Gordon Stables - From Squire to Squatter - A Tale of the Old Land and the New

The furniture was rustic in the extreme – studiously so. There was a tall rocking-chair, a great dais or sofa, and a recline for Rupert – “poor Rupert” as he was always called – the big chair was the guest’s seat.

The ornaments on the walls had been principally supplied by Branson. Stuffed heads of foxes, badgers, and wild cats, with any number of birds’ and beasts’ skins, artistically mounted. There were also heads of horned deer, bows and arrows – these last were Archie’s own – and shields and spears that Uncle Ramsay had brought home from savage wars in Africa and Australia. The dais was covered with bear skins, and there was quite a quantity of skins on the floor instead of a carpet. So the whole place looked primeval and romantic.

The bookshelf was well supplied with readable tales, and a harp stood in a corner, and on this, young though she was, Elsie could already play.

The guest to-night was old Kate. She sat in the tall chair in a corner opposite the door, Branson occupied a seat near her, Rupert was on his recline, and Archie and Elsie on a skin, with little Peter nursing wounded Fuss in a corner.

That was the party. But Archie had made tea, and handed it round; and sitting there with her cup in her lap, old Kate really looked a strange, weird figure. Her face was lean and haggard, her eyes almost wild, and some half-grey hair peeped from under an uncanny-looking cap of black crape, with long depending strings of the same material.

Old Kate was housekeeper and general female factotum. She was really a distant relation of the Squire, and so had it very much her own way at Burley Old Farm.

She came originally from “just ayant the Border,” and had a wealth of old-world stories to tell, and could sing queer old bits of ballads too, when in the humour.

Old Kate, however, said she could not sing to-night, for she felt as yet unused to the place; and whether they (the boys) believed in ghosts or not she (Kate) did, and so, she said, had her father before her. But she told stories – stories of the bloody raids of long, long ago, when Northumbria and the Scottish Borders were constantly at war – stories that kept her hearers enthralled while they listened, and to which the weird looks and strange voice of the narrator lent a peculiar charm.

Old Kate was just in the very midst of one of these when, twang! one of the strings of Elsie’s harp broke. It was a very startling sound indeed; for as it went off it seemed to emit a groan that rang through the chamber, and died away in the vaulted roof. Elsie crept closer to Archie, and Peter with Fuss drew nearer the fire.

The ancient dame, after being convinced that the sound was nothing uncanny, proceeded with her narrative. It was a long one, with an old house in it by the banks of a winding river in the midst of woods and wilds – a house that, if its walls had been able to speak, could have told many a marrow-freezing story of bygone times.

There was a room in this house that was haunted. Old Kate was just coming to this, and to the part of her tale on which the ghosts on a certain night of the year always appeared in this room, and stood over a dark stain in the centre of the floor.

“And ne’er a ane,” she was saying, “could wash that stain awa’. Weel, bairns, one moonlicht nicht, and at the deadest hoor o’ the nicht, nothing would please the auld laird but he maun leave his chaimber and go straight along the damp, dreary, long corridor to the door o’ the hauntid room. It was half open, and the moon’s licht danced in on the fleer. He was listening – he was looking – ”

But at this very moment, when old Kate had lowered her voice to a whisper, and the tension at her listeners’ heart-strings was the greatest, a soft, heavy footstep was heard coming slowly, painfully as it might be, up the turret stairs.

To say that every one was alarmed would but poorly describe their feelings. Old Kate’s eyes seemed as big as watch-glasses. Elsie screamed, and clung to Archie.

“Who – oo – ’s – Who’s there?” cried Branson, and his voice sounded fearful and far away.

No answer; but the steps drew nearer and nearer. Then the curtain was pushed aside, and in dashed – what? a ghost? – no, only honest great Bounder.

Bounder had found out there was something going on, and that Fuss was up there, and he didn’t see why he should be left out in the cold. That was all; but the feeling of relief when he did appear was unprecedented.

Old Kate required another cup of tea after that. Then Branson got out his fiddle from a green baize bag; and if he had not played those merry airs, I do not believe that old Kate would have had the courage to go downstairs that night at all.

Archie’s pony was great fun at first. The best of it was that he had never been broken in. The Squire, or rather his bailiff, had bought him out of a drove; so he was, literally speaking, as wild as the hills, and as mad as a March hare. But he soon knew Archie and Elsie, and, under Branson’s supervision, Scallowa was put into training on the lawn. He was led, he was walked, he was galloped. But he reared, and kicked, and rolled whenever he thought of it, and yet there was not a bit of vice about him.

Spring had come, and early summer itself, before Scallowa permitted Archie to ride him, and a week or two after this the difficulty would have been to have told which of the two was the wilder and dafter, Archie or Scallowa. They certainly had managed to establish the most amicable relations. Whatever Scallowa thought, Archie agreed to, and vice versa , and the pair were never out of mischief. Of course Archie was pitched off now and then, but he told Elsie he did not mind it, and in fact preferred it to constant uprightness: it was a change. But the pony never ran away, because Archie always had a bit of carrot in his pocket to give him when he got up off the ground.

Mr Walton assured Archie that these carrots accounted for his many tumbles. And there really did seem to be a foundation of truth about this statement. For of course the pony had soon come to know that it was to his interest to throw his rider, and acted accordingly. So after a time Archie gave the carrot-payment up, and matters were mended.

It was only when school was over that Archie went for a canter, unless he happened to get up very early in the morning for the purpose of riding. And this he frequently did, so that, before the summer was done, Scallowa and Archie were as well known over all the countryside as the postman himself.

Archie’s pony was certainly not very long in the legs, but nevertheless the leaps he could take were quite surprising.

On the second summer after Archie got this pony, both horse and rider were about perfect in their training, and in the following winter he appeared in the hunting-field with the greatest sang-froid , although many of the farmers, on their weight-carrying hunters, could have jumped over Archie, Scallowa, and all. The boy had a long way to ride to the hounds, and he used to start off the night before. He really did not care where he slept. Old Kate used to make up a packet of sandwiches for him, and this would be his dinner and breakfast. Scallowa he used to tie up in some byre, and as often as not Archie would turn in beside him among the straw. In the morning he would finish the remainder of Kate’s sandwiches, make his toilet in some running stream or lake, and be as fresh as a daisy when the meet took place.

Both he and Scallowa were somewhat uncouth-looking. Elsie, his sister, had proposed that he should ride in scarlet, it would look so romantic and pretty; but Archie only laughed, and said he would not feel at home in such finery, and his “Eider Duck” – as he sometimes called the pony – would not know him. “Besides, Elsie,” he said, “lying down among straw with scarlets on wouldn’t improve them.”