The Dew of Their Youth

by S. R. Crockett

It was, as it chanced, a busy day at the pirn-mill. The labours of the farm being fairly over for the year, the mill had been shut down for hasty repairs, which Alec McQuhirr had come down from Ironmacannie to superintend. He was, so they said, the best mill-wright in the half-dozen counties of the south and west. He had, however, the one fault common to all his tribe, that of dilatoriness. So my grandfather, who had his “pirn” contracts to be shipped for England on certain days, used to call his sons about him, and devote himself and all of them to the service of repairing. Boyd Connoway, also, usually gave us the benefit of his universal genius for advice, and, when he chose, for handiness also.

After tea some provisions had been carried to the mill by my mother on her way home. “One of the boys”—meaning my uncles—was to bring back the basket.

That night, also, supper was somewhat later than usual. Up in the mill men were still crawling about along the machinery with carefully protected lanterns. Buckets of water stood handy. For a pirn-mill is no place in which to play with fire. The sound of male voices and the thud of wooden mallets did not cease till long after dark. Supper was, therefore, later than usual, and the moon had risen before the sound of their footsteps was heard coming down among the tree-roots in the clearing which they themselves had made. The kitchen, which was also the living-room of Heathknowes, glowed bright, and the supper-table was a-laying. Aunt Jen bustled about. I had laid aside my writing, satisfied with a goodly tale of sheets to my credit. My grandmother was in the milk-house, but every now and then made darts out to the fire on which the precious “het supper” was cooking—roast fowl, bacon, and potatoes—traditional on occasions when the men had been “working late at the mill and had brought home company.”

It was a bright and cheerful sight. The high dresser, the kitchen pride of Galloway, was in a state of absolute perfection. Aunt Jen despised men, but she had a way of reproving their congenital untidiness by the shine of her plates and the mirror-like polish of her candlesticks. She had spent a couple of hours over the dresser that afternoon, answering all the taunts of her mother as to her occupation, “It’s true, mither, they will never ken the difference; but, then, I will!”

“Go up, Irma, and tell your brother that we are waiting,” said my grandmother. But as Irma was busy with Duncan the Second, I offered myself instead. I remember still the long corridor, and I wondered at the moment why no ray of light penetrated through the keyhole of Sir Louis’s door. He must be sitting in the dark, and I smiled to myself as I thought how I had been wasting a couple of my grandmother’s best candles for an hour. The explanation was that Louis, in fear of being spied upon, had carefully plugged up the keyhole and every crack of the door. But this I only knew later.

I stood a moment in the passage, keeping very still. I could hear his voice. He seemed in some way indignant. But the sound was dulled by the thickness of the walls and the care with which the chinks of the door had been “made up.” Then I also heard—what sent the blood chill to my heart—another voice, shorter, harsher, older. For a moment I was struck dumb, and then—I laughed at myself. Of course the lad was simply stage-struck. For some time he had been reading and declaiming Hamlet, Julius Cæsar, and anything he could lay his hands upon, as well as scraps of the Greek tragedies he had learnt at school.

But as I leaned nearer, there pierced sharp as a pang to my heart the certainty that the other voice which I heard was not that of any of the characters of Julius Cæsar. A trembling horror of what I had once seen in that very room, and a memory of the great hearty Richard Poole entering there in all his amplitude of vivid life, quickly arrested me.

I rapped and called vehemently, trying the latch and feeling that the door resisted. I could hear a trampling beneath me. Men were on the way to my assistance. At the door I sprang. The bolts were as old as the door, and the nails of the lintel fastening only knocked in after its former rough handling.

I got one waft of light as the door opened, half from the candle on the table, half from the moonlight falling dim without. I saw something that crouched—manlike indeed, but with bearded face and head held between its shoulders—leap from the window into the darkness. I did not see Louis clearly. His head was lying on the table, and immediately all the circumstances of the former drama came back to me. But this time I wasted no time. Something glittered on the table, hilt towards me—knife or sword, I hardly knew which. I only knew that with it in my hand I was armed. I sprang through the window and gave chase.

Then very loud in my ears I heard the crack of a pistol, but felt no wound. I now think it had not even been fired at me. I pursued with the energy of a young stag. My mornings on the hills with Eben looking for the sheep now stood me in good stead—that is, good or bad according as to whether the man in front of me had another loaded pistol ready or not.