Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 13

by Unknown

Mrs. Tweedie rated my mother for not having told her before of her situation, and concluded by promising that neither she nor her children should ever again want a meal as long as she had one to give them; and she instantly loaded her with as many potatoes as she could carry home. Her husband, who was present on this occasion, enjoyed the joke exceedingly, and gave the chosen victim of his own wit, Brydon, great credit for his trick. He further expressed himself highly pleased that the latter had taken the dish of porridge to my mother, seeing that she stood so much in need of them. To make a long story short (added the soldier), both Tweedie and Brydon, who were good kind-hearted men, from this moment that my mother's necessities were thus so strangely made known to them, took her under their especial patronage.

On the following day, Brydon sent her as much meal and potatoes as lasted her a month; each of them took one of my brothers into their service; their wives gave her as much spinning as she could execute; and a complement of provisions, sometimes of one kind and sometimes of another, has been sent her alternately and regularly ever since by the two benevolent jokers. From that day to this, old mother, has never been in want; and when speaking of the occurrence says, that the day on which Peter Brydon brought the dish of stolen porridge to her door was the luckiest in her life.

Here the soldier finished his story and his pipe together. Both the matter of his little tale and his manner of telling it tended considerably to calm the apprehensions of his hostesses, and to disabuse them, in spite of their dream, of much of the unfavourable opinion they had entertained of his intentions. Still, however, they felt by no means secure, and would even yet have readily given the half, perhaps the whole, of the money in the house, to have been quit of him. Nor were the fears that yet remained lessened by their having discovered, which they had not done for some time after he had entered, that he wore his bayonet by his side. On this formidable weapon the two poor women looked with inexpressible horror; having a strong feeling of apprehension that it was the dreadful instrument by which their destruction was to be accomplished and their dream fulfiled. Now, too, the sisters detected the fellow occasionally glancing around the house, with a most suspicious look, as if calculating on future operations. He now, also, began to put questions that greatly alarmed them—such as, Was there nobody in the house but themselves? How far distant was the nearest house? and guessing, with an apparently assumed air of jocularity, that their father (they had informed him of his death) had left them a good round sum in some corner or other? In short, his behaviour altogether began again to grow extremely suspicious; and, perceiving this, the sisters' fears returned with all their original force.

In the meantime, the storm without, so far from abating, had increased; the dreary, rushing sound of the trees became fiercer and louder, and the fitful gusts of wind more frequent and furious. It was now about one o'clock of the morning, when, actuated by the same motives which had induced them to ask their terrible guest to sit by the fire—namely, to disarm him, by kindness, of any evil design he might entertain towards them—the sisters now offered the soldier some refreshment. He gladly accepted the offer. Food was placed before him, and he ate heartily. When he had done, one of the sisters told him that there was a spare bed in a closet to which she pointed, and that he might go to it if he chose. With this offer he also gladly closed, and immediately retired.

The sisters, well pleased to have got their guest thus disposed of—thinking it something like a sign of harmless intention on his part—determined to sit themselves by the fire throughout the remainder of the night. They were, then, thus sitting, and it might be about one hour after the soldier had retired, listening with feverish watchfulness to every sound, when they suddenly heard a noise as if of some one forcing the door. At first the poor horrified women thought it was some unusual sound produced by the storm, but, on listening again, there was no doubt of the appalling fact. They heard distinctly the working of an iron instrument, and the creaking of the door from its pressure. The wretched women leaped from their seats, and again their wild shrieks were heard rising above the noise of the tempest without. Awakened by their alarming cries—for he had been fast asleep—the soldier started from his bed, calling out, as he hurried on his clothes—

"What the devil is the matter now! By heaven! you are all mad."

"Oh, you know but too well what is the matter," replied one of the sisters, in a voice faint and almost inarticulate with excessive terror—"you know but too well what is the matter. These are some of the other murderers of your gang forcing open the door. O God! in mercy receive our souls!"

"My gang forcing the door! What the devil do you mean?" replied the soldier, emerging from the closet. Then, after an instant—"By heaven! it is so far true. There is some one breaking in, sure enough."

Saying this, he drew his bayonet, and ran to the door; but, ere he gained it, it was forced open, and two men were in the act of entering, one behind the other. On seeing the soldier, the foremost presented a pistol to his head, and drew the trigger; but a click of the lock was the only result. It missed fire. In the next instant the soldier's bayonet was through the ruffian's body, and he fell, when he who was behind him immediately fled. The soldier pursued him, but, after running several hundred yards, gave up the chase as hopeless, and returned to the house, where he found, to his great surprise, that the man whom he had stabbed, and whom he thought he had killed outright, had disappeared, and was nowhere to be seen.

On entering the house—"Well, my good women," said the soldier, "are you now satisfied of the sincerity of my intentions towards you? Why, I think I have saved your lives, in place of taking them."