Tales of My Landlord - All 7 Novels in One Edition (Illustrated). Walter Scott
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Sergeant Bothwell, that makes every wife’s plack and her meal-ark his ain; neither your carabines, nor your pistols, nor your broadswords, nor your horses, nor your saddles, bridles, surcingles, nose-bags, nor martingales, shall resist the arrows that are whetted and the bow that is bent against you!”
“That shall they never, I trow,” echoed Mause; “castaways are they ilk ane o’ them — besoms of destruction, fit only to be flung into the fire when they have sweepit the filth out o’ the Temple — whips of small cords, knotted for the chastisement of those wha like their warldly gudes and gear better than the Cross or the Covenant, but when that wark’s done, only meet to mak latchets to the deil’s brogues.”
“Fiend hae me,” said Cuddie, addressing himself to Morton, “if I dinna think our mither preaches as weel as the minister!— But it’s a sair pity o’ his hoast, for it aye comes on just when he’s at the best o’t, and that lang routing he made air this morning, is sair again him too — Deil an I care if he wad roar her dumb, and then he wad hae’t a’ to answer for himsell — It’s lucky the road’s rough, and the troopers are no taking muckle tent to what they say, wi’ the rattling o’ the horse’s feet; but an we were anes on saft grund, we’ll hear news o’ a’ this.”
Cuddie’s conjecture were but too true. The words of the prisoners had not been much attended to while drowned by the clang of horses’ hoofs on a rough and stony road; but they now entered upon the moorlands, where the testimony of the two zealous captives lacked this saving accompaniment. And, accordingly, no sooner had their steeds begun to tread heath and green sward, and Gabriel Kettledrummle had again raised his voice with, “Also I uplift my voice like that of a pelican in the wilderness”—
“And I mine,” had issued from Mause, “like a sparrow on the house-tops”—
When “Hollo, ho!” cried the corporal from the rear; “rein up your tongues, the devil blister them, or I’ll clap a martingale on them.”
“I will not peace at the commands of the profane,” said Gabriel.
“Nor I neither,” said Mause, “for the bidding of no earthly potsherd, though it be painted as red as a brick from the Tower of Babel, and ca’ itsell a corporal.”
“Halliday,” cried the corporal, “hast got never a gag about thee, man?— We must stop their mouths before they talk us all dead.”
Ere any answer could be made, or any measure taken in consequence of the corporal’s motion, a dragoon galloped towards Sergeant Bothwell, who was considerably a-head of the party he commanded. On hearing the orders which he brought, Bothwell instantly rode back to the head of his party, ordered them to close their files, to mend their pace, and to move with silence and precaution, as they would soon be in presence of the enemy.
Chapter 15
Quantum in nobis, we’ve thought good
To save the expense of Christian blood,
And try if we, by mediation
Of treaty, and accommodation,
Can end the quarrel, and compose
This bloody duel without blows.
Butler.
The increased pace of the party of horsemen soon took away from their zealous captives the breath, if not the inclination, necessary for holding forth. They had now for more than a mile got free of the woodlands, whose broken glades had, for some time, accompanied them after they had left the woods of Tillietudlem. A few birches and oaks still feathered the narrow ravines, or occupied in dwarf-clusters the hollow plains of the moor. But these were gradually disappearing; and a wide and waste country lay before them, swelling into bare hills of dark heath, intersected by deep gullies; being the passages by which torrents forced their course in winter, and during summer the disproportioned channels for diminutive rivulets that winded their puny way among heaps of stones and gravel, the effects and tokens of their winter fury;— like so many spendthrifts dwindled down by the consequences of former excesses and extravagance. This desolate region seemed to extend farther than the eye could reach, without grandeur, without even the dignity of mountain wildness, yet striking, from the huge proportion which it seemed to bear to such more favoured spots of the country as were adapted to cultivation, and fitted for the support of man; and thereby impressing irresistibly the mind of the spectator with a sense of the omnipotence of nature, and the comparative inefficacy of the boasted means of amelioration which man is capable of opposing to the disadvantages of climate and soil.
It is a remarkable effect of such extensive wastes, that they impose an idea of solitude even upon those who travel through them in considerable numbers; so much is the imagination affected by the disproportion between the desert around and the party who are traversing it. Thus the members of a caravan of a thousand souls may feel, in the deserts of Africa or Arabia, a sense of loneliness unknown to the individual traveller, whose solitary course is through a thriving and cultivated country.
It was not, therefore, without a peculiar feeling of emotion, that Morton beheld, at the distance of about half a mile, the body of the cavalry to which his escort belonged, creeping up a steep and winding path which ascended from the more level moor into the hills. Their numbers, which appeared formidable when they crowded through narrow roads, and seemed multiplied by appearing partially, and at different points, among the trees, were now apparently diminished by being exposed at once to view, and in a landscape whose extent bore such immense proportion to the columns of horses and men, which, showing more like a drove of black cattle than a body of soldiers, crawled slowly along the face of the hill, their force and their numbers seeming trifling and contemptible.
“Surely,” said Morton to himself, “a handful of resolute men may defend any defile in these mountains against such a small force as this is, providing that their bravery is equal to their enthusiasm.”
While he made these reflections, the rapid movement of the horsemen who guarded him, soon traversed the space which divided them from their companions; and ere the front of Claverhouse’s column had gained the brow of the hill which they had been seen ascending, Bothwell, with his rearguard and prisoners, had united himself, or nearly so, with the main body led by his commander. The extreme difficulty of the road, which was in some places steep, and in others boggy, retarded the progress of the column, especially in the rear; for the passage of the main body, in many instances, poached up the swamps through which they passed, and rendered them so deep, that the last of their followers were forced to leave the beaten path, and find safer passage where they could.
On these occasions, the distresses of the Reverend Gabriel Kettledrummle and of Mause Headrigg, were considerably augmented, as the brutal troopers, by whom they were guarded, compelled them, at all risks which such inexperienced riders were likely to incur, to leap their horses over drains and gullies, or to push them through morasses and swamps.
“Through the help of the Lord I have luppen ower a wall,” cried poor Mause, as her horse was, by her rude attendants, brought up to leap the turf enclosure of a deserted fold, in which feat her curch flew off, leaving her grey hairs uncovered.
“I am sunk in deep mire where there is no standing — I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me,” exclaimed Kettledrummle, as the charger on which he was mounted plunged up to the saddle-girths in a well-head, as the springs are called which supply the marshes, the sable streams beneath spouting over the face and person of the captive preacher.
These exclamations excited shouts of laughter among their military attendants; but events soon occurred which rendered them all sufficiently serious.
The leading files of the regiment had nearly attained the brow of the steep hill we have mentioned, when two or three horsemen, speedily discovered to be a part of their own advanced guard, who had acted as a patrol, appeared returning at full gallop, their horses much blown, and the men apparently in a disordered flight. They were followed upon the spur by five or six