The Standard Bearer

which, being seen and overpast in an hour, changed all my life, and so in time by t

and kicking up my heels among the collie tykes, with many another shep

sits on the purple braeface above the loch of Ken, with a little circumambient yard enclosed by cattle-offices

when I have tried so mickle of bliss and teen, and wearied my life out in so many wanderin

father had to go for a while into hiding-not that he was any over-strenuous Covenant man, but solely because he had never in his life refused bite and s

e great sloughing beeches and firs about the door ever found any of the three of us in our beds. For me, I was up and away to the hills-where so

nd chummering in their nests, while the wood-doves' moan rose plaintive from every copse and covert-it was a fit birthplace for a young lad's soul. Though indeed at that time none was farther from guessing it than Quintin MacClellan. For as I went hither and thither I pondered on nothing except the fin

, made a Covenant man, and even a fairly consistent follower of the Hill Folk. Neither will I bide to speak of my brothers Hob and David, for their names and characters will have occasion to appear as I write down my own strange history. Nor yet can I pause to tell of the sweetness a

nan top the twenty-first day of June-high Midsummer Day

ddening the heather behind dyke-backs. There was indeed little talk of anything else throughout all the land of the South and West.{5} But it so chanced that our House of Ardarroch, bein

ther, whom we had entertained on such a night and whom on such another. After this occasion it was judged expedient that my father should kee

ly, and no startling and personal evil befal-tales of ill, unseen and unproven, fall on the ear like the clatter

Midsummer Day of

which had just been brought from a neighbouring lowland farm to summer upon our scanty upland pastures. Now it is the nature of sheep to return if they can to their mother-hill, or, at least, to

rd that I could not run down and grip by the neck. And when Hob, my elder brother, would take after me because of some mischief I had wr

a fly. Also I snatched up a little square book from the window-sill, hoping that in it I might find some entertainment to while away the hours in the bield of some granite stone or behind some bush of heather. But I found it to be the collect of Mr. Samuel

diverse as any human brother and sister-Ashie being gay and frisky, ever full of freits and caperings; his

{8} erect, cocking her short ears and keeping a sharp eye on the "hefting" lambs, which went aimlessly straying and cropping below, seeking

om wild David, who had brought the broad sheet back with him from Keltonhill Fair. Thus I had been carolling, gay as the laverock which I watched flirting and pulsing up

and delightful with it. I heard the note sink and change to that heavenly murmuring that comes with drowsiness, or which, mayhap, is but the sound of the

wo so foolishly in the air. But I did not hear them. My ears were dulled. The moorland sounds melted deliciously into the very sough and murmur of reposefulness. I was already well on my way to Drowsieland. I heard my mother sing me a lullaby

in his stomach so that the sound would

re softly, the black wicks of her mouth pul

to be thus aroused, and yet more unreasonably angry with the dogs whose watchfulness had recalled me to the realities of life. As I raised my head, the sounds of the hills broke on my e

feeding and straying quietly enough-rather wi

king right and left at the dogs with my staf

ectly away from the hefting lambs. Gray said nothing, but uncovered her shining teeth a li

d low, but still I could

that I was about to consign myself to sleep again, or at least to seek the p

s up the slope towards the top of the fell, sniffing belligerently as though they scented an i

crying of men. Then came the clear, imperative "Crack! Crack!" of musket shots-first two, and then half-a-dozen close together, sharp and

clamour of peewit flocks on the table-lands above me, clouds of them stooping and swoopin

e being pursued like the partridge upon the mountain. It might be that the blood of my own f

knowing by the voice that I was much in earnest, very obediently the dogs slung behi

thought; "he will be at his old work of pursuing

tred and secret suspicion, I crept cautiously up the side of the fell, taking advantage of every tummock of heather and boss of tall bent gr

and the spirit of the game had entered into them e

n's voices encouraging each other, as the huntsmen do on the hillsides when they drive the

nan, but now we had to come out into the open. The last thirty yards of ascent were bare and s

ollowed like four-footed guardian angels behind, now dragging themselves painfully yard by yard upon their bellies, now lying motionless as stone statue

shelter of the boulders and scattered clumps of heather and bent, I

h I reached the top and set my