you would justify the attempt at abducting Glen Nant’s rich daughter?” said the lady.

      “Do you happen to have seen her?”

      “I have,” said the lady, and could not for her life have kept from smiling. “It was the sight of her spoiled what small romantics I had about the Hielan cateran.”

      “Are you sure there are none to the fore yet?”

      “Not a morsel!” said the lady, looking point-blank at his nose.

      “Mo thruagh!” said Macdonald tragically; “then are we indeed forsaken.”

      “You made a shabby flight, by all accounts, from the lady’s brother.”

      “Humph!” said he, for the first time disconcerted; indeed, it was a story no way creditable to Clan Macdonald. “I think,” said he, “we’ll better let that flea stick to the wall,” and looked across the room to where his cousin sat glowering in a manifest anxiety.

      “Oh, Barrisdale, Barrisdale, can ye no’ be a good man?” said Miss Duthie, in a petty lady-like concern, and unable to keep her eyes from that unlucky nose.

      He put up his hand and covered it. She flushed to the neck that he should so easily have divined her, and he laughed.

      “It’s no use trying, ma’am,” said he. “Let me be as good as gold and I would never get credit for it from your sex, that must always fancy that a handsome face never goes but with a handsome heart.”

      She rose with an air of vexation to leave him, very red below her mask; the last dance was on the point of ending, the dowagers were coming in with their Paisley plaids on their shoulders. “I would never hurt any person’s feelings by allusion to his personal appearance,” she said, as she was turning away.

      “I am sure of it, ma’am,” said he; “you are most considerate.”

      CHAPTER II

      THE FIRE

      MACDONALD and his cousin Jock walked to their lodging in Halkerston’s Wynd without a lanthorn. The watch cried, “Twal o’clock, twal o’clock, and a perishin’ cauld nicht”; they could hear the splash of his shoes in the puddles of the lane although they could not see him. The town now rose above the haar that brooded in the swampy hollow underneath the citadel; the rain was gone, the stars were clear, the wind moaned in the lanes and whistled on the steep. It was like as they were in some wizard fortress cut from rock, walking in mirk ravines, the enormous houses dizzy overhanging them, the closes running to the plains on either hand in sombre gashes. Before them went sedans and swinging lanterns and flambeaux that left in their wake an odour of tow and rosin not in its way unpleasant.

      “Yon was a dubious prank upon the lady,” said Macdonald, and his cousin laughed uproariously.

      “Upon my word, Donald,” said he, “I could not for the life of me resist it. I declare it was better than a play; I have paid good money for worse at a play.”

      “And still and on a roguish thing,” said Macdonald, hastening his step. “You were aye the rogue, Jaunty Jock.”

      “And you were aye the dullard, Dismal Dan,” retorted the other in no bad humour at the accusation. “To be dull is, maybe, worse. You had the opportunity – I risked that – to betray me if you liked.”

      “You knew very well I would not do that.”

      “Well, I thought not, and if you did not take the chance to clear yourself