PART II.—INCHGARRY’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED.
Three weeks elapsed, during which no one in Inchgarry had set eyes on Ian Dhu. The story of his love for the sheach was commonly known, and speculation was rife as to his proceedings since the night of his disappearance. This was set at rest one evening by his sudden appearance in the kitchen of the sub-factor’s house, lean and gaunt as a famished hound. His face was haggard and hunger-pinched, and a gleam very like insanity lit up the dark scowling eyes. His hair and beard were matted and tangled, and his clothes were soiled and rent. It was conjectured that he had spent the interval since his flight, in the fastnesses of the mountains—a prey to the throes of that passion which his powerful nature had conceived. What a picture might not imagination draw of the terrible human struggle enacted in those solitudes! Perhaps some such thought occurred to the frightened women-servants as Ian stood before them. At anyrate, they received him with silent sympathy, and invited him to take refreshment. It does seem strange that the revenge which succeeded his paroxysm of disappointed love should not first have been directed against the young gardener and his sweetheart. Various theories exist to account for this; one being that it really was his purpose to include them among his victims. My informant, however, held the very plausible opinion that Ian Dhu’s reason had given way under the great strain on his feelings, that his love was thereafter mercifully a blank to him, while the old grudge against Stewart had assumed unnatural proportions.
Forbes had an interview that night in his own parlour with his quondam henchman as the investigation which afterwards took place proved; and it was late when Ian Dhu slunk from the house by the private door, carrying with him a gun, and was seen to disappear in the belt of firs that skirts the loch. It is mentioned, with that morbid zest for details which a tragedy never fails to excite, that only a few minutes previous to Ian’s plunging into the wood, Archie Guthrie and Effie Stewart (now formally betrothed) had passed the sub-factor’s house arm-in-arm. What would have been the consequences of a rencontre between the lovers and Black Sutherland is a favourite topic for surmise amongst the people of Inchgarry to this day.
On the following morning, Grantoch, who had returned from his rounds, took his spy-glass from its case and directed it towards Bhein à B’huachaill. A fire in the heather on this hill had been reported earlier, and Stewart had gone to investigate the cause, telling Grantoch to follow him when his other duties should leave him at liberty. The burning of the heather in the month of July, and in the centre of the ‘forest’ ground, was a serious matter in the eyes of the keepers, driving the deer as it would, from a favourite haunt. Grantoch now desired to make out, if possible, in what direction Stewart had gone, that he might be able to join him by the shortest route. He brought the glass to bear on every part of the mountain, its wood-clad base, purple sides, gray scaurs, and shimmering water-courses—but without result; and was just about to close it, when his glance rested upon a human figure shewing on the near shoulder of Bhein à B’huachaill. His practised eye told him at once it was not Donald Stewart. He carefully scrutinised it for some minutes, until with startled surprise he recognised Ian Dhu creeping over the watershed, bearing a gun on his shoulder.
Grantoch quietly shut his glass, returned it to its case, examined with professional caution the lock of his double-barrel to see that it was at half-cock, and started at a swinging trot for the foot of the hill. Its nearest point was only a mile and a half distant; but, convinced that Ian was on another poaching expedition, he resolved to get the assistance of a keeper whose cottage stood about a mile farther up the loch. Here he was agreeably surprised to find Stewart engaged in issuing some orders. The latter explained that he had come direct to the cottage to learn whether the under-keeper knew anything of the fire; and that he found he had visited the spot. It was merely a patch which had soon burned out of itself, and Stewart had therefore waited leisurely for his comrade’s appearance. He pricked up his ears, however, when Grantoch told him of Ian Dhu’s movements, at once suspecting him of having intentionally fired the heather. The thought brought his hasty temper to such a heat that he resolved at once to clear up the matter by giving chase to Ian Dhu.
The trio took the route which Grantoch had seen Sutherland take, and their keen eyes kept them close on his track after it quitted the watershed. At length they came in full view of him as he now strode rapidly along the side of the hill. Their object was to detect him in the act of poaching, confident that Inchgarry would this time prosecute, and hopeful that the incendiarism would also be brought home to him. To avoid being observed in their turn, they now crouched along amongst the tall heather, till within a few hundred yards of where they had seen Ian Dhu last halt. Stewart then proposed to advance alone on all-fours to reconnoitre. As he thus cautiously approached the poacher, he observed that he had leapt into the dry channel of what is termed a winter stream, and was looking along the barrel of his weapon—a rifle—which he held resting on the bank at the opposite side of the channel to that on which Stewart now lay. Ian Dhu’s face was if possible more haggard and wild than ever, while the hand which grasped the rifle shook as if with ague or palsy. His glance was directed towards a spot some hundred yards distant, where the heather shewed blackened as if by recent fire. Now and again the maniac—for he had every appearance of being bereft of reason—would start up with an impatient cry and gesture, as though disappointed by the non-appearance of some object for which he waited. At last, in view of the puzzled and somewhat terrified keeper, he brought the rifle to his shoulder, and with steady deliberate aim, fired at an object unseen by the keeper. The echoes which the sharp report awakened were mingled with a piercing cry!
Ian Dhu had not time to complete his attempted spring from the channel of the stream before his shoulder was seized in the strong grasp of Donald Stewart. He turned to face his captor; then with a scream of terror, which for the moment paralysed the stout-hearted keeper, tore himself free and dashed down the mountain like a hunted stag. Donald, with the two under-keepers, who had rapidly approached, watched him in silence as he sped from rock to rock. Pursuit was useless. Following him with their eyes as he disappeared and reappeared among the inequalities of the ground, they at last observed, with a thrill of horror, that he did not turn aside in his descent from a well-known point at which the hill sloped almost precipitously for several hundred feet. With blanched faces and upraised hands they saw Ian Dhu pause for a moment on the dangerous verge, and take the awful leap.
The three keepers resolved at once to make a detour to the spot where he must have fallen, and for this purpose hastened down the shoulder of the hill. They had not proceeded far when Grantoch called the attention of the others to a groaning sound proceeding from some spot near them. Stewart believing it to be the dying moans of a wounded stag, answered his faithful comrade rather rudely and hurried on. His course happily took him to the very spot where the man, whom Ian Dhu’s last bullet had reached, lay bleeding and apparently dying. To the horror and amazement of all, it proved to be Forbes the sub-factor. Stewart, with a sensitiveness that did him credit, left the wounded man in the charge of Grantoch and their companion, and hurried off himself to procure assistance. With as much speed as the task would admit, he returned to the spot, leading a sure-footed pony, and on this, supported alternately by the keepers, Forbes was conveyed by easy stages to his own house.
The wound proved mortal; but before his death he made a statement which threw light upon the mysterious events of that fatal morning. Along with Ian Dhu he had concocted a scheme for Stewart’s destruction. He it was who had instructed Sutherland to fire the heather, calculating shrewdly that the circumstance would unfailingly call the keeper to the spot, in all likelihood alone, his trusty assistant being fully employed at that early hour. Ian, lying in wait with Forbes’s rifle, was to have shot the head-keeper whenever he appeared on the scene. The explanation of his own unfortunate presence was extremely simple. When he believed the dark deed accomplished, he had become anxious to recover the rifle from Ian Dhu, seeing that, in the event of capture, its possession would open up a suspicious inquiry respecting his own share in the dastardly business. This motive sealed his own fate. The impatient and vengeful Ian had not paused to reckon the chances of a mistake, but had pressed the trigger the moment he saw a human figure moving through the high heather towards the scene of the fire. Stewart, so happily deterred from his first purpose of visiting the burning hill, thus escaped the doom intended for him.
‘And what were the fortunes of the other characters in your sad story?’ I asked of the chief.
‘Oh! You see that cottage over there with the sweet bit of garden in front, ornamented with rockeries and ferns? That is the home of Archie Guthrie and his wife, née Effie Stewart. The fairy scarcely deserves the name now, having lost much of her elfish slenderness and activity, but is after all, perhaps, a prettier heroine as the gardener’s wife, and less dangerous to my young male subjects. A coquette she certainly never was; but discreet and prudent to a rare degree. I am at a loss to divine what the source of her strange power was, but am thankful she is now Mrs Guthrie.’
I laughed at the naïve remark.
‘As for Stewart,’ continued Inchgarry, ‘he has married well—the daughter of one of my wealthiest tenants. Grantoch has got a chief charge on an estate in the West Highlands, taking with him the buxom servant whom Stewart brought from Badenoch. So you see they are all doing well. And for my own part, the revelations which were made at the time of the tragedy fully awakened me to the duty of weighing carefully the complaints of my “people,” and of charily guarding against too free an investiture of power over them to an ignorant, malicious, or interested servant. I spend more time here than formerly, and am gratified by the increased contentment and prosperity of those under my care. The story, you will now perceive, though sad, is not without its moral.’