The Raiders: Being Some Passages In The Life Of John Faa, Lord And Earl Of Little Egypt
o’ ye. Gang in and stop them.’
Mistress Allison was crying ‘Murder!’ and ‘Thieves!’ time about without pausing a moment. May Maxwell looked so imperative and threatening that I went in again at once. I had meant to remind her that the matter was her own suggestion, and that she herself had begun about the rats. But her anger and her imagination were working so handsomely that I did not dare. Besides, it is no use casting up anything to a woman. She can always put ten to the back of anything you say. My father often said so.
So I went in.
No sooner was I within the dark kitchen than Mistress Allison, perhaps impelled by that terrible thing example, did as the Maxwell lass had done, and dropped upon my neck. I was under no illusions whatever this time as to the manner in which I found myself on the ground. Mistress Allison is no featherweight. But ultimately at the long and last I got them out, and on the green bank outside I gave them some refreshment. Then I went into the house and brought the evil callants out to make their peace and my own.
‘I hae catched the rat,’ cried little Jerry, ‘but it was at the peril of my life. See here!’ He showed red teeth-marks on his arm.
His mother screamed in mixed fear and admiration. ‘Oh, my laddie, hoo durst ye? A ratton’s bite is poisonous!’
‘D’ye think I’m carin’ for that, mither, when I can do onything to help ye?’
He passed the limb round for inspection impartially, as though it belonged to someone else. There were certainly tooth-marks upon it, but they were broad and regular. I, who had seen many a rat bite, knew what the young scoundrel had done as well as if I had seen him do it. Round the corner he had set his own teeth in his arm. Then he had rubbed the place hard for a moment to drive away the blood from under the skin. So the tooth marks now stood out with alarming distinctness. It would not have imposed upon a man for a moment, but it did well enough with women.
Thus peace was arranged.
But not one of them would venture back into the terrible house of Rathan; which was a most strange and unaccountable thing, for in after days I saw with my own eyes one of these same fearful women-folk loading muskets for the fighters under a hot fire with the greatest coolness, yet at the mention of a white rat with red eyes any of them to the end of her days would have got out upon the housetop and screamed. The Almighty made all things very good without doubt, but He left some mighty queer kinks in woman. But then the whole affair of her creation was an after-thought.
When finally they rowed away with the morose keeper of the boat that evening all was kindliness and amity. May Mischief undid the great white parcel I had helped her to carry up from the boat. It was an immense pie with most toothsome, flaky crust. To look at it made our mouths water.
‘That’s no rat-pie!’ she said, for all good-bye.
And the strange thing is, that from that day, though I was long in owning it to myself and abused her as much as ever to other people, I liked the lass none so ill in my heart.
1 A communion cup of ancient silver belonging to Macmillan of Balmaghie, the first Cameronian minister, to which a special sanctity was attached by the country folk.
BUT I PROMISED Silver Sand a chapter to himself. Before all be done the justice of this will be acknowledged. Silver Sand was at that time and for long after, a problem like those they give to the collegers at Edinburgh, which the longer you look at, grow the more difficult. To begin with, there seemed nothing uncanny about Silver Sand more than about my clogs with their soles of birk. But after you knew him a while, one strange and unaccountable characteristic after another emerged and set you to thinking. We shall take the plain things first.
Silver Sand was a slenderish man, of middle height, stooped in the shoulders, and with exceedingly long arms, which he carried swinging at his sides as if they belonged to somebody else who had hung them there to drip. These arms were somehow malformed, but as none had seen Silver Sand without his coat, no one had found out exactly what was wrong. Also he was not chancy to ask a question of. It was curious, however, to see him grasp everything from a spoon to a plough-handle or a long scythe for meadow hay, with the palm ever downwards.
Silver Sand made no secret of his calling and livelihood. He had a cuddie and a dog, both wonderful beasts of their kind – the donkey, the largest and choicest of its breed – the dog, the greatest and fiercest of his – a wolf-hound of the race only kept by the hill gypsies, not many removes in blood from their hereditary enemy. This fierce brute padded softly by his master’s side as he in his turn walked by the side of the donkey, not one of the three raising a head or apparently looking either to the right or to the left.
I had known Silver Sand ever since I was a lad. It so chanced that I had been over to the mainland by the shell-causeway that was dry at every ebb tide. I went to gather blackberries, which did not grow in any plenty on Rogues’ Island. Now in the tangle of the copse it happened that I heard a great outcry of boys. I made straight for them as a young dog goes to a collie-shangie of its kind – by instinct, as it were. Here I found half a dozen laddies of my own age, or a little older, who were torturing a donkey. There is no doubt that the animal could have turned the tables on its tormentors but for the fact that it was shackled with a chain and block about its forelegs, so that every time it turned to spread its hoofs at its enemies, it collapsed on its side. When I got near to it the poor beast had given up trying to defend itself, and stood most pitifully still, sleeking back its ears and shutting the lids down on its meek eyes to ward off the rain of blows.
Now whatever be my own iniquities I never could abide ill deeds done to dumb things. So I went into the fray like a young tiger. I had no skill or science of my hands, but with nails and teeth, with clog-shod feet and plenty of wild-cat good will, I made pretty fair handling of the first half-dozen, till a great lout came behind, and with the knob of a branch laid me on the grass. It had gone ill with the donkey and worse with me – for I was far from popular with the village lads – but for the advent of Silver Sand and his dog, Quharrie. Then there were sore dowps and torn breeks among the Orraland callants that night. Also their mothers attended to them, and that soundly, for coming home with their clothes in such a state. The donkey, Silver Sand, and I fell on one another’s necks. Afterwards Silver Sand introduced me to Quharrie – that terrible dog – making him tender me a great paw in a manner absurdly solemn, which made me kin and blood-brother to him all the days of my life. And I have received many a gift which I have found less useful, as you shall hear.
In these troubled times to be a third with Silver Sand and Quharrie, was better than to be the Pope’s nephew. So in this curious way began my friendship with Silver Sand.
From that day to this Silver Sand came to Rogues’ Island and Rathan Tower every month. He made journeys of three weeks’ length to all the farm-towns and herds’ cothouses in the lirks of the hills, with keel in winter and scythe-sand in summer – and it may be a kenning of something stronger, that had never King George’s seal on it. But I asked him nothing of this last.
At any rate he had the freedom of the hill fastness of the gypsies up by the Cooran and the Dungeon of Buchan, and he would make my blood run cold with tales of their cruelty and wrong-doing, and of the terror which they spread all through Carrick and the hill country of Galloway.
It was a heartsome sight to see the encampment of Silver Sand by the little burnside, that came down from the high spring on the top of Rathan Isle. It was aye like a breath of thyme to me. For one thing the place was really green all the year round, and seemed to keep hidden about it the genius of the spring.
Silver Sand and Quharrie, his great wolf-dog, appeared there with a kind of regular irregularity, so that we grew to expect them. Some morning, looking out of my deep-set wicket in the high