Midwinter: Certain Travellers in Old England

by John Buchan

"Yet she must miss you, and if you fall she will be widowed."

"True, true. I have no clearness in the matter. I will seek light in prayer and sleep." He marched from the room, leaving his new accoutrements lying neglected in a corner.

Next day Alastair was sufficiently recovered to travel, and the two set out shortly after daylight. The woman of the inn, who had been instructed by Midwinter, had counsel to give. The Ashbourne road was too dangerous, for already the pursuit had begun and patrols of Government horse were on the trail of the Highlanders; two gentlemen such as they might be taken for the tail of the rebels and suffer accordingly. She advised that the road should be followed by Chesterfield and the east side of the county, which would avoid the high hills of the Peak and bring them to Manchester and the Lancashire levels by an easier if a longer route. It was agreed that the two should pass as master and man—Mr Andrew Watson, the coal-merchant of Newcastle, and his secretary.

The secretary, ere they started, drew his sword and fingered it lovingly. "I must tell you," he whispered to Alastair, "that the reflections of the night have not shaken my purpose. I am still resolved to accompany you to the wars."

But there was no gusto in his air. All that day among the shallow vales he hardly spoke, and now and then would groan lamentably. The weather was mist and driving rain, and the travellers' prospect was little beyond the puddles of the road and the wet glistening stone of the roadside dykes. That night they had risen into the hills, where the snow lay in the hollows and at the dyke-backs, and slept at a wretched hovel of a smithy on a bed of bracken. The smith, a fellow with a week's beard and red-rimmed eyes, gave the news of the place. The Scots, he had heard, had passed Macclesfield the night before, and all day the militia, horsed by the local squires, had been scouting the moors picking up breechless stragglers. He did not appear to suspect his sullen visitors, who proclaimed their hurry to reach Manchester on an errand of trade.

Thereafter to both men the journey was a nightmare. In Manchester, where they slept a night, the mob was burning Charles in effigy and hiccuping "George is magnanimous"—that mob which some weeks before had worn white favours and drunk damnation to Hanover. They saw a few miserable Highlanders, plucked from the tail of the army, in the hands of the town guard, and a mountebank in a booth had got himself up in a parody of a kilt and sang ribaldry to a screaming crowd. They heard, too, of the Government troops hard on the trail, Wade cutting in from the east by the hill roads, Cumberland hastening from the south, Bland's and Cobham's regiments already north of the town, mounted yeomen to guard the fords and bridges, and beacons blazing on every hill to raise the country.

"The Prince must halt and fight," Alastair told his companion as they rode out of Manchester next morning. "With this hell's pack after him he will be smothered unless he turn and tear them. Lord George will command the rear-guard, and I am positive he will stand at Preston. Ribble ford is the place. You may yet witness a battle, and have the chance of fleshing that blade of yours."

But when they came to Preston—by circuitous ways, for they had to keep up the pretence of timid travellers, and the main road was too thick with alarums—they found the bridge held by dragoons. Here they were much catechised, and, having given Newcastle as their destination, were warned that the northern roads into Yorkshire were not for travellers and bidden go back to Manchester. The Prince, it seemed, was at Lancaster, and Lord George and the Glengarry men and the Appin Stewarts half-way between that town and Preston.

That night Alastair implored Johnson to return. "We are on the edge of battle," he told him, "and I beseech you to keep away from what can only bring you ruin." But the other was obstinate. "I will see you at any rate on the eve of joining your friends," he said, "We have yet to reach Ramoth-Gilead."

The Preston dragoons were too busy on their own affairs to give much heed to two prosaic travellers. Alastair and Johnson stole out of the town easily enough next morning, and making a wide circuit to the west joined the Lancaster road near Garstang. To their surprise the highway was almost deserted, and they rode into Lancaster without hindrance. There they found the town in a hubbub, windows shuttered, entries barricaded, the watch making timid patrols about the streets, and one half the people looking anxiously south, the other fearfully north to the Kendal road. The Prince had been there no later than yesterday, and the rear-guard had left at dawn. News had come that the Duke of Cumberland was recalled, because of a French landing, and there were some who said that now the Scots would turn south again and ravage their way to London.