“Poor lad, poor lad!” my father cried blurting the sentiment as he had been a bairn.
How we tossed a coin to decide which should be the first to fire, and Borland had won the toss, and gone to the other end of our twenty paces with vulgar menaces and “Spoiled Horn” the sweetest of his epithets.
“Poor lad! he but tried to bluster down the inward voice that told him the folly o’t,” said father.
And how Borland had fired first. The air was damp. The sound was like a slamming door.
“The door of hope shut up for him, poor dear,” cried father.
And how he missed me in his trepidation that made his hand that held the pistol so tremble that I saw the muzzle quiver even at twenty paces.
“And then you shot him deliberately I M cried my father.
“No, no,” I cried at that, indignant. “I aimed without a glance along the barrel: the flint flashed; the prime missed fire, and I was not sorry, but Borland cried ‘Spoiled Horn’ braggingly, and I cocked again as fast as I could, and blindly jerked the trigger. I never thought of striking him. He fell with one loud cry among the rushes.”
“Murder, by God!” cried my father, and he relapsed into a chair, his body all convulsed with horror.
I had told him all this as if I had been in a delirium, or as if it were a tale out of a book, and it was only when I saw him writhing in his chair and the tassel shaking over his eyes, I minded that the murderer was me. I made for the door; up rose my father quickly and asked me what I meant to do.
I confessed I neither knew nor cared.
“You must thole your assize,” said he, and just as he said it the clatter of the mare’s hoofs sounded on the causey of the yard, and he must have minded suddenly for what object she was saddled there.
“No, no,” said he, “you must flee the country. What right have you to make it any worse for her?”
“I have not a crown in my pocket,” said I.
“And I have less,” he answered quickly. “Where are you going? No, no, don’t tell me that; I’m not to know. There’s the mare saddled, I meant Sandy to send the doctor from the Mearns, but you can do that. Bid him come here as fast as he can.”
“And must I come back with the mare?” I asked, reckless what he might say to that, though my life depended on it.
“For the sake of your mother,” he answered, “I would rather never set eyes on you or the beast again; she’s the last transaction between us, Paul Greig.” And then he burst in tears, with his arms about my neck.
Ten minutes later I was on the mare, and galloping, for all her ailing leg, from Hazel Den as if it were my own loweing conscience. I roused Dr. Clews at the Mearns, and gave him my father’s message. “Man,” said he, holding his chamber light up to my face, “man, ye’re as gash as a ghaist yersel’.”
“I may well be that,” said I, and off I set, with some of Uncle Andy’s old experience in my mind, upon a ride across broad Scotland.
CHAPTER VIII
I RIDE BY NIGHT ACROSS SCOTLAND, AND MEET A MARINER WITH A GLEED EYE
That night was like the day, with a full moon shining. The next afternoon I rode into Borrowstounness, my horse done out and myself sore from head to heel; and never in all my life have I seen a place with a more unwelcome aspect, for the streets were over the hoof in mud; the natives directed me in an accent like a tinker’s whine; the Firth of Forth was wrapped in a haar or fog that too closely put me in mind of my prospects. But I had no right to be too particular, and in the course of an hour I had sold the mare for five pounds to a man of much Christian profession, who would not give a farthing more on the plea that she was likely stolen.
The five pounds and the clothes I stood in were my fortune: it did not seem very much, if it was to take me out of the reach of the long arm of the doomster; and thinking of the doomster I minded of the mole upon my brow, that was the most kenspeckle thing about me in the event of a description going about the country, so the first thing I bought with my fortune was a pair of scissors. Going into a pend close in one of the vennels beside the quay, I clipped off the hair upon the mole and felt a little safer. I was coming out of the close, pouching the scissors, when a man of sea-going aspect, with high boots and a tarpaulin hat, stumbled against me and damned my awkwardness.
“You filthy hog,” said I, exasperated at such manners, for he was himself to blame for the encounter; “how dare you speak to me like that?” He was a man of the middle height, sturdy on his bowed legs in spite of the drink obvious in his face and speech, and he had a roving gleed black eye. I had never clapped gaze on him in all my life before.
“Is that the way ye speak to Dan Risk, ye swab?” said he, ludicrously affecting a dignity that ill suited with his hiccough. “What’s the good of me being a skipper if every linen-draper out of Fife can cut into my quarter on my own deck?”
“This is no’ your quarter-deck, man, if ye were sober enough to ken it,” said I; “and I’m no linen-draper from Fife or anywhere else.”
And then the brute, with his hands thrust to the depth of his pockets, staggered me as if he had done it with a blow of his fist.
“No,” said he, with a very cunning tone, “ye’re no linen-draper perhaps, but – ye’re maybe no sae decent a man, young Greig.”
It was impossible for me to conceal even from this tipsy rogue my astonishment and alarm at this. It seemed to me the devil himself must be leagued against me in the cause of justice. A cold sweat came on my face and the palms of my hands. I opened my mouth and meant to give him the lie but I found I dare not do so in the presence of what seemed a miracle of heaven.
“How do you ken my name’s Greig?” I asked at the last.
“Fine that,” he made answer, with a grin; “and there’s mony an odd thing else I ken.”
“Well, it’s no matter,” said I, preparing to quit him, but in great fear of what the upshot might be; “I’m for off, anyway.”
By this time it was obvious that he was not so drunk as I thought him at first, and that in temper and tact he was my match even with the glass in him. “Do ye ken what I would be doing if I was you?” said he seemingly determined not to let me depart like that, for he took a step or two after me.
I made no reply, but quickened my pace and after me he came, lurching and catching at my arm; and I mind to this day the roll of him gave me the impression of a crab.
“If it’s money ye want-” I said at the end of my patience.
“Curse your money!” he cried, pretending to spit the insult from his mouth. “Curse your money; but if I was you, and a weel-kent skipper like Dan Risk – like Dan Risk of the Seven Sisters– made up to me out of a redeeculous good nature and nothing else, I would gladly go and splice the rope with him in the nearest ken.”
“Go and drink with yourself, man,” I cried; “there’s the money for a chappin of ate, and I’ll forego my share of it.”
I could have done nothing better calculated to infuriate him. As I held out the coin on the palm of my hand he struck it up with an oath and it rolled into the syver. His face flamed till the neck of him seemed a round of seasoned beef.
“By the Rock o’ Bass!” he roared, “I would clap ye in jyle for less than your lousy groat.”
Ah, then, it was in vain I had put the breadth of Scotland between me and that corpse among the rushes: my heart struggled a moment, and sank as if it had been drowned in bilge. I turned on the man what must have been a gallows face, and he laughed, and, gaining his drunken good nature again he hooked me by the arm, and before my senses were my own again he was leading me down the street and to the harbour. I had never a word to say.
The port, as I tell, was swathed in the haar of the east, out of which tall masts rose