Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since — Volume 1

by Walter Scott

  CHAPTER XXX

  SHOWS THAT THE LOSS OF A HORSE'S SHOE MAY BE A SERIOUSINCONVENIENCE

  The manner and air of Waverley, but, above all, the glitteringcontents of his purse, and the indifference with which he seemedto regard them, somewhat overawed his companion, and deterred himfrom making any attempts to enter upon conversation. His ownreflections were moreover agitated by various surmises, and byplans of self-interest with which these were intimately connected.The travellers journeyed, therefore, in silence, until it wasinterrupted by the annunciation, on the part of the guide, thathis 'naig had lost a fore-foot shoe, which, doubtless, his honourwould consider it was his part to replace.'

  This was what lawyers call a fishing question, calculated toascertain how far Waverley was disposed to submit to pettyimposition. 'My part to replace your horse's shoe, you rascal!'said Waverley, mistaking the purport of the intimation.

  'Indubitably,' answered Mr. Cruickshanks; 'though there was nopreceese clause to that effect, it canna be expected that I am topay for the casualties whilk may befall the puir naig while inyour honour's service. Nathless, if your honour--'

  'O, you mean I am to pay the farrier; but where shall we findone?'

  Rejoiced at discerning there would be no objection made on thepart of his temporary master, Mr. Cruickshanks assured him thatCairnvreckan, a village which they were about to enter, was happyin an excellent blacksmith; 'but as he was a professor, he woulddrive a nail for no man on the Sabbath or kirk-fast, unless itwere in a case of absolute necessity, for which he always chargedsixpence each shoe.' The most important part of thiscommunication, in the opinion of the speaker, made a very slightimpression on the hearer, who only internally wondered whatcollege this veterinary professor belonged to, not aware that theword was used to denote any person who pretended to uncommonsanctity of faith and manner.

  As they entered the village of Cairnvreckan, they speedilydistinguished the smith's house. Being also a public, it was twostories high, and proudly reared its crest, covered with greyslate, above the thatched hovels by which it was surrounded. Theadjoining smithy betokened none of the Sabbatical silence andrepose which Ebenezer had augured from the sanctity of his friend.On the contrary, hammer clashed and anvil rang, the bellowsgroaned, and the whole apparatus of Vulcan appeared to be in fullactivity. Nor was the labour of a rural and pacific nature. Themaster smith, benempt, as his sign intimated, John Mucklewrath,with two assistants, toiled busily in arranging, repairing, andfurbishing old muskets, pistols, and swords, which lay scatteredaround his workshop in military confusion. The open shed,containing the forge, was crowded with persons who came and wentas if receiving and communicating important news, and a singleglance at the aspect of the people who traversed the street inhaste, or stood assembled in groups, with eyes elevated and handsuplifted, announced that some extraordinary intelligence wasagitating the public mind of the municipality of Cairnvreckan.'There is some news,' said mine host of the Candlestick, pushinghis lantern-jawed visage and bare-boned nag rudely forward intothe crowd--'there is some news; and, if it please my Creator, Iwill forthwith obtain speirings thereof.'

  Waverley, with better regulated curiosity than his attendant's,dismounted and gave his horse to a boy who stood idling near. Itarose, perhaps, from the shyness of his character in early youth,that he felt dislike at applying to a stranger even for casualinformation, without previously glancing at his physiognomy andappearance. While he looked about in order to select the personwith whom he would most willingly hold communication, the buzzaround saved him in some degree the trouble of interrogatories.The names of Lochiel, Clanronald, Glengarry, and otherdistinguished Highland Chiefs, among whom Vich Ian Vohr wasrepeatedly mentioned, were as familiar in men's mouths ashousehold words; and from the alarm generally expressed, he easilyconceived that their descent into the Lowlands, at the head oftheir armed tribes, had either already taken place or wasinstantly apprehended.

  Ere Waverley could ask particulars, a strong, large-boned, hard-featured woman, about forty, dressed as if her clothes had beenflung on with a pitchfork, her cheeks flushed with a scarlet redwhere they were not smutted with soot and lamp-black, jostledthrough the crowd, and, brandishing high a child of two years old,which she danced in her arms without regard to its screams ofterror, sang forth with all her might,--

  Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling, Charlie is my darling, The young Chevalier!

  'D' ye hear what's come ower ye now,' continued the virago, 'yewhingeing Whig carles? D'ye hear wha's coming to cow yer cracks?

  Little wot ye wha's coming, Little wot ye wha's coming, A' the wild Macraws are coming.'

  The Vulcan of Cairnvreckan, who acknowledged his Venus in thisexulting Bacchante, regarded her with a grim and ire-forebodingcountenance, while some of the senators of the village hastened tointerpose. 'Whisht, gudewife; is this a time or is this a day tobe singing your ranting fule sangs in?--a time when the wine ofwrath is poured out without mixture in the cup of indignation, anda day when the land should give testimony against popery, andprelacy, and quakerism, and independency, and supremacy, anderastianism, and antinomianism, and a' the errors of the church?'

  'And that's a' your Whiggery,' reechoed the Jacobite heroine;'that's a' your Whiggery, and your presbytery, ye cut-lugged,graning carles! What! d' ye think the lads wi' the kilts will carefor yer synods and yer presbyteries, and yer buttock-mail, and yerstool o' repentance? Vengeance on the black face o't! mony anhonester woman's been set upon it than streeks doon beside onyWhig in the country. I mysell--'

  Here John Mucklewrath, who dreaded her entering upon a detail ofpersonal experience, interposed his matrimonial authority. 'Gaehame, and be d--(that I should say sae), and put on the sowensfor supper.'

  'And you, ye doil'd dotard,' replied his gentle helpmate, herwrath, which had hitherto wandered abroad over the whole assembly,being at once and violently impelled into its natural channel, 'YEstand there hammering dog-heads for fules that will never snapthem at a Highlandman, instead of earning bread for your familyand shoeing this winsome young gentleman's horse that's just comefrae the north! I'se warrant him nane of your whingeing KingGeorge folk, but a gallant Gordon, at the least o' him.'

  The eyes of the assembly were now turned upon Waverley, who tookthe opportunity to beg the smith to shoe his guide's horse withall speed, as he wished to proceed on his journey; for he hadheard enough to make him sensible that there would be danger indelaying long in this place. The smith's eyes rested on him with alook of displeasure and suspicion, not lessened by the eagernesswith which his wife enforced Waverley's mandate. 'D'ye hear whatthe weel-favoured young gentleman says, ye drunken ne'er-do-good?'

  'And what may your name be, sir?' quoth Mucklewrath.

  'It is of no consequence to you, my friend, provided I pay yourlabour.'

  'But it may be of consequence to the state, sir,' replied an oldfarmer, smelling strongly of whisky and peat-smoke; 'and I doubtwe maun delay your journey till you have seen the Laird.'

  'You certainly,' said Waverley, haughtily, 'will find it bothdifficult and dangerous to detain me, unless you can produce someproper authority.'

  There was a pause and a whisper among the crowd--'SecretaryMurray'--'Lord Lewis Gordon'--'Maybe the Chevalier himsell!' Suchwere the surmises that passed hurriedly among them, and there wasobviously an increased disposition to resist Waverley's departure.He attempted to argue mildly with them, but his voluntary ally,Mrs. Mucklewrath, broke in upon and drowned his expostulations,taking his part with an abusive violence which was all set down toEdward's account by those on whom it was bestowed. 'YE'LL stop onygentleman that's the Prince's freend?' for she too, though withother feelings, had adopted the general opinion respectingWaverley. 'I daur ye to touch him,' spreading abroad her long andmuscular fingers, garnished with claws which a vulture might haveenvied. 'I'll set my ten commandments in the face o' the firstloon that lays a finger on him.'

  'Gae hame, gudewife,' quoth the farmer a
foresaid; 'it wad betterset you to be nursing the gudeman's bairns than to be deaving ushere.'

  'HIS bairns?' retorted the Amazon, regarding her husband with agrin of ineffable contempt--'HIS bairns!

  O gin ye were dead, gudeman, And a green turf on your head, gudeman! Then I wad ware my widowhood Upon a ranting Highlandman'

  This canticle, which excited a suppressed titter among the youngerpart of the audience, totally overcame the patience of the tauntedman of the anvil. 'Deil be in me but I'll put this het gad downher throat!' cried he in an ecstasy of wrath, snatching a bar fromthe forge; and he might have executed his threat, had he not beenwithheld by a part of the mob, while the rest endeavoured to forcethe termagant out of his presence.

  Waverley meditated a retreat in the confusion, but his horse wasnowhere to be seen. At length he observed at some distance hisfaithful attendant, Ebenezer, who, as soon as he had perceived theturn matters were likely to take, had withdrawn both horses fromthe press, and, mounted on the one and holding the other, answeredthe loud and repeated calls of Waverley for his horse. 'Na, na! ifye are nae friend to kirk and the king, and are detained as siccana person, ye maun answer to honest men of the country for breachof contract; and I maun keep the naig and the walise for damageand expense, in respect my horse and mysell will lose to-morrow'sday's wark, besides the afternoon preaching.'

  Edward, out of patience, hemmed in and hustled by the rabble onevery side, and every moment expecting personal violence, resolvedto try measures of intimidation, and at length drew a pocket-pistol, threatening, on the one hand, to shoot whomsoever dared tostop him, and, on the other, menacing Ebenezer with a similar doomif he stirred a foot with the horses. The sapient Partridge saysthat one man with a pistol is equal to a hundred unarmed, because,though he can shoot but one of the multitude, yet no one knows butthat he himself may be that luckless individual. The levy en masseof Cairnvreckan would therefore probably have given way, nor wouldEbenezer, whose natural paleness had waxed three shades morecadaverous, have ventured to dispute a mandate so enforced, hadnot the Vulcan of the village, eager to discharge upon some moreworthy object the fury which his helpmate had provoked, and notill satisfied to find such an object in Waverley, rushed at himwith the red-hot bar of iron with such determination as made thedischarge of his pistol an act of self-defence. The unfortunateman fell; and while Edward, thrilled with a natural horror at theincident, neither had presence of mind to unsheathe his sword norto draw his remaining pistol, the populace threw themselves uponhim, disarmed him, and were about to use him with great violence,when the appearance of a venerable clergyman, the pastor of theparish, put a curb on their fury.

  This worthy man (none of the Goukthrapples or Rentowels)maintained his character with the common people, although hepreached the practical fruits of Christian faith as well as itsabstract tenets, and was respected by the higher orders,notwithstanding he declined soothing their speculative errors byconverting the pulpit of the gospel into a school of heathenmorality. Perhaps it is owing to this mixture of faith andpractice in his doctrine that, although his memory has formed asort of era in the annals of Cairnvreckan, so that theparishioners, to denote what befell Sixty Years Since, still sayit happened 'in good Mr. Morton's time,' I have never been able todiscover which he belonged to, the evangelical or the moderateparty in the kirk. Nor do I hold the circumstance of much moment,since, in my own remembrance, the one was headed by an Erskine,the other by a Robertson.

  [Footnote: The Reverend John Erskine, D. D, an eminent Scottishdivine and a most excellent man, headed the Evangelical party inthe Church of Scotland at the time when the celebrated DoctorRobertson, the historian, was the leader of the Moderate party.These two distinguished persons were colleagues in the Old GreyFriars' Church, Edinburgh; and, however much they differed inchurch politics, preserved the most perfect harmony as privatefriends and as clergymen serving the same cure]

  Mr. Morton had been alarmed by the discharge of the pistol and theincreasing hubbub around the smithy. His first attention, after hehad directed the bystanders to detain Waverley, but to abstainfrom injuring him, was turned to the body of Mucklewrath, overwhich his wife, in a revulsion of feeling, was weeping, howling,and tearing her elf-locks in a state little short of distraction.On raising up the smith, the first discovery was that he wasalive; and the next that he was likely to live as long as if hehad never heard the report of a pistol in his life. He had made anarrow escape, however; the bullet had grazed his head and stunnedhim for a moment or two, which trance terror and confusion ofspirit had prolonged somewhat longer. He now arose to demandvengeance on the person of Waverley, and with difficultyacquiesced in the proposal of Mr. Morton that he should be carriedbefore the Laird, as a justice of peace, and placed at hisdisposal. The rest of the assistants unanimously agreed to themeasure recommended; even Mrs. Mucklewrath, who had begun torecover from her hysterics, whimpered forth, 'She wadna saynaething against what the minister proposed; he was e'en ower gudefor his trade, and she hoped to see him wi' a dainty decentbishop's gown on his back; a comelier sight than your Genevacloaks and bands, I wis.'

  All controversy being thus laid aside, Waverley, escorted by thewhole inhabitants of the village who were not bed-ridden, wasconducted to the house of Cairnvreckan, which was about half amile distant.