Patsy

by S. R. Crockett

The Bothy on the Wild of Blairmore was an entrenched camp, for Stair was too good a general not to see to the state of his defences, to his victualling and armament from the beginning. So, though the moment of the attack was a surprise, its manner had long been foreseen. As Stair had repeatedly said, "The sea is never shut!"

Landing parties from the Britomart and Vandeleur had marched up the Valleys, and the Preventive men of all the West of Galloway had quietly gathered at Stranryan in order to co-operate with them.

It was Stair who stumbled upon a picket of the Britomart men hidden among the eastern sand-dunes. He was on his way to meet Joseph, Whitefoot as usual at his heels, when suddenly the dog sprang forward, eyes blazing, hackles stiff, his nose high in the air, and his teeth bared, ready to bound. Stair restrained him and crept to the lip of a little sandy cup where, from the midst of a clump of dry saw-edged sea-grass, he could look down on a group of men busied about their soup-kettle.

"Silly fools," he muttered to himself, "they do not know that the first handful of heather and dried bracken they throw on their fire, will send a skarrow to the sky that will warn every soul within twenty miles. If I had not been a blind idiot, and thinking of something else, I should have seen it long before I came so far."

And looking over his shoulder he saw to the right, to the left, and behind him towards the cliffs seaward, multitudinous pulsing ruddy camp-fire blooms, waking, waxing and falling, that told of a general investment of their fastness, so long secure. In spite of the surprise, however, Stair managed to meet Joseph and to warn him that nothing further must be attempted except by means of Whitefoot. He introduced the wise collie and made him give his two front paws to the confidential servant in token of amity, while he repeated his name over and over again—"Joseph! Joseph!"

"Ao-ouch!" whispered Whitefoot, as much as to say, "Of course I understand! Do you think that I, Whitefoot Garland, am some silly puppy gambolling through life?"

For Whitefoot was a grave dog and had had to do with many very serious things indeed—things which touched even the life of his master. So it is no wonder that at this time of day he rather resented pains being taken with his education. It was like setting a double-first to construe the first book of Cæsar.

Stair returned to the Bothy with his heart heavy and many thoughts churning within him. He reached the Wild safely with nothing worse to report than the fact that he was fired upon by a sentry, which warned him that he must not come that way too often. He did not enter directly into the Bothy, where, as he knew, Julian Wemyss would be doing an hour's reading before turning in. Instead he betook himself to the dam which his brothers and the band had constructed at the close of the autumnal peat-leading.

All the winter the Sunk of Blairmore had been full of black moss water. For the greater part of the cold weather it had been frozen and snow-bound. But now, swollen with spring rains, the ditches of the Sunk were lipping to the overflow. Stair took the great iron gelleck and with a blow or two knocked back the clutches of the flood-barriers. Then flinging down the huge crow-bar, he fled for his life, the ink-black water hissing and spurting at his heels. It was not noisy, that water. It ran silently, almost oilily, but all the same it followed after, and it was swirling black about Stair Garland's knees as he scrambled up the high platform of the Bothy, at the place where you could dig out the sand and sea-shells of a past age from among the roots of the heather.

"That will put out one or two of their fires for them!" he exclaimed triumphantly, and even as he spoke he heard cries announcing danger, hasty preparations for flight, while the red "skarrows" in the sky winked only once or twice more and were then wiped out clean all along the east and west borders of the Wild. Only on the high southern cliffs the fires still shone. And Stair knew that it was thither that the drowned-out investing parties would be compelled to retreat.