CHAPTER III. THE LITTLE LADY OF EARLSTOUN.

But it was not the will of God that I should warn my mother that day; for even as I ran, threading my way among the scattered boulders and whin bushes of the lower slopes, I came upon that which surprised me almost as greatly as the shooting itself.

Right in my path a little girl was sitting on a green mound like a deserted ant hillock: She had long yellow hair, and a red cloak was about her, with a hood to it, which came over her head and partly shaded her brow. A wooden pail had been placed carefully on the heather at her feet. Now, what with the perturbation of my spirits and my head being full of country tales of bogles and elves, at the first glance I took the maid for one of these, and would have avoided and given her a wide berth as something much less than canny.

But she wiped her eyes with her little white{23} hand, and as I looked more closely I saw that she had been crying, for her face was rubbed red, and her cheeks all harrowed and begrutten with tears.

So at that I feared no more, but went nearer. She seemed about seven or eight, and very well grown for her age.

“Why do you cry, little maid?” I said to her, standing before her in the green path.

For a while she did not answer, but continued to sob. I went near to comfort her, but she thrust her hand impatiently out at me.

“Do not touch me, ragged boy,” she said; “it is not for herd laddies to touch little ladies.”

And she spoke the words with such mightily offended dignity that on another occasion I would have laughed.

Then she commanded herself and dried her eyes on her red cloak.

“Carry the can and come with me to find my father,” she ordered, pointing imperiously with her finger as if I had been no better than a blackamoor slave in the plantations.

I lifted the wooden pail. It contained, as I think, cakes of oatmeal with cheese and butter wrapped in green leaves. But the little girl would not let me so much as look within.{24}

“These are for my father,” she said; “my father is the greatest man in the whole world!”

“But who may your father be, little one?” I asked her, standing stock still on the green highway with the can in my hand. She was daintily arranging the cloak about her like a fine lady. She paused, and looked at me very grave and not a little indignant.

“That is not for you to know,” she said, with dignity; “follow me with the pail.”

So saying she stalked away with dignified carriage in the direction of the hill-top. A wild fear seized me. One of the two men I had seen fleeing might be the little girl’s father. Perhaps he into whose back—ah! at all hazards I must not let her go that way.

“Could we not rest awhile here,” I suggested, “here behind this bush? There are wicked men upon the hill, and they might take away the pail from us.”

“Then my father would kill them,” she said, shaking her head sagely, but never stopping a moment on her upward way. “Besides, my mother told me to take the pail to the hill-top and stand there in my red cloak till my father should come. But it was so hot and the pail so heavy that—{25}—”

“That you cried?” I said as she stopped.

“Nay,” she answered with an offended look; “little ladies do not cry. I was only sorry out loud that my father should be kept waiting so long.”

“And your mother sent you all this way by yourself; was not that cruel of her?” I went on to try her.

“Little ragged boy,” she said, looking at me with a certain compassion, “you do not know what you are saying. I cannot, indeed, tell you who my father is, but I am Mary Gordon, and my mother is the Lady of Earlstoun.”

So I was speaking to the daughter of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, the most famous Covenanter in Scotland, and, next to my Lord Viscount of Kenmure, the chief landowner in our countryside.

“And have you come alone all the way from Earlstoun hither?” I asked in astonishment, for the distance was at least four or five miles and the road rough and ill-trodden.

“Nay,” she made answer, “not so. My mother set me so far upon the way, and now she waits for me by the bushes yonder, so that I must make haste and return. We came in a{26} boat to your water-foot down there where the little bay is and the pretty white sand.”

And she pointed with her hand to where the peaty water of the moorland stream mingled with and stained the deep blue of the loch.

“Haste you, laddie,” she cried sharply a moment after; “my father is not a one to be kept waiting. He will be impatient and angry. And because he is so great a man his anger is hard to bide.”

“You must not go up to the hill-top,” I said, “for there are many bad men on the Bennan to-day, and they would perhaps kill you.”

“But my father is there,” said she, stopping and looking at me reproachfully. “I must go; my mother bade me.”

And haply at that moment I saw the entire company of soldiers, led by the man in the red coat, stringing down the farther side of the mountain in the line of flight by which the second fugitive had made good his escape. So I judged it might be as well to satisfy the lass and let her go on to the top. Indeed, short of laying hold of her by force, I knew not well how to hinder so instant and imperious a dame.

Besides, I thought that by a little generalship I would be able to keep her wide of the{27} place where lay the poor body of the slain man.

So straight up the hill upon which I had seen such terrible things we went, Ashie and Gray slinking unwillingly and shamefacedly behind. And as I went I cast an eye to my flock. And it appeared strange to me that the lambs should still be feeding quietly and peacefully down there, cropping and straying on the green scattered pastures of Ardarroch. Yet in the interval all the world had changed to me.

We reached the summit.

“Here is the place I was to wait for my father,” said Mary Gordon. “I must arrange my hair, little boy, for my father loves to see me well-ordered, though he is indeed himself most careless in his attiring.”

She gave vent to a long sigh, as if her father’s delinquencies of toilette had proved a matter of lifelong sorrow to her.

“But then, you see, my father is a great man and does as he pleases.”

She put her hand to her brow and looked under the sun this way and that over the moor.

“There are so many evil men hereabout—your father may have gone down the further side to escape them,” I said. For I desired to{28} withdraw her gaze from the northern verge of the tableland, where, as I well knew, lay a poor riven body, which, for all I knew, might be that of the little maid’s father, silent, shapeless, and for ever at rest.

“Let us go there, then, and wait,” she said, more placably and in more docile fashion than she had yet shown.

So we crossed the short crisp heather, and I walked between her and that which lay off upon our right hand, so that she should not see it.

But the dogs Ashie and Gray were almost too much for me. For they had gone straight to the body of the slain man, and Ashie, ill-conditioned brute, sat him down as a dog does when he bays the moon, and, stretching out his neck and head towards the sky, he gave vent to his feelings in a long howl of agony. Gray snuffed at the body, but contented herself with a sharp occasional snarl of angry protest.

“What is that the dogs have found over there?” said the little maid, looking round me.

“Some dead sheep or other; there are many of them about,” I answered, with shameless mendacity.{29}

“Have your Bennan sheep brown coats?” she asked, innocently enough.

I looked and saw that the homespun of the man’s attire was plain to be seen. “My father has been here before me, and has cast his mantle over the sheep to keep the body from the sun and the flies.”

For which lie the Lord will, I trust, pardon me, considering the necessity and that I was but a lad.

At any rate the maid was satisfied, and we took our way to the northern edge of the Bennan top.{30}