Flower o' the Heather: A Story of the Killing TimesMacKenna, Robert William
History
Flower o' the Heather: A Story of the Killing Times
MacKenna, Robert William
Adventure stories; Covenanters -- Scotland -- Fiction; Love stories; Scotland -- History -- 17th century -- Fiction
A blaze of light as though the sun had sprung full armoured to the
height of heaven smote upon my eyes. I opened them, but in that
brilliant glare I could see nothing, though I heard voices about me:
"Wha’ think ye he can be?"
"He hasna got a kent face," a woman’s voice replied. "Some puir gangrel
body nae doot. But what can he be daein’ off the high road?"
I let the light filter through a chink between my eyelids, and when I
could bear its full brightness I opened them and looked around me. A
little group of five people bent over me--an old man, holding a lantern,
an old woman, and three young men whom I took to be their sons.
As I looked round there came to me out of the depths some memory of the
happenings of the night. I wondered dimly if the tragedy of which I had
been witness were reality, or dream. Who could these people be? Were
they some chance Samaritans who had come upon me bound hand and foot,
and delivered me from the hands of the persecutors? As I wondered I
heard the old woman say to her husband:
"Think ye he can be a hill-man? sic another as we found in the laigh
field after Rullion Green."
Hill-man! hill-man! the words burned themselves into my torpid brain. I
gathered all my strength, and raising myself so suddenly that they fell
away from me startled, I cried, "For the love of God, tell me, are you
hill-folks?"
"What o’ that, what o’ that?" asked the old man cautiously.
Then I threw discretion to the winds. "Tell me," I cried, my voice
breaking, "are you hill-men, for I bring tidings that will brook no
delay."
They gathered round me again and looked at me with anxious eyes.
"Got wi’ it, lad," cried the old man, almost as excited as myself, and
with what speed I could I told them all. Breathlessly they listened.
"God in heaven, save us," groaned the old man as I finished, and then,
turning to his sons he cried: "Boys, it’s yours to carry the message
through. Awa’ wi’ ye! Post men at the cross-roads, scatter the news far
and wide, and the Cause may yet be saved."
Like hounds from the leash the lads sprang away into the darkness. With
failing sight I saw them go, then I sank back again wearily and knew no
more.
Long afterwards I was conscious in a dim kind of way of being lifted
from the ground and borne gently over what seemed to be an interminable
distance; but I was too drowsy and fatigued to care what was happening
to me. When I opened my eyes I found myself lying on a soft bed in a
small farm kitchen. A glowing fire was on the hearth and its pleasant
warmth pervaded the room. The good man of the house brought me a drink
of something hot, which put new life in my veins and I was my own man
again.
I would fain have talked to my rescuers, but they forbade me, and I sank
once more into a drowse, but ere I slept I heard, as I had heard so
often in the old house at Daldowie, the good man opening the Book and
saying, "Let us worship God by singing to His praise a part of the 124th
Psalm."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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