“Will you throw off your coat? It will give you more freedom,” said his Grace in conclusion.
“My coat! Na, na; nae coats aff wi’ me for this silly affair,” replied he. “I thocht it had been some terrible I throw or ither that thae chaps had made, when I was ca’ed for a’ the way to Lunnun to see to gang ayont them; but if this be a’, I wadna hae meaned ye to hae done’t yoursel.” Then poising the ball for a little in his hand, and viewing it with an air of contempt, “There!” said he, tossing it carelessly from him into the air, “he that likes may gang and fetch it back.”
The ball, as if shot from the mouth of a cannon, flew on in a straight line completely over the wall, and alighted on the roof of a house at some distance beyond it. Its weight and velocity forced it through the tiles, and with a crash which immediately caused the house to be evacuated by its inmates, it penetrated also the garret floor, and rolled upon that of the next storey. An instantaneous hubbub ensued,—the party staring at each other in silence, and the crowd swearing it was the devil! but the servant knew his duty, and in a twinkling Glenmannow was no longer amongst them.
His Grace, after paying for the damage done to the house, conducted the whole party to his residence, there to discharge their forfeit, and to gaze upon the prodigy by whom they were vanquished. Glenmannow was well rewarded for his trouble and loss of time in journeying to London; and, over and above the immediate bounty of his Grace, he returned to his honest Mally with a discharge for one year’s rent of the farm in his pocket.
One summer, during his Grace’s residence at Drumlanrig, his friend the Duke of Buccleuch, who was at that time colonel of a regiment of fencibles, happened to be passing between Dumfries and Sanquhar with a company of his grenadiers; and having made Thornhill a station for the night, he went and billeted himself upon his Grace of Queensberry, by whom he was received with a hearty welcome. The two friends deeming one night’s intercourse too short, and Buccleuch’s marching orders not being peremptory in regard to time, it was agreed between them that they should spend the two succeeding days together, and that the soldiers, during that period, should be distributed among the tenantry around the castle.
Buccleuch, though a personal stranger to Glenmannow, was no stranger to his fame; and it was contrived between them, that a few of the grenadiers should be dispatched to beat up his quarters, and endeavour to force themselves upon him as his guests. Six of the stoutest were accordingly selected for this purpose, and after being told the character of the person to whom they were sent, and the joke which was intended to follow it, they received a formal billet, and set out for their destination. Their orders were to enter the house in a seemingly rough manner, to find fault with everything, to quarrel with Glenmannow, and endeavour, if possible, to overpower and bind him; but not on any account to injure either his person or effects in even the slightest degree. The soldiers, their commander knew, were arch fellows, and would acquit themselves in the true spirit of their instructions.
In those days few roads, excepting footpaths,—and those frequently too indistinctly marked to be traced by a stranger,—existed in the interior parts of the country. The soldiers, therefore, experienced no small difficulty in marshalling their way around the slope of the huge Cairnkinnow, in evading bogs and brakes, leaping burns and march dykes, and in traversing all the heights and hollows which lay between them and their secluded bourne. But the toils of their journey were more than compensated by the pleasures of it, for the pilgrim must possess little of either fancy or feeling, who could wander without delight amid the wild scenery of that mountainous district. When the top of Glenquhargen is reached, and the bottom of the Glen of Scaur is beheld far, far beneath your feet; when the little river, which gives to the glen its name, is seen, descending from the hills, like an infant commencing the journey of life, into the long level holm which spreads its bosom to receive it; when, after descending, the eyes are cast around on its amphitheatre of Alpine hills, arrayed in “the brightness of green,” and on the clouds that slumber, or the mists that curl along their summits; and when the head is thrown backward to contemplate the rocky peak of Glenquhargen, with the hawk, the gled, and the raven whirling, screaming, and croaking around it, that individual were dull and despicable indeed whose spirit would not fly forth and mingle, and identify itself, as it were, with the grand and the beautiful around him.
In a truly picturesque situation, on the side of one of the most northern of those hills, the soldiers beheld the house of Glenmannow. It was a low, thatchroofed building, with a peat-stack leaning against one gable, and what might well be denominated a hut, which served for barn, byre, and stable, attached to the other; while a short way farther up the hill stood a round bucht, in which, upon occasion, the sturdy tenant was in the habit of penning his flock. A more modern structure has now been reared in the immediate vicinity of Glenmannow’s domicile; yet in the beginning of the present century some vestiges of the ancient one were still remaining.
It was nearly noon when the party arrived in the “door-step;” yet at that late hour they found Mally busied in making a quantity of milk porridge for her own and her husband’s breakfast, who had not yet returned from his morning visit to the hill. The appearance of soldiers in so sequestered a spot was to her a matter of scarcely less surprise than was that of the Spaniards to the simple Indians, on their first landing upon the shores of the New World. Soldiers, too, are generally objects of terror in such places, where their names are associated in the minds of the peasantry only with ideas of oppression and of slaughter; and at the period referred to, this feeling was in much greater force than at present. Poor Mally endeavoured as much as possible to conceal her fears and embarrassment, and with all the politeness she was mistress of, desired the party to be seated. Her artifice, however, was far from equalling their penetration: they soon remarked her timorous side—glances and hesitating manner, as she walked backward and forward through the house; and they therefore resolved to divert themselves a little by working upon her prejudices.
“That bayonet of mine,” said one of the fellows, “will never be as clear again, I am afraid. The blood of that old herd, whom we did away with as we came, sticks confoundedly to it.”