The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

'Greeting courteously to you, Bargany,' he said. 'This is a pleasure unexpected. Over on our poor shire-side, the erne of the hills neither mixes nor mells with the quarrels of the carrion crow.'

'I greet you well, Sheriff,' said Gilbert Kennedy; 'but say your say plain out, without bringing all the birds of the air into the matter.'

'Plainly then,' said the Sheriff, 'the matter is this. The Earl has moved the law against us for rights his father granted us years agone, rights that have never been questioned, and when we will not yield to him, he uses his influence with the King to make us traitors. He sends his low-born officers to remove us from our kindly homesteadings, and from the castles where for centuries our forefathers dwelled—ay, before one stone of Cassillis lay on the top of another.' And the fire glinted in the Sheriff's deep-set eyes, till, with his eagle's beak, he looked himself the very erne of which he had spoken. He went on. 'Then comes he himself, with a force of forty horse, to reduce the unbroken baronage of Galloway. He summons us to the court of doom, and lo! we come to this yett with a hundred gentlemen, and as many more footmen that but wait to be called. We have obeyed his mandate to the letter, whereat he sulks within gates. Then we send him word that we are at the trysting-place, and that we will be most glad to see his face. But for some reason or other that I cannot guess at, he comes not; but withdraws himself into the house of the Inch, where presently he remains. And we, being bound to see that no ill befalls him within our borders, have set ourselves down to be the warders and the protectors of him and of the castle.'

So said the Sheriff, and made his courteous amend. And to him Bargany replied,—

'But, Lochnaw, ye know well that ye have no warrant thus to shut up the Earl of Cassillis, immuring your lawful feudal superior and defying ancient custom.'

Then spake the red-bearded Laird of Garthland.

'If it come to that, we are bound to you and not to the Earl, Gilbert Kennedy. Ye are bound to maintain us in our rights! Am I to lose my auld and kindly office and possession, which I have held in direct line from Uchtred, Lord of Galloway? Of a truth, no, Bargany! Ye are of a conscience overtrue for work of this kind. Ye will do to me your honourable duty, as your predecessors have ever done to mine in time past.'

And having said his say with dignity, the red Garthland held his peace.

I could see very well that Bargany was ill at ease. He liked not the errand he had come on. Blows were very well, but to be process-server sat heavy on his stomach. I heard him mutter,—

'That I, Gilbert Kennedy, should be doing John of Cassillis's dirty work! For none other sake than Marjorie's would I do this thing!'