The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

'There also is Blairquhan the Simpleton, Cloncaird of the Black Heart, and Benane the Laird's brother—a very debauched man—and there, I declare, is my Lord Ochiltree. Upon soul and conscience, I wonder what he does here thus riding with the Barganies?'

As soon as the fire died down a little, some of the party began to search about among the defences and outhouses, and a few even entered into the inner part of the tower. In twos and threes they came forth, some bringing a wounded man, some a dead man, till, on the cool, grey stones of the court, there rested five that lay motionless on their backs, and two that moaned a while and then were still. The more lightly wounded were cared for in a chamber within the gate. Then we could see all the gentlemen of the Bargany side dismounted from their horses and standing about those five that were killed.

'Alas for young Girvanmains!' I heard one cry, for we were very near. 'What shall we say to his father? And here also is Walter Pollock, the cunning scrivener—and James Dalrymple, that was a kindly little man and never harmed anyone—the Lord do so to me, and more also, if I write not this killing in blood upon the walls of Cassillis!'

The crowd thinned a little, and I saw it was the Laird himself that spoke.

Then this same young Bargany, who was taller by a head than any there, called for room. So they made a ring, with the dead men in the midst, and Bargany standing a little before. He bent him over the body of Walter Pollock, the young clerk, and drew forth a book from his breast.

'Listen!' he cried, 'all you that love Bargany, and who now behold this deed of dule and cruelty. Here lie our dead. Here is the Book of God that I have taken from one of the servants of peace, cruelly bereft of life by our enemies!'

'I warrant he drew a good sword when it came to the fighting, clerk though he might be,' whispered my father, 'I know the Pollock breed!'

Bargany looked at the book in his grasp and again at the hand which had held it.

'This falls out well,' he said. 'Here in the presence of our dead, upon the Bible that is wet with the blood of the unjustly slain, let us band ourselves together and take oath to be avenged upon the cruel house—the house of over-trampling pride—the house that has ever wrought us woe! Will ye swear?'

He looked round a circle of faces that shone fierce and dark in the lowe of the furnace beyond. As he did so he unsheathed his sword, and pointed with it to the topmost pinnacles of Ardstinchar. In a moment there was a ring of steel all about him, for, quick as his own, every man's hand went out to his scabbard, and in every man's grip there gleamed a bare blade. And the sight thrilled me to see it, ay, more than all the religion I had ever been taught, for I was but a boy. And even though religion be learned in youth, the strength and the use of it comes not till after.