The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

'Then,' said he, laughing, 'he is likely to hear my father at his devotions.'

I had at that time no inkling of David Crauford's meaning, but before all was done I learned.

So Master Robert Bruce and I rode daintily and cannily along the riverside, till we came to the ford of the mill which is beneath the house of Kerse. As we rode our horses through the water and slowly up the bank, and even as we set our heads over the edge, we heard the loud and wrathful crying of a voice that shook the air. It sounded just as when, straying by quiet woodland ways, one turns the corner of a cliff and comes suddenly upon the sea edge, and lo! the roar and brattle of the waves on the long beaches.

As we neared the house of Kerse we noted that the words rose and fell, swaying like the voice of a preacher who has repeated the same prayer times without number.

'Did not the young man mention that his father was at his devotion? Heard ye ever tell that he was a religious person?' asked the Minister of me.

I answered him no, but by all accounts the contrary. I told him that I had once been in the house of Kerse, and that none there (including myself, I might have added with truth) seemed to be greatly oppressed with any overload of the Christian virtues.

When we came near we were aware of a wide and vacant house, all the doors open to the wall, stables and barn alike void and empty. Not so much as a dog stirring. But from the house end that looked down the water, there came the crying of this great voice of one unseen. Mid-noon though it was, and I with the most noted minister in Scotland by my side, I declare that I felt eerie. Indeed, I have never cared for coming on a habited house, when it stands empty with all the furniture of service left where the folk laid them down, and finding no one therein. Such a place is full of footfalls and whispers, and a kirkyard at midnight is not more uncanny, at least not to my thought.

'It sounds much like a man blaspheming his Maker,' said the Minister.

We rode round an angle of the wall, where there was a flanking tower; and there, straight before us, sitting on a high oaken chair under a green tree, was old David Crauford of Kerse, his head thrown forward, his hands clenched, his eyes fixed on the brow of the hill over which his sons had gone—while from his mouth there came an astounding stream of oaths and cursings, of which, so far as one could grasp it, the main purpose seemed to be the sending of every Kennedy that ever drew the breath of life directly and eternally to the abodes of the damned.

We dismounted leisurely from our horses, and reined them loosely to the rings in the louping-on stone at the house end. Then Maister Bruce strode forward and stood in front of the old man, who had never for a moment noticed us nor ceased from his earth-shaking cursings.