The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

Down by the waterside and straight before us we saw a post of men, and we heard them clank their war-gear as they marched from side to side and looked ever up at the castle on its steep, spitting like a furnace, flaming like a torch. So at sight of them my father turned us about sharply enough, because, in spite of what he had said to my Aunt Grisel, he had much reason to fear for his neck. For if, on the night of a Cassillis raid, one of the hated faction should be found in the town of Ballantrae, little doubt there was but that a long tow and a short shrift would be his fate.

We climbed the breast of the brae up from the waterside, intending to make a detour behind the castle. My father said that there would be an easy crossing at Heronford, where he knew a decent man that was of his own party. Thence we could make up the glen of the Tigg Water, which in the evil state of the country was as good and quiet a way back to Minnochside as one might hope to find.

It seemed a most pitiful sight to me, that was but a young lad (and had never seen a fire bigger than a screed of muirburn screeving across the hills with a following wind at its tail), to watch the noble house with all its wealth of plenishing and gear being burned up.

I said as much to my father, who swung along with his head bent to the hill slope, dragging my arm oftentimes almost from the socket, in his haste to get us out of such unwholesome company as the angry folk of Ballantrae.

'It is an enemy's house!' he replied very hastily. 'Come thy ways, lad!'

'But what harm have the Bargany folk done to us?' I asked. For this thing seemed strange to me—that Kennedy should strive with Kennedy, burn castle, kill man, harry mow and manger, drive cattle—and I never be able to make out what it was all for.

'Hold your breath, Launcelot Kennedy!' said my father, testy with shortness of wind and going uphill, 'or right speedily you will find out for what! Is it not enough that you are born to love Cassillis and to hate Bargany?'

'Are the folk of Cassillis, then, so much better than the folk of Bargany?' I asked, taking what I well knew to be the chances of a civil answer, or of a ring on the side of the head.

It was not the civil answer that I got.

And, indeed, it was an ill season for query and question, or for the answering of them. In time we got to the angle of the castle, and there we were somewhat sheltered from the fierce heat and from the glare of light also. From the eminence we had gained, we could look away along the shore side. My father pointed with his finger.