The Standard Bearer

by S. R. Crockett

I think that if at any time he had held up his hand and called them to follow him to battle, every man would have gone forth as unquestionably as did Cameron’s folk on that fatal day of the Moss of Ayr.

But I who sat there, with eyes sharpened and made jealous by exceeding love for my brother, could see clearly the looks of dark suspicion, the sneers that dwelt on sanctimonious lips, the frowns of envy and ill-will as Quintin stood up, and the folk poured anxiously inward towards the preaching-tent to hear him. I noted also the yet deeper anger of those who succeeded him, when multitudes rose and forsook the meeting because there was to be no more of the young minister o’ Balmaghie that day.

Now though it was rather on the point of politics and of the standing of the kirk, her right to rule herself without interference of the State, her ancient independence and submission to Christ the only head of the church, that Quintin was finally persecuted and called in question, yet, as all men know in Galloway, it was really on account of the popular acclaim, the bruit of great talents and godliness which he held among all men, beyond any that ever came into the countryside, and of his quietness and persistence also in holding his own and keeping a straight unvarying course amid all threatenings and defections, which brought the final wrath upon him and constituted the true head and front of his offending.

Aye, and men saw that the storm was brewing over him long before it burst.

For several of the Galloway ministers had deliberately left the folk of the mountains for the sake of a comfortable down-sitting in bein and sheltered parishes. Some of them even owed their learning at the Dutch Universities to the poor purses of these covenanting societies.

And so when papers came down from the Privy Council or from the men who, like Carstairs, posed as little gods and popes infallible, the Presbytery men greedily signed them, swallowing titles, oaths and obligations with shut eye and indiscriminate appetite lest unhappily they would be obliged to consult their consciences.

Such men as constituted the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright had but one motto—a clear and useful one indeed at such a time, “Those in power can do no wrong!”

So three years went uneasily by, and meantime the parish of Balmaghie had grown to know and love our Quintin. There was hardly a rascal drover, a common villain pig-dealer who was not ready to crack a skull at an ill word said of him even in jest. Men who in time past had sneered at religion, and had never any good report of ministers, dull clods with ideals tethered to the midden and the byre, waked up at sight of him, and would travel miles to hear him preach.

And thus three happy unstirred years went by. I abode in the manse with Quintin, and every morning when I arose at break of day to take the cattle afield, or to set the plough in the glebe, I would see that his window-blind was withdrawn, his candle alight if it were winter, and that he had already set him down with his book. Or sometimes when the summer evening darkened to dusk I would meet him wandering, his hands clasped behind his back, and his whole soul steeped in meditation by the whispering rushes of the waterside.

Yet what a simpleton in worldly things he was; and, mayhap, that was what made me love him the more.