At last I was aroused by the sudden cracking of a knot in the torch. I saw that it would last but a few hours more. I determined to put it out, for I might be allowed no more light, and even a few minutes of this torch every day would be a great boon. So I took it from its place, and was about to quench it in the moist earth at the foot of the wall, when I remembered my tobacco and my pipe. Can you think how joyfully I packed full the good brown bowl, delicately filling in every little corner, and at last held it to the flame, and saw it light? That first long whiff was like the indrawn breath of the cold, starved hunter, when, stepping into his house, he sees food, fire, and wife on his hearthstone. Presently I put out the torchlight, and then went back to my couch and sat down, the bowl shining like a star before me.
There and then a purpose came to me—something which would keep my brain from wandering, my nerves from fretting and wearing, for a time at least. I determined to write to my dear Alixe the true history of my life, even to the point—and after—of this thing which now was bringing me to so ill a pass. But I was in darkness, I had no paper, pens, nor ink. After a deal of thinking I came at last to the solution. I would compose the story, and learn it by heart, sentence by sentence, as I so composed it.
So there and then I began to run back over the years of my life, even to my first remembrances, that I might see it from first to last in a sort of whole and with a kind of measurement. But when I began to dwell upon my childhood, one little thing gave birth to another swiftly, as you may see one flicker in the heaven multiply and break upon the mystery of the dark, filling the night with clusters of stars. As I thought, I kept drawing spears of the dungeon corn between my fingers softly (they had come to be like comrades to me), and presently there flashed upon me the very first memory of my life. It had never come to me before, and I knew now that it was the beginning of conscious knowledge: for we can never know till we can remember. When a child remembers what it sees or feels, it has begun life.
I put that recollection into the letter which I wrote Alixe, and it shall be set down forthwith and in little space, though it took me so very many days and weeks to think it out, to give each word a fixed place, so that it should go from my mind no more. Every phrase of that story as I told it is as fixed as stone in my memory. Yet it must not be thought I can give it all here. I shall set down only a few things, but you shall find in them the spirit of the whole. I will come at once to the body of the letter.
VI
MORAY TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE
"…I would have you know of what I am and whence I came, though I have given you glimpses in the past. That done, I will make plain why I am charged with this that puts my life in danger, which would make you blush that you ever knew me if it were true. And I will show you first a picture as it runs before me, sitting here, the corn of my dungeon garden twining in my fingers:—
"A multiplying width of green grass spotted with white flowers, an upland where sheep browsed on a carpet of purple and gold and green, a tall rock on a hill where birds perched and fluttered, a blue sky arching over all. There, sprawling in a garden, a child pulled at long blades of grass, as he watched the birds flitting about the rocks, and heard a low voice coming down the wind. Here in my dungeon I can hear the voice as I have not heard it since that day in the year 1730—that voice stilled so long ago. The air and the words come floating down (for the words I knew years afterwards):
'Did ye see the white cloud in the glint o' the sun?
That's the brow and the eye o' my bairnie.
Did ye ken the red bloom at the bend o' the crag?
That's the rose in the cheek o' my bairnie.
Did ye hear the gay lilt o' the lark by the burn?
That's the voice of my bairnie, my dearie.
Did ye smell the wild scent in the green o' the wood?
That's the breath o' my ain, o' my bairnie.
Sae I'll gang awa' hame, to the shine o' the fire,
To the cot where I lie wi' my bairnie.'
"These words came crooning over the grass of that little garden at Balmore which was by my mother's home. There I was born one day in June, though I was reared in the busy streets of Glasgow, where my father was a prosperous merchant and famous for his parts and honesty.