"Have you heard anything of the press-gang at your house, Patsy?"
"Nothing," said Patsy, busy with a best Sunday cap, all lace frills and furbelows. "Of course there is always Captain Laurence at Stranryan. On clear nights you can hear his fifes and drums by standing on the stile above our house, and they say there is a King"s ship or two about Belfast Lough--but why do you ask?"
Jean Garland paused yet nearer to Patsy and spoke in her ear.
"It"s the lads!" she murmured. "They are in it. I am feared for them."
"What?" exclaimed Patsy, but checked by a glance she instantly lowered her voice--"not Fergus and Stair and Agnew?"
Jean nodded slightly.
"Does their father know?" Patsy whispered back. Jean preserved a grave face.
"Not any one of us, his own family, can guess what Diarmid Garland knows and does not know. He had his time of the Free Trading. He was at the head of it, and if the boys head a clean run from the Dutch coast or the Isle of Man--why, if father is ignorant of the business, it is because he wishes to be."
"But there is nothing new in all that," said Patsy; "there have always been smugglers and sh.o.r.e lads who helped them--always King"s cutters and preventive men to chase and lose them--what danger do the boys run more than at other times?"
"This," said Jean Garland, very gravely, "there is a new superintendent of enlistments at Stranraer. He is just a spy, one Eben McClure from Stonykirk, a man of our own country. He works with the preventive superintendent, and when they cannot or dare not meddle with the cargo-runners, as they dare not with my brothers, they set the press upon them--and the soldiers" press is the worst by far."
No more was said. The girls worked quietly for an hour till all was finished. The hedges and clothes-lines were cleared of their burden, and with a whisper of "Shall we go down to the cove--the tide is nearly full," the girls slipped each a cotton gown and a towel apiece into Patsy"s little reticule and made off to the bathing cove, a well-hidden nook of sand, half cavern, half high sh.e.l.l-bank, which bygone tides had excavated in the huge flank of the Black Head. Fergus and his brothers knew about it, of course, and saw to it that none about the farm interfered with the girls at their play.
In a minute their young figures were lost among the birches of the valley, a wider and an opener one than that of the Abbey Burn, the banks higher and farther off, and from their ridges giving glimpses of the distant Mull of Galloway and the blue sh.o.r.es of Ireland.
They kept in the bottom of the glen, splashing and springing from stone to stone, with mirthful enjoyment of each other"s slips. Far off on a heathery knoll Diarmid watched them go. He had noted the swift intaking of the white cleading on the hedges, the disappearance of fluttering garmentry from the clothes-lines. He approved of young people enjoying themselves, _after_ their work was done--Diarmid"s emphasis on the "after" was strong.
As they went Jean Garland pointed out a pony track high on the fells.
"Careless fellows," she said, "that must have been Stair"s band. For both Fergus and Agnew are more careful!"
Indeed, the trail by which the laden ponies had pa.s.sed was still clearly evident, and Jean was roused to anger against the headstrong brother who had risked bringing all about the house into trouble.
"The others went by the bed of the burn," she said, "why could not Stair?"
Looking seaward, they saw all things more clearly than usual--the pause before a storm from the west, prophesied Jean Garland. The island at the Abbey Burnfoot divided itself into two peaks. They could see the houses at Donnahadee, and the boats turning sharply about to make for Belfast Lough, showing a sudden broadside of white canvas as they did so. But little they minded. At present the sky was glorious, the sea a mirror, and here was the Maidens" Cove, into which they dipped from the cliff edge, as suddenly as a kite swoops from the sky. In a moment they were lost to sight, and only the tinkle of their laughter among the blue, purple and creamy reflected lights of the cove told where they were.
Outside the sheltered sea rocked and laved the sands with a pleasant swishing invitation. Presently they looked out from the low mouth of the cove. All seemed still and lonely, and they were about to step down into the clear green water of the Atlantic, when a noise came to their ears.
It was the sound of men rowing--many men, and many men at that time and place meant the pinnace of a King"s ship. The thought of Stair"s careless bridle-track high on the heathery side of the fell tortured the mind of his sister. What could they want? It was too early in the day for any surprise work in the interests of the Excise. There were no smuggling cellars near to search--but at that moment the girls of one accord drew in their heads. They moved stealthily into the dark of the cove. Here they could not be observed, but they could see a boat"s crew of seamen which went past rapidly in the direction of Abbey Burnfoot, the salt water sparkling in a rain of silver and pearl from the oars, and an officer sitting spick and span at the tiller-ropes.
The next moment they were gone and in the clear submerged dark of the purple dulse that shaded the cavern mouth the girls looked at one another with dismay in their eyes.
"Can they be going to take Uncle Julian?" said Patsy.
"Uncle Julian--no," exclaimed Jean Garland, "of course not--what would they be doing with a learned man and a gentleman? It is that silly Stair who has set them on the track of my brothers. They will land at the Burnfoot and catch them all at the Bothy of Blairmore, where they gather to take their "four hours"--I must run and warn them--"
"Jean," said Patsy, "I can run two yards for your one. Lend me your scarf and I shall go and warn the lads."
"You--the laird"s daughter!"
"Yes, I," said Patsy, girding her waist with the red sash, and looking to the criss-crossed ties of the bathing-sandals her uncle had given her out of his store of foreign things. Her kilted skirt came but a little way below her knee and her blouse of fine blue linen let her arms be seen to the elbow. Patsy looked more Pictish than ever thus, with a loose blown ta.s.sel of ink-black hair on her brow. Jean offered some faint objections but did not persist. After all, it was the main thing that the lads should be warned in time.
So Patsy, trim and slim as your forefinger with a string of red tied about it, sped eastward over the hills to the Bothy of Blairmore.
CHAPTER III
THE BOTHY
Patsy had always been a wonderful runner. She could outpace her pony.
She could flee from Louis Raincy like the shadow of a wind-blown cloud crossing a mountain-side, and on the sands, with none but Jean Garland to see, Patsy could fleet it along the wet tide wash, sending the spray about her as a swallow that skims a pond and flirts the surface with its wings.
Old Diarmid mounted on the stile, balanced himself with his staff, and looked. The dogs accompanying him c.o.c.ked their ears in hopes of a chase, but the next moment, their keen senses telling them that it was only Patsy running over the heather, they settled down, marvelling that men could be so strong with foot and hand and yet know so little.
There was half a mile to be run along the sands before turning up over the hot glacier-planed stones of the moor. Diarmid Garland watched and wondered. He had often seen Patsy giving his daughter Jean, of the heavier and slower-moving blonde Scandinavian blood, half the distance to Saythe Point and then pa.s.sing her, as an arrow may miss and pa.s.s one who flees. Now she moved like a leaf blown by the hurricane. Her white feet in their sandals of yellow leather of Corinth hardly seemed to touch the sand. Then Patsy turned up the crumbling cliffs at their lowest point, mounting like a goat with an effortless ease till she crowned the causeway of seaworn rock and plunged to the armpits into the tall heather of the Wild of Blairmore.
Then Diarmid lost sight of the girl for a minute, but when he saw her again she was far out on the perilous goat-track which led down to the bothy itself. Diarmid scanned the distance with his eye--he knew the length of time it would have taken a hillsman to go from point to point.
"That girl is a miracle," he muttered to himself, "she can run through deep heather as fast as on the sand of the seash.o.r.e."
He was wrong, however. She was only a Pictess, with some thousand years of the heather instinct in her blood. Her body was lithe and supple, her foot light, and her eye sure. Besides, she could hear what was hidden and unheard at the stile on which Diarmid stood, the _rock-rock_ of the short, steady navy stroke, which was pulling the landing-party from His Majesty"s ship _Britomart_ nearer and nearer to the Bothy of Blairmore.
Then she pa.s.sed quite out of sight. She had a long descent before her, sheltered seaward, so that she did not need to consider the danger of being seen by the enemy. The leather of her sandals pattered like rain on dry leaves on the narrow, twisted sheep-tracks, then mounted springily over the bulls"-fell of the knolls of stunted heather, and as it were in the clapping of a pair of hands, she appeared at the door of the Bothy of Blairmore, scarce heated, quite unbreathed, but with grave face and anxious eyes.
"Scatter!" she commanded, clapping her hands. "Off with you, lads! Take to the hills. The press-gang is landing at this moment at the Abbey Burnfoot to cut you off. Eben McClure is with them. He has heard of your cargo-running and he wants to send you all to the wars."
"And what will _you_ do?" said Stair, who was always the boldest in speech as he was the most reckless in action.
"I--oh, pray don"t give yourself the least trouble about me, Stair Garland. I shall stay here and wash the dishes."
The lads were declaring that under no circ.u.mstances should she remain where she was, but Patsy had made up her mind. She must see what a press-gang was like. She would see and speak with the officers who were at the head of it. Perhaps they had their side to it also, which would be worth the finding out. And the spy--she had never seen a spy, a marker-down of men--so she resolved to see this Eben McClure, the most hated man in all Wigtonshire. She would stay, and it was with a certain imperiousness that she ordered the boys away.
They went reluctantly, but they knew that because she was the daughter of a magistrate and a laird, nothing serious would happen to her, while they risked life and liberty every moment they stayed.
"Do you think I ran all the way from the bathing cove for nothing?" she said. "Save yourselves, lads. Do as I bid you and at once."
They went, though it was not with the best grace in the world. Stair wore a scowl on his handsome face as he slung his gun over his shoulder.
Only Fergus thanked her for having come to warn them.
"Hold your tongue," said Patsy, peremptorily, "get out of sight. Keep yourselves safe. That is the best thanks, and all that I ask for from you."
So it came about that fifteen minutes later, Lieutenant Everard of the _Britomart_, disembarking with Captain Laurence of the Dragoons and the Superintendent of Enlistments, Mr. Ebenezer McClure, came upon a picture framed in the doorway of the Bothy of Blairmore. Patsy had spread Jean Garland"s scarlet sash to its broadest, and so had been able to let down her skirt of blue linen till it came to almost her ankles, above which the yellow cross-gartering of the sandals was diamonded in the Greek fashion her Uncle Julian had taught her.
Patsy had found piles of unwashen dishes and spoons, for the boys of the Glenanmays family depended for cleaning up upon uncertain, semi-occasional visits, from one or other of their sisters. What they wanted at the time they took out and washed in the pleasant tumble of the hill brook which pa.s.sed their door on its way down to meet the Abbey Burn a little above Uncle Julian"s house. The rest they left.
The two officers of His Majesty stood a moment too astonished for speech. This was not at all what they had come out to find, nor what their men had been posted all about the bothy to secure in case of an attempt to escape.