"It's been a stiff clim'," said the packman, "we'd better sit doon and rest a wee." He threw off his pack and we sat down upon some rising ground by the roadside. For a time I sat and drank in the beauty which spread itself before me, but my reverie was disturbed by Hector, who laid his hand upon my knee and said, "I want to talk to you." All attention, I turned towards him, but he was slow to begin. Patiently I waited, and then, half turning so that he looked me straight in the face with his piercing right eye wide open, his left half shut, he said:
"Nae doot ye're puzzled aboot me." I wondered whether he had been able to read the thoughts that had flitted through my mind as we climbed the hill from New Abbey. "I think it is only richt," he continued, "that before we gang ony further, I should mak' masel' clear to you. Maybe when I ha'e opened my heart to you, you'll tell me something aboot yersel' for, if I ha'e kept my counsel, so ha'e you. Rale frien'ship maun be built on mutual confidence; withoot that, frien'ship is naething mair than a hoose o' cairds. Ye ken already that I am no' a'thegither what I seem. I'd better begin at the beginnin'. I'm an Ayrshire man, articled in my youth to the Law and at ae time a student o' Glasgow College; an' lang syne, when my blood was hot and I was fu' o' ideals, I threw in my lot wi' the Covenanters. And I've suffered for it." He pushed down the rig-and-fur stocking on his left leg. "Look at that," he said. I looked, and saw, where the skin ran over the bone, a long, ugly brown scar. "Ye'll no' ken what that means?" I shook my head. "Weel," he said, "that's what the persecutors did for me. I've had 'the boot' on that leg, and until my dying day I'll carry the mark. But I'm no' what they ca' a guid Covenanter. I'm a queer mixture, as maybe you yersel' ha'e already noticed. I canna say that I'm a religious man, and though my heart is wi' the lads that are ready to dee for the Covenant, I fear that I masel' lack grace. Hooever, that's by the way. Lang years sin' I cam' to this country-side whaur naebody knew me, as a packman wi' a tree-leg, and as such I am kent to maist o' my acquaintances. Wi' my pack on my shoulder I wander through the country-side back and forrit frae Dumfries to Portpatrick, and frae Portpatrick back again to the Nith, wi' chap-books, and ribbons, and pots o' salve, but a' the while I keep my e'en and my ears open. I get to ken the movements o' the troopers, and I hear tell in the hooses o' the Covenanters o' comin' hill-meetings and sic-like, and mony a time I ha'e been able to drop a hint in the richt place that has brocht to nought some crafty scheme o' the persecutors and saved the life o' mair than ane hill-man. If ye like to put it that way, I rin wi' the hare and hunt wi' the hounds. I'm hand in glove, to a' ootward seeming, wi' the persecutors themselves. I foregather wi' sodgers in roadside inns, and it's marvellous hoo a pint or twa o' 'tippenny' and a truss o' Virginia weed will loosen their tongues and gaur them talk. I've listened quately, and mony a time I've let fa' a remark that mak's them believe that a' my sympathies are wi' them and that I'm no' in wi' the Covenanters ava. As a matter o' solid fact, I am sae weel thocht o' by men sic as Sir Robert Grier, Dalzell himsel' and Claver'se, that mair than aince I ha'e been sent by them on special commissions to find things oot; and I've come back and I've tellt them what they wanted to ken, and riding hell for leather they've gane off wi' their dragoons to some wee thackit cottage on the moors. But they've never caught the bird they were after. Somebody--maybe it was me, I'm no' sayin'--had drapped a timely warnin'; and though I tellt the persecutors nae lee, I ha'e mair than aince gi'en them cause to remember that truth lies at the bottom o' a very deep well. That's my story. I'm a spy, if ye like--an ugly word, but I ha'e na man's blood upon my haun's or on my conscience. And it's dangerous wark, as you may weel ken. Some day ane or other o' my schemes will gang agley, and the heid and haun's, and maybe the tree-leg as weel, o' Hector the packman will decorate a spike on Devorgilla's brig at Dumfries. I wadna muckle mind; for life is sometimes a weary darg, but I'd like, afore that day comes, tae ha'e feenished my magnum opus. I maun really lay masel' on and get it begun. It would be a monument by which I micht be remembered.
"Sometimes as I walk my lane alang the roads I think o' things. Here and there I come across a wee mound on the moorland, or maybe by the roadside, and I ken it covers the body o' some brave man wha has died for his faith. Desolate, lonely, and scattered cairns they are. And then I think, that though this is the day o' the persecutors, and though they be set in great power, a day is comin' when a' their glory will be brocht to naething. By and by Grier o' Lag, Dalzell and Claver'se, and a' the rest o' them will pay the debt to Nature, and nae doot they will be buried wi' muckle pomp and circumstance, and great monuments o' carved stane will be set abune them. But in time to come, I'm thinkin', it will no' be their tombs that will be held in reverence, but the lonely graves scattered aboot the purple moors and the blue hills. It's them that will be treasured for ever as a precious heritage. We're a religious folk in Scotland, or at least we get that name--but religion or no', we love liberty wi' every fibre o' oor being, and in days to come, generations yet unborn, wha may be unable to understaun the faith for which the hill-men died, will honour them because they were ready to lay doon their lives in defiance o' a tyrant king. Noo," he said, letting his eyes fall, "ye ken a' aboot me that there's ony need to ken, and it's for ye to say whether we pairt company here or whether we gang on thegither." He drew out his pipe and proceeded to fill it.
For a moment I was at a loss. Was he seeking to entrap me into an open declaration of sympathy with the Covenanters; or was he telling the truth? His confession had been an absolutely open one, so open that if my sympathies were with the persecutors he had placed himself completely in my hands. He had looked me straight in the face with one piercing eye as though to read my soul, while the other was half veiled as though to hide his own. But his voice had rung with fervour as he spoke of the lone graves of the hill-men, and I remembered the fight in the wood. He must have spoken the truth; so I took courage and without further delay told him my story. He listened attentively, and when I had finished he said:
"Ay, the auld packman is richt again. I thocht aboot ye last nicht. Man, I can read fowk like a coont on a slate, and I'm richt gled to hear frae your ain lips, what I had already guessed, that you're for the Cause. If I had thocht onything else, I wu'd ha'e held my tongue."
CHAPTER XXVIII
FOR THE SWEET SAKE OF MARY
When with characteristic self-satisfaction the packman had extolled his own intelligence, he lapsed into silence. As for me, the telling of my tale had reawakened so many sad memories that for a time I sat gazing before me, unable through my tears to see the other side of the road. Hector knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and sighed.
"It is," he said, "ane o' the saddest stories I ha'e ever heard. Sic an experience is enough to mak' a man bitter for the rest o' his days. But if Mary was only half o' what you ha'e tellt me she was, that's no' what she wu'd like to see. It's the prood woman she wu'd be if she knew ye were minded to throw in your lot wi' the Cause. What are ye gaun to dae?"
"I am making for England," I answered.