“Ye may say that—nae name better ken'd between the Lennox and Breadalbane. Robin was ance a weel-doing, painstaking drover, as ye wad see amang ten thousand—It was a pleasure to see him in his belted plaid and brogues, wi' his target at his back, and claymore and dirk at his belt, following a hundred Highland stots, and a dozen o' the gillies, as rough and ragged as the beasts they drave. And he was baith civil and just in his dealings; and if he thought his chapman had made a hard bargain, he wad gie him a luck-penny to the mends. I hae ken'd him gie back five shillings out o' the pund sterling.”
“Twenty-five per cent,” said Owen—“a heavy discount.”
“He wad gie it though, sir, as I tell ye; mair especially if he thought the buyer was a puir man, and couldna stand by a loss. But the times cam hard, and Rob was venturesome. It wasna my faut—it wasna my faut; he canna wyte me—I aye tauld him o't—And the creditors, mair especially some grit neighbours o' his, gripped to his living and land; and they say his wife was turned out o' the house to the hill-side, and sair misguided to the boot. Shamefu'! shamefu'!—I am a peacefu' man and a magistrate, but if ony ane had guided sae muckle as my servant quean, Mattie, as it's like they guided Rob's wife, I think it suld hae set the shabble* that my father the deacon had at Bothwell brig a-walking again.
* Cutlass.
Weel, Rob cam hame, and fand desolation, God pity us! where he left plenty; he looked east, west, south, north, and saw neither hauld nor hope—neither beild nor shelter; sae he e'en pu'd the bonnet ower his brow, belted the broadsword to his side, took to the brae-side, and became a broken man.” *
* An outlaw.
The voice of the good citizen was broken by his contending feelings. He obviously, while he professed to contemn the pedigree of his Highland kinsman, attached a secret feeling of consequence to the connection, and he spoke of his friend in his prosperity with an overflow of affection, which deepened his sympathy for his misfortunes, and his regret for their consequences.
“Thus tempted and urged by despair,” said I, seeing Mr. Jarvie did not proceed in his narrative, “I suppose your kinsman became one of those depredators you have described to us?”
“No sae bad as that,” said the Glaswegian,—“no a'thegither and outright sae bad as that; but he became a levier of black-mail, wider and farther than ever it was raised in our day, a through the Lennox and Menteith, and up to the gates o' Stirling Castle.”
“Black-mail?—I do not understand the phrase,” I remarked.