Neil Munro - Jaunty Jock and Other Stories

The first thing a man to-day would do in the like circumstances would be to call for the police; but even to-day, in the Islands, the police are rare and remote from Kilree, and at that time it was as ill to reach them as to reach St Kilda, even had there been no popular conviction that the civil law alone is all that a Highland gentleman can with propriety call into action. So Kilree for a while did nothing but nurse his wound, and Macaulay lurked in his fastness alone, no one – by the Captain’s orders – lifting a hand against him. But the stabbing of his master and the lifting of his bestial were only the start of his escapade, which became the more astonishing after his clerk, the lad Macdonald, out of Moidart, was sent to him on a curious mission.

Macdonald was a fellow without fear, and it must be added, without brains either, otherwise he might never have done a thing that made all the Isles laugh at him when they heard later what he had carried, and another thing that bears out my premiss that the primitive man is immediately below a good many well-laundered modern shirts.

“I think I could bring that madman of mine to his senses,” Macaulay’s wife said to the clerk one day.

“The sooner the better, then,” said Macdonald, “for there’s much to do before the rent collection.” He spoke as if his master were only out upon a drinking-bout.

“If I just had him here for ten minutes!” said Mrs Macaulay.

“You might – you might venture to go to Kincreggan and see him,” suggested the clerk.

“I have more regard for my life,” said the woman. “I’m ower much of the Lowlander to trust myself in a den with a mad Highlander – even if he’s my own man. Forbye” (here she smiled), “forbye, I’ve tried it already. I have been twice at Kincreggan in the early morning, and he kept me fifty yards off the walls with his gun. But I would not care to have that mentioned in the place; it’s perhaps as little to my credit as to his own. Oh, if I had him under this roof again for ten minutes, or could get a certain thing delivered in his hands – ” She broke off, and looked into Macdonald’s face quickly as with an inspiration.

“What is it?” asked the clerk.

“A little packet,” she replied; “just a small packet you could carry in your hand.”

“ Buidseachas – I mean witchcraft?” said Macdonald, who had brought a good many superstitions from Moidart.

“Well, well – in a way, a sort of witchcraft,” she admitted, with a smile. “It is part of a charm that wiles men from their wild ways.”

“I don’t know but what I might risk taking it to him, then,” said Macdonald, and so it happened that that very evening he found himself challenged fifty yards from the wall of Kincreggan, with a pair of slippers wrapped carefully in paper in his hands – nothing more.

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