John Buchan - The Collected Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

“Are ye sure it’s the richt man, Ecky?” said a voice which he did not hear.

“Sure. It’s the Glesca body Dobson telled us to look for yesterday. It’s a pund note atween us for this job. We’ll tie him up in the wud till we’ve time to attend to him.”

“Is he bad?”

“It doesna maitter,” said the one called Ecky. “He’ll be deid onyway long afore the morn.”

Mrs. Morran all forenoon was in a state of un-Sabbatical disquiet. After she had seen Saskia and Dickson start she finished her housewifely duties, took Cousin Eugenie her breakfast, and made preparation for the midday dinner. The invalid in the bed in the parlour was not a repaying subject. Cousin Eugenie belonged to that type of elderly women who, having been spoiled in youth, find the rest of life fall far short of their expectations. Her voice had acquired a perpetual wail, and the corners of what had once been a pretty mouth drooped in an eternal peevishness. She found herself in a morass of misery and shabby discomfort, but had her days continued in an even tenor she would still have lamented. “A dingy body,” was Mrs. Morran’s comment, but she laboured in kindness. Unhappily they had no common language, and it was only by signs that the hostess could discover her wants and show her goodwill. She fed her and bathed her face, saw to the fire and left her to sleep. “I’m boilin’ a hen to mak’ broth for your denner, Mem. Try and get a bit sleep now.” The purport of the advice was clear, and Cousin Eugenie turned obediently on her pillow.

It was Mrs. Morran’s custom of a Sunday to spend the morning in devout meditation. Some years before she had given up tramping the five miles to kirk, on the ground that having been a regular attendant for fifty years she had got all the good out of it that was probable. Instead she read slowly aloud to herself the sermon printed in a certain religious weekly which reached her every Saturday, and concluded with a chapter or two of the Bible. But to-day something had gone wrong with her mind. She could not follow the thread of the Reverend Doctor MacMichael’s discourse. She could not fix her attention on the wanderings and misdeeds of Israel as recorded in the Book of Exodus. She must always be getting up to look at the pot on the fire, or to open the back door and study the weather. For a little she fought against her unrest, and then she gave up the attempt at concentration. She took the big pot off the fire and allowed it to simmer, and presently she fetched her boots and umbrella, and kilted her petticoats. “I’ll be none the waur o’ a breath o’ caller air,” she decided.

The wind was blowing great guns but there was only the thinnest sprinkle of rain. Sitting on the hen-house roof and munching a raw turnip was a figure which she recognized as the smallest of the Die-Hards. Between bites he was singing dolefully to the tune of “Annie Laurie” one of the ditties of his quondam Sunday School:

“The Boorjoys’ brays are bonnie,

Too-roo-ra-roo-raloo,

But the Workers of the World

Wull gar them a’ look blue,

And droon them in the sea,

And—for bonnie Annie Laurie

I’ll lay me down and dee.”

“Losh, laddie,” she cried, “that’s cauld food for the stomach. Come indoors about midday and I’ll gie ye a plate o’ broth!” The Die-Hard saluted and continued on the turnip.

She took the Auchenlochan road across the Garple bridge, for that was the best road to the Mains, and by it Dickson and the others might be returning. Her equanimity at all seasons was like a Turk’s, and she would not have admitted that anything mortal had power to upset or excite her: nevertheless it was a fast-beating heart that she now bore beneath her Sunday jacket. Great events, she felt, were on the eve of happening, and of them she was a part. Dickson’s anxiety was hers, to bring things to a business-like conclusion. The honour of Huntingtower was at stake and of the old Kennedys. She was carrying out Mr. Quentin’s commands, the dead boy who used to clamour for her treacle scones. And there was more than duty in it, for youth was not dead in her old heart, and adventure had still power to quicken it.

Mrs. Morran walked well, with the steady long paces of the Scots countrywoman. She left the Auchenlochan road and took the side path along the tableland to the Mains. But for the surge of the gale and the far-borne boom of the furious sea there was little noise; not a bird cried in the uneasy air. With the wind behind her Mrs. Morran breasted the ascent till she had on her right the moorland running south to the Lochan valley and on her left Garple chafing in its deep forested gorges. Her eyes were quick and she noted with interest a weasel creeping from a fern-clad cairn. A little way on she passed an old ewe in difficulties and assisted it to rise. “But for me, my wumman, ye’d hae been braxy ere nicht,” she told it as it departed bleating. Then she realized that she had come a certain distance. “Losh, I maun be gettin’ back or the hen will be spiled,” she cried, and was on the verge of turning.

But something caught her eye a hundred yards farther on the road. It was something which moved with the wind like a wounded bird, fluttering from the roadside to a puddle and then back to the rushes. She advanced to it, missed it, and caught it.

It was an old dingy green felt hat, and she recognized it as Dickson’s.

Mrs. Morran’s brain, after a second of confusion, worked fast and clearly. She examined the road and saw that a little way on the gravel had been violently agitated. She detected several prints of hobnailed boots. There were prints, too, on a patch of peat on the south side behind a tall bank of sods. “That’s where they were hidin’,” she concluded. Then she explored on the other side in a thicket of hazels and wild raspberries, and presently her perseverance was rewarded. The scrub was all crushed and pressed as if several persons had been forcing a passage. In a hollow was a gleam of something white. She moved towards it with a quaking heart, and was relieved to find that it was only a new and expensive bicycle with the front wheel badly buckled.

Mrs. Morran delayed no longer. If she had walked well on her out journey, she beat all records on the return. Sometimes she would run till her breath failed; then she would slow down till anxiety once more quickened her pace. To her joy, on the Dalquharter side of the Garple bridge she observed the figure of a Die-Hard. Breathless, flushed, with her bonnet awry and her umbrella held like a scimitar, she seized on the boy.

“Awfu’ doin’s! They’ve grippit Maister McCunn up the Mains road just afore the second milestone and forenent the auld bucht. I fund his hat, and a bicycle’s lyin’ broken in the wud. Haste ye, man, and get the rest and awa’ and seek him. It’ll be the tinklers frae the Dean. I’d gang misel’ but my legs are ower auld. Ah, laddie, dinna stop to speir questions. They’ll hae him murdered or awa’ to sea. And maybe the leddy was wi’ him and they’ve got them baith. Wae’s me! Wae’s me!”

The Die-Hard, who was Wee Jaikie, did not delay. His eyes had filled with tears at her news, which we know to have been his habit. When Mrs. Morran, after indulging in a moment of barbaric keening, looked back the road she had come, she saw a small figure trotting up the hill like a terrier who has been left behind. As he trotted he wept bitterly. Jaikie was getting dangerous.

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Dickson always maintained that his senses did not leave him for more than a second or two, but he admitted that he did not remember very clearly the events of the next few hours. He was conscious of a bad pain above his eyes, and something wet trickling down his cheek. There was a perpetual sound of water in his ears and of men’s voices. He found himself dropped roughly on the ground and forced to walk, and was aware that his legs were inclined to wobble. Somebody had a grip on each arm, so that he could not defend his face from the brambles, and that worried him, for his whole head seemed one aching bruise and he dreaded anything touching it. But all the time he did not open his mouth, for silence was the one duty that his muddled wits enforced. He felt that he was not the master of his mind, and he dreaded what he might disclose if he began to babble.