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
Then when I had stripped him, I cast about in my mind for some means to
give him burial. Not far away I knew there was a gash in the hill-side
where once some primeval tarn had been. Reverently I lifted his body
and bore it thither. Gently I laid it down, and standing with bowed
head under the starlit sky, I pronounced over that noble dust all I
could remember of the English burial service. Did ever Covenanter have
a stranger burial? I trow not. Then reverently I happed him over with
heather and brackens and turf which I tore from the hill-side, and
laboured on until the trench was filled and I had built a cairn of
stones over it.
So I left him sleeping there, and, as I turned away, I was overwhelmed
by a sense of loss and loneliness.
I gathered up the clothing which I had taken from his body, and bore it
to the side of the loch. There, from the coat, I washed the stains of
blood, and laid it on the sward to dry.
Occupied as I had been, I was unconscious of the flight of time; but I
was reminded by a sudden access of hunger. A problem faced me, for I
had no food of my own. For days I had been depending on the charity of
my friend; and I did not know where his store lay hidden. In that
wilderness it was well secreted lest any questing bird or four-footed
creature of the moorlands might find it. A sudden apprehension seized
me, and, with its coming, my hunger disappeared. I hurried to the place
where we were wont to take our evening meal together, and then I walked
in the direction which he had usually taken when he went to fetch the
provender. I sought beneath likely tussocks of heather and under the
shadow of boulders and beneath the shelves of overhanging turf, where
some sheep, aforetime, had had a rubbing place. But nowhere could I
find a trace of his store. Baffled, I determined that I would seek my
hiding-place and lie down to sleep for the rest of the night. In the
morning, with the help of the light, perhaps my quest would be rewarded.
So I betook myself to my heather bed, and as I crawled under the
bracken--and laid myself down, I thought how, but for the divine charity
of my dead friend, I should at that hour have been sleeping the sleep of
death.
*CHAPTER XIII*
*PURSUED*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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