“But there’s ae thing, callants,” said Walter, “that has astonished me, an’ I canna help speering. Where got ye the coffin sae readily for the man that died last night?”
“That coffin,” said Brown, “was brought here one night by the friends of one of the men whom Clavers caused to be shot on the other side of the ridge there, which you saw. The bodies were buried ere they came; it grew day on them, and they left it; so, for the sake of concealment, we brought it into our cave. It has been useful to us; for when the wretched tinker fell down among us from that gap, while we were at evening worship, we pinioned him in the dark, and carried him in that chest to your door, thinking he had belonged to your family. That led to a bloody business, of which you shall hear anon. And in that coffin, too, we carried off your ungrateful curate so far on his journey, disgraced for ever, to come no more within twenty miles of Chapelhope, on pain of a dreadful death in twenty-four hours thereafter; and I stand warrandice that he shall keep his distance. In it we have now deposited the body of a beloved and virtuous friend, who always foretold this, from its first arrival in our cell.—But he rejoiced in the prospect of his dissolution, and died as he had lived, a faithful and true witness; and his memory shall long be revered by all the just and the good.”
CHAPTER V.
I hate long explanations, therefore this chapter shall be very short; there are, however, some parts of the foregoing tale, which require that a few words should be subjoined in elucidation of them.
This John Brown was a strenuous and desperate reformer. He was the son of a gentleman by a second marriage, and half-brother to the Laird of Caldwells. He was at the battle of Pentland, with five brave sons at his back, two of whom were slain in the action, and he himself wounded. He was again at Bothwell Bridge with the remaining three, where he was a principal mover of the unhappy commotions in the army that day, owing to his violent irreclaimable principles of retaliation. A little before the rout became general, he was wounded by a musket bullet, which grazed across his back, and deprived him of all power. A dragoon coming up, and seeing him alive, struck him again across the back with his sword, which severed the tendons, and cut him to the bone. His sons had seen him fall, and, knowing the spot precisely, they returned overnight, and finding him still alive, they conveyed him to a place of safety, and afterwards to Glasgow, where he remained concealed in a garret in a friend’s house for some months; and, after great sufferings in body and mind, recovered of his wounds; but, for want of surgical assistance, he was so crooked and bowed down, that his nearest friends could not know him; for in his youth, though short in stature, he was strong and athletic. At length he reached his own home, but found it ransacked and desolate, and learned that his wife was carried to prison, he knew not whether. His powerful eloquence, and wild Cameronian principles, made him much dreaded by the other party; a high reward was offered for apprehending him, so that he was driven to great straits, yet never failed to wreak his vengeance on all of the persecuting party that fell within his power, and he had still a number of adherents.
At length there was one shot in the fields near Kirkconnel that was taken for him, and the promised reward actually paid; on which the particular search after him subsided. His two youngest sons both died for the same cause with the former, but James, his third son, always kept by his father, until taken prisoner by Clavers as he was fishing one day in Coulter Water. Clavers ordered him to be instantly shot, but the Laird of Coulteralloes being present, interceded for him, and he was detained a prisoner, carried about from place to place, and at length confined in the gaol at Selkirk. By the assistance of his father and friends he effected his escape, but not before being grievously wounded; and, by reason of the hurts he received, and the fever that attacked them in the cave, when Katharine was first introduced there, he was lying past hope; but, by her unwearied care and attention, he, with others, was so far recovered as to be able to sit up, and walk about a little. He was poor Nanny’s own son; and this John was her husband, whom she had long deemed in another and a happier state—No wonder that she was shocked and affrighted when she saw him again in such a form at midnight, and heard him speak in his own natural and peculiar voice. Their meeting that day at Chapelhope must be left to the imagination; it is impossible for any pen to do it justice.
It is only necessary to add, that Walter seems to have been as much respected and beloved by his acquaintances and domestics, at least as any neighbour or master of the present day, as will appear from the few following remarks. The old session-clerk and precentor at Ettrick said, “It was the luckiest thing that could have happened that he had come home again, for the poor’s ladle had been found to be a pund Scots short every Sunday since he and his family had left church.” And fat Sandy Cunningham, the conforming clergyman there, a very honest inoffensive man, remarked, “that he was very glad to hear the news, for the goodman always gave the best dinners at the visitations and examinations of any farmer in his parish; and one always felt so comfortable in his house.” Davie Tait said, that “Divine Providence had just been like a stell dike to the goodman. It had bieldit him frae the bitter storm o’ the adversary’s wrath, an’ keepit a’ the thunner-bolts o’ the wicked frae brikking on his head; that, for his part, he wad sit down on his knees an’ thank Heaven, Sunday and Saturday, for his return, for he could easily lend his master as muckle siller as wad stock a’ Riskinhope ower again, an’ there was little doubt but he wad do it.” Even old John of the Muchrah remarked, “that it was just as weel that his master was come back, for he had an unco gude e’e amang the sheep when ought was gaun wrang on the hill, an’ the ewes wadna win nae mair into the hogg fence o’ the Quave Brae, i’ the day time at ony rate.”
If there are any incidents in this Tale that may still appear a little mysterious, they will all be rendered obvious by turning to a pamphlet, entitled, A Cameronian’s Tale, or The Life of John Brown, written by himself. But any reader of common ingenuity may very easily solve them all.
END OF THE BROWNIE OF BODSBECK.