Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea

“‘Let me go, Nancy. Let me go,’ he pleaded. ‘My father would kill me if he knew I was found out.’

“He wriggled out o’ my hands and fled, and I hardly felt the ground beneath my feet till I reached the low end o’ the glen and found myself opposite the gate o’ Mill House.

“Then I remembered the letter.

“Dare I deliver it?

“Dare I refuse? That would be worse. I took the road down through the willow thicket, and crossed the rickety auld plank bridge, and in two minutes I was in front of the house. There were sounds of singing and revelry from the inside; I knocked, but wasn’t heard. Knocked louder, and in a moment everything was dark and silent. The door opened. I was seized and dragged in. What I saw and heard at Mill House that night I was put on oath not to tell till all were dead or gone. I may tell you now – they were smugglers.”

“Thank goodness!” said Dugald, greatly relieved it was no worse. “Oh! Grannie, but you have a fearsome way o’ tellin’ a story.”

“For twa lang years they occupied that house, but during that time something happened that caused grief amang the village bairns. Corbie was missed. Weeks flew by, and he never came back. Then one day a thinly-attended funeral came winding towards the kirk-yard, carrying a wee bit coffin.

“The coffin was Corbie’s, and there were many tears and mickle sorrow amang the poor hunchback’s acquaintances, I can tell ye. His friends went awa’, and left poor Corbie in the mools, but the bairnies ne’er forgot the grave, and mony a bonnie wreath o’ buttercups and gowans did they string and put on it in the sweet summer-time.

“Well, laddies, the Mill House was found deserted one day. The smugglers had gone as quietly as they had come. But the house kept its bad name, and so did the hills above it; and so my story ends.”

“Not quite,” said Dugald. “Did the brownie never come again, or the kelpie? Were the dead candles seen nae mair?”

“No,” said Kenneth; “don’t you understand? The brownie was the poor boy, Corbie; the kelpie was a smuggler; and the dead candles the lights seen at night near the cave in the fairy knoll. That was the place where they carried on their sinfu’ trade.”

“I see things clearly enough noo,” said Dugald; “and I’ll no’ be feared to cross the muir. Ah, well, Grannie, you have relieved my mind.”

“I’m glad o’ it, laddie. Now will Grannie take down the good Book and read a bit?”

Grannie did.

The talk now took a cheerier turn. Old Nancy, knowing how painfully superstitious Dugald was, refrained from introducing anything more in the shape of either brownie or spunkie. And so a pleasant hour was spent, till the old “wag-at-the-wa’” pointed to the hour of twelve, and warned Kenneth and his friend it was high time to commence retracing their steps across the moor.

Chapter Four

Gloaming in the Glen – Kennie’s Cave

“Gloaming o’er the glen is falling;    Little birds have ceased to sing,Flowerets now their petals faulding    As night descends on dewy wing.”Anon.

Scene: Half-way down the glen, where heather and patches of tilled land end, and woodland commences. Where the stream goes wimpling and swirling round the boulders, underneath the rustic bridge.

At the corner, where, after crossing the bridge, the road takes a bend, and is soon lost in the gloom of overhanging foliage, Kenneth is seated on a stone.

At his feet lies Kooran, looking very knowing, because he has got his ears pricked up, and his eyes very wide open, and his head thoughtfully turned a little on one side.

Kooran knows that his master has come there to meet his friend the Highland keeper, and that the retriever Shot will be with him, but the keeper may come down from the brae-land on the right, or up the road from the wood, or he may suddenly appear on the cliff top, after fording the stream and climbing the rocks.

No need for Kenneth to listen; he has only to watch Kooran.

No sound can deceive Kooran. He will not move from that position till the right moment.

Not far from Kooran’s extended tail, a field-mouse begins to sing a little song. She is hidden in under the dry moss, through which she has driven all sorts of smooth round tunnels, for quite an engineer is the field-mouse, and the only wonder is she ever finds her way back again to her nest, through such a labyrinthic network of half-lighted lanes.

“Beet-ee-beet-ee-beet-ee-ee-beet-ee.” So goes her song.

Kooran never moves his head; all he does is to turn one ear back towards his tail for a moment, but only one ear.

“I hear you,” he seems to say. “Sing away, my pretty one you know I’m busy, but wait a wee till Shot comes. Shot and I will soon have you out of there. My eyes! won’t we make the turf fly!”

A great bird flies right over a tree, but turns sharply in the air and flies back affrightedly. It was a moor-cock, but he didn’t know any one was there. He has to take another road home.

A twig snaps; Kenneth looks in that direction. The dog never moves. He knows it is only the polecat trying to reach out to a branch where a thrush has gone to sleep.

The stream makes music in drowsy monotone, but hark! there is a plash. It is an otter. Kooran knows it, and does not move. Then presently there are close beside them apparently, two sharp dull thuds. It is only mother rabbit beating her heels on the ground to drive her over-bold little ones back into their holes, and to warn every rabbit within hearing that danger is near, and that there are a live dog and a live boy not far off, who can’t be after any good.

Sometimes the distant bleating of sheep or the pleasant lowing of kine falls on Kenneth’s ear, and anon, far up among the mountains, there is a strange shout, half whoop, half whistle, prolonged and mournful. At first it is repeated about every two seconds; then Quicker and quicker it comes, and wilder and wilder, till it ends in one long quavering scream.

“Whoo-oop, whoo-oop, whoo-oop, whoop, whoop-oop-oop-oop-oo-oo-oo!”

It is the shriek of the curlew as he sails round and round in the air.

“Why, Kooran,” says the boy at last, “what can be keeping them?”

Kooran beats his tail twice on the ground, but does not move his body.

“I hope they won’t be long, dear doggie.”

Kooran beats his tail once against the ground.

This means, “Have patience, master.”

The sun goes down behind the hills.

Then comes still Evening on.

In the bonnie Scottish Highlands, reader, in sweet summer-time, or in riper autumn, we cannot say with truth that night falls; no, rather “Evening steals down.”

Oh! how gently she is stealing down now on the peaceful scene around Kenneth and Kooran. Far down the glen yonder, where the river broadens out in the valley, there lie long clouds of grey mist, with the tall spruce pines glimmering green and ghost-like through them. They are the trailing garments of Evening. Gradually they change to crimson as the sun’s parting rays fall on them.

But day lingers long on the hill-tops, among the steel-grey rocks, among boulders that stand boldly out from the dark background like blocks of snow, and among patches of purple heather. Evening sees that day must go at last, so she hies away to put the flowers to sleep.

“Sleep, sleep, my gentle flowers,” she says, “for the day is dying fast, and the dews will fall and blight you.”

She whispers to the gowans (mountain daisies) first, and the “wee modest crimson-tippèd flowers” fold their petals like sea-anemones, and go softly to sleep. She lightly touches the pimpernels, the crimson and the pink-eyed, and they curl their flower-leaves and sink to rest. She breathes upon the wild convolvulus that trails among the grass, and it twists up its silken blossoms till they look like little wisps of calico, pink and white. Even the hardy heather bells creep closer together, and the star-like blossoms of the bramble that clothe the banks shrink smaller as she brushes them with her wings.

Then Evening speaks to the west wind.

“Blow softly, gentle west wind,” she says; “blow softly through the feathery larches and the needled pines; make the leaves of the russet oaks and the silvery drooping birches sing soft lullabies, that my children the flowers may sleep.”

And the west wind obeys her, and goes sighing through the trees, and all the flowerets nod and sleep.

The linnet has long gone to bed, close hidden under the whin bush. The tom-tit creeps closer against a patch of lichen that grows on the stem of an old ash tree. The cushat in the thicket of spruce hears the west wind’s lullaby, and ceases to croodle. The blackbird and thrush hide themselves in the hawthorn tree; only the robin still sings on the top rail of the old bridge.

“I will sing all night,” the robin says. “I will sing with the trees and the west wind till the sun returns.”

“Twhoo-hoo-hoo!” shrieks the owl, and Robin flies away.

Then Evening goes to the hedgehog, to the fox, to the foumart, the whitterit, the bat, and the vole.

“Come out now, come out now,” she cries to these, “for the moon is coming, and danger has fled with the daylight far over the hills.”

But the lithe green snake, and the deadly adder, and the toad have heard the invitation too, and lie closer under cover or creep into their holes, for enemies are abroad.

Then slowly and solemnly over the distant hills uprises the moon.

And so gloaming gives place to night.

Something black came feathering along at last, and next moment Shot, with his jacket quite wet, and very much out of breath with running, was kissing his friend the collie.

Very soon after Dugald and Kenneth were shaking hands.

“You thought I wasn’t coming?” said Dugald.

“Indeed, you’re right, but I had almost fallen asleep.”

“I’ve had such a chase after a couple of poachers. Didn’t you hear me firing? No? But troth, I did have a rap at one of them. Didn’t kill him? Man, no, and more’s the pity. Troth, Kennie, lad, there are too many about. But come along, till we see the fairy’s knoll. Man, it’s a whole week since I’ve seen you. How’s the sheep?”

“Doing well. No more late lambs. No more feeble dying ones.”

The keeper shouldered his gun; the two dogs speedily tore up the grass where the field-mouse had been singing. They destroyed all her tunnels and mossy lanes, but they hadn’t time to unearth the mouse herself.

Away up over the hills went the friends. Up, and up, and up. When on the brow of the mountain they were to cross they must have been fifteen hundred feet above the sea level. Down beneath them the rolling country was slumbering in the misty moonlight, only the river meandered through it all and sparkled like a thread of silver.

It was a near cut they had taken; they had now only to descend a little way, and, behold, they were at the cave.

And soon in it.

“I’ll light the lamp,” said Kenneth, and in a moment more the interior was illuminated.

“Well, I do declare this is grand! Never in this world before had shepherd such a shelter, surely!”

So he well might say. Kenneth had cleaned the cave out, bedded the floor with a carpet of withered brackens, hung a huge oil lamp in it, which gave light and warmth both, built rude seats round it, made a rude table, and conveyed hither his books, his fishing-gear, and even his flute.

“Isn’t it delightful!” cried Kenneth, laughing till his eyes danced and sparkled in the moonlight.

“Oh! it is grand!” said Dugald, sitting down all the better to view the place.

“I can eat my dinner here, you know,” said Kenneth, “and read my books, and study at night.”

“At night!” exclaimed honest Dugald. “Wad ye no’ be feared, man?” he added solemnly. “Are there no bogles about? Losh! there might be even ghosts. Or, man! just fancy a wee fairy body coming in through the door when you were a’ by yoursel’!”

“Oh!” cried the boy, “that is too good ever to be true. I should rejoice to see a fairy.”

“Well, man, rather you than me. But tak’ your flute and play a tune, to banish eerie thoughts.”

Kenneth put his instrument together and commenced.

Shot sat down on the brackens and commenced too.

Dugald turned Shot out of the cave, but Kooran had better manners and was allowed to stay. It was the “Flowers o’ the Forest” that Kenneth played, and to this sweetly mournful air Dugald listened entranced.

“Silly Dugald!” some would say, for his very eyes were moist.

“Ah! Kennie, man,” he said at last, “I hope you may never live to play that dear auld lilt in a foreign land with the tears rinnin’ o’er your face.”

“What mean ye, Dugald?” Kenneth said.

“Mean?” cried Dugald almost fiercely. “Why, this, lad: that news came to-day to the clachan that our auld laird, that has ever been sae kind to us, is bankrupt, and has sold his fine estate to an American – to a foreigner, Kennie.”

“Don’t say so?”

“But I do say so, and I fear it’s an owertrue tale, lad. The place that knows us noo may soon know us no more. For they tell me he is going to evict the tenants, pull the clachan down, and turn our bonnie glen into a forest for deer, knock doon the dear auld kirk, Kennie, that you and I were christened in, and have sung psalms in Sunday after Sunday, knock doon our kirk, give our roofs to the flames, – ay, Kennie, and level the graves o’ those we hold dear!”

“I really cannot believe all this, Dugald. Oh! it would kill my mother.”

“Poor laddie!” said Dugald, laying his hand kindly on Kenneth’s shoulder. “Poor laddie! Grief has been your share in the world of late. Two or three years ago, when your father lived, what a merry boy you were! But your father, once a thrifty crofter, had been reduced to a humble shepherd, and when that broke his heart, and the Lord took him, his brave boy Kennie left school and tended the sheep, and his industry supports a widowed mother. Ay, lad, Kennie, it will gang hard on you and hard on your mother to leave Glen Alva.”

Kenneth looked the picture of despair. His flute had fallen from his hand, and lay unheeded among the brackens.

“To leave my mother,” he muttered, speaking apparently to himself, “to go into a foreign land, that were bad, but to know that the very glen itself was altered, the old kirk roofless, the houses heaps of ruins, to have nothing to look back to, nothing at home to love – oh! Duncan, Duncan, that wouldn’t be absence from home; it would be banishment, Duncan, banishment and exile.”

“Let us try no’ to think about it, Kennie. Dinna look so woe-begone, man, or you’ll mak’ me sorry that I’ve told you.”

The boy turned quickly round.

“Oh! but say you’ve been but joking. Say it is not true, Duncan.”

“Oh hey!” was Duncan’s answer – a big sigh, that was all.

“But you know,” said Duncan, after a pause, “nobody is sure yet of anything.”

The boy laughed now.

“Ha! ha! yes,” he cried, tearing himself away from gloomy thoughts. “We’ll have hope. We won’t think about it, will we? Ha! ha! no, we won’t think about it. And I’ll never say a single word to my mother about the matter. It may pass, you know.

“And so,” he continued, “you really like my cave. Well, little Archie, your son, will often be here with me. And you must come too, and we’ll have such fun. I wonder if the ptarmigans will build next year in the same place as they did last. Mind when the snow falls you’ll take me for a day’s white hare hunting, won’t you? It is such grand sport, and you promised, you know. What tune did you say I was to play? Something merry. Oh! yes, I know – ”

Kenneth recovered his flute from among the brackens as he spoke, and rattled off into as merry a reel as ever witches danced to in “Alloway’s auld haunted kirk.”

“First-rate!” cried Duncan, clapping his hands, while even Kooran barked for joy, and Shot’s voice gave gladsome echo at the cave’s mouth. “First-rate! man; that’s the kind o’ music to banish the bogies. Losh! Kennie, music like that would have made Methuselah himsel’ grow young again. That it would.”

It was late that evening ere the two friends found themselves down the glen again, but when they bade each other good-night and walked briskly homewards there was not a thought in their hearts of evil to come; they were each as happy as the lark that carols o’er spring corn.

Chapter Five

A Day in the Wilds

“My heather land, my heather land,Though fairer lands there be,Thy gowany braes in early daysWere gowden ways to me.”Thom.

Scene: The fairy’s glen high up among the mountains. Kenneth seated, book in hand, on the top of the fairy knoll, which stands out strangely green against the purples and browns which surround it. Kenneth is alone. Kooran is away down beneath, minding the sheep. The shepherd-boy lays down the book at last, or rather he drops it down the chimney of his cave, and it falls on the carpet of brackens beneath. Then he takes his crook, and goes slowly down the strath.

This was a Saturday forenoon, and Kenneth and his little friend Archie McCrane were going on a long round of pleasure.

Ha! yonder comes Archie. Or rather, yonder suddenly doth he appear. He comes straight up out of the centre of a bush of furze, in quite a startling kind of way.

Archie is eleven years of age, though very tiny, but very strong, and as hard as an Arab. No fat about Archie. His face and bare neck and breast and thorn-scratched knees are as red as if recently rubbed with brick-dust. There isn’t a rent or hole in either his jacket or kilt, but woe is me, it is pretty nearly all patches; it is mother’s work every night to mend the rents Archie makes in his clothes. Archie is, of course, his mother’s darling. She even takes pains to make him pretty. She prides herself even in his beautiful hair. His hair is one of Archie’s strong points. Mind, he wears no bonnet (cap), never did and never would. He owns one, but always forgets to put it on. So his soft golden hair is cut across above the brows, and hangs in wavy luxuriance over his shoulders. I said golden, but it is more straw colour, and bleached on the top almost white.

He is a singular lad, Archie, has a half-wild, half-frightened look in his face; in fact, take him all in all, he is quite in keeping with the romantic surroundings.

“I’ve got him,” Archie said.

“What is it?”

“A little black rabbit.”

“Strange,” said Kenneth; “put him down. He must be half tame, I should think.”

Archie put it down, and the two boys knelt beside it among the heather. It was a half-grown one, so mild, so gentle-looking. Butter, you would have said, wouldn’t melt in that wee rabbit’s mouth. And it crouched down low and held its ears flat against its back, and never moved an eye or winked, but allowed the lads to smooth it with their fore-fingers.

But all at once, pop! it was off like an eel.

“Oh?” said Archie, with such a disappointed look, “and I meant to take it hame wi’ me.”

Kenneth laughed, and off the two scampered, as wild as any rabbits.

“Shot is here,” said Archie.

“Where?”

“Down with Kooran.”

“Then you must whistle him up; Kooran will look after the sheep by himself, but Shot will lead him into temptation. Besides, the sheep don’t know Shot. Whistle, Archie, whistle, man.”

Archie put four fingers in his mouth and emitted a scream as shrill as the scream of the great whaup. (The curlew.) In a moment more Shot was coming tearing along through the heather.

And with him was Kooran.

“What do you want, Kooran?”

Kooran threw himself in a pleading attitude at his master’s feet, looked up with brown, melting, pleading eyes, and wagged his tail.

“Oh! I know, dear doggie,” said Kenneth; “you want your dinner, because you know we’ll be away all day.”

Kooran jumped and capered and danced and barked, and Kenneth rolled a piece of cake and a bit of cheese in a morsel of paper and handed it to the dog.

“Keep the koorichan,” (sheep) “well together, doggie,” he said; “and don’t take your dinner for an hour yet.”

Kooran gave his tail a few farewell wags and galloped off, but as soon as he was in sight of the flock and out of sight of his master, he lay down and ate his dinner right up at once. He ate the cheese first, because it smelt so nice, and then he ate the cake.

Away went Archie and Kenneth and Shot. It didn’t take them long to gallop through the heather and furze. Of course the furze made their bare knees bleed, but they did not mind that.

They reached the road in twenty minutes, and went straight away to the clachan to report themselves at the manse, or minister’s house.

It wasn’t much of a manse, only an ordinary-looking, blue-slated house of two stories, but it had a nice lawn in front and gardens round it, where ash trees, limes, planes, and elms grew almost in too great abundance. The windows were large, and one was a French one, and opened under a verandah on to the lawn. This was the Rev. David Grant’s study.

Before they came round the hedgerow, both boys stopped, dipped their handkerchiefs in the running brook, and polished their faces; then they warned Shot to be on his best behaviour, and looking as sedate and solemn as they could, they opened the gate, and made their way to the hall door. And Shot tried to look as old as he could, and followed behind with his nose pretty near the ground, and his tail almost between his heels.

But Mr Grant himself saw them, opened the casement window, and cried, —

“Come this way, boys.”

Mr Grant was the clergyman of the village. The living was a poor one, and as he had seven grown-up daughters, he was obliged to turn sheep farmer. It was his sheep that Kenneth herded, and that his father had herded before him, after “the bad years” had ruined the poor man.

“Miss Grant will soon be here,” he said. “And how have you left the sheep, Kenneth?”

“They are all nicely, thank you, sir,” replied Kenneth.

“All healthy and thriving, I hope?”

“Oh, yes, sir, we won’t have any more trouble, and Kooran is minding them. He will take capital care of them, sir. And Duncan McCrane, Archie’s father, is going up himself to see them.”

“That’s right,” said Mr Grant.

The Misses Grant were the mothers of the clachan. I haven’t space to tell you half of the good they did, so I shall not attempt it, but they taught in school and Sunday-school, they knew all the deserving poor, and attended them when sick, and advised them, and prayed with them, and read to them, and never went empty-handed to see them. Why, they even begged for them. And they knew the undeserving poor, and did good to them also. Even Gillespie, the most dreaded poacher and wildest man in the clachan, was softened in tone and like a child when talking to the “good Miss Grants,” as they were always called.

Well, every one loved these homely sisterly lassies of the parson’s.

“By-the-bye, Kennie,” said Mr Grant, “I hear the glen is going to be evicted.”

“Surely, sir, that isn’t true?” replied Kenneth.

Miss Grant the elder was Kenneth’s teacher, one of them, old Nancy Dobbell was another, and Nature was a third.

“Did you come for a lesson to-day?” said Miss Grant, entering.

“No, thank you. Miss Grant.”

“Well, I’m glad, because I was going out. Little Miss Redmond is here with her governess. They have the pony trap, and I am going to their glen with them to lunch. Come to the drawing-room; they are there.”

Miss Redmond was the only daughter of an Englishman of wealth, who had bought land in an adjoining glen. Mr Redmond himself was seldom at home – if, indeed, Scotland could be called his home – and his wife was an invalid.

But there was nothing of the invalid about little Jessie, the daughter. Quite a child she was, hardly more than eight, but with all the quiet dignity and easy affability that is only to be found among children of the bon ton.

Archie was simply afraid of her. Kenneth got on better, however. He answered all her innocent but pointed questions, as if he were talking to his grandmother. But Jessie was really asking for information, and Kenneth knew it, so the two had quite a serious old-fashioned conversation.

Well, Kenneth seemed a gentleman born. He sat easily in his chair, he held his cap easily, and behaved himself with polite sang froid. Miss Grant was proud of Kenneth.

But poor Archie looked ill at ease.

Kenneth told Jessie the story of the little black rabbit, and Jessie was much interested.

“What did it look like?” she asked.