by John Buchan
The wife did not change her habit of life. The son Benjamin accompanied her as before in the long rounds between May and October, and in the winter abode in the fishing quarter of Muirtown, and intermittently attended school. Presently his mother took a second husband, a Catholic Macdonald from the West, for the road is a lonely occupation for a solitary woman. Her new man was a cheerful being — very little like the provident Ebenezer — much addicted to the bottle and a lover of all things but legitimate trade. But he respected the dead man’s wishes and made no attempt to touch the hoard in the Muirtown bank; he was kind, too, to the boy, and taught him many things that are not provided for in the educational system of Scotland. From him Benjie learned how to take a nesting grouse, how to snare a dozen things, from hares to roebuck, how to sniggle salmon in the clear pools, and how to poach a hind when the deer came down in hard weather to the meadows. He learned how to tell the hour by the sun, and to find his way by the stars, and what weather was foretold by the starlings packing at nightfall, or the crows sitting with their beaks to the wind, or a badger coming home after daylight. The boy knew how to make cunning whistles from ash and rowan with which to imitate a snipe’s bleat or the call of an otter, and he knew how at all times and in all weathers to fend for himself and find food and shelter. A tough little nomad he became under this tutelage, knowing no boys’ games, with scarcely an acquaintance of his age, but able to deal on equal terms with every fisherman, gillie, and tinker north of the Highland line.
It chanced that in the spring of this year Mrs Bogle had fallen ill for the first time in her life. It was influenza, and, being neglected, was followed by pneumonia, so that when May came she was in no condition to take the road. By ill luck her husband had been involved in a drunken row, when he had assaulted two of his companions with such violence and success that he was sent for six months to prison. In these circumstances there was nothing for it but that Benjie should set out alone with the cart, and it is a proof of the stoutheartedness of the family tradition that his mother never questioned the propriety of this arrangement. He departed with her blessing, and weekly despatched to her a much-blotted scrawl describing his doings. There was something of his father’s hard fibre in the child, for he was a keen bargainer and as wary as a fox against cajolery. He met friends of his family who let him camp beside them, and with their young he did battle, when they dared to threaten his dignity. Benjie fought in no orthodox way, but like a weasel, using every weapon of tooth and claw, but in his sobbing furies he was unconquerable, and was soon left in peace. Presently he found that he preferred to camp alone, so with his old cart and horse he made his way up and down the long glens of the West to the Larrig. There, he remembered, the fish trade had been profitable in past years, so he sat himself down by the roadside, to act a middleman between the fishing-cobles of Inverlarrig and the kitchens of the shooting lodges. It would be untrue to say that this was his only means of livelihood, and I fear that the contents of Benjie’s pot, as it bubbled of an evening in the Wood of Larrigmore, would not have borne inspection by any keeper who chanced to pass. The weekly scrawls went regularly to his now convalescent mother, and once a parcel arrived for him at the Inverlarrig post- office containing a gigantic new shirt, which he used as a blanket. For the rest, he lived as Robinson Crusoe lived, on the country-side around him, asking no news of the outer world.
On the morning of the 27th of August he might have been seen, a little after seven o’clock, driving his cart up the fine beech avenue which led to Glenraden Castle. It was part of his morning round, but hitherto he had left his cart at the lodge-gate, and carried his fish on foot to the house; wherefore he had some slight argument with the lodge-keeper before he was permitted to enter. He drove circumspectly to the back regions, left his fish at the kitchen door, and then proceeded to the cottage of the stalker, one Macpherson, which stood by itself in a clump of firs. There he waited for some time till Mrs Macpherson came to feed her hens. A string of haddocks changed hands, and Benjie was bidden indoors, where he was given a cup of tea, while old Macpherson smoked his early pipe and asked questions. Half an hour later Benjie left, with every sign of amity, and drove very slowly down the woodland road towards the haugh where the Raden, sweeping from the narrows of the glen, spreads into broad pools and shining shallows. There he left the cart and squatted inconspicuously in the heather in a place which commanded a prospect of the home woods. From his observations he was aware that one of the young ladies regularly took her morning walk in this quarter.
Meantime in the pleasant upstairs dining-room of the Castle breakfast had begun. Colonel Alastair Raden, having read prayers to a row of servants from a chair in the window — there was a family tradition that he once broke off in a petition to call excitedly his Maker’s attention to a capercailzie on the lawn — and having finished his porridge, which he ate standing, with bulletins interjected about the weather, was doing good work on bacon and eggs. Breakfast, he used to declare, should consist of no kickshaws like kidneys and omelettes; only bacon and eggs, and plenty of ‘em. The master of the house was a lean old gentleman dressed in an ancient loud-patterned tweed jacket and a very faded kilt. Still erect as a post, he had a barrack-square voice, and high- boned, aquiline face, and a kindly but irritable blue eye. His daughters were devoting what time was left to them from attending to the breakfasts of three terriers to an animated discussion of a letter which lay before them. The morning meal at Glenraden was rarely interrupted by correspondence, for the post did not arrive till the evening, but this missive had been delivered by hand.
“He can’t come,” the younger cried. “He says he’s seedy again. It may really be smallpox this time.”
“Who can’t come, and who has smallpox?” her father demanded.
“Sir Archibald Roylance. I told you I met him and asked him to lunch here to-day. We really ought to get to know our nearest neighbour, and he seems a very pleasant young man.”
“I think he is hiding a dark secret,” said the elder Miss Raden. “Nobody who calls there ever finds him in — except Lady Claybody, and then he told her he had smallpox. Old Mr Bandicott said he went up the long hill to Crask yesterday, and found nobody at home, though he was perfectly certain he saw one figure slinking into the wood and another moving away from a window. I wonder if Sir Archibald is really all right. We don’t know anything about him, do we?”
“Of course he’s all right — bound to be — dashed gallant sporting fellow. Sorry he’s not coming to luncheon — I want to meet him. He’s probably afraid of Nettie, and I don’t blame him, for she’s a brazen hussy, and he does well to be shy of old Bandicott. I’m scared to death by the old fellow myself.”
“You know you’ve promised to let him dig in the Piper’s Ring, Papa.”
“I know I have, and I would have promised to let him dig up my lawn to keep him quiet. Never met a man with such a flow of incomprehensible talk. He had the audacity to tell me that I was no more Celtic than he was, but sprung from some blackguard Norse raiders a thousand years back. Judging by the sketch he gave me of their habits, I’d sooner the Radens were descended from Polish Jews.”
“I thought him a darling,” said his elder daughter, “and with such a beautiful face.”
“He may be a darling for all I know, but his head is stuffed with maggots. If you admired him so much, why didn’t you take him off my hands? I liked the look of the young fellow and wanted to have a word with him. More by token” — the Colonel was hunting about for the marmalade—”what were you two plotting with him in the corner after dinner?”
“We were talking about John Macnab.”
The Colonel’s face became wrathful.
“Then I call it dashed unfilial conduct of you not to have brought me in. There was I, deafened with the old man’s chatter — all about a fellow called Harald Blacktooth or Bottlenose or some such name, that he swears is buried in my grounds and means to dig up — when I might have been having a really fruitful conversation.
What was young Bandicott’s notion of John Macnab?”
“Mr Junius thinks he is a lunatic,” said the elder Miss Raden. She was in every way her sister’s opposite, dark of hair and eye where Janet was fair, tall where Janet was little, slow and quiet of voice where Janet was quick and gusty.
“I entirely differ from him. I think John Macnab is perfectly sane, and probably a good fellow, though a dashed insolent one. What’s Bandicott doing about his river?”
“Patrolling it day and night between the 1st and 3rd of September. He says he’s taking no chances, though he’d bet Wall Street to a nickel that the poor poop hasn’t the frozenest outside.”
“Nettie, he said nothing of the kind!” Miss Agatha was indignant. “He talks beautiful English, with no trace of an accent — all Bostonians do, he told me.”
“Anyhow, he asked what steps we were taking and advised us to get busy. We come before him, you know... Heavens, papa, it begins to-morrow night! Oh, and I did so want to consult Sir Archibald. I’m sure he could help.”
Colonel Raden, having made a satisfactory breakfast, was lighting a pipe.
“You need not worry, my dear. I’m an old campaigner and have planned out the thing thoroughly. I’ve been in frequent consultation with Macpherson, and yesterday we had Alan and James Fraser in, and they entirely agreed.”
He produced from his pocket a sheet of foolscap on which had been roughly drawn a map of the estate.
“Now, listen to me. We must assume this fellow Macnab to be in possession of his senses, and to have more or less reconnoitred the ground — though I don’t know how the devil he can have managed it, for the gillies have kept their eyes open, and nobody’s been seen near the place. Well, here are the three beats. Unless young Bandicott is right and the man’s a lunatic, he won’t try the Home beat, for the simple reason that a shot there would be heard by twenty people and he could not move a beast twenty yards without being caught. There remains Carnmore and Carnbeg. Macpherson was clear that he would try Carnmore, as being farthest away from the house. But I, with my old campaigning experience” — here Colonel Raden looked remarkably cunning—”pointed out at once that such reasoning was rudimentary. I said ‘He’ll bluff us, and just because he thinks that we think he’ll try Carnmore, he’ll try Carnbeg. Therefore, since we can only afford to watch one beat thoroughly, we’ll watch Carnbeg.’ What do you think of that, my dears?”
“I think you’re very clever, papa,” said Agatha. “I’m sure you’re right.”
“And you, Nettie?”
Janet was knitting her brows and looking thoughtful.
“I’m... not... so... sure. You see we must assume that John Macnab is very ingenious. He probably made his fortune in the colonies by every kind of dodge. He’s sure to be very clever.”
“Well put, my dear,” said her father, “it’s just that cleverness that I propose to match.”
“But do you think you have quite matched it? You have tried to imagine what John Macnab would be thinking, and he will have done just the same by you. Why shouldn’t he have guessed the solution you have reached and be deciding to go one better?”
“How do you mean, Nettie?” asked her puzzled parent. He was inclined to be annoyed, but experience had taught him that his younger daughter’s wits were not to be lightly disregarded.
Nettie took the estate map from his hand and found a stump of pencil in the pocket of her jumper.
“Please look at this, papa. Here is A and B. B offers a better chance, so Macpherson says John Macnab will take B. You say, acutely, that John Macnab is not a fool, and will try to bluff us by taking A. I say that John Macnab will have anticipated your acumen.”
“Yes, yes,” said her father impatiently. “And then?”
“And then will take B after all.”
The Colonel stood rapt in unpleasant meditation for the space of five seconds...
“God bless my soul!” he cried. “I see what you mean. Confound it, of course he’ll go for Carnmore. Lord, this is a puzzle. I must see Macpherson at once. Are you sure you’re right, Nettie?”
“I’m not in the least sure. We’ve only a choice of uncertainties, and must gamble. But, as far as I see, if we must plump for one we should plump for Carnmore.”
Colonel Raden departed from his study, after summoning Macpherson to that shrine of the higher thought, and Janet Raden, after one or two brief domestic interviews, collected her two terriers and set out for her morning walk. The morning was as fresh and bright as April, the rain in the night had set every burn singing, and the thickets and lawns were still damp where the sun had not penetrated. Her morning walk was wont to be a scamper, a thing of hops, skips, and jumps, rather than a sedate progress; but on this occasion, though two dogs and the whole earth invited to hilarity, she walked slowly and thoughtfully. The mossy broken tops of Carnbeg showed above a wood of young firs, and to the right rose the high blue peaks of the Carnmore ground. On which of these on the morrow would John Macnab begin his depredations? He had two days for his exploit; probably he would make his effort on the second day, and devote the first to confusing the minds of the defence. That meant that the problem would have to be thought out anew each day, for the alert intelligence of John Macnab — she now pictured him as a sort of Sherlock Holmes in knickerbockers — would not stand still. The prospect exhilarated, but it also alarmed her; the desire to win a new hunter was now a fixed resolution; but she wished she had a colleague. Agatha was no use, and her father, while admirable in tactics, was weak in strategy; she longed more than ever for the help of that frail vessel, Sir Archie.
Her road led her by a brawling torrent through the famous Glenraden beechwood to the spongy meadows of the haugh, beyond which could be seen the shining tides of the Raden sweeping to the high-backed bridge across which ran the road to Carnmore. The haugh was all bog-myrtle and heather and bracken, sprinkled with great boulders which the river during the ages had brought down from the hills. Half a mile up it stood the odd tumulus called the Piper’s Ring, crowned with an ancient gnarled fir, where reposed, according to the elder Bandicott, the dust of that dark progenitor, Harald Blacktooth. If Mr Bandicott proposed to excavate there he had his work cut out; the place was encumbered with giant stones since a thousand floods had washed its sides since it first received the dead Viking. Great birch woods from both sides of the valley descended to the stream, thereby making the excellence of the Home beat, for the woodland stag is a heavier beast than his brother of the high tops.
Close to the road, in a small hollow where one of the rivulets from the woods cut its way through the haugh, she came on an ancient cart resting on its shafts, an ancient horse grazing on a patch of turf among the peat, and a small boy diligently whittling his way through a pile of heather roots. The urchin sprang to his feet and saluted like a soldier.
“Please, lady,” he explained in a high falsetto whine, “I’ve gotten permission from Mr Macpherson to make heather besoms on this muir. He’s been awfu’ kind to me, lady.”
“You’re the boy who sells fish? I’ve seen you on the road.”
“Aye, lady, I’m Fish Benjie. I sell my fish in the mornin’s and evenin’s, and I’ve a’ the day for other jobs. I’ve aye wanted to come here, for it’s the grandest heather i’ the country-side; and Mr Macpherson, he kens I’ll do nae harm, and I’ve promised no to kindle a fire.”
The child with the beggar’s voice looked at her with such sage and solemn eyes that Janet, who had a hopeless weakness for small boys, sat down on a sun- warmed hillock and stared at him, while he turned resolutely to business.
“If you’re hungry, Benjie,” she said, “and they won’t let you make a fire, you can come up to the Castle and get tea from Mrs Fraser. Tell her I sent you.”
“Thank you, lady, but if you please, I was gaun to my tea at Mrs Macpherson’s. She’s fell fond o’ my haddies, and she tell’t me to tak a look in when I stoppit work. I’m ettlin’ to be here for a guid while.”
“Wil
l you come every day?”
“Aye, every day about eight o’clock, and bide till maybe five in the afternoon when I go down to the cobles at Inverlarrig.”
“Now, look here, Benjie. When you’re sitting quietly working here I want you to keep your eyes open, and if you see any strange man, tell Mr Macpherson. By strange man I mean somebody who doesn’t belong to the place. We’re rather troubled by poachers just now.”
Benjie raised a ruminant eye from his besom.
“Aye, lady. I seen a queer man already this mornin’. He cam up the road and syne started off over the bog. He was sweatin’ sore, and there was twa men from Strathlarrig wi’ him carryin’ picks and shovels... Losh, there he is comin’ back.”
Following Benjie’s pointing finger Janet saw, approaching her from the direction of the Piper’s Ring, a solitary figure which laboured heavily among the peat-bogs. Presently it was revealed as an elderly man wearing a broad grey wide-awake and a suit of flannel knickerbockers. His enormous horn spectacles clearly did not help his eyesight, for he had almost fallen over the shafts of the fish-cart before he perceived Janet Raden. He removed his hat, bowed with an antique courtesy, and asked permission to recover his breath.
“I was on my way to see your father,” he said at length. “This morning I have prospected the barrow of Harald Blacktooth, and it is clear to me that I can make no progress unless I have Colonel Raden’s permission to use explosives. Only the very slightest use, I promise you. I have located, I think, the ceremonial entrance, but it is blocked with boulders which it would take a gang of navvies to raise with crowbars. A discreet application of dynamite would do the work in half an hour. I cannot think that Colonel Raden would object to my using it when I encounter such obstacles. I assure you it will not spoil the look of the barrow.”
