Dickson McCunn - Complete 'Gorbals Die-hards' Series. Buchan John

at Heritage, who nodded. “It’s the only way,” he said. “Get every man jack you can raise, and if it’s humanly possible get a gun or two. I believe there’s time enough, for I don’t see the brig arriving in broad daylight.”

      “D’you not?” Dickson asked rudely. “Have you considered what day this is? It’s the Sabbath, the best of days for an ill deed. There’s no kirk hereaways, and everybody in the parish will be sitting indoors by the fire.” He looked at his watch. “In half an hour it’ll be light. Haste you, Mem, and get ready. Dougal, what’s the weather?”

      The Chieftain swung open the door, and sniffed the air. The wind had fallen for the time being, and the surge of the tides below the rocks rose like the clamour of a mob. With the lull, mist and a thin drizzle had cloaked the world again.

      To Dickson’s surprise Dougal seemed to be in good spirits. He began to sing to a hymn tune a strange ditty.

      “Class-conscious we are, and class-conscious wull be

       Till our fit’s on the neck o’ the Boorjoyzee.”

      “What on earth are you singing?” Dickson inquired.

      Dougal grinned. “Wee Jaikie went to a Socialist Sunday School last winter because he heard they were for fechtin’ battles. Ay, and they telled him he was to join a thing called an International, and Jaikie thought it was a fitba’ club. But when he fund out there was no magic lantern or swaree at Christmas he gie’d it the chuck. They learned him a heap o’ queer songs. That’s one.”

      “What does the last word mean?”

      “I don’t ken. Jaikie thought it was some kind of a draigon.”

      “It’s a daft-like thing anyway… When’s high water?”

      Dougal answered that to the best of his knowledge it fell between four and five in the afternoon.

      “Then that’s when we may expect the foreign gentry if they think to bring their boat in to the Garplefoot… Dougal, lad, I trust you to keep a most careful and prayerful watch. You had better get the Die-Hards out of the Tower and all round the place afore Dobson and Co. get loose, or you’ll no’ get a chance later. Don’t lose your mobility, as the sodgers say. Mr. Heritage can hold the fort, but you laddies should be spread out like a screen.”

      “That was my notion,” said Dougal. “I’ll detail two Die-Hards— Thomas Yownie and Wee Jaikie—to keep in touch with ye and watch for you comin’ back. Thomas ye ken already; ye’ll no fickle Thomas Yownie. But don’t be mistook about Wee Jaikie. He’s terrible fond of greetin’, but it’s no fright with him but excitement. It’s just a habit he’s gotten. When ye see Jaikie begin to greet, you may be sure that Jaikie’s gettin’ dangerous.”

      The door shut behind them and Dickson found himself with his two charges in a world dim with fog and rain and the still lingering darkness. The air was raw, and had the sour smell which comes from soaked earth and wet boughs when the leaves are not yet fledged. Both the women were miserably equipped for such an expedition. Cousin Eugenie trailed heavy furs, Saskia’s only wrap was a bright-coloured shawl about her shoulders, and both wore thin foreign shoes. Dickson insisted on stripping off his trusty waterproof and forcing it on the Princess, on whose slim body it hung very loose and very short. The elder woman stumbled and whimpered and needed the constant support of his arm, walking like a townswoman from the knees. But Saskia swung from the hips like a free woman, and Dickson had much ado to keep up with her. She seemed to delight in the bitter freshness of the dawn, inhaling deep breaths of it, and humming fragments of a tune.

      Guided by Thomas Yownie they took the road which Dickson and Heritage had travelled the first evening, through the shrubberies on the north side of the House and the side avenue beyond which the ground fell to the Laver glen. On their right the House rose like a dark cloud, but Dickson had lost his terror of it. There were three angry men inside it, he remembered: long let them stay there. He marvelled at his mood, and also rejoiced, for his worst fear had always been that he might prove a coward. Now he was puzzled to think how he could ever be frightened again, for his one object was to succeed, and in that absorption fear seemed to him merely a waste of time. “It all comes of treating the thing as a business proposition,” he told himself.

      But there was far more in his heart than this sober resolution. He was intoxicated with the resurgence of youth and felt a rapture of audacity which he never remembered in his decorous boyhood. “I haven’t been doing badly for an old man,” he reflected with glee. What, oh what had become of the pillar of commerce, the man who might have been a bailie had he sought municipal honours, the elder in the Guthrie Memorial Kirk, the instructor of literary young men? In the past three days he had levanted with jewels which had once been an Emperor’s and certainly were not his; he had burglariously entered and made free of a strange house; he had played hide-and-seek at the risk of his neck and had wrestled in the dark with a foreign miscreant; he had shot at an eminent solicitor with intent to kill; and he was now engaged in tramping the world with a fairytale Princess. I blush to confess that of each of his doings he was unashamedly proud, and thirsted for many more in the same line. “Gosh, but I’m seeing life,” was his unregenerate conclusion.

      Without sight or sound of a human being, they descended to the Laver, climbed again by the cart track, and passed the deserted West Lodge and inn to the village. It was almost full dawn when the three stood in Mrs. Morran’s kitchen.

      “I’ve brought you two ladies, Auntie Phemie,” said Dickson.

      They made an odd group in that cheerful place, where the new-lit fire was crackling in the big grate—the wet undignified form of Dickson, unshaven of cheek and chin and disreputable in garb; the shrouded figure of Cousin Eugenie, who had sunk into the arm-chair and closed her eyes; the slim girl, into whose face the weather had whipped a glow like blossom; and the hostess, with her petticoats kilted and an ancient mutch on her head.

      Mrs. Morran looked once at Saskia, and then did a thing which she had not done since her girlhood. She curtseyed.

      “I’m proud to see ye here, Mem. Off wi’ your things, and I’ll get ye dry claes, Losh, ye’re fair soppin’ And your shoon! Ye maun change your feet… Dickson! Awa’ up to the loft, and dinna you stir till I give ye a cry. The leddies will change by the fire. And You, Mem”—this to Cousin Eugenie—”the place for you’s your bed. I’ll kinnle a fire ben the hoose in a jiffey. And syne ye’ll have breakfast—ye’ll hae a cup o’ tea wi’ me now, for the kettle’s just on the boil. Awa’ wi’ ye. Dickson,” and she stamped her foot.

      Dickson departed, and in the loft washed his face, and smoked a pipe on the edge of the bed, watching the mist eddying up the village street. From below rose the sounds of hospitable bustle, and when after some twenty minutes’ vigil he descended, he found Saskia toasting stockinged toes by the fire in the great arm-chair, and Mrs. Morran setting the table.

      “Auntie Phemie, hearken to me. We’ve taken on too big a job for two men and six laddies, and help we’ve got to get, and that this very morning. D’you mind the big white house away up near the hills ayont the station and east of the Ayr road? It looked like a gentleman’s shooting lodge. I was thinking of trying there. Mercy!”

      The exclamation was wrung from him by his eyes settling on Saskia and noting her apparel. Gone were her thin foreign clothes, and in their place she wore a heavy tweed skirt cut very short, and thick homespun stockings, which had been made for some one with larger feet than hers. A pair of the coarse low-heeled shoes which country folk wear in the farmyard stood warming by the hearth. She still had her russet jumper, but round her neck hung a grey wool scarf, of the kind known as a “Comforter.” Amazingly pretty she looked in Dickson’s eyes, but with a different kind of prettiness. The sense of fragility had fled, and he saw how nobly built she was for all her exquisiteness. She looked like a queen, he thought, but a queen to go gipsying through the world with.

      “Ay, they’re some o’ Elspeth’s things, rale guid furthy claes,” said Mrs. Morran complacently. “And the shoon are what she used to gang about the byres wi’ when she was in the Castlewham dairy. The