Copyright Story. (PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.) The Last of Smugglers.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVI, Issue II, 12 January 1901, Page 54

Copyright Story. (PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.) The Last of Smugglers.

A Christmas Eve Adventure.

By

S.R. CROCKETT.

Author of “Joan of the Sword," “The Men of the Moss-Hags," “The Grey Man,” “The Stickit Minister,” etc.

1 had been so long away from my own country that when 1 looked out once more upon the heather at the little wayside station of Dornal, on the Port Murdock line, the width and space about me, the loneliness of the hills, and the crying of the muir-fowl affected me almost to tears. It was not long, how’ever, before I had other things to think about. I had long been an orphan, and, indeed (to tell the truth) had not felt much the worse for it. My father and mother died when I was a boy at school, and the uncle who brought me up and put me into his own business in England must have taken some permanent distaste to his native country of Galloway. At any rate, he never revisited it, nor for that matter encouraged me to do so. Nevertheless, he gave me an excellent education and trained me well to his own profession of architect and building contractor, with the idea that I should succeed him in Highgate when he should wish to retire to the pretty house he had built for himself on the shores of one of the most beautiful of English lakes. But quite suddenly one morning, when I was twenty-four, my uncle was found dead in his bed, and I. Hal Grierson, came into immediate possession of a good business and a very considerable sum in money. Among other things in my uncle's safe I found a large number of letters, receipts for money, and private memoranda. From these I learned for the first time that I had a relative living of whom I had never so much as heard. My deceased uncle, Walter Arrol, was, of course, my mother’s brother, and a man singularly reticent in all things not pertaining to business. Still, it struck me as strange and in a way humorous that as a young' man of twenty-four, I shouTd come first to the knowledge that 1 had a grandfather still living. let after many perusals and re-perusals of the letters and memoranda I could come to no other conclusion. It was now the middle of December. and so lately as the month before, there was a letter dated from the “Cothouse of Curlywee.” It ran as follows: —“Dear Son, herewith I enclose bank-bill for £25. We have had a good back-end and are well. Please acknowledge receipt. Your affectionate father, John Arrol.” 1 laughed aloud when 1 came upon the letter. It seemed to me that it was rather late to add a live grandfather to my family connections. Then the “we” puzzled me. Had I an unknown grandmother, too—or several unacknowledged uncles? At any rate my curiosity was highly excited. But so far as correspondence went 1 found no clue. My uncle had never encouraged sentiment, and though there were many similar notes, dating at half-yearly intervals for nearly fif teen years back, his ‘ affectionate father” never got beyond the simple and perspicuous statement that it had been a “good” or a “bad” year, that the “lambs were doing fine,” or that “there were many daiths among the vowes.” I discovered, however, that fifteen years before, Walter Arrol had bought a little moorland property m Galloway which had then come into the market. He paid what with my knowledge of English prices seemed to me a ridiculously inadequate pi ice for the five or six thousand acres it was stated to comprise. . The title deeds were there, all in due order, and the receipt for taxation stamps, and lawyers’ charges. There was also the memorandum of a loan of a thousand pounds to “John Arrffl. my father, to stock the farm of Curlywee with black-faced sheep.” together with notes of payment of interest at four per cent, for the first five years.

After that I could trace no further receipts on that account.

It was just the day before Christinas that I set out from a Midland town where 1 had had some business, resolved to find out all that I did not know about my Galloway relatives. I might easily have written indeed, either to “John Arrol” himself, who from his style of correspondence would have been the very man to give me exact (and concise) information, or to the firm of lawyers in Cairn Edward whose name was upon the deeds and parchments. But. though it would have ruined me from a business point of view had it been known in Highgate, i have always had a romantic strain in my blood, and the little adventure pleased me. 1 would take a little climb, so f told myself, into the branches of my family tree. 1 would go in person to the Cothouse of Curlywee. and make the acquaintance of my grandfather. I wondered if "John Arrol" would turn out to be as ignorant of my existence as I had been of his. At any rate he was clearly not a person to waste words or squander his sentiment broadcast. Had I been content to prove my title to my uncle’s property he would doubtless have continued to sign himself "John Arrol,” to enclose his half-yearly rent, and to require a receipt therefor to the end of the chapter, without making the least effort to cultivate my acquaintance.

So this was the errand upon which I found myself standing in the little wayside station of Dornal. it was a grim and greyish winter afternoon, and I had occupied myself, in speculating as the train slowly struggled up the incline, how long this rough houldery desolation was to continue, and at what point it would issue forth upon the level strath and kindly hamlets of men. where I had pictured to myself my venerable relative residing in patriarchal dignity. “Can you show me the way to the villageof Curley wee?” I said to the station master, who came suddenly out of his office to take my ticket. In fact he made a dash at me almost like a terrier at a rat.

"Tile what?" he said, sharply, dropping his official manner in his surprise. "The vilage of Curley wee?” The station master laughed a short quick laugh: almost as one would expect the aforesaid terrier to do m mirthful mood. He turned about on the pivot of one heel. “Rob,” he cried sharply, "come ye here!” “1 car.na come! I'm at the lamps—foul fa’ them —the oil they hae sent us this time will no burn ony mair than as muckle spring water!" “Come here. I tell ye. Rob—or I'll report ye!” “Report awa’—an’ be —!” Something that T did not catch. The station master did not further attempt to bring his official dignity to bear upon his recalcitrant subordinate. He tried another tack. “There’s a man out here wants to ken the road to the village of Curlywee!” And as Te spoke the little wiry station master glanced quizzically up at me. as much as to say. “That will fetch him!” 1 failed to see the humour —then. Immediately I heard a bouncing sound. Heavy feet trampled in the unseen lamp room, a stool was knocked over, and a great, broad, jovial faced m in came out. still rubbing a lamp globe with a most unclean piece of waste.

“The village of Curlywee,” he inquired. smiling broadly at me, as it were (ion. head to foot. "Did I understand ye to say the village o’ Curleywte?*' 1 nodded brusquely. I was growing "I never heard tell o’t,” he continued, slowly, still smiling and shaking bis head. "Is there not a. conveyance—an omnibus. or a trap of any kind which I can hire to take me there?” I was getting more than a little angry by this time. It seemed past belief that 1 should have come so far to lie laughed at by a couple of boors in the middle of a Galloway morass. “Ow, aye, there’s a conveyance.” said the porter, “a pair o’ them!” "Then.” said 1, tartly, “be good enough to put my bag in one of them, and let me get off!” The big man continued to rub and grin. The stationmaster watched me as a terrier watches a rat-hole, with his grey birse of a head at the side. Then with the piece of dirty waste in his hand “Rob” pointed to my knickerbockered legs and brown leather shoes. “Thae’s the only conveyance ye’ll get to Curlywee if ye wait a month at the Dornal!” “What,” 1 cried, “is there no road? There surely must be some kind of a highway.” Again the waste rag pointed. It was waved like a banner across the bleak moorish wilderness upon which the twilight was settling grey. "Road?” he cried, gleefully. “Highway? Aye, there’s the hillside —just tlie plain hillside!” He waved me an introduction to it, like a master of ceremonies. "Enough of this!” 1 said, tartly. “I have come from London ” "So I see by your ticket. It’s a fine big place—London!” interjected the stationmaster, with the air of one about to begin an interesting conversation. "To see a gentleman in the neighbourhood. of the name of Arrol, who lives at Curlywee. I would be obliged to you if you would point out to me the best and quickest way of reaching his house}” The two men looked at each other. There was nothing like a broad grin on the big man’s face now. The stationmaster, also, had lost his alert and amused air. and had become suddenly thoughtful. As neither of the two spoke I added still more sharply. “Do you know the gentleman?” “Ow, aye.” said Rob; “we ken the man!” "Well, be good enough to put me on the road to his house!” Rob of the lamp and rag turned slowly, as one of my own cranes turns with a heavy load of stone. His arm pointed out over the thin bars of shining steel of the railroad track. "Yonder!” he said. “Keep straucht up the gully till ye come to yon nick in the hill. Then turn to the left for three or four miles through the Dead Man's Hollow. Syne ye will come to a water; -and if ye can get across, baud up the face of the gairy, and gin ye dinna break your neck by faain’ until the Dungeon o' Buchan or droon yoursel' in the Cooran Lane, ye will see the Cothouse o' Curlywee richt afore your nose!”

It was not an appetising description, but anything was better than staying there to be laughed at* so I thanked the man, asking him to put my bag in the left luggage office, and proffered him a shilling. The big man looked at the coin in my fingers. “What’s this for?” he said. “To pay the ticket for the left luggage.” I said: “and the rest for yourself!” Slowly he shook his head. “There’s no sic a thing nearer than Cairn Edward as a left luggage office,” he said, "but I'll put the bit bag in the lamp room. It’ll be there if ever ye want it again!” “What do you mean?” I cried, furiously.” Do you know that I am—-!” “I mean.” said Rob, deliberately, "that ye are like to hae a saft walk and to need a’ your daylieht before ye get to Curlywee this nicht. A guid pair o’ legs to ye. Ye will need them!” Upon the details of that weary and terrible journey I need not linger. Though when at first I threw my leg

over the wire fencing of the railway and stepped out on the moor, the instinct of the heather seemed to come back to me. 1 lost my way at least half-a-dozen times. Indeed if the moon had not l>een shinging about half full liehind the grey veil of cloud. I must have wandered all night without remedy and most likely frozen to death. My Ixmdon-made single-soled shoes were soon completely sodden, and presently the uppers began to part company with the welt. 1 was wet to the waist or above it by falling into deep moss-holes, where the black peaty water oozed through the softest of verduous green. I was bruised by constant stumbles over unseen boulders, and scratched as to my hands by slipping on icy rocks. A thousand times I cursed myself for leaving my comfortable rooms, which looked over to Hampstead Heath. I might have been reading a volume of “ Rob Roy,” with my feet one on each side of the mantelpiece. And-—at that very moment my foot plunged through the heather into a deep crevasse between two boulders, and I wrenched my ankle sideways with a stound of pain keen as a knife. By this time I had been six or seven hours on the moor. I had, to the best of my ability, endeavoured to steer the course set for me by the bigboned genius of the lamp-room. I possessed a little compass at my watch chain, and my profession had made me accustomed enough to using it. But in the grey, uncertain light the glens seemed to turn all the wrong way. and what the “ face of the gairy” might be I had not the least idea. I only knew that at the moment when I sprained my ankle I had been descending a hill side as lonely as an African desert and apparently as remote from anywhere as the North Pole. I managed, however, by an effort to get my leg out of the trap into which I had fallen, and sat down upon a rack, half-dazed with the shock. I remember that I moaned a little with the pain and started at the sound, not realising that I had been making it myself. Whenl came round a littlelwas looking down into a kind of misty vaUey. The ground appeared to fall away on every side, and I could see shadowy and ghostlike forms of boulders, all about me. some standing erect like Breton menhirs, pointing stony fingers into the grey winter sky; some with noses sharpened took the exact shape of polar bears scenting a prey, as you may see them in the plates of my favourite Arctic explorer. Gradually it dawned upon me that there was some sort of a light beneath me in the valley. It seemed most like a red pulsing glow, as if a nearly extinct smithy fire were being blown up with bellows. A sense of eeriness came over me. I had been educated i>y my uncle in a severe school of practicality. To be a contracting builder in the better-class suburbs of London is destructive of romance. But I have the Pictish blood in me for all that. Aboriginal terrors prickle in mv blood as I pass a graveyard at midnight. and never when I can help it do I go under one of my own ladders. But now for the first time in my life I felt a kind of stiffening of the hair of my scalp.

But this did not last long. My foot and ankle recalled me to myself. I could not. T thought, be worse off than I was—wet. miserable, hurt. If that light beneath me betokened a human habitation in the wild. I was saved. If not —well, I was no worse than I had been before. So with a certain amount of confidence I made shift to limp downward towards the strange, pulsing, undulating glow. But though the sweat ran from me like rain. I could only go a few yards at a time. Nevertheless, the ruddy eye grew ever plainer as I descended. winking slowly and irregularly. waxing and waning like a fire permitted to go low’ and then again replenished.

At last I was near enough to see that the light proceeded from beneath a great face of rock, which sprang upwards into the sky, so high that it faded ghostlike into the milky glow of the mist-choked moonlight. Just then my injured foot jarred painfully upon a stone which gave beneath its thrust. T he loose boulder thundered away down the declivity, and with a erv 1 sank upon my hands and knees. When I came to myself I could not speak. Something had been thrust into my mouth, something that gagged and almost choked me. My

hands also were tied behind me. The red pulsing- glow had vanished, but between me and the faintly-lit grey sky I could see a tall dark figure which moved purposefully about. Presently 1 found myself dragged to my feet and thrust rudely forward. I tried to make my captor understand that I could not walk; but as I could not speak, I could only do this by lying down and utterly refusing to proceed. Then my captor drew a lantern from behind a heather bush and flashed it upon my face. As he did so 1 held up my foot and endeavoured by sign to show where and how it was hurt. But I was utterly unprepared for what my captor did next. He took me by the arms and laid me over his shoulders, pulling the plaid which he wore about my body as a kind of supporting belt. Then with slow steady strides he began to descend the hill. I suffered agonies lest we should both fall, and my ankle pained me till I nearly wept with sheer agony. At last, with a fling of his foot, my captor threw aside a door, stepped down a short ladder, and 1 found myself stretched upon some straw. Then a candle was lit, and the flame, sinking to nothing and rising again, presently illuminated a little barn halftilled with sheaves and fodder. Upon a heap of the latter 1 was lying, with my head away from the door. “So,” said he who had brought me, “I hae catched ye, sirrah!” I saw my man now —a tall old patriarch with abundant grizzled hair, his face clean-shaven and having a fringe of grey beard beneath the chin. His expression was stem, even fierce, and the eyes, under bushy’ eyebrows that were still raven-black, looked out undimmed by years and unsoftened by pity’. It was a mediaeval .almost a savagecountenance; even so, 1 thought, might Rob Roy himself have looked in his wilder moments. I had to recur to my wounded foot to convince myself that I had left a nineteenth century railway station less than ten hours before. Was it possible that this was the reason why my uncle did not visit his Galloway tenants’? And did this one wish to square a deficiency in his rent bv making an end of his landlord ? But the old man did not offer to touch me again, not even to release me from my bonds. He simply threw a few empty com-sacks over me, removed my gag. picked up the lantern and went out with these words: “Bide ye there, my man. till T am ready’ for you!”

But whether he went to dig my grave or take his supper I could not make out: though the speculation was not without some elements of interest. At any rate he locked the door behind him. and I was left alone in the black blank darkness of the barn. It was poor enough cheer, and I began to shiver with the cold of the moss hags in my bones. Whether that exercise helped to loosen the bonds about my wrists 1 know not —perhaps they were hastily tied. At any rate it was not long before 1 had my hands loose. Then I could take the knotted handkerchief with its short crossknuckle of bog-oak out of my mouth. But 1 could do no more to make myself easy. My foot and ankle were already' terribly painful, and the latter, as 1 could feel with my hand, had swollen almost to double its usual size. After that 1 cannot tell very well what happened for some time. It may seem impossible, but I think that 1 slept —at least, certain it is that the night passed somehow-, between dozing and shivering. Hot flushes passed over me. with wafts of that terrible feeling of “falling away” which precedes fever.

ben 1 awoke in the morning, it seemed that I saw a. young girl sitting opposite me on the edge of an overturned bushel measure. She had her chin in the hollow of her palm, et my head was so whirled about with the trouble which was on me that 1 eould not be sure, till she rose and came close to me with a pitying look in her eyes. Then I tried to think of something to say to her which might explain who I was, and how I came thither. For I began to be sure there had been some mistake.

However I could think of nothing but what day it was. So I said to her as *he approached, in the most commonplace way possible. "I wish you a merry Christmas.” Yet all the time 1 knew very well that I was making a consummate fool of myself. The girl seemed checked at my words. She stopped, and theu, touched perhaps by the ridiculous anomaly of my, appearance and my eommonplace greeting, she burst into a ringing peal of laughter. I think 1 laughed too a little, but 1 am not sure. When next 1 came to myself I was being supported upon elouds, or down, or at least by something equally pleasant and soft, whereat I opened my eyes and there was the girl, bending over me and trying to get some hot liquid down my’ throat out of a long thin-stemmed glass. As soon as she saw that I was conscious she said. "Are you the excise officer from Port Mary who has been watching my’ great-uncle?" “No,” said I. “my name is Henry Grierson: 1 come from London. Where am I?” But she sat up with a face of great horror. “Not the exciseman? Why. you are never Hal Grierson —my cousin?’ “That is my name.” I said, steadied bv the situation. “1 came to look for a grandfather I never knew 1 possessed till a week or two ago! His name is John Arrol. and he lives at the Cothouse of Curly-wee!” The girl smiled a little. “This is the Cothouse of Curly’wee, and mv great-uncle mistook you for a <>au«-er —-an exciseman. It is a mercy he did not kill you. But wait. I will bring him. He will be soiry. Bv this time 1 had forgotten the pain in mv head, and I was none so eagei for the presence of my terrible relative. . “Please wait a moment. 1 want to ask your name,” I said, looking up at her. a _ •‘Mv name is Elsa Arrol, she answered frankly and in a cultivated manner. “My father used to live here during 1 the last years of his life, and when he died I had to leave school in Edinburgh and come to Curlywee to keep house for my great-uncle.” “Then you are my cousin?’ I said with some eagerness. “Yes, a cousin of a sort: not a first cousin.” And even then I was glad somehow of so much kinship. “Will you shake hands with your new cousin before you go? ’ I said. “I will do better,” she answered, fluttering down from the edge of the corn mow where she had seated herself. “This is Christmas Day, and the cobwebs on the roof will serve for mistletoe.”

And soft as a snowflake I was aware of a waft of perfumed air, and something that might have been a butterfly and might have been a pair of Ifps alighted to mv forehead for a moment. “There! You wiil think lam a bold madam, but you are ill and deserve a better greeting than a handshake after what von have gone through.” Again 1 was left alone, but not for long. I saw the fierce old man again in the doorway, his brow still gloomy, though it was no longer angry.” “This lass tells me you are not the Port Mary gauger,” he said with a hard aceent. “that you come from London. Is this true?” “It is,” said I briefly, for I thought of the knuckle of bog oak between my jaws. “Then what might you be doing on my hill at midnight of a. winter’s nicht?” “Well,” I returned with some point, “it is in a way my hill also. At least if it be a part of the property of Curlywee left me by my uncle, the late Walter Arrol. of Highgate.” “What!” he cried a little hoarsely. “Ye are never my Annie’s boy —wee Harry Grierson?” “The same,” I said, still curtly, for 1 wanted to see how he would extricate himself. He stood frowning awhile and stripping the piles from a head of corn.

“Ye will not misunderstand me If 1 confess that I am grieved for what has happened,” he said, with a certain stern and manifest dignity of bearing which become him. “1 am sorry, not because ye are now my landlord and 1 your tenant and debtor, but because I have made a mistak’ and showed but poor hospitality to the wayfaring

man.” “Say no more about it." 1 answered, "but give me a lied to lie down on and a pillow for mv head, for I am very ill." The old man lifted me in his arms like a child ami carried me into his own room, where he laid me down. Then with a skill, |>atience, and tenderness I could not have lielieved possible he undressed me and laid me on his own bed. When this was done he called Elsa and she brought hot water to bathe my swollen ankle, now in girth well-nigh as thick as my thigh. He said not a word more about his rough treatment of me, nor did he mention his son. my late uncle, nor yet the quarrel which had separated them in life. All that strange Christmas Day 1 was light-headed, and these two gave me brews of a certain herb-tea, famed in Galloway as a febrifuge. I dozed off to find my cousin Elsa still unweariedly pouring hot water over my foot, or coming in with a new poultice of marshmallow leaves in her hands. 1 suppose 1 must have talked a great deal of nonsense. Indeed, Elsa told me afterwards that 1 made a great many very personal remarks upon her eyes and hair, which made her blush for shame before her great-uncle. 1 found myself somewhat better, however, the next morning, and was able to join in the exercise of familyworship. which my grandfather conducted at great length, reading two or three chapters of names and genealogies out of the historical books of tiie Old Testament, in a loud, harsh voice, as if he had a spite against them. Then reverently laying the great Bible aside, he stood up to pray. I noticed that as he did so he smoothed his grey badger's brush of haildown on top as if it were a part of t he ceremony. When he had finished praying my grandfather stood awhile, and then sat down beside me. ‘Elsa.’’ he said, “will you betake yourself to the kitchen for a space? 1 have something to say to this young man that is only for a man and a kinsman to hear.” Mv cousin obediently’ vanished. 1 never heard so light a footfall. “Now, sir.” said the old man, “you have been brought up in another school, and may misunderstand. But 1 must e’en tak’ the risk of that. .Did vour uncle give you any religious training?” . "He never mentioned the subject to me. sir!” 1 said. For my uncle, though a good man, had been neither churchgoer nor church lover. “ \re vou a true Presbyterian, then ! Or are ve one of the worshippers of the Scarlet Woman that sitteth upon the Seven Hills?” -1 have not really thought much about it,” I replied. “1 am a Christian —1 believe 1 may say though indeed 1 have no claims to be thought better than my neighbours indeed the contrary! "Then." said the old man, frownin°-. “I fear ve are no better than a heathen man and a publican.” "But.” 1 cried, “was there not One born this Christmas Day "ho was partial to the company of publicans and sinners?” 1 thought 1 had him there, but he evaded me. "That is in the New Testament! he retorted, somewhat disparagingly. "You will not understand, but listen. 1 am an old Cameronian, as my fathers were before me. No one of us has ever owned an uncovenanted King. Arrols not a few have gone to prison and to judgment because we wouldn’t bow the knee to tyranny in the laud and prelaw in the Kirk. T had never paid a King’s cess or tax till the law distrained upon my goods. And I have continued to bake my bread and brew my drink as my fathers did before me. And who shall say me nay? Not any gauger that ever tapped a barrel!” I certainly had no intention of doing so. but 'all the same it seemed a curious thing to have smuggling and illicit distilling thus put, as it were, upon a religious basis. The old man continued: "Therefore it was that I mistook ye for the spy of the Queen’s Excise. I had watched the pair craitur nosing about the hilHtops for a day or two. I fear I used you somewhat roughly in my haste. For that 1 ask your pardon.” I hastened to assure him that I never bore a grudge. He thrust out his hand at the word.

“No more do I.” he said: quickly adding. however, “that is. no after it is satisfied!” It was thus that I spent my Christmas Day in the Cothouse of Curlywee. It was three weeks more before I could lehve my chair, ami a month before I was able to return south to business. So that it was well my uncle bail left competent men in charge. During this time, not unnaturally I saw a good deal of my cousin. I thought her every day more charming, as she certainly grew more Ixautifu). As for my grandfather, he used to lie out upon the brae-faces with a long spy-glass, looking for the -exciseman from Port Mary.” But that gentleman showed the excellence of his judgment by obstinately staying away. When at last I set out over the moor towards the station, I rode upon a strong shelf ie. Elsa came with me part of the way. to -convoy me off the ground." as she said. At our parting-place 1 asked her a certain question, which at first she refused to answer directly. Afterwards she stated that she had conscientious scruples about the marriage of cousins and other near relatives. However. 1 am not without the strongest reasons for hoping that these objections are not insuperable, and that they will be overcome by next Christmas Eve. Already I have observed tokens of wavering. But in any case we will not tell my grandfather till the last moment. for where he will get a housekeeper to dwell alone in the Cothouse of Curlywee is more than either of us can tell. Meantime T am grateful for all that my Christmas Eve search for a grandfather has brought me. and still more for what it promises to bring. (The End.)