It hurt me to have her go so chilly all of a sudden, but I replied frankly, "Both. It does indeed worry me to have you breakfastless in these wilds through my doings."
"Yes," she said, smiling down on me, "I ken fine the distinction between water-brose and ham and eggs."
"We are still in Staffordshire," I said cheerily, "and I"ll go ahead and see what I can do for you. Now, Donald, your best foot first!"
He and I started ahead again, leaving her waiting for the rest of the party, detained by some explanation on the Colonel"s part of the military aspects of the lie of the land.
"There"s a wheen foine leddies wi" ta Prince, Got bless him," said Donald, "but when yon carline gets amangst "em she"ll pe like a muirc.o.c.k amangst a thrang o" craws. She"ll ding "em a"."
I expected that Donald would cherish ill will to me for my blow, but in this I was wrong. So far from bearing me a grudge, he quite obviously liked me for it. He had a fist, or nief, as he called it, nearly as big as a leg of lamb, and almost the first thing he did when we were alone was to hold it out, huge, dirty, and hairy, and put it alongside mine. He scratched his rough head in his perplexity.
"At Gladsmuir," he said, ""er nainsell did take ten Southron loons wi"
"er own hant, wi" n.o.body to help "er, an" now one callant had dinged "er clean senseless wi" nothin" but a bairn"s nief."
"It wasn"t clean fighting, Donald," said I. "Nothing but a sort of trick.
If you were to hit me fair and square I should snap in two like a carrot.
Tell me how you captured the ten men!"
It was a longish story, at any rate as he told it, in quaint uncertain English, intermixed with spates of his own Gaelic as he got excited over the account of his prowess. One of them was an officer, and Donald finished up by ferreting out of his meal-bag a magnificent gold watch, lawful prize from his point of view, taken out of the officer"s fob.
"Ta tam t"ing was alife when I raxed "er out of "is poke," he said, "but "er went dead sune after. She can "ave "er for a shillin"."
He had no idea, nor could I make him understand, what it was and what purpose it served. When it had run down for want of winding, to his simple mind it had "died." He pushed it into my hand as indifferently as if it had been a turnip, and I promised to pay him at Leek, for my pockets were empty again and Margaret had the bag.
""Er nainsell wad rather "ave a new pair o" progues," said he. "And what for does anybody want a thing tat goes dead to tell ta time wi"? T"ere"s ta sun and ta stars, tat never go dead."
As we walked rapidly we overtook our party soon after settling the matter of the watch. The plough-lad who had been pressed as guide told me we were near the road to Leek, and I let him return. We dropped down to a rough road running our way, and a mile or so along it the roofs of a village came in sight, and we halted till the main body came up.
"What is it, Oliver?" asked the Colonel.
"Breakfast, sir," said I.
We marched into the village in military array. At our head strode Donald, stout of heart and mighty of hand, with two pipers skirling away at his heels, and the clansmen stepping it out bravely two abreast behind them.
Margaret came next, with me at her mare"s head, and the Colonel and Maclachlan brought up the rear.
Our arrival created as much stir as an earthquake. The Highlanders, in twos and threes, swarmed into the houses and ordered their unwilling hosts to prepare them a meal. That it was war I was engaged in was, for the first time, brought clearly home to me when I saw a fearsome Highlander, with claymore, dirk, and loaded musket, posted at each end of the village.
A touch of ordinary human nature was, however, added, when the children, fearless and happy in their ignorance, sidled up to the sentries and stared at them as eagerly as if they had been war-painted Indians in a travelling show.
At first, we, the gentry for short, intended to seek accommodation in the inn, poor and shabby though it looked, and Donald was ordered thither to give instructions. The Colonel and the chieftain rode along the village to observe how things were going, and this left Margaret and me together, and spectators of a delightful little pa.s.sage. For as Donald approached the inn-door, the hostess, a sharp-nosed, vixenish woman, charged at him with a very dirty besom and routed him completely. Truth to tell, Donald, who had the sound, sweet nature of a child, had all the natural child"s indifference to dirt, but even he, long-suffering in such matters as he was, had to stop to sc.r.a.pe the filth out of his eyes. This gave me the chance of making peace, and I went up and explained that we should pay for everything like ordinary travellers, good money for good fare.
"Oh aye!" she said.
"Jonnock!" said I.
"You"re a Stafford chap," she a.s.serted.
"I am," I agreed, "and I"ll see you done well by."
That settled her, and Donald was settled too, for his immediate wants were satisfied by a large gla.s.s of brandy, and those more remote by a bucket of water and a towel.
"Gom!" said the virile little woman to me, "a wesh"ll do him no harm.
I"ve got the biggest gorby of a mon," she went on, "between Mow Cop and the c.o.c.klow o" Leek. He"s gone trapesing off, with our young Ted on his shoulders, to see yow chaps march into Leek. There"s about a dozen on "em gone, as brisk as if they were goin" to Stoke wakes. Fine fools they"ll lukken when they comes whom to-nate."
As it happened, the "Dun Cow" was after all left to Donald and the pipers. When I rejoined Margaret, she said, "Pray help me down, Oliver, and we"ll find the doctor, and have him dress your head. And, once out of Donald"s sight, I"ll have the laugh that"s nearly killing me to keep under."
I helped her down, and said, "Never mind doctor! That fine old church yonder must be well worth looking into."
"You will mind, sir," she flashed. She beckoned to Donald to take charge of her mare, and then waylaid a pa.s.sing girl, running from one sentry to the other, and got her to show us the doctor"s.
So we started thither, and as we went she said, "Really, Oliver, you are inconsiderate at times."
"Nonsense," said I. "It"s my head."
I was angry, not at her words, for I knew she did not mean them, but at my inability to see what the fascinating jade was driving at.
"Inconsiderate," she repeated firmly. "You"d be content to be introduced to the Prince with a great swathe of dirty, blood-stained linen round your head, regardless of how it reflected on me."
"Reflected on you?" I echoed blankly.
"Yes. We shouldn"t match. I suppose dear old Bloggs was a bachelor?"
"He was," said I, resigning the contest in despair.
The doctor lived in a fair-sized stick-and-wattle house. He was a dapper little man, with a cleverish, weakling cast of face, and was all on the jump with the turn things had taken. He had just opened the door to us, and was eyeing us uncertainly, when the Colonel and the Chief, returning on foot from their inspection, having left their horses to be baited under the watchful eye of a Highlander, stopped beside us.
"Are you the doctor?" asked Margaret promptly, as if to forestall any backing out on my part. If I could have joyed at anything, I should have been overjoyed at her keenness in having me seen to.
"Yes," he said, but very softly.
"Then please attend to this gentleman"s wound," she said.
"Is he a rebel?" he asked, so loudly that he might have been talking to some one across the street, and instinctively I turned round There, sure enough, was the parson, a pasty, pursy, mean-looking rogue, coming across to see what was doing.
"It"s his head I want you to attend to," retorted Margaret, "not his politics."
"I doctor no rebels," said he, louder than ever.
"Man," intervened Maclachlan, taking a pistol from his belt, and emphasizing his words by gently tapping its barrel on the palm of his hand, "if in ten minutes yon head isn"t doctored to pairfection, it"s your own sel" will be beyond all the doctoring in England."
"It"s against all law," said the doctor.
"I"m the law in this clachan to-day," said Maclachlan simply, still tapping away with his pistol. Hearing the parson behind, he turned round and added drily, "And the gospel." Hereupon the parson"s face took on the appearance of ill-made, ill-risen dough, and he turned and slipped off with creeping, noiseless steps, like a cat.
"Come in," whispered the doctor.
"Ye"re a man o" sense," said Maclachlan, and pushed his pistol back into his belt.
We all pa.s.sed into the hall, and the doctor made the door carefully.