Zachary Brough's Venture

Front matter

VANNA MAP OF TXCHGLAS PARISH. Roads _^_________= F00t_ftaths :;;;•.-_.-.-.-.- VANNA By Mark McClellan LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN All rights reserved. CONTENTS PAGE Chapter I. {July, 1753) . . 7 Chapter II. {July, 1759) . • 17 Chapter III. {July, 1759) . . 37 Chapter IV. {August, 1759) . . 57 Chapter V. {September, 1759) . 75 Chapter VI. {September, 1759) • 91 Chapter VII. {October, 1759) . 105 Chapter VIII. {October, 1759) . 119 Chapter IX. {October, 1759) . 123 Chapter X. {November- December, 1759) . . .129 Chapter XL {June, 1764 — January 1766) . . . VANNA.

Chapter I

(7"(V» J753-) THE summer holidays had lately begun at the parish school of Inchglas, and the scholars were roaming from morning to night in the Burn Glen, and by the seashore, and along the heughs. On the evening which begins this story, four of them — William and Jock Monro, the Minister's sons, and their cousin, Hugh Monro, the Captain's son, and Patrick Cockburn, the second son VANNA, of the Laird of Tintolea — were coming along the Tintolea heughs with rods from the Doon rock, where they had been fishing all day — the Doon rock runs a good way out into the sea, and from a ledge at the foot of it you can fish with a rod in deep water. When they came to the place where the Tintolea heughs slope, and in parts fall in yellow scaurs, down to the Burn Glen, they met another company of roaming scholars who had climbed up from the Glen.

These were Peter and Andrew Morrison, Knock's sons, and their sisters Jean and Agnes, and the foreign lassie, Vanna, who lived with them. The Knock boys called out to the fishers to come and see a nest of bees they had found. It was in the side of a knowe which rises clear of the whin bushes, close to the edge of the heugh, VANNA 9 just above the scaur nearest to the sea. There were the bees, one by one coming home for the night, and going down, among the sea-pinks and thyme, into a hole in the side of the knowe. Patrick Cockburn began by cutting out a large sod of the turf round the hole with his knife. When the sod was lifted, the end of a thin, flat stone was laid bare, and the hole was seen to slant beneath it, between the edge of it and another stone. A few bees came out of the hole and flew angrily about, while the boys cut away the shallow turf, till the flat stone could be lifted.

It was the lid of an ancient coffin, and there was the skeleton in the fine, dry earth between the side-slabs, the upper part of the skull broken away, but the jaws there, and the white teeth, and the ribs in order, and the arms on each VANNA side, and the long leg-bones stretched out. The three lassies had been standing in a row, watching the boys breaking into the bees' nest. When the skeleton was all at once uncovered, nobody spoke for a moment or two ; then Jean Mor rison caught her sister's hand to draw her away, and said to her brothers, " Come awa' hame, boys, it'll soon be getting dark " ; but the foreign lassie, Vanna, stood looking at the bones, shaking her black hair, and smiting the bees away from it with a branch of rowan berries. The other boys might perhaps have taken Jean's advice, for the sun had gone down behind the Fell, and though it was still light it was not daylight, and they all felt eerie ; but the cheerful words of Jock Monro made them stay : " He's an auld Druid !

Maybe treasure's VANNA, 11 buried wi' him — maybe gold rings and chains ! " So he and Patrick Cockburn firstset about groping in the earth among the bones and the drowsy bees, and then, when they found nothing in this way, began to take the bones out of the coffin and the earth in handfuls, and searched each handful separately on the grass, to see if they could find any thing. The others, boys and lassies, stood round watching, and saying nothing, till somebody whispered, " Vanna's greeting." Vanna heard, and when she saw them looking at her, she came a step forward, stripping the berries off the rowan branch and letting them fall ; her eyes were bright with tears — she had grown very beautiful in the last year — and she sobbed out, " Patrick Cockburn, how daur ye ! Put back VANNA his banes, and cover them wi' the stane !

I tell ye, put back his banes ! " Patrick Cockburn said not a word, but obeyed; and when he and Jock Monro had put all the bones back in their place (all but one which Jock had in his pocket), the other boys helped them to lift the covering-stone and put it on the coffin again, and hap it over with the sods. Then the company started to go home, down from the heughs and across the Burn Glen. Vanna walked a little way apart from the others, and nobody spoke to her, for she was still greeting. Before this story goes on further, we must go back a few years, and tell who Vanna was. She was an Italian girl — now about thirteen years old — who had lived at the Knock with the Morrisons, as a VANNA 13 child of the house, since the night, seven years ago, when her father's brig, the Stella, of Palermo, was wrecked on the rocks in the Knock farm.

Her mother and all others on board were drowned and lost, but her father, the master of the brig, helped by the Knock folk, who came down with ropes, man aged to swim ashore with his little daughter. They were taken to the Knock, but he sank through the night, and died in the morning. The little Giovanna was brought up with the Knock children as a sister, and became in speech and life one of them, a Scottish lassie — except for her father's grave. His grave was in the Auld Kirkyard, where the ruin of the kirk is, in the Knock farm, under the heughs, down on the shore — there is a part of it, by the thorn-bush, under the VANNA wall next the sea-beach, where several shipwrecked sailors are buried. Of her father himself Vanna had only a very dim memory. Her earliest clear memory was of his grave ; she remem bered being taken to it before the little headstone, with his name and the date, was put up.

She went oftener and oftener to his grave as she grew older, and could go down to the Auld Kirkyard alone ; indeed, the other children were 'feared to go there with her — it was an eerie place among the old trees, and she was so unlike one of themselves and herself when she was there. But it was not till after the Great Storm that she began to go regularly, at fixed times. The Great Storm was in the January of this present year, 1753, on a Saturday night. There was a violent gale from the west, and a high VANNA 15 tide, and the sea broke a slap in the wall between the sailors' graves and the beach, and threw up sand and gravel and seaweed on the graves. As soon as it was light on the Sabbath morning, she ran down to the Auld Kirk yard — it is only across one field from the house — to find out if any harm had been done, for she was always in anxiety about the sea, and her father's grave being so near the sea.

When they came back from the kirk in the afternoon, she could not rest till she got the boys, Peter and Andrew, and the farm lad to come down with her and build up the slap. She took a rake with her, and raked off the gravel and seaweed herself, and the boys built up the wall, working till after dark on the Sabbath night. After this, as I have said, she went down regularly at fixed times. All VANNA through this summer of 1753 she used to go down every Sabbath afternoon between the time when they got home from the kirk and the time when Knock used to hear them say their Questions ; and some boys told that one Sabbath, when they were passing along the shore, they heard her singing — she was a bonnie singer — they said that they saw her standing at the head of her father's grave, and heard her singing.

But, as I have said, except for her father's grave, she was a Scottish lassie — and a bonnie and blithe one, and the cleverest of them' all at the Inchglas school.

Chapter II

{July, 1759.) THE kirk of Inchglas is not in the village, but stands about a mile inland, among tall ash-trees. There is a new manse built near it now, but in the year 1759 the kirk stood by itself, and the minister lived in the old manse which was just beyond the end of the village of Inchglas, on the Tintolea road, opposite the Knock road end. It was a warm day, and the two end doors of the kirk were left open for air. Dr. Monro had given out the text of the first sermon — in summer there were two sermons — and the folk VANNA were all finding the place in their books, and you could hear the corn craiks calling round about the kirk in the Kirk-land Fey. Before the sermon begins — and while it goes on — there will be time to look at the congregation. Facing the minister, in a front seat, a wee wrinkled man sat by himself, clean shaven, with bushy grey eye brows, and a brown wig showing green in certain lights.

He had found the text sooner than anybody else, and, in evidence thereof, had taken off his gold spectacles and laid them on his bible. This was Mr. Robert Reid, the Parish Teacher, a good Latin scholar, and a notable handler of the tawes in his day, though now less severe, they said. He had come to Inchglas as Teacher when he was a very young man, and there were not many in the kirk now whom VANNA 19 he had not taught. His wife had died long ago, soon after he came to Inch glas, and their only child, a daughter, was now married out of the parish. On a line with Mr. Robert, in the other front seat, the Minister's brother, Captain James Monro, sat with his daughter, Miss Margaret, and his son Hugh. Hugh, whom we have seen before, six years ago, at the Druid's Grave, was now about eighteen, learning to be a doctor at Edinburgh College, and home for his summer holidays.

The Captain was a big man, and sat up very straight. He had a ruddy complexion, and large grey whiskers, and wore a wig not unlike Mr. Robert's in make and shade. He took snuff very deliberately, out of a silver snuff-box, after the text was given out, before he put on his spectacles to find the place in his book. But Miss Margaret had VANNA already found it, and passed her book along to her father. And what was Miss Margaret like ? She was like the honeysuckle flower that lay on the book-board before her — bonnie, bonnie : grey eyes and long eyelashes under the white bonnet with the pink ribbon. Her mother died when Hugh was born. The Captain was at sea, on the voyage out to Calcutta, in his ship the East Indiaman Cathay, when his wife died. He made only two more voyages after, and then retired from the sea, and came with Margaret and Hugh to live at Inchglas in the Big House — the old lady of Tintolea lived in it after the old laird's death, and it was when she died that the Captain came.

It is the three-storied white house with the walled garden, beyond the mill, ;at the low end of the village. The house was full of VANNA 21 foreign things which the Captain had collected on his voyages ; these things were the wonder of the Inchglas boys, Hugh's friends, and made most of them resolve to go to sea — savages' bows and arrows (poisoned arrows !), and spears, and head-gear, and Chinese idols, and great horns of antelopes, and sword fishes, and beautiful wee humming-birds in a glass case, and an ostrich's egg, and pistols, and a long gun, and swords, and tigers' skins, and the head of a lion, stuffed, with his mouth open, and great yellow eyes ! But our thoughts are wandering far away from the kirk of Inchglas ! — that corn-craik will bring them back, calling so close under the window on the minister's right, so close that Archie Morrison, the Benjamin of the Knock family, out of sight hitherto at the head of the seat between Agnes and the VANNA window, has jumped half up, and is craning his neck to look out of the window, in hope of seeing the Voice.

Agnes has pulled him down into his seat, and a smile is passing along a row of comely faces — first Agnes, and then Mary, and then Jean — in Jean's eyes fading away into demureness. Next is their mother, and then Andrew who lives at home — Peter has gone out to America — and then, with his arm hang ing over the door of the seat, Knock himself, honest man, already nodding. Vanna is not there. She does not live at the Knock now ; she has gone into service, to be waiting-maid to Miss Mary Cockburn of Tintolea, and just now she is gone with her young mistress who is visiting away by Tweed-side. Under the Tintolea loft — on the minister's right — a few seats behind the Knock seat, not far from the kirk-door, VANNA 23 that great muckle black-aviced dour looking man is Sandy McCulloch, the grieve of Tintolea.

He always sits with the door of his seat half-open and his leg out in the passage, and is the first man to get out of the kirk after the blessing is said. In the same seat with him is a good looking fair-haired lad, with a smart, soldier-like bearing — this is Ian Robert son, the young keeper who came to Tintolea last year from the Highlands. He is looking steadily away into the dark corner, at the far end of the kirk, where Ellen Bell is sitting. It is too far for us to see for ourselves what Ellen is like — whether she is bonnie or no ; but Ian's eyes " are sharp to see," and they say plainly that she is the bonniest lass in the kirk — aye, and in braid Scotland. Her father, Geordie Bell, and her two young brothers are VANNA there. Geordie has a wee croft by the shore, before you come round to the Knock from Inchglas, and a good lump of a boat.

He is mostly at the fishing in the summer-time ; but, when the nights are long, it is fishing of another sort, they say — it is slipping across from the Isle of Man with brandy, and claret, and webs of silk, if the revenue-cutter is out of the way. Ellen was the bonniest lass in the kirk — so thought poor Ian under the Tintolea loft ; but alas ! in the loft above him Mr. Patrick Cockburn thought the same. In the loft, sitting in the middle of the seat, were the Laird and the Lady — he with a face like cold iron, and she fragile and tearful-looking. Next his mother sat Mr. Patrick, now about twenty — a winning fair face it was, perhaps chiefly noticeable for the eyes being set wide apart. VANNA 25 Mr. Patrick, as we know, was the second son. His elder brother, the young laird, was away with his regiment in America, fighting the French, for the Colonists, on the St. Lawrence.

It was to the law that Mr. Patrick was being bred. In due course, it was hoped, he would be admitted Advocate, and then would become Lord Advocate — so his fond mother thought — and, at last, a Lord of Session, like her grandfather. Next to the laird was Mr. — or rather now, Dr. — David Hamilton. He had been Mr. Patrick's tutor at Tintolea in summer, and in Edinburgh through the winter, for the last five years, having at the same time carried on his own work as a medical student. Now he had just taken his doctor's degree, and had returned to Tintolea with Mr. Patrick only a few days ago, intending to settle down and practise at Inchglas, VANNA where he had become well known. He was staying at Tintolea till the house he had taken in the village was ready to receive him. Dr. David — as we must now call him — was about five years Mr. Patrick's senior — a well-favoured, noticeable man, with a spirited, " aye ready " look in his face.

No stranger who had come to Inchglas of late years had won his way so well as Mr. David in the regard of everybody, gentle and simple, by good sense, and by kindly ways and words, and, not least of all, by excellence in trials of bodily strength and skill : there was no one better with gun or rod in the whole lower district than Mr. David ; and as for walking — had he not walked from Edinburgh in two days and a half over the hills, beating Mr. Patrick and the riders ? The manse seat — a high square seat VANNA 27 — was close under the pulpit on the minister's left. Mrs. Monro, the minis ter's wife, was in it, and her younger son Jock. Jock was now a lad of eighteen, at home doing nothing, and not likely ever to do anything that needed much steady application. He spent most of his time fishing with Geordie Bell, and during the last year he had been well entered by Geordie in the smuggling business — he knew all the quiet landing-places on this side, and along the Manx coast from the Point of Ayre to Peel, as well as Geordie himself.

He had picked up some knowledge of the Manx language, and was useful to Geordie, who was not a linguist, in dealing with the foreigners. Indeed he was improving his Manx on the present occasion by means of a Manx Bible in which he tried to follow his father's reading of the chapters. VANNA William, the minister's elder son, was of a very different stamp. He had obtained a commission lately, through the influence of the Tintolea family, and was in the same regiment as the young laird in America fighting the French. It was a serious time — this year 1759 — and letters were being anxiously looked for. In due time the kirk came out, to the joy of the collie-dogs accustomed to wait patiently outside — at any rate, patiently, till they heard the ha'pennies clinking into the ladles. The Laird and the Lady drove away by themselves in the old yellow Tintolea carriage — the only wheeled vehicle in the district, except two or three carts ; for the roads were at this time few and bad — indeed mostly mere tracks fitted only for riders ; and peats, and corn, and every kind of merchandise had to VANNA 29 be carried on the backs of galloways.

There was, however, even at this time, a fair road from the kirk of Inchglas down to the village, and up from the village to Tintolea House. Dr. David and Mr. Patrick walked down the road from the kirk with Captain Monro and Miss Margaret and Hugh ; but Mr. Patrick and Hugh soon went on before, and walked with Jock Monro. The Captain made the pace for his party, stumping slowly along with his walking-stick, and, when he came to the more important parts of his discourse, stopping and facing round to Dr. David with great emphasis. The Captain had always a great deal to say, but to Dr. David to-day more than usual, not having seen him for over six months. Miss Margaret was not included in VANNA the conversation — indeed it was not conversation, for Dr. David was only a listener, though a good listener.

Miss Margaret therefore beguiled the way — especially when her father stopped — by gathering harebells which grew here and there along the roadside. When they got over the brae between the whin hedges, where you first come in sight of the sea and of the village of Inchglas, and were near the stile where the footpath — a short cut to the Captain's house — goes off to the left, Dr. David spied a white harebell growing on his side of the road. He plucked it deftly in passing, without seeming to be inattentive to the Captain's discourse, and, a minute after, handed it, behind the Captain, to Miss Margaret, without speaking. Miss Margaret took it with a smile and a pretty look, saying nothing — for VANNA indeed her father was just then in the middle of a very emphatic passage about the danger of making the American colonists too strong by fighting the French for them ; but he must have been vaguely conscious that some thing trivial and sentimental had taken place, for he finished his sentence sooner than was to be expected, and stopped, and pointed up to the sky with his walking - stick, and said, " A braw singer that laverock !

A braw bird ! " — then walked on, resuming the thread of his serious discourse. When they came to the stile where Dr. David had to part from the Captain and Miss Margaret, there was a long time of standing, while the Captain talked, and Dr. David listened, his eyes often turning to Miss Margaret and her harebells — the bonnie white one in the middle of the blue ones. VANNA. After he parted from the Captain and Miss Margaret, Dr. David pushed quickly on, and found Mr. Patrick and Hugh and Jock sitting on the dyke, waiting for him, near the entrance of the village. When Dr. David came up, Jock was maintaining that everybody — at least everybody in the south of Scotland — should learn Manx ; and, to enforce, or illustrate, his opinion, was repeating the Manx numerals, up to ten, in a loud voice.

Hugh turned to the left at the mill to go home, while Dr. David and Mr. Patrick and Jock took their way to the right up the Tintolea Row. When they came near to the Knock road end opposite the Manse, they saw the Bells — Geordie himself and Ellen and one of the boys — standing at the parting of the ways talking to Ian Robertson, who VANNA 33 had walked so far from the kirk with them. When Ian saw Mr. Patrick and his two friends coming up, he took leave of the Bells, and walked briskly up the Tintolea road, just once looking back to have a last sight of Ellen — but his last sight of her was standing talking to Mr. Patrick. In those days, in that remote part of Scotland, all, gentle and simple, were educated together at the parish school, and met in after life on easy friendly terms. No doubt Mr. Patrick was a gentleman, and the laird's son, which meant quite as much to Ellen as it would to a country girl to-day ; but he was also her old schoolfellow ; and to Mr. Patrick Ellen was still a lass that he kenned at the school.

So there was nothing unusual in their friendly greet ing, after Mr. Patrick's six months' absence. VANNA Ellen was a fine well-grown lass, blue eyed, with a bonnie douce face ; and she was as good as she was bonnie — - kind to her mother who was not strong, and a grand worker in the house and out of it, and — this was well known to Jock and others in Inchglas — a courageous lass who had known how to help her father when things looked their worst for him. Everybody thought well of Ellen for her virtues — and some, Mr. Patrick evidently among them, were in love with her for her bonnie sel' ; but, as I have said, there was nothing unusual in his speaking to her on this occasion, and Ian's Highland blood was boiling, perhaps without sufficient reason. After a few minutes Mr. Patrick and Dr. David went on, and as they parted from Jock at the Manse gate, Jock told them he was going round with Geordie VANNA 35 Bell to the Cave early next morning — a boat with kegs of rum was coming over from the Isle of Man — she was to sail that night as soon as it was dark.

As Dr. David and Mr. Patrick went up the Tintolea road together, Mr. Patrick said, " It's still the same, David ! I told you it would aye be the same. I canna leave her. I'll speak to her the morn — and we'll gang awa' to America, and take a farm and settle there. I carena what my father says ! Dr. David said — "But, Patrick lad, maybe Ellen '11 no gang wi' ye." "I'll spier," replied Mr. Patrick, indignantly — I'll spier o' her the morn ! " Dr. David answered, " Weel, Patrick, ye maun please yoursel' ; but I think it would be better for Ellen if ye left VANNA her alane — she would hae a happier life in after years than wi' you awa' in America and baith o' ye maybe wishing to come hame and no liking to come." "I'll spier o' her the morn," said Mr. Patrick, still indignantly ; then added, " What gars ye think that she'll no gang wi' me ?

" "Oh, nought!" replied Dr. David. " I said she'll maybe no : it's no easy to tell what a lass is thinking o'." "I'll spier o' her," said Mr. Patrick again. Then they walked on in silence, Dr. David wondering what answer Miss Margaret would give himself if he spiered o' her.

Chapter III

{July, 1759.) AT daybreak Geordie and Jock and Geordie's two boys went round in the boat to the Cave. The Cave is on the Knock shore, between the Auld Kirk yard and the Burn Mouth. In calm weather a boat can be rowed into it ; indeed, it is hardly possible to get into it except by boat, for the way down the cliffs to it is very dangerous. Out of the boat you step, to the left, upon a ledge about four feet wide, which runs along the side of the cave ; and, walking in on this ledge for a few yards, you come to the entrance of a side-cave. VANNA It was in this side-cave that the kegs, which Geordie expected from the Isle of Man, were to be stored ; afterwards they would be taken round by the boat, at opportune times, to the beach at the Burn Mouth, and sent inland on ponies. This side-cave was a place which everybody, even Geordie himself, re garded with awe.

No one had ever gone further than thirty or forty feet into it, for it was believed to be the entrance of a subterranean passage lead ing to a ruined castle many miles inland. A man and his dog, so the tale ran, once went in at the castle-end of the passage ; the man never was seen again, but the dog came out at the Cave with his hair singed. While Geordie and his companions were waiting in the Cave for the Manx man, Ellen was stationed on the heugh above to look out, and warn them, if VANNA 39 she saw the revenue cutter, by rolling a stone over the edge of the cliff" down upon the low rocks near the mouth of the Cave. If the cutter, which had not been seen in these parts for the last few weeks, appeared, the Manxman would probably be caught ; but Geordie, warned in time, could slip away home with his boat.

The morning wore on — a beautiful still morning, one sail — probably the Manxman becalmed — far out on the shining sky-line of the sea ; while Ellen sat on a knowe, knitting a grey stocking, and keeping watch. In the middle of her watch she was startled by a commotion in the whins hard by, and out rushed, to greet her, her friend Peerie, one of the Tintolea terriers, by which sign she knew that either Ian or Mr. Patrick was near. It was Ian, who soon came tramping VANNA along. When he saw Ellen his face flushed up, and it seemed as if he was going to pass without stopping ; but he stopped sharply, like a soldier at the word of command, and turned and came and sat down on the knowe beside her without saying a word. Peerie pressed himself between them, and sat blinking at the sun, and wagging his tail.

Ellen was the first to speak — " Yon's no the cutter ! Surely no ! " pointing to the one sail in sight. Ian said, " 'Deed I hae nae skill o' cutters." Silence, which Peerie seemed to find oppressive, for he rose and put his paws on Ellen's shoulder, and licked her cheek, and threw her knitting-pins and yarn into confusion. Ellen defended herself against Peerie as best she could, and expostulated with VANNA 41 him, and, at last, said — " Gang awa' ye bad dog ye, and hunt rabbits wi' your master ! " Then Ian broke silence with, " Come awa', Peerie ! " and rose. Peerie at once stood at attention, his eye on his master ; but Ian stood still, half turned away from Ellen. Then Peerie gave an impatient little bark ; and Ellen looked up from her tangled yarn, and said in a whisper — " Wheesht, Peerie, wheesht !