The Standard Bearer

by S. R. Crockett

The Sheriff, being admonished for his slackness by his legal superiors, and complained of by the reverend court of the Presbytery, resolved to make a bold push for it, and at one blow to take final possession of kirk and manse.

So he summoned the yeomanry of the province to meet him under arms at the village of Causewayend, which stands near the famous and beautiful loch of Carlinwark, on a certain day, under penalties of fine and imprisonment. And about a hundred men on horseback, all well armed and mounted, drew together on the day appointed. A fine breezy day in August, it was—when many of them doubtless came with small good-will from their corn-fields, where a winnowing wind searched the stooks till the ripe grain rustled with the parched well-won sound that is music to the farmer’s ear.

But if the news of gathering of the yeomanry had been spread by summons, far more wide and impressive had been the counter call sent throughout the parish of Balmaghie.

For farmer and cotter alike knew that matters had come to the perilous pinch with us, and if it should be that the civil powers were not turned aside now, all the past watching and sacrifice would prove in vain.

It was about noon when the sentinels reported that the Sheriff and his hundred horsemen had crossed Dee water, and were advancing by rapid stages.

Now it was Jonita’s plan to draw together the women also—for what purpose we did not see. But since she had summoned them herself it was not for any of us young men to say her nay.

So by the green roadside, a mile from the manse and kirk, Jonita had her hundred and fifty or more women assembled, old and young, mothers of families and wrinkled grandmothers thereof, young maidens with the blushes on their cheeks and the snood yet unloosed about their hair.

Faith, spite of the grandmothers, many a lad of us would have desired to be of that company that day! But Alexander-Jonita would have none of us. We were to keep the castle, so she commanded, with gun and sword. We were to sit in our trenches about the kirk, and let the women be our advance guard.

So when the trampling of horses was heard from the southward, and the cavalcade came to the narrows of the way, “Halt!” cried Alexander-Jonita suddenly. And leaping out of the thicket like a young roe of the mountains, she seized the Sheriff’s bridle rein. At the same moment her hundred and fifty women trooped out and stood ranked and silent right across the path of the horsemen.

“What do ye here? Let go, besom!” cried the Sheriff.