It was, as I say, the breaking of a stormy morrow when we faced up the brae, sword in hand, finding none to withstand us, for all had fled before the music of the wild Highland drones. Then in the sustaining quiet I asked the Dominie by what inspiration he had thought of such a mad thing as thus blasting upon the war-pipes.
'Oh it just came to me!' said he, lightly. And with that he wiped his chanter and set the drones under his arm, letting them hang down as though they had been the legs of a lamb which a herd has found on the hill.
But our troubles were not yet over, for we had to pass through many miles of Bargany country ere we could reach our own folk. I proposed to turn landwards, for that, as the crow flies, is the shortest road. But the Dominie denied me, saying that since those cruel monsters of the were-wolfs band had fled that way, the closer we kept to the coast, the safer we should be.
We made, therefore, only such a detour as would enable us to escape the town of Girvan, which was a strength of our foes, and passing by Killochan, a pleasant and friendly tower, well set in a wooded valley with a view of our old strength of Ailsa, we hastened as fast as we could march with the women in our company to Culzean.
Now near by Killochan there was a school and a schoolmaster, the name of him John Guid. He had been for a long season a friend and crony of our Dominie Mure. To him we resorted, or rather the Dominie went alone to seek him, while I abode with Marjorie and Nell. It was over in the afternoon when he came back, and what was our joy to hear behind him the trampling of a pair of hardy ponies, for with the weariness of her terrible quest and the stress of the night in the Cave of Death, Marjorie looked dismally near to her end. And, indeed, I am not sure that Nell was greatly better.
Marjorie had passed some part of the long march in telling us in bits and snatches the tale of her sufferings, her flight and capture, and how by evil and hateful hands she had been flung into the water from off the Heuch of Benerard.
It was a tale of most tyrannous wrong, and shall be kept for its own place, when Marjorie came to tell it to a greater and more powerful than either Launcelot Kennedy or Dominie Mure of Maybole.
I shall, therefore, let the reader wait yet a brief space for the explanation of many things which are dark to him now, and which had been equally dark to me till that gusty, rain-plashing morning.
So we four fared northward over the moors of Carrick, with Marjorie and Nell riding upon the garrons, and the Dominie and myself hasting along by their side with a hand apiece in their stirrup-leathers. We were just by the edge of the Red Moss, and going straight and snell for my Lord Earl's house of Cassillis, when Nell, who was ever our most keen-eyed watcher, cried out that we were pursued. And when I had turned me about and looked, I saw that of a surety it was so.
Then I thought that if it should happen that we were attacked, it might be as well to have the advantage of position. So I posted our party on a little heathery mound, having an open lairy moss in front with dangerous quags, trembling bogs, and square black islands of moss and peat standing in the midst, all gashed and riven. Here we waited, the two men of us under arms in front, and the maids standing close behind the horses, with the bridles loose in their hands.
I had cast my cloak over the shoulder of Nell's sheltie to clear my arms for the fray, if indeed it should come to the clash of blows; and it pleased me well to see her catch it without a word, and fold it like a wife who watches her husband and is pleased to anticipate his need. This indeed (I say it twice) pleased me well, for I knew that she had done with daffing with me any more, and that she had at last forgotten all the matters concerning that pretty tell-tale Kate Allison.
The three men who rode toward us were at first to our sight like ships low down on the sea-line. But they mounted steadily, spears and pennons first, after that the shine of armour, and then the heads of their horses, becking and bowing with the travail of the moss.
Then verily we that stood had anxious hearts, for we knew not whether they might chance to be friend or foe, and, indeed, it was well that we looked for the worst. As they came nearer we saw that the two who rode ahead were armed in a knightly way, and gripped lances in their hands. But the third, who came behind and held a little aloof, was plainly clad in a grey cloak and hat.
'It is Auchendrayne and a younger man, with the Wolf of Drummurchie in their company; it could not well be worse,' said the Dominie. 'We are like to be hard bested.'
And I knew that Marjorie Kennedy looked once more upon the man who, in cold blood, had slain her father, and also upon the man who according to the law, was her husband.
I had looked for them to call a parley, and had set myself in front to acquit me well in the barter of words before the damsels; but I was not prepared for the event as it happened.
For without a word of preamble, warning or speech-making, John Mure of Auchendrayne (he in the cloak of grey) cried out, 'Have at them! Slay them every one! 'Tis now too late for whimsies. It is our lives for theirs if we do not.'
So with that the two younger men-at-arms came on, couching their long lances and riding directly at us. I stuck my sword downward by the point, naked in the soft moss at my side, so that I should not have it to draw out of the sheath when it came to the pinch. And for the last time I looked at my pistol priming, and longed horribly for one of my lord's new hackbutts of the French pattern out of the armoury of Cassillis.
But wishing would not bring them or I had had a dozen, each with a good Culzean man behind it, with his finger on the touch. But yet you may depend that my imagination bodied them forth, standing there useless in the press, oiled and burnished, as I had seen them. And all the while the two villains came on.
Now, in a plain place we had had but little chance to stand against them, cumbered with the women as we were; but the peat hag I had chosen for our defence on the edge of the Red Moss favoured us. When, however, I had fired my pistol and made nothing of it, save only the clink of the bullet whizzing off the plate metal, they got time to ride round the main obstruction. Then it had gone hard with us indeed, but that the Dominie Mure, as the horses came forward, blew so sudden a snorting blast upon his pipes, that one of the steeds swerved and stumbled, almost throwing his rider to the ground. Then, ere he had time to recover, the Dominie was upon him with his sword, springing upward and striking like an angry etter-cap ever at the face, so that it took the horseman all his time to defend himself.
The other drave at me full tilt with his long spear, and though I leapt aside from the lance-thrust, I, with only my pistol and sword, had been no better than a dead man at the next turn. But Marjorie Kennedy, giving the bridle reins of both horses to her sister, seized the Dominie's Lochaber axe. She sprang behind the visored man, and, hooking the bent prong in his gorget collar behind, she pulled him down from his horse with a clash of armour. Then, after that, there remained nothing for me to do, but to set my sword to his throat and bid him yield himself.
By this time the frightened horse which had stumbled first became perfectly mad, and turning in spite of all that Thomas of Drummurchie could do, it galloped away with him, belly-to-earth, across the Red Moss.
Then the man in the grey cloak also put his horse to its speed, so soon as he saw how the matter was like to go. For he had kept at a distance and taken no part in the fighting. We were therefore left alone, victorious, without a wound, and with the man in the visor, our prisoner.
He seemed to be stunned with his fall, so Marjorie stooped and undid his laced steel-cap, shelling his head as one shells the husk of a nut from the kernel.
The man whom she revealed was James Mure the younger of Auchendrayne, her wedded husband.
We stood thus some time in wonderment what should be the upshot. Marjorie Kennedy (I cannot while I live call her by any other name) stood looking down at the man to whom in foulest treachery she had been given. Then after a while Nell touched my arm, and lo! on the Moss, there was yet another man on horseback coming towards us. I knew the beast. It was the same on which the Wolf of Drummurchie had ridden. But the man was other than the Wolf.
The thing was a mystery to us.
But at last Nell, whose eyes were like an eagle's for keenness—though, as I have before observed, of heavenly beauty, cried out, 'It is Robert Harburgh—we are saved!' Which was no great things of a saying, for I myself had saved her ten times during that last night and day, if it came to any talk of saving. Yet I think from that moment she began to draw away a little from me. Whether as remembering some of my old ploys with that tricksy lass who was now Robert Harburgh's wife, or partly lest she should have seemed to be over-ready in owning her love for me.
At any rate, after I had thought over her unkindness and sudden chill a little while, I was not sure that it might not be after all the best sign in the world. For as the reader of this chronicle must have gathered, I am a man of some penetration in these matters, and it is not given to any woman to twine Launcelot Kennedy in a knot about her little finger.
Also I have had very considerable experience.
'Faith,' cried Robert Harburgh, when he had ridden up, 'whom have we here?'
I answered him with another question.
'Where gat ye that horse, Robert?'
'I got it,' he replied, readily and also calmly, 'from a man that is little likely to need it again, at least for a tale of months.'
'From Thomas of Drummurchie?' I asked.
'Who else?' said Harburgh, simply, as though the fact had been sufficient explanation; as, indeed, it was—in the way he said it.
But all the while Marjorie stood looking calmly down at James Mure. He recovered little by little from the stunning knock, and presently made as if he would sit up.
'Tie his hands,' said Marjorie Kennedy. And then seeing that we hesitated—'nay, give me the halter,' she said, 'I will do it myself.' And there on the open moor, with the bridle of his own beast, I declare she did the binding featly and well.
'Now, listen, James Mure,' she said, raising her voice, 'ye have steeped your hands in my father's blood. Ye have shed yet more blood to cover that crime, even the blood of an innocent young child. With these hands that are tied, you did these things. I am your wife. I will never leave you nor forsake you till you die. I will see that you have fair and honourable trial; but be assured that I shall testify against you truly as to that which I know and have seen.
She turned to us with her old easy way of command, imperiously gracious, but sharper a little than her ordinary. 'Mount him on that horse,' she said, like a queen who issues commands to her court.
And this was she who had walked gladsomely with me in the garden at Culzean, and who in smiling maidenly condescension had given a love-sick boy her favour to wear. What agony of hell had passed over her spirit thus to turn the sweet maiden to a woman of stone?
'Whither shall we take him?' said I, for it seemed to me not at all expedient to delay longer than we could help in that disturbed and fatal part of the country.
'To the Earl, on his way to the King!' replied Marjorie Kennedy.
'If ye bide still half-an-hour where ye are, ye will see the Earl come hither,' said Robert Harburgh. 'He rides to the south to hold his yearly Court of Bailiary on the borders of Carrick.'
For since the great defeat of the Bargany faction, and the death of the young chief at the gate of Maybole upon that memorable day of snow, my Lord Cassillis had gained more and more in power, so that none now was able to make any head openly against him. The death of Sir Thomas, my good master, had also thrown all that additional weight of authority upon his shoulders. Indeed Earl John bode fair to be what his father had been before him—the King of Carrick.
His titular jurisdiction had always included the southern parts of the district. But it was only of late that he had made himself so strong as to be able to enforce his authority there.
Now, however, Earl John was riding to hold his Court near Girvan, in a country which not a great while ago had been purely a stronghold of his enemies, and which still swarmed with the disaffected and rebellious.
So even while we stood and waited there, Nell cried out that a cavalcade rode southward toward us by the edge of the Red Moss. It was not long before we could discern the fluttering pennons of blue and gold, which denoted the presence of the Earl. He had with him a noble retinue of well-nigh four hundred—all handsomely armed—many of them knights and gentlemen of his own name.
We waited for them to come up with us, I meanwhile keeping close by Nell's side, and Marjorie Kennedy standing steadfastly at her husband's head and looking at him, while Robert Harburgh marched up and down with his hands under his points and whistled the 'Broom o' the Cowdenknowes.'
When the Earl John, riding first as was his custom, perceived who we were, he lighted down with much courtesy to salute his cousins.
'How do you, ladies? And what, by the grace of God, brings you hither with so small a company in such a dangerous place?'
Then said Marjorie, 'Earl of Cassillis, you are my cousin; but you are also Bailzie of Carrick and hold the power of life and death. I take you and all your company to witness that I deliver over to you this man, called James Mure of Auchendrayne. He is twice a convict murderer—right cruelly he slew my father and your uncle, and I charge him also with the fact of the murder of William Dalrymple, a poor boy of tender years, whom he killed with his own hands to cover the first deed—both which accusations I shall in due time make good.'
The Earl was manifestly mightily astonished, as well he might be, at the Lady Marjorie's declaration; but he was glad also, because it was no light thing for him to lay the enemy of his house by the heels, and, seeing good prospect of getting the Mures attainted and denounced, to be able to make himself omnipotent in all the lands of the south.
'Bring the man along with us!' he commanded. 'Let him have all tendance and care; but let a double guard be placed over him.'
'I will be his guard!' said Marjorie, firmly. 'I, and no other!'
Nevertheless, Earl John named a retinue to ride with Marjorie and her husband, in the name of a guard of honour; but really because he felt his fingers already on the throat of his house's enemy.
And as we rode back the way we had come—now no longer in fear and trembling, but in manifest state and pomp—Marjorie sate humbly upon a sheltie by the side of the man who was lawfully her husband, and yet whom she had most sacredly vowed to bring to the gallows.
And for the present the Dominie and I resolved to keep the secret of the Cave of Death, and of the fearsome inner place where was bestowed the Treasure of Kelwood.
But immediately after the Court of Justiceaire I resolved to make it known to the Earl, for so Nell and I had made our compact. And as for the Dominie he might be relied upon to speak or to be silent even as I bade him.