"You have done a greater service to the Covenant than you know," I said, then springing up I dashed from the house into the gathering darkness.
I had lost two precious hours--but by the mercy of God I was still alive, and I should carry my message through.
I raced down the slope to the road, and turned my face to the long ascent. The wind had abated, and I could make better progress. The cold air stung my burnt arm, but as I set my mind to my task the pain ceased to trouble me.
With hope still rising within me I struggled on--breaking into a steady, mechanical trot. As the woman had said, the road was very bad, but, after my strange deliverance from death, nothing could daunt me, and I fought my way on. The stars were looking down upon me now, and I looked up at them with a grateful heart. At last I reached the top of the hill, and the long descent lay before me. I paused for a moment to regain my breath, and saw far below me that tender light which always hangs in the sky, when night comes, above the habitations of men, and I knew that I was looking down on Moffat. As though the light were a beacon which beckoned me, I started to run down-hill.
My stiff limbs warmed to their work and soon I was running with some freedom. On and on ... splashing through the pools of water that lay in the path, with eyes strained ever towards the gleam in the sky; on, and on ... with clenched teeth and parted lips through which my hurrying breath issued with the poignant sound of a sob. On, and on ... the rhythmic sound of my footsteps throbbing through my brain. Faster now, for the light was drawing nearer; on, and on ... till just without the confines of the little town I turned to the right lest the sound of my racing feet should awake suspicion. Skirting the township cautiously, I came out upon the road again beyond it.
On, and on ... fear and desire lending speed to my feet; and behind me the town clock striking ten. God help me!--a score of miles still lay before me; had I strength to accomplish the task? The perspiration broke out upon me, and for very weariness I reeled as I ran. At last I came to the place where I must leave the highway and take to the open country. It was harder going thus, but the way was more direct and every moment was precious. On, and on ... until my mind divorced itself from my body, and in a mood of abstraction contemplated the running figure alongside which it sailed so easily. On, and on ... the mind holding itself aloof and regarding with a kind of pity the struggles of the tired body that was plunging headlong across the fields. Suddenly I was conscious that something other than myself was running along beside me ... keeping step with my step, measuring its paces with my paces, neck and neck with me. What ghostly companion was this? I looked to the right and left but saw nothing, and, as I looked, the sound of the attendant footsteps ceased and I heard nothing but the tick-tack of my own feet. On, and on ... crashing through the hedges, leaping over the low dykes, stumbling in the ruts of the ploughed fields, wading the little streams, ... still I pressed on. I was panting wildly now, so that my breath whistled as the wind whistles through a keyhole in winter. Nothing mattered: come life, come death, I should carry the tidings through. Once more the ghostly feet were audible, keeping time with my own--pit-pat, pit-pat, step for step. I flung my arms to right and left, but they touched vacancy, and the ghostly footsteps ceased. On, and on, ... until a heavy languor stole over me and filled me with the hunger of sleep. My eyelids drooped, so that for an instant I did not see the ground before me, and I stumbled and almost fell. I sprang erect and shook myself. Sleep meant death--not for myself, but for thousands of others who had grown to be dear to me, and on and on I ran. But the things that a man would do are conditioned by the strength which God has given him, and the body, though an obedient slave to the mind, sometimes becomes a tyrant. My limbs were heavy--no longer things of flesh and blood, but compact of lead. On, and on ... knowing nothing now but that my task was a sacred one, deaf to the sound of my own footsteps, blind to the things around me, on and on I reeled till sleep or something akin to it, seized me, and for a time I raced on unconscious of what I did. Stumbling, I fell to spring up again wildly alert. I should win through or die! On and on--and on and on ... till I sank helpless to the ground.
I slept: I dreamed:--
It was a peaceful Sabbath day. In a hollow among the hills above Closeburn a great gathering of men and women and children was assembled to keep the feast. On a low table covered with a fair white cloth stood the sacred elements. Behind the table I saw my friend of the cave at the Linn standing with a look of rapture on his face. The gathered people were singing a psalm, when, suddenly, there was a loud alarm. The posted sentinels came hot-foot with cruel tidings on their lips. But it was too late. From north and south and east and west, on horses at the gallop, poured the dragoons--Claver'se's men, Lag's men, Winram's men, Dalzell's men, all with the blood-lust in their eyes--and in a moment that peaceful hollow was a bloody shambles. Muskets rattled on every side; men, women and children fell. Through and through that defenceless company the wild troopers rode, spurring their horses to their sickening task, trampling the women and children underfoot, shooting the men with their bullets or beating them down with the stocks of their muskets. Screams and wild blasphemy rent the air that but a moment before had been fragrant with the melodies of love and adoration. Lag himself I saw spur his charger over a tangled mass of dead and dying right at the sacred table. The horse leaped, spurning to the ground the Bread and Wine, and the man of blood, swinging his sword high, brought it down upon the head of the sainted minister, who fell cleft to the chin. And I, by whose failure such deeds of blood had been made possible, lay bound, a prisoner, hand and foot.
CHAPTER XXXVII
"OUT OF THE SNARE OF THE FOWLERS"