His cousin came back from the crush. “As sure’s death, I’m glad to see you and sorry I never bided,” said he. “You never came on her; I knew very well she must have got out at the outset.”
“Indeed!” said Barrisdale. “As it happens, she’s yonder yet, and I had the honour to wake her; I fancy she’s taking her hair from the curl-papers at this moment. You never had a better chance of getting credit for a fine action very cheaply. It was in the dark I wakened her; I told her I was Barrisdale and would return when she was dressed. You may go back to her.”
“Man, I wouldn’t mind,” said the cousin; “but what’s the object?” he added suspiciously.
“Only that I’m tired of being Barrisdale to suit you. If you like to be Barrisdale and carry your own reputation, you’ll have the name of saving her life—one thing at least to your credit that’ll maybe make her forget the rest. With a creature so romantical, I would not wonder if it came to the runaway match after all.”
“Faith, I’ll risk it,” said Jaunty Jock, and ran up the stair. He came down with the lady on his arm, and took her to a neighbour’s.
“And did you confess to your identity?” asked his cousin when they met again.
“Surely she did not boggle at the Barrisdale; I was certain it would make little odds to a lady of her character.”
“Oh, she was willing enough, but it’s not a match,” said Jaunty Jock. “After this, I’ll always see the mask off first; she had a worse nose than yourself!”
OF the half-dozen men of Mid-Argyll condemned on one account or another for their part in the Rebellion, the last, and the least deserving of so scurvy a fate, was young John Clerk of Pennymore. He had been out in the affair more for the fun of the thing than from any high passion of politics; he would have fought as readily for the Duke as for the Young Pretender if the Duke had appealed to him first; he was a likeable lad to all who knew him, and the apple of his mother’s eye.
The hanging of young John Clerk seemed at the time all the more harsh a measure since he was not charged directly with rebellion, but with being actor or art and part in the death of the Captain of Clonary, who was shot on his way from Culloden by a gang of lurking Jacobites of whom the lad was one, and maybe innocent. The murderers scattered to the mist and to the sea. For six years Clerk sequestered in the land of France, and was caught at last in a tender filial hour when he had ventured home to see his folk. A squad of the Campbells found him skulking in the wood of Pennymore on the very afternoon of his return; he had not even had the time to see his people, and the trinkets and sweetmeats he had meant for his mother were strewn from his pockets among the bracken as he was being dragged before the Lords.