第83章 HEATHERCAT(7)

At least there were three hundred horses tethered for the most part in the ring;though some of the hearers on the outskirts of the crowd stood with their bridles in their hand,ready to mount at the first signal.The circle of faces was strangely characteristic;long,serious,strongly marked,the tackle standing out in the lean brown cheeks,the mouth set and the eyes shining with a fierce enthusiasm;the shepherd,the labouring man,and the rarer laird,stood there in their broad blue bonnets or laced hats,and presenting an essential identity of type.From time to time a long-drawn groan of adhesion rose in this audience,and was propagated like a wave to the outskirts,and died away among the keepers of the horses.It had a name;it was called 'a holy groan.'

A squall came up;a great volley of flying mist went out before it and whelmed the scene;the wind stormed with a sudden fierceness that carried away the minister's voice and twitched his tails and made him stagger,and turned the congregation for a moment into a mere pother of blowing plaid-ends and prancing horses;and the rain followed and was dashed straight into their faces.Men and women panted aloud in the shock of that violent shower-bath;the teeth were bared along all the line in an involuntary grimace;plaids,mantles,and riding-coats were proved vain,and the worshippers felt the water stream on their naked flesh.The minister,reinforcing his great and shrill voice,continued to contend against and triumph over the rising of the squall and the dashing of the rain.

'In that day ye may go thirty mile and not hear a crawing cock,'he said;'and fifty mile and not get a light to your pipe;and an hundred mile and not see a smoking house.For there'll be naething in all Scotland but deid men's banes and blackness,and the living anger of the Lord.O,where to find a bield -O sirs,where to find a bield from the wind of the Lord's anger?Do ye call THIS a wind?Bethankit!Sirs,this is but a temporary dispensation;this is but a puff of wind,this is but a spit of rain and by with it.Already there's a blue bow in the west,and the sun will take the crown of the causeway again,and your things'll be dried upon ye,and your flesh will be warm upon your bones.But O,sirs,sirs!for the day of the Lord's anger!'

His rhetoric was set forth with an ear-piercing elocution,and a voice that sometimes crashed like cannon.Such as it was,it was the gift of all hill-preachers,to a singular degree of likeness or identity.Their images scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and the rainy hill-top,the shepherd and his sheep,a fowling-piece,a spade,a pipe,a dunghill,a crowing cock,the shining and the withdrawal of the sun.An occasional pathos of simple humanity,and frequent patches of big Biblical words,relieved the homely tissue.It was a poetry apart;bleak,austere,but genuine,and redolent of the soil.

A little before the coming of the squall there was a different scene enacting at the outposts.For the most part,the sentinels were faithful to their important duty;the Hill-end of Drumlowe was known to be a safe meeting-place;and the out-pickets on this particular day had been somewhat lax from the beginning,and grew laxer during the inordinate length of the discourse.Francie lay there in his appointed hiding-hole,looking abroad between two whin-bushes.His view was across the course of the burn,then over a piece of plain moorland,to a gap between two hills;nothing moved but grouse,and some cattle who slowly traversed his field of view,heading northward:he heard the psalms,and sang words of his own to the savage and melancholy music;for he had his own design in hand,and terror and cowardice prevailed in his bosom alternately,like the hot and the cold fit of an ague.

Courage was uppermost during the singing,which he accompanied through all its length with this impromptu strain:

'And I will ding Jock Crozer down No later than the day.'

Presently the voice of the preacher came to him in wafts,at the wind's will,as by the opening and shutting of a door;wild spasms of screaming,as of some undiscerned gigantic hill-bird stirred with inordinate passion,succeeded to intervals of silence;and Francie heard them with a critical ear.'Ay,'he thought at last,'he'll do;he has the bit in his mou'fairly.'

He had observed that his friend,or rather his enemy,Jock Crozer,had been established at a very critical part of the line of outposts;namely,where the burn issues by an abrupt gorge from the semicircle of high moors.If anything was calculated to nerve him to battle it was this.The post was important;next to the Hill-end itself,it might be called the key to the position;and it was where the cover was bad,and in which it was most natural to place a child.It should have been Heathercat's;why had it been given to Crozer?An exquisite fear of what should be the answer passed through his marrow every time he faced the question.Was it possible that Crozer could have boasted?that there were rumours abroad to his -Heathercat's -discredit?that his honour was publicly sullied?All the world went dark about him at the thought;he sank without a struggle into the midnight pool of despair;and every time he so sank,he brought back with him -not drowned heroism indeed,but half-drowned courage by the locks.His heart beat very slowly as he deserted his station,and began to crawl towards that of Crozer.

Something pulled him back,and it was not the sense of duty,but a remembrance of Crozer's build and hateful readiness of fist.Duty,as he conceived it,pointed him forward on the rueful path that he was travelling.Duty bade him redeem his name if he were able,at the risk of broken bones;and his bones and every tooth in his head ached by anticipation.An awful subsidiary fear whispered him that if he were hurt,he should disgrace himself by weeping.He consoled himself,boy-like,with the consideration that he was not yet committed;he could easily steal over unseen to Crozer's post,and he had a continuous private idea that he would very probably steal back again.His course took him so near the minister that he could hear some of his words:'What news,minister,of Claver'se?He's going round like a roaring rampaging lion....