Everything about this man seemed expressive of colossal proportions and brutal strength. As if danger might not be distant, with an air that in another would have seemed bravado, but in him was quite natural, he drew his mighty sword, examined the point, tested the spring of the blade, and smiled with a grim satisfied air, as he sheathed it again.
In most of the incidents of our story we have been compelled to follow and to portray the course of events with the care of an historian rather than of a romancer; and thus must we detail, or rather translate, the conversation which ensued between Sir Patrick Gray and this burly Celtic giant, as it was maintained in a strange mixture of old Doric Scottish and the Celtic language then spoken by the inhabitants of Galloway.
"What may the last news be among you here?" asked Sir Patrick.
"What could they be but of sorrow?" growled the other.
"I doubt it not where Earl James abides."
"You are a bold man to say so," replied the Galwegian.
"I am in the king's service, my friend, and a good cause gives courage; but, beside the storming of Raeberry, and the lawless capture of Sir Thomas MacLellan, what is there new in Galloway?"
"The foul slaughter of the laird of Sandwick, whom the Douglas troopers fell upon in Kirkandrews, and killed when at his prayers, – and this was yesternight."
"Another act of sacrilege?"
"Air mhuire! so my lord the abbot of Tongland terms it; but they were dainty gentlemen who followed the laird of Glendoning," said the other, with bitter irony; "they cared not to stain the floor or altar of God's consecrated church with blood; so they dragged old Sandwick forth, though he clung to the iron altar-rail, and drew him to the louping-on-stane at the grave-yard gate, and there hacked him to pieces."
"It was like these men of Thrave," said Sir Patrick; "but a day of vengeance for these continued atrocities must come, and speedily too."
As he said this the host, who was making a posset of Alicant on the hearth, looked up with terror; but the strong man with the mace laughed bitterly, and added, as he struck the floor with his mace,
"Dioul! the sooner the better for me."
"And who are you?" asked Sir Patrick.
"Would you be a wiser man for knowing?" was the cautious and not over-courteous response; "yet I care not if I telclass="underline" I am Malise MacKim, – "
"What – Malise, the hereditary smith of Thrave – MacKim the Brawny?" exclaimed Gray, with something of alarm in his tone.
"Yes," said the other through his clenched teeth.
Gray, by a twitch of his belt, brought his dagger conveniently to his hand; MacKim saw the movement, and smiled disdainfully.
"Has the earl wronged you?" asked Sir Patrick.
"To the heart's core," was the emphatic reply. "Oh, mhuire as truidh! mhuire as truidh! that I should ever have it to say – I, whose fathers have eaten the bread of his race for generations – ay, since the first handful of earth was laid there to form the Moat of Urr – yea, yea, since first the Urr waters ran, and leaves grew in the wood of Dalbeattie!"
"What has happened?"
"His people have this day slain my brother Donacha MacKim, near the Bush aboon Tracquair, and have carried off his daughter, who was the love of my youngest son; but I have seven – SEVEN sons, each taller and stronger than myself, and I will have sure vengeance on Douglas, if he grants it not to me; and this I have sworn by the cross of St. Cuthbert, and by the soul of her I love best on earth, my wife Meg."
The black eyes of the gigantic smith glared with genuine Celtic fury and hate as he said this; he beat the floor with his roughly-shod feet, and his strong fingers played nervously with the shaft of his mace, the chain and morning-star of which (a ball a pound in weight, furnished with four sharp iron spikes) lay on the floor. Gray, as he surveyed him, reflected that it was extremely fortunate that the smith's fealty to Douglas had been broken, otherwise he might have proved a very unpleasant companion for the night in that small and solitary hostelry, situated, as it was, in a hostile and lawless district. This meeting, however, taught Gray to be wary, and thus, though knowing the country well, he affected to be a stranger.
"Is the abbot of Tongland at Thrave?" he asked.
"No; the earl, in sport, poured a ladleful of gold down the throat of the Raeberry warder; so his father confessor pronounced a malediction upon him, and retired to the abbey at Tongland, in disgust and despair at his cruelty."
"How far is it from hence to the clachan?"
"About ten miles."
"And to the abbey?"
"It is beside the clachan." – "Good."
During that night Gray slept with his door and window well secured, with his sword drawn under his head, and his armour on a chair by his bedside, to be ready for any emergency. The lassitude incident to his long journey on horseback by such rough roads – for then they went straight over hill and down valley, through forest, swamp, and river – made him sleep long and late on his bed of freshly-pulled heather; thus the noon of the next was far advanced before he set out once more.
Malise MacKim, his sullen acquaintance of the preceding evening, conducted him for some distance beyond the Urr, and told him, what Gray already knew well, that if he wished to reach the clachan of Tongland, he must pass the Loch of Carlinwark on his right, and pursue the road that lay through the wood on the left bank of the Dee.
"And whither go you, my friend?" he asked, as the gigantic smith was about to leave him.
"To join my seven sons, and scheme our vengeance; yet what can mortal vengeance avail against the earl of Douglas?" – "How?" said Gray; "in what manner?"
"Know you not that he wears a warlock jacket, against which the sharpest swords are pointless?"
"What do you mean?" asked the soldier, keeping his horse in check.
"I mean a doublet made for him by a warlock in Glenkens, woven of the skins of water-snakes caught in a south-running burn where three lairds' lands met, and woven for him under the beams of a March moon, on the haunted Moat of Urr."
Gray laughed and said, "I should like to test this dagger, my poor MacLellan's gift, upon that same doublet."
"Moreover," said the smith, lowering his voice, while a deeper scowl impressed his grisly visage, "it is said in Galloway here, that when Earl James, a child, was held by his godmother at the font in Tongland Abbey Kirk, the blessed water, as it fell from the hand of Abbot John, hissed upon his little face as upon iron in a white heat."
"Peace, carle! can a stout fellow like thee be moonling enough to give such stories credence?"
"'Tis folly, perhaps, to think of them, betouch us, too! so near the Moat of Urr," said the smith, with a perceptible shudder, as he glanced covertly over his shoulder.
"And why here more than elsewhere?"
"Know ye not?" asked the smith, in a whisper.
"You forget that I am a stranger."
"True. Then it was on this spot that James Achanna, the earl's sooth fast-friend and henchman, sold himself to Satan, after conjuring him up by performing some nameless rites of hell."
"Adieu, and God be wi' you," said Gray, laughing, yet nevertheless making the sign of the cross, for the place was savage and solitary, and he was not without a due share of the superstition incident to his age and country. Turning his horse, he rode rapidly off.