by Unknown
“We’ll let other laddies buy them,” Tommy explained in his superior way, “and then after the Muckley is past, we’ll buy them frae them.”
The others understood now. After a Muckley there was always a great dearth of pence, and a moneyed man could become owner of Muckley purchases at a sixth part of the Muckley price.
“You crittur!” exclaimed Corp, in abject admiration.
But Gav saw an objection. “The feck of them,” he pointed out, “will waur their siller on shows and things to eat, instead of on what we want them to buy.”
“So they will, the nasty sackets!” cried Corp.
“You couldna blame a laddie for buying Teuch and Tasty,” continued Gav with triumph, for he was a little jealous of Tommy.
“You couldna,” agreed Corp, “no, I’ll be dagont, if you could,” and his hand pressed his money feverishly.
“Deuteronomy!” roared Tommy, and Corp’s hand jumped as if it had been caught in some other person’s, pocket.
“But how are we to do?” he asked. “If you like, I’ll take Birkie and the Haggerty-Taggertys round the Muckley and fight ilka ane that doesna buy—”
“Corp,” said Tommy, calmly, “I wonder at you. Do you no ken yet that the best plan is to leave a thing to me?”
“Blethering gowks that we are, of course it is!” cried Corp, and he turned almost fiercely upon Gav. “Lippen all to him,” he said with grand confidence, “he’ll find a wy.”
And Tommy found a way. Birkie was the boy who bought the pack of cards. He saw Tommy looking so-woe-begone that it was necessary to ask the reason.
“Oh, Birkie, lend me threepence,” sobbed Tommy, “and I’ll give you sixpence the morn.”
“You’re daft,” said Birkie, “there’s no a laddie in Thrums that will have one single lonely bawbee the morn.”
“Him that buys the cards,” moaned Tommy, “will never be without siller, for you tell auld folks fortunes on them at a penny every throw. Lend me threepence, Birkie. They cost a sic, and I have just—”
“Na, na,” said greedy Birkie, “I’m no to be catched wi’ chaff. If it’s true, what you say, I’ll buy the cards mysel’.”
Having thus got hold of him, Tommy led Birkie to a stand where the King of Egypt was telling fortunes with cards, and doing a roaring trade among the Jocks and Jennys. He also sold packs at sixpence each, and the elated Birkie was an immediate purchaser.
“You’re no so clever as you think yoursel’!” he said triumphantly to Tommy, who replied with his inscrutable smile. But to his satellites he said, “Not a soul will buy a fortune frae Birkie. I’ll get thae cards for a penny afore next week’s out.”
Francie Crabb found Tommy sniggering to himself in the back wynd. “What are you goucking at?” asked Francie, in surprise, for, as a rule, Tommy only laughed behind his face.
“I winna tell you,” chuckled Tommy, “but what a bar, oh, what a divert!”
“Come on, tell me.”
“Well, it’s at the man as is swallowing swords ahint the menagerie.”
“I see nothing to laugh at in that.”
“I’m no laughing at that. I’m laughing at him for selling the swords for ninepence the piece. Oh, what ignorant he is, oh, what a bar!”
“Ninepence is a mislaird price for a soord,” said Francie. “I never gave ninepence.”
Tommy looked at him in the way that always made boys fidget with their fists.
“You’re near as big a bar as him,” he said scornfully. “Did you ever see the sword that’s hanging on the wall in the backroom at the postoffice?”
“No, but my father has telled me about it. It has a grand name.”
“It’s an Andrea Ferrara, that’s what it is.”
“Ay, I mind the name now; there has been folk killed wi’ that soord.”
This was true, for the postoffice Andrea Ferrara has a stirring history, but for the present its price was the important thing. “Dr. McQueen offered a pound note for it,” said Tommy.
“I ken that, but what has it to do wi’ the soord-swallower?”
“Just this; that the swords he is selling for ninepence are Andrea Ferraras, the same as the postoffice ones, and he could get a pound a piece for them if he kent their worth. Oh, what a bar, oh, what—”
Francie’s eyes lit up greedily, and he looked at his two silver shillings, and took two steps in the direction of the sword-swallower’s, and faltered and could not make up his agitated mind. Tommy set off toward the square at a brisk walk.
“Whaur are you off to?” asked Francie, following him.
“To tell the man what his swords is worth. It would be ill done no to tell him.” To clinch the matter, off went Tommy at a run, and off went Francie after him. As a rule Tommy was the swifter, but on this occasion he lagged of fell purpose, and reached the sword-swallower’s tent just in time to see Francie emerge elated therefrom, carrying two Andrea Ferraras. Francie grinned when they met.
“What a bar!” he crowed.
“What a bar!” agreed Tommy, and sufficient has now been told to show that he had found a way. Even Gav acknowledged a master, and, when the accoutrements of war were bought at second hand as cheaply as Tommy had predicted, applauded him with eyes and mouth for a full week, after which he saw things in a new light. Gav of course was to enter the bursary lists anon, and he had supposed that Cathro would have the last year’s schooling of him; but no, his father decided to send him for the grand final grind to Mr. Ogilvy of Glen Quharity, a famous dominie between whom and Mr. Dishart existed a friendship that none had ever got at the root of. Mr. Cathro was more annoyed than he cared to show, Gav being of all the boys of that time the one likeliest to do his teacher honor at the university competitions, but Tommy, though the decision cost him an adherent, was not ill-pleased, for he had discovered that Gav was one of those irritating boys who like to be leader. Gav, as has been said, suddenly saw Tommy’s victory over Messrs. Birkie, Francie, etc., in a new light; this was because when he wanted back the shilling which he had contributed to the funds for buying their purchases, Tommy replied firmly:
“I canna give you the shilling, but I’ll give you the lantern and the tartan cloth we bought wi’ it.”
“What use could they be to me at Glen Quharity?” Gav protested.
“Oh, if they are no use to you,” Tommy said sweetly, “me and Corp is willing to buy them off you for threepence.”
Then Gav became a scorner of duplicity, but he had to consent to the bargain, and again Corp said to Tommy, “Oh, you crittur!” But he was sorry to lose a fellow-conspirator. “There’s just the twa o’ us now,” he sighed.
“Just twa!” cried Tommy. “What are you havering about, man? There’s as many as I like to whistle for.”
“You mean Grizel and Elspeth, I ken, but—”
“I wasna thinking of the womenfolk,” Tommy told him, with a contemptuous wave of the hand. He went closer to Corp, and said, in a low voice, “The McKenzies are waiting!”
“Are they, though?” said Corp, perplexed, as he had no notion who the
McKenzies might be.
“And Lochiel has twa hunder spearsmen.”
“Do you say so?”
“Young Kinnordy’s ettling to come out, and I meet Lord Airlie, when the moon rises, at the Loups o’ Kenny, and auld Bradwardine’s as spunky as ever, and there’s fifty wild Highlandmen lying ready in the muckle cave of Clova.”
He spoke so earnestly that Corp could only ejaculate, “Michty me!”
“But of course they winna rise,” continued Tommy, darkly, “till he lands.”
“Of course no,” said Corp, “but — wha is he?”
“Himsel’,” whispered Tommy, “the Chevalier!”
Corp hesitated. “But, I thought,” he said diffidently, “I thought you—”
“So I am,” said Tommy.
“But you said he hadna landed yet?”
“Neither he has.”
“But you—”
&
nbsp; “Well?”
“You’re here, are you no?”
Tommy stamped his foot in irritation. “You’re slow in the uptak,” he said. “I’m no here. How can I be here when I’m at St. Germains?”
“Dinna be angry wi’ me,” Corp begged. “I ken you’re ower the water, but when I see you, I kind of forget; and just for the minute I think you’re here.”
“Well, think afore you speak.”
“I’ll try, but that’s teuch work. When do you come to Scotland?”
“I’m no sure; but as soon as I’m ripe.”
At nights Tommy now sometimes lay among the cabbages of the schoolhouse watching the shadow of Black Cathro on his sitting-room blind. Cathro never knew he was there. The reason Tommy lay among the cabbages was that there was a price upon his head.
“But if Black Cathro wanted to get the blood-money,” Corp said apologetically, “he could nab you any day. He kens you fine.”
Tommy smiled meaningly. “Not him,” he answered, “I’ve cheated him bonny, he hasna a notion wha I am. Corp, would you like a good laugh?”
“That I would.”
“Weel, then, I’ll tell you wha he thinks I am. Do you ken a little house yont the road a bitty irae Monypenny?”
“I ken no sic house,” said Corp, “except Aaron’s.”
“Aaron’s the man as bides in it,” Tommy continued hastily, “at least I think that’s the name. Well, as you ken the house, you’ve maybe noticed a laddie that bides there too?”
“There’s no laddie,” began Corp, “except—”
“Let me see,” interrupted Tommy, “what was his name? Was it Peter? No.
Was it Willie? Stop, I mind, it was Tommy.”
He glared so that Corp dared not utter a word.
“Have you notitched him?”
“I’ve — I’ve seen him,” Corp gasped.
“Well, this is the joke,” said Tommy, trying vainly to restrain his mirth, “Cathro thinks I’m that laddie! Ho! ho! ho!”
Corp scratched his head, then he bit his warts, then he spat upon his hands, then he said “Damn.”
The crisis came when Cathro, still ignorant that the heather was on fire, dropped some disparaging remarks about the Stuarts to his history class. Tommy said nothing, but — but one of the school-windows was without a snib, and next morning when the dominie reached his desk he was surprised to find on it a little cotton glove. He raised it on high, greatly puzzled, and then, as ever when he suspected knavery, his eyes sought Tommy, who was sitting on a form, his arms proudly folded. That the whelp had put the glove there, Cathro no longer doubted, and he would have liked to know why, but was reluctant to give him the satisfaction of asking. So the gauntlet — for gauntlet it was — was laid aside, the while Tommy, his head humming like a beeskep, muttered triumphantly through his teeth, “But he lifted it, he lifted it!” and at closing time it was flung in his face with this fair tribute:
“I’m no a rich man, laddie, but I would give a pound note to know what you’ll be at ten years from now.”
There could be no mistaking the dire meaning of these words, and Tommy hurried, pale but determined, to the quarry, where Corp, with a barrow in his hands, was learning strange phrases by heart, and finding it a help to call his warts after the new swears.
“Corp,” cried Tommy, firmly, “I’ve set sail!”
On the following Saturday evening Charles Edward landed in the Den. In his bonnet was the white cockade, and round his waist a tartan sash; though he had long passed man’s allotted span his face was still full of fire, his figure lithe and even boyish. For state reasons he had assumed the name of Captain Stroke. As he leapt ashore from the bark, the Dancing Shovel, he was received right loyally by Corp and other faithful adherents, of whom only two, and these of a sex to which his House was ever partial, were visible, owing to the gathering gloom. Corp of that Ilk sank on his knees at the water’s edge, and kissing his royal master’s hand said, fervently, “Welcome, my prince, once more to bonny Scotland!” Then he rose and whispered, but with scarcely less emotion, “There’s an egg to your tea.”
CHAPTER XXII
THE SIEGE OF THRUMS
The man in the moon is a native of Thrums, who was put up there for hacking sticks on the Sabbath, and as he sails over the Den his interest in the bit placey is still sufficient to make him bend forward and cry “Boo!” at the lovers. When they jump apart you can see the aged reprobate grinning. Once out of sight of the den, he cares not a boddle how the moon travels, but the masterful crittur enrages him if she is in a hurry here, just as he is cleverly making out whose children’s children are courting now. “Slow, there!” he cries to the moon, but she answers placidly that they have the rest of the world to view tonight. “The rest of the world be danged!” roars the man, and he cranes his neck for a last glimpse of the Cuttle Well, until he nearly falls out of the moon.
Never had the man such a trying time as during the year now before him. It was the year when so many scientific magnates sat up half the night in their shirts, spying at him through telescopes. But every effort to discover why he was in such a fidget failed, because the spyglasses were never levelled at the Thrums den. Through the whole of the incidents now to tell, you may conceive the man (on whom sympathy would be wasted) dagoning horribly, because he was always carried past the den before he could make head or tail of the change that had come over it.
The spot chosen by the ill-fated Stuart and his gallant remnant for their last desperate enterprise was eminently fitted for their purpose. Being round the corner from Thrums, it was commanded by no fortified place save the farm of Nether Drumgley, and on a recent goustie night nearly all the trees had been blown down, making a hundred hiding-places for bold climbers, and transforming the Den into a scene of wild and mournful grandeur. In no bay more suitable than the flooded field called the Silent Pool could the hunted prince have cast anchor, for the Pool is not only sheltered from observation, but so little troubled by gales that it had only one drawback: at some seasons of the year it was not there. This, however, did not vex Stroke, as it is cannier to call him, for he burned his boats on the night he landed (and a dagont, tedious job it was too), and pointed out to his followers that the drouth which kept him in must also keep the enemy out. Part of the way to the lair they usually traversed in the burn, because water leaves no trace, and though they carried turnip lanterns and were armed to the teeth, this was often a perilous journey owing to the lovers close at hand on the pink path, from which the trees had been cleared, for lads and lasses must walk whate’er betide. Ronny-On’s Jean and Peter Scrymgeour, little Lisbeth Doak and long Sam’l from Pyotdykes were pairing that year, and never knew how near they were to being dirked by Corp of Corp, who, lurking in the burn till there were no tibbits in his toes, muttered fiercely, “Cheep one single cheep, and it will be thy hinmost, methinks!” under the impression that Methinks was a Jacobite oath.
For this voluntary service, Stroke clapped Corp of Corp on the shoulder with a naked sword, and said, “Rise, Sir Joseph!” which made Corp more confused than ever, for he was already Corp of Corp, Him of Muckle Kenny, Red McNeil, Andrew Ferrara, and the Master of Inverquharity (Stroke’s names), as well as Stab-in-the-Dark, Grind-them-to-Mullins, and Warty Joe (his own), and which he was at any particular moment he never knew, till Stroke told him, and even then he forgot and had to be put in irons.
The other frequenters of the lair on Saturday nights (when alone the rebellion was active) were the proud Lady Grizel and Widow Elspeth. It had been thought best to make Elspeth a widow, because she was so religious.
The lair was on the right bank of the burn, near the waterfall, and you climbed to it by ropes, unless you preferred an easier way. It is now a dripping hollow, down which water dribbles from beneath a sluice, but at that time it was hidden on all sides by trees and the huge clods of sward they had torn from the earth as they fell. Two of these clods were the only walls of the lair, which had at times a ceiling not un
like Aaron Latta’s bed coverlets, and the chief furniture was two barrels, marked “Usquebach” and “Powder.” When the darkness of Stroke’s fortunes sat like a pall upon his brow, as happened sometimes, he sought to drive it away by playing cards on one of these barrels with Sir Joseph, but the approach of the Widow made him pocket them quickly with a warning sign to his trusty knight, who did not understand, and asked what had become of them, whereupon Elspeth cried, in horror:
“Cards! Oh, Tommy, you promised—”
But Stroke rode her down with, “Cards! Wha has been playing cards? You,
Muckle Kenny, and you, Sir Joseph, after I forbade it! Hie, there,
Inverquharity, all of you, seize those men.”
Then Corp blinked, came to his senses and marched himself off to the prison on the lonely promontory called the Queen’s Bower, saying ferociously, “Jouk, Sir Joseph, and I’ll blaw you into posterity.”
It is sable night when Stroke and Sir Joseph reach a point in the Den whence the glimmering lights of the town are distinctly visible. Neither speaks. Presently the distant eight-o’clock bell rings, and then Sir Joseph looks anxiously at his warts, for this is the signal to begin, and as usual he has forgotten the words.
“Go on,” says someone in a whisper. It cannot be Stroke, for his head is brooding on his breast. This mysterious voice haunted all the doings in the Den, and had better be confined in brackets.
(“Go on.”)
“Methinks,” says Sir Joseph, “methinks the borers—”
(“Burghers.”)
“Methinks the burghers now cease from their labors.”
“Ay,” replied Stroke, “‘tis so, would that they ceased from them forever!”
“Methinks the time is at hand.”
“Ha!” exclaims Stroke, looking at his lieutenant curiously, “what makest thou say so? For three weeks these fortifications have defied my cannon, there is scarce a breach yet in the walls of yonder town.”
“Methinks thou wilt find a way.”
“It may be so, my good Sir Joseph, it may be so, and yet, even when I am most hopeful of success, my schemes go a gley.”
