Deep Moat Grange. Crockett Samuel Rutherford

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      "And while the din was at its height in the cot, there came a sound to Mistress Comline's ear that garred her kind heart loup within her. It was like the whimpering of a bairn that is ill used and dares not cry out loud. And with that she for gat her fear of the strange fool, Daft Jeremy, and with her naked hands she shook the door of the cothouse of Breckonside till the iron stinchel clattered in its ring.

      "'The magistrates o' Dumfries shall ken o' this or I am a day aulder!' she cried in to them. 'Gie me the lassie or the preventive men shall hear of the barrels ye hae hidden in the yard. Supervisor Imrie shall be here and search every inch high and low if ye lay as much as a finger on the innocent bairn!'

      "And even as she cried out threatenings and shook the stout oaken door so that the leaves almost fell asunder, Margaret Comline heard a noise behind her, and whipped about quickly with her heart in her mouth, for she thought it was Daft Jeremy come out to slay her.

      "But instead it was the wee lass herself that had escaped by a kind of a miracle through the window of the 'aumry' or pantry closet. For Laird Stennis had it closed with a board, grudging the expense of glass. The lass was greeting and laughing at the same time, feared to the marrow of her bits of bones, but yet crouse withal. Mistress Comline marvelled to see her.

      "'I hae left the stead of my teeth in his hand, I wot!' she said, as Mistress Comline helped her into the light cart at the roadside.

      "'And see what I brought with me,' she added as they drove away. It was a shagreen leather pocketbook like those which well-to-do farmers carry, or rich English drovers that come to the cattle trysts to buy for the English market. And Mistress Comline, struck with fear lest she should be taken for a thief, would have turned back, but that at that very moment, out of the door of the cot, there burst a terrifying figure – even Daft Jeremy himself, a great flesher's knife uplifted in his hand. He was scraiching out words without meaning, and looked so fleysome that the decent woman e'en slipped the shagreen purse into her reticule basket and laid whiplash to Donald till that pampered beast must have thought that the punishment of all his sins had overtaken him at once.

      "The 'mounster' pursued after them with these and such like affrighting outcries to the very entering in of Longtown. And never had Margaret Comline, decent woman, been so glad to recognize Her Majesty's authority as when she saw Supervisor Imrie with two-three of his men come riding up from the Brig-End and out upon the green grass of the Terreggles Braes. But she said nothing, only gave them a good day in passing, and bade them 'beware o' the puir "naiteral," Daft Jeremy, that was in one o' his fits o' anger that day!'

      "'Sic a fierce craitur should be in the Towbooth. He is a danger to the lieges,' said Supervisor Imrie, adding more cautiously, 'That is, were it no that he would be a cess on the burgh and pairish!"

      "When Mistress Comline gat to her own door she first delivered Donald into the hands of her serving prentice, Robin Carmorie, as stout and blythe a lad as ever walked the Plainstanes. But the wee lass she took by the hand up to her own chamber, and there she stripped her to the skin and washed her and put fine raiment on her, new from the shop – aye, and did not rest from her labours till she had gathered every auld rag that she found on her and committed them to the flames, as if they had been art and part in the wizardry of Laird Stennis, her grandfather, and the coming ill-repute of the white cothouse on the brae-face of Breckonside.

      "But, fearing she knew not clearly what, she sealed the shagreen pocket-book up in a clean white wrapper and laid it aside in her drawer, saying to herself, 'If this be honestly come by the laird is no the man to forget to ca' in for his ain. And if no – " Here a shake of the head and a shrewd smile intimated that the contents of the pocket-book might one day be useful to its finder, little Elsie Comline, as she was now to be named.

      "'And wha has a better richt!' the shopkeeper would add, perhaps to salve her conscience in the matter.

      "But, indeed, it was but seldom, the pocket-book once safe in the drawer, that she thought about the matter at all. For Margaret Comline was a busy woman of affairs, having under her serving lassies and prentice loons, a shop on the ground floor of a house in the Vennel, and a well-patronized stall in the market. All day she went to and fro, busily commending her goods and reproving her underlings with equal earnestness and point. Sunday and Saturday the wrinkle was never off her brow. Like Martha in the Scripture, she was careful and troubled about many things. She read but seldom, and when she did her memory retained not long the imprint of what she read. So that our young monkey, Elsie, being fresh from the mischief-making of the grammar school, where she was drilled with a class of boys, used to shift the marker of woven silk back ten pages or so in the godly book over which her foster mother fell asleep on Sabbath afternoons. By which means Mistress Comline was induced to peruse the same improving passage at least fifty times in the course of a year, yet without once discovering, or for a moment suspecting the fact.

      "For all that, she saw to it that Elsie did her nightly school tasks, recommending the master to 'palmie' her well if she should ever come to school unprepared. But, being a quick and ready learner, the young lass needed the less encouragement of that kind.

      "As she grew older, too, Elsie would upon occasions serve a customer in the shop, though Margaret Comline never allowed her to stand on the street among the babble of tongues at the market stalls. In a little time she could distinguish the hanks of yarn and thread, the webs of wincey, and bolts of linen as well as her mistress, and was counted a shrewd and capable hand at a bargain before she was fifteen.

      "All this time her grandfather, the old miser Hobby, lived on in the little white house up among the fir-woods of Breckonside, growing ever harder and richer, at least according to the clashes of the country folk. By day, and sometimes far into the night, the click of his shuttle was never silent, and, being an old man, it was thought a marvel how he could sit so long at his loom. And still Daft Jeremy abode with him and filled his pirns. Sometimes the 'naiteral' would sit on the dyke top at the end of the cottage and laugh at the farmers as they rode by, crying names and unco words after them, so that many shunned to pass that way in the gloaming, for fear of the half-witted, strong creature that mopped and mowed and danced at the lonely gable end. And they were of excellent judgment who did so.

      "For Riddick of Langbarns disappeared frae the face o' the earth, being last seen within half a mile of Laird Stennis's loaning, and, less than a month after that, Lang Hutchins, who came to Longtown with all his gains frae a year's trading padded inside his coat, so folks said, started out of Longtown at dusk and was never seen in Breckonside again. There were those who began to whisper fearsome things about the innocent-appearing white cot at the top of the Lang Wood o' Breckonside.

      "Yet there were others again, and they a stout-hearted majority, who scoffed, and told how Riddick had been seen in market carrying more than his load of whisky, and that as for Lang Hutchins, had he not dared his Maker that very day to strike him dead if he spoke not the truth – all that heard him well knowing that even as he uplifted his hand he lied in his throat.

      "Nor was Elsie wholly forgotten by her only near of kin. Twice or thrice a year there came from the cottage a web of fine cloth, woven as only Laird Stennis could weave it, with the inscription written plainly thereon, 'To be sold for the benefit of the upkeep of my granddaughter, Elsie Stennis.'

      "After his accident, which nobody could explain and, indeed, few dared to ask about, Laird Stennis took a disgust at the Weaver's Cot by the burnside. He got his miserly money out, and with it he bought the estate of Deep Moat Hollow, that had been in the market for long – and they say that he got it for a song, the late owner's need being great and money terrible scarce. Then he and Daft Jeremy removed thither, and they had Jeremy's sister, a queer old maid (madder, they said, than himself), to keep house for the pair of them. Then the Laird Stennis rode ever the more to market and tryst, and waxed ever the richer, laying field to field, as is forbidden in the Holy Book. Then good Mrs. Comline died, and, though I was no better СКАЧАТЬ