Serjeant.—It was about seven feet high, sir, and the tradition regarding it is, that it was set up there in memory of a sad story that is connected with it.
Author.—A story, said you?
Clifford.—Then, my good fellow, Serjeant Stewart, just have the kindness to sit down there, and tell us the particulars of your sad story, while I give a few casts here over this most tempting stream.
Serjeant.—With all manner of pleasure, sir; I shall be happy to tell your honours all I have gathered about it. It is the very legend for which Mr. Clifford marked me down in his book.
Clifford immediately began to fish. Grant and I seated ourselves on the daisied bank of the river, one on each side of the serjeant. The gilly stretched himself at length on the grass, and was soon asleep—the pony with the panniers grazed as far around him as the length of his halter would let him, and my Newfoundland dog Bronte sat watching the trouts leaping, whilst Archy proceeded with his narrative, as nearly as I can recollect, in the following words; but if not always precisely in the serjeant’s own language, at least I shall give it with a strict adherence to his facts.
LEGEND OF THE CLAN-ALLAN STEWARTS.
From the important correction which your honour has made upon my genealogy, I think I may now venture to say, with some confidence, that the time of my legend must be somewhere about the fifteenth century—how early in it I cannot say; but it is pretty clear that my ancestor, Sir Allan Stewart, must have lived about that period. As I have already told you, the whole of this country, hill and glen, was then covered with forests, except in such spots as were kept open by the art of man for pasture or for tillage, but of the latter, even of the rudest kind, I suspect there was but little hereaway in those days. I take it for granted that the chief of the Clan-Allan must have had his stronghold at the old tower of Drummin, though I do not mean to say that it was identically the same building that now exists there. It stands, as some of you perhaps know, gentlemen, a good way down the country from where we now are, on a point of table land considerably elevated above the valley, which is there rendered wider by the junction of the river Livat with the river Aven, and just in the angle between these two streams. When the noble old forests waved over the surrounding hills, leaving the quiet meadows below open in rich pasture, it must have been even yet a more beautiful place for man to dwell in than it is now,—and, let me tell you, that is saying a great deal.
My history begins towards the end of the life of Sir Allan Stewart, whose term of existence had been long, and no doubt boisterous enough, as you may very well guess. He was by this time so old as to be confined to his big oak chair, which was generally placed for him under the projection of the huge chimney of the ancient fire-place, or lumm, as we call it in Scotland; and there he sat, propped up with pillows, crooning over old ballads, and muttering old saws from morn till night, as if he now cared for nothing in this life, but to drone away the last dull measure of his time, like the end of some drowsy ill-composed pibroch, if such a thing there can be. But the lively interest which he took when any stirring event occurred, which in any degree affected the honour or welfare of himself, his family or clan, sufficiently showed that all his martial fire was not extinguished; for then would it flash out from beneath his heavy eyelids—his bulky form would move impatiently on his seat, and he would turn his eyes restlessly towards his broadsword and targe, that hung conspicuously among the deers’ heads, wolfs’ skins, and the numerous warlike weapons that covered the walls, with an expression so animated, as very plainly to speak the ardour of his decaying spirit, which still, like that of the old war-horse, seemed thus to snuff up the battle from afar.
Sir Allan had two tall strapping sons by his first marriage—Walter and Patrick, both of them pretty men. To Walter, as the elder of the two, he looked as his successor, and, accordingly, he already acted in all things, and on all occasions, as his father’s representative. After the death of their mother, Sir Allan had married a woman of lower degree, by whom he had a third son, called Murdoch, whose naturally bad dispositions had been fostered by the doting fondness of his old father. Murdoch’s mother, at the time we are speaking of, was what we would call in our country phrase a handsome boardly-looking dame, of some forty years of age or so, whose smooth tongue and deceitful smile covered the blackest and most depraved heart.