it was toward the mellow end of august that there came a sough of things terrible wafted down the fair glen of the kens, a sough which neither lost in volume nor in bitterness when it turned into the wider strath of the dee.
it arrived in time at the manse of balmaghie, as all things are sure to turn manseward ere a day pass in the land of galloway.
one evening in the quiet space between the end of hay and the first sickle-sweep of harvest, hob came in with more than his ordinary solemn staidness.
but he said nothing till we were over with the taking of the book and ready to go to bed. then as he was winding the watch i had brought him from edinburgh he glanced up once at me.
“when ye were last at earlstoun,” he said, “heard ye any news?”{287}
i thought he meant at first that mary was to be married, and it may be that my face showed too clearly the anxiety of the heart.
“about sandy himself?” he hastened to add.
“about alexander gordon?” cried i in astonishment. “what ill news would i hear about alexander gordon of earlstoun?”
he nodded, finished the winding of his horologe, held it gravely to his ear to assure himself that it was going, and then nodded again. for that was hob’s way.
“well,” he said, “the presbytery have had him complained of to them for drunkenness and worse. and they will excommunicate him with the greatest excommunication if he decline their authority.”
“but earlstoun is not of their communion,” i cried, much astonished, the matter being none of the presbytery’s business; “he is of the hill-folk, an elder and mainstay among them for thirty years.”
“the presbytery have made it their business because he is a well-wisher of yours,” said hob. “besides, the report of it has already gone abroad throughout the land, and they say{288} that the matter will be brought before the next general meeting of the societies.”
“and in the meantime?” i began.
“in the meantime,” said hob, “those of the hill-folk who form the committee of the seven thousand have suspended him from his eldership!”
hob paused, as he ever did when he had more to tell, and was considering how to begin.
“go on, hob,” cried i—testily enough, i fear.
“they say that his old seizure has come again upon him. he sits in an upper room like a beast, and will be approached by none. and some declare that, like king david, he feigns madness, others that he has been driven mad by the sin and the shame.”
now this was sore and grievous tidings to me, not only because of mary gordon, but for the sake of the cause.
for alexander gordon had been during a generation the most noted covenanter of the stalwart sort in scotland. he had suffered almost unto death without wavering in the old ill times of charles and james. he had languished long in prison, both in the castle of edinburgh and that of blackness. he had{289} come to the first frosting of the hair with a name clear and untainted. and now when he stood at the head of the covenanting remnant it was like the downfall of a god that he should so decline from his place and pride.
then the other part of the news that the presbytery, as the representatives and custodians of morals, were to lay upon him the greater excommunication was also a thing hard and bitter. for if they did so it inferred the penalties of being shut off from communion with man in the market-place and with god in the closet. the man who spoke to the excommunicated partook of the crime. and though the power of the presbytery to loose and to bind had somewhat declined of late, yet, nevertheless, the terror of the major anathema still pressed heavily upon the people.
hob went soberly up to his bedroom. the boards creaked as he threw himself down, and i could hear him fall quiet in a minute. but sleep would not come to my eyelids. at last i arose from my naked bed and took my way down to the water-side by which i had walked oftentimes in dark days and darker nights.
then as i was able i put before him who is never absent the case of alexander gordon.{290} and i wrestled long as to what i should do. sometimes i thought of him as my friend, and again i knew that it was chiefly for the sake of mary gordon that i was thus greatly troubled.
but with the dawning of the morning came some rest and a growing clearness of purpose—such as always comes to the soul of man when, out of the indefinite turmoil of perplexity, something to be done swims up from the gulf and stands clear before the inward eye.
i would go to earlstoun and have speech with alexander gordon. the presbytery had condemned him unheard. his own folk of the societies—at least, some of the elders of them—had been ready to believe an evil report and had suspended him from his office. he needed a minister’s dealing, or at least a friend’s advice. i was both, and there was all the more reason because i was neither of the kirk that had condemned nor of the communion which was ready to believe an ill report of its noblest and highest.
it was little past the dawning when, being still sleepless, i set my hat on my head, and, taking staff in hand, set off up the wet meadow-edges to walk to earlstoun. i heard the black-cap sing sweetly down among the gall-bushes{291} of the meadow. a blackbird turned up some notes of his morning song, but drowsily, and without the young ardour of spring and the rathe summer time. suddenly the east brightened and rent. the day strode over the land.
i journeyed on, the sun beating hotly upon me. it was very evidently to be a day of fervent heat. soon i had to take off my coat, and as i carried it country fashion over my shoulder the harvesters gave me good-day from the cornfields of the pleasant strath of the ken, and over the hated park-dykes which the landlords were beginning to build.
mostly when i walked abroad i observed nothing, but to-day i saw everything with strange clearness, as one sometimes does in a vision or when stricken with fever.
i noted how the red willow-herb grew among the river stones and set fire to little pebbly islands. the lilies, yellow and white, basked and winked belated on the still and glowing water. the cattle, both nolt and kye, stood knee-deep in the shallows—to me the sweetest and most summersome of all rural sights.
as i drew near to new galloway a score of laddies squattered like ducks and squabbled{292} like shrill scolding blackbirds in and out of the water, or darted naked through the copsewood at the loch’s head, playing “hide-and-seek” about the tree-trunks.
and through all pulsed the thought, “what shall i say to my friend? shall i be faithful in questioning, faithful in chastening and rebuke? shall i take part with mary gordon’s father, and for her sake stand and fall with him? or are my message and my master more to me than any earthly love?” i feared the human was indeed mightier in my heart of hearts. nevertheless something seemed to arise within me greater than myself.
