IN TWO PARTS.

PART I.—INCHGARRY’S NARRATIVE.

Some years ago, while upon a professional visit at the mansion of a well-known Highland gentleman, I was invited one morning by my host to inspect his famous kennel of staghounds. On that occasion, I remember well, my interest was curiously divided between the princely animals themselves and the magnificent specimen of humanity who acted as their custodian. Standing at least six feet, his finely proportioned, athletic figure was displayed to advantage by a well-made knickerbocker deer-stalking suit. His face was fair, full-bearded, and strikingly regular in its features. In the quick blue eyes gleamed the rapidly succeeding emotions of an intelligent, proud, sensitive nature. I observed that he usually addressed the chief by the name of the estate (a practice by no means uncommon in some parts of Scotland), and that the word ‘sir’ was somewhat infrequent in his speech. There was nothing decidedly disrespectful or assumptive in his manner, yet it was quite unlike that of modern inferiors towards superiors generally. I had been so struck during our inspection of the kennels with his appearance and bearing, that on our return to Inchgarry Hall, I put several questions to my worthy host respecting him. The result of these was, that after informing me that the young fellow’s name was Donald Stewart, and that he was a native of Badenoch, he entered upon the following curious and instructive narrative of his first settlement at Inchgarry, and of the tragedy in which it eventuated; pointing out as he did so, with great frankness, the evils a landlord may create among his people by delegating too largely to an inferior the personal supervision of his interests.

James Forbes, the son of one of the chief’s humblest dependants, had been reared upon the estate. Industry, a certain versatility of talent, and above all, an uncompromising yet judicious sycophancy, had together stood him in such good stead that, beginning his career as stable-boy, he had passed rapidly to assistant-gardener, head-gardener, and manager of the home-farm; until, at the time the events we are about to record took place, he was his master’s factotum, holding the position and title of sub-factor to the property. Residing for three parts of the year in London or abroad, Inchgarry necessarily gave him large powers in matters affecting his tenantry and servants; so that—the factorship proper being then in the hands of an estimable but old and infirm lawyer, with whom the wily Forbes had ingratiated himself—the authority of the latter was almost boundless. Like all sycophants, he was also a tyrant. The tenantry, who held their farms on long leases, and were practically part and parcel of the soil, escaped the oppression to which, under other circumstances, they might have been subjected. Nevertheless, Forbes contrived in many ways to harass and annoy all who in any way offended him. As for the immediate servants of the Hall and home-farm, the foresters and keepers, the labourers and handicraftsmen on the estate, his was to them strictly a reign of terror. None but those who chose to do so by abject flattery and toadyism dared hope to escape molestation.

Among those trucklers to whom Forbes extended his patronage, was one John Sutherland—or Ian Dhu, as he was invariably styled—the idlest and most worthless character in the district. It would be difficult to conceive what bond could exist between this semi-pariah, poacher, and vagabond, and the chief’s confidential agent, did we not remember that men of the sub-factor’s stamp invariably make a henchman of some unscrupulous master of their own weapon—sycophancy. Ian Dhu had not only the skill to step into the good-will of Forbes by his fawning, but to establish himself therein by acting as spy and reporter upon all that was said and done upon the estate. Following no recognised employment, though ostensibly odd-man about his patron’s private grounds, he perverted his leisure by haunting the garden, workshops, bothies, the keepers’ houses, and the kitchen of the Hall itself, picking up scraps of information for the jealous ear of the sub-factor. He was, in fact, a necessity of the pernicious system of control which reigned; and he was, at the time our story commences, in the full light of favouritism.

Inchgarry, my host, was a just, large-hearted, and clear-headed man; of rather an indolent disposition no doubt, but, when roused to interest, both prompt and strong-willed, brooking neither argument nor persuasion. His brief occasional visits to the Hall were always marked by some change in, or reversal of, his agent’s arrangements, as well as by some considerate extension of privileges to his ‘people.’ In one instance his wrath had been awakened by the neglected condition of his garden and kennels; the latter perhaps his dearest subject of pride. He spoke sharply and conclusively about these matters to Forbes, whose minions both the head-gardener and chief-keeper were. Ten days thereafter he announced that he had engaged a man from the Lothians to superintend his garden-grounds, and a gamekeeper from Badenoch to supplant the inefficient favourite; adding, however, with characteristic kindness, that the superseded men might remain, if they chose, as second-hands until they could better themselves. Forbes received the news of these innovations with outward deference and submission, but inward chagrin and rage. It was the beginning of the end, as it proved.

Archie Guthrie, the new gardener, arrived first on the scene to form a nine days’ subject of comment to the simple population of Inchgarry; and a few weeks later Donald Stewart took possession of the roomy and comfortable keeper’s cottage so picturesquely situated by the loch side. He was accompanied by his sister, a few years his junior, who undertook to act as his housekeeper, and by a powerful-looking young serving-lass. Effie was as unlike her brother as well could be. She was petite, of slight frame, with small delicate features. Lithe, active, elfish, her dark hair and pale face, together with the general grace and rapidity of her movements, soon acquired for her the pretty sobriquet of sheach or fairy. Cheerful, even volatile, this singular creature had yet a depth of tenderness and sympathy so easily stirred, so sensitive and all-pervading, that nothing animate appeared to escape its influence. In character, then, as well as in appearance, she presented a marked contrast to her handsome, really good-hearted, but choleric and somewhat imperious brother. Yet never perhaps, the chief informed me, was brotherly and sisterly affection more complete and perfect than between these two. In a short time they had finished their new domestic arrangements, and passed through the usual ordeal of rustic criticism. Effie glided at once into the respect and confidence of every woman on the estate—a feat which the student of womankind will consider an all but impossible one. Her kind-heartedness and tact, doubtless, were the means towards such a result, aided as they were by the incessant and impartial distribution of favours, which her deft fingers and clever little head enabled her to do with an expenditure of nothing more than her redundant good-will and energy. The other sex became her slaves to a man. Every one within a radius of ten miles in that sparsely peopled district came under the spell of the sheach, and loved or admired her secretly or openly, platonically or otherwise, according to temperament or position. Inchgarry gave some most amusing instances of her sway: of stalwart Highlanders seized by the ear and marched off to perform some menial duty, or commanded to execute some commission for herself or neighbours. It was said that even Forbes himself, surly as he was, and imbittered from the first against her brother, could never disguise the pleasure which Effie’s presence gave him: probably the most harmless and respectable sentiment he ever entertained. He refused nothing she asked for herself or others, and did not hesitate to proclaim his high opinion of her disposition and character. I record this with pleasure as the one bright spot redeeming a dark and contemptible nature.

Forbes and Stewart instinctively regarded each other as enemies from the first. Frank and open to a fault, the new keeper chafed under the reticence and duplicity of the sub-factor; and to every unreasonable command he returned a hot and indignant refusal; to every malicious word an angry, contemptuous retort. Thoroughly acquainted with his own duties, he would brook no interference; and to Forbes’s utter confusion, on one occasion, when that worthy had attempted to meddle in some matter affecting the dogs, he boldly threatened, in presence of several underlings, to report him to Inchgarry for obstructing his work. Before two months had passed, it was war to the knife between them. As was natural, the majority of the natives secretly rejoiced to find that the young stranger meant to beard the tyrant; while the great man’s favourites and the constitutionally envious nursed a bitter enmity against him as an interloper. The despotism was now broken up into two struggling factions; and the contest was a protracted and unhappy one.

But more fierce and implacable even than Forbes’s hatred of the keeper was that conceived by his henchman, Ian Dhu. To the keenness of partisanship he added a violent personal animosity, which only ended with the tragic event hereafter detailed. Ian had long been suspected of deer-poaching; but hitherto the friendship of the sub-factor had screened him from conviction if not from detection. At last Stewart caught him red-handed in the act of ‘gralloching’ a stag in one of the favourite ‘passes’ of the forest. He reported the fact at once to Inchgarry, who, if not exactly claiming his ancestral power of ‘pit and gallows,’ reserved to himself the right of deciding whether or not any of his ‘people’ should be handed over to the civil authorities. His decision was a most merciful one—merely requiring Sutherland to surrender his gun to the keeper. The sentence nevertheless rankled with deadly purpose in his heart; and but for one singular circumstance, would doubtless have earlier taken the form of the terrible revenge he ultimately sought.

That circumstance was his love for Effie Stewart. He too had been smitten by the sheach’s bewitching face and smile—smitten as only such dark, troublous natures can be smitten. His love was to him a terrible torture. The better thoughts which this new and powerful passion awakened, only goaded and stabbed, being too intermittent to subdue the darker passions which they illumined. From the moment he first saw Effie, a marked change came over him, or, more properly speaking, his idiosyncrasies became intensified. Always taciturn, he was now morose and brooding; his surliness became vehement irascibility, and his roving stealthy movements were now erratic and purposeless. He would hang for hours around the kennels, pass and repass the keeper’s cottage a dozen times a day, inventing trifling excuses for calling there, that he might look upon the girl whose unconscious influence had so strongly affected him. In her presence his misery was complete. He would crouch on a settle by the fireside, silent and burning with the unquenchable fire within him, his furtive impassioned glances following her every movement, as Effie flitted about the house. Whenever the little woman paused from her work, and with piquant, gracious vivacity addressed some pleasant remark to him, the heavy brows would unbend, and the dark eyes lift themselves to her face with a transient gleam of supreme pleasure, only to be averted again in increased gloom and depression. On those occasions when the young neighbours extemporised a merry-making at one or other of their houses, or, as was oftener the case, in the roomy cottage of the keeper, Ian Dhu’s torture was beyond description. There he was compelled to witness the object of his infatuation surrounded by a number of youths, many of whom he instinctively knew were fascinated by her. He listened entranced when she sung—but, then, other ears also drank in the sweet sounds; he watched the slight elfish figure move in the merry dance, but was she not observed with admiration by every one? First one and then another of the strapping young Highlanders became her partner, would hold her hands, clasp her waist, and whirl with her in the freedom of the old-fashioned reels; every incident adding a fresh torment to the jealous heart of Ian Dhu.

Time went on, and Ian Dhu was thus fain to curb the rebellious desire for revenge upon Donald Stewart. The gratification of looking upon Effie was only possible under conditions which his revenge would entirely destroy. Like a hungry spaniel, he crouched and fawned when he would otherwise have snapped. He submitted to obey many overbearing behests of the haughty young keeper, to assist him about the croft or go on messages; and acted generally so as to gain Stewart’s tolerance, if not his confidence. These tactics were not unobserved by Forbes, who, however, satisfied of the genuineness of the hatred with which his henchman viewed Donald, for a time attributed them to crafty zeal in his own service.

As for the sub-factor himself, time only increased his detestation of the keeper. Inchgarry was in London attending to his parliamentary duties; and Forbes did not neglect the opportunity of wreaking his malice in every possible way upon his proud-spirited subordinate. In his letters to the chief, the sub-factor conveyed many hints derogatory to Stewart, and succeeded to some extent in his unworthy purpose.

The young man, who was not only conscious of his abilities, but enthusiastic in his desire to acquit himself creditably in all that concerned his craft, one morning received a cold sharp letter from Inchgarry, recounting a charge of permitting poaching in the forest, and commenting severely upon his negligence. The chief circumstantially stated that the interior portions of a deer had been found in a ‘pass’ through a certain hill, where it had been ‘gralloched.’ The astonishment of Stewart was for the moment fully equal to his chagrin. He had had that very pass carefully watched by the under-keepers, and especially by his favourite and friend, a young sandy-haired blue-eyed lad from Lochaber, whose surname of Grant had been familiarised, in Highland fashion, into ‘Grantoch’ on account of his popularity. After the first burst of angry surprise, Stewart sought Grantoch, who in his laconic way repudiated the possibility of the thing, and after a deliberate study of the subject, as he leant upon his gun, quietly delivered himself of his opinion. About ten days previous, he said, while cutting open a hind, which in accordance with orders he had shot for the dogs, Ian Dhu had been present. Chancing to return to the same place about half an hour later in search of the knife which he had dropped, he was not a little surprised to find the refuse portions removed; and was completely puzzled when he observed, by the traces of blood amongst the heather, that they had evidently been carried up the forest. He was certain now that Sutherland had, with the connivance of Forbes, taken this method of throwing suspicion of negligence upon Stewart. The head-keeper’s quick intelligence grasped the whole affair before Grantoch had finished. He directed his assistant to state the facts as they were, in a letter to the chief; and wrote himself a respectful but firm repudiation of the charge. The effect was this: Forbes received a freezing order from Inchgarry to turn Ian Dhu out of his service. Nothing further was said; no reflection made as to his possible complicity in a design to injure the keeper’s character.

But the incident had rendered the sub-factor’s desire for revenge incontrollable. He goaded on his discharged henchman to be the instrument of wreaking their common hatred on the keeper. To his surprise, Ian Dhu was sullenly intractable. Forbes was at first furious, but incidentally learning the obstacle which existed in Sutherland’s passion for Effie Stewart, he resolved to use this as the very means of bringing him round to his purpose. He had heard, amongst other gossip, that Archie Guthrie’s attentions to the girl were received with favour. Ian was now completely under his control, and accident unfortunately favoured the factor in working upon his jealousy. Returning home from a visit to the post-town one evening in his dog-cart, Forbes observed, on a part of the road near Stewart’s cottage, the lovers standing together arm-in-arm, in the moonlight, evidently transacting a lengthened and agreeable parting for the night. Ian, whom he still sheltered, was waiting his arrival and assisted him to alight. With a malignance worthy of the worst part of his evil nature, he immediately despatched the unsuspecting Sutherland upon a message which should take him past the spot where Archie and Effie were standing. The effect was terrible. Ian Dhu on reaching the place discovered the pair in the act of embracing; staggering for a moment as if shot, he fled from the spot and disappeared, to return, after several weeks, to consummate the tragedy which forms the sequel of the tale.

PART II.—INCHGARRY’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED.

Three weeks elapsed, during which no one in Inchgarry had set eyes on Ian Dhu. The story of his love for the sheach was commonly known, and speculation was rife as to his proceedings since the night of his disappearance. This was set at rest one evening by his sudden appearance in the kitchen of the sub-factor’s house, lean and gaunt as a famished hound. His face was haggard and hunger-pinched, and a gleam very like insanity lit up the dark scowling eyes. His hair and beard were matted and tangled, and his clothes were soiled and rent. It was conjectured that he had spent the interval since his flight, in the fastnesses of the mountains—a prey to the throes of that passion which his powerful nature had conceived. What a picture might not imagination draw of the terrible human struggle enacted in those solitudes! Perhaps some such thought occurred to the frightened women-servants as Ian stood before them. At anyrate, they received him with silent sympathy, and invited him to take refreshment. It does seem strange that the revenge which succeeded his paroxysm of disappointed love should not first have been directed against the young gardener and his sweetheart. Various theories exist to account for this; one being that it really was his purpose to include them among his victims. My informant, however, held the very plausible opinion that Ian Dhu’s reason had given way under the great strain on his feelings, that his love was thereafter mercifully a blank to him, while the old grudge against Stewart had assumed unnatural proportions.

Forbes had an interview that night in his own parlour with his quondam henchman as the investigation which afterwards took place proved; and it was late when Ian Dhu slunk from the house by the private door, carrying with him a gun, and was seen to disappear in the belt of firs that skirts the loch. It is mentioned, with that morbid zest for details which a tragedy never fails to excite, that only a few minutes previous to Ian’s plunging into the wood, Archie Guthrie and Effie Stewart (now formally betrothed) had passed the sub-factor’s house arm-in-arm. What would have been the consequences of a rencontre between the lovers and Black Sutherland is a favourite topic for surmise amongst the people of Inchgarry to this day.

On the following morning, Grantoch, who had returned from his rounds, took his spy-glass from its case and directed it towards Bhein À B’huachaill. A fire in the heather on this hill had been reported earlier, and Stewart had gone to investigate the cause, telling Grantoch to follow him when his other duties should leave him at liberty. The burning of the heather in the month of July, and in the centre of the ‘forest’ ground, was a serious matter in the eyes of the keepers, driving the deer as it would, from a favourite haunt. Grantoch now desired to make out, if possible, in what direction Stewart had gone, that he might be able to join him by the shortest route. He brought the glass to bear on every part of the mountain, its wood-clad base, purple sides, gray scaurs, and shimmering water-courses—but without result; and was just about to close it, when his glance rested upon a human figure shewing on the near shoulder of Bhein À B’huachaill. His practised eye told him at once it was not Donald Stewart. He carefully scrutinised it for some minutes, until with startled surprise he recognised Ian Dhu creeping over the watershed, bearing a gun on his shoulder.

Grantoch quietly shut his glass, returned it to its case, examined with professional caution the lock of his double-barrel to see that it was at half-cock, and started at a swinging trot for the foot of the hill. Its nearest point was only a mile and a half distant; but, convinced that Ian was on another poaching expedition, he resolved to get the assistance of a keeper whose cottage stood about a mile farther up the loch. Here he was agreeably surprised to find Stewart engaged in issuing some orders. The latter explained that he had come direct to the cottage to learn whether the under-keeper knew anything of the fire; and that he found he had visited the spot. It was merely a patch which had soon burned out of itself, and Stewart had therefore waited leisurely for his comrade’s appearance. He pricked up his ears, however, when Grantoch told him of Ian Dhu’s movements, at once suspecting him of having intentionally fired the heather. The thought brought his hasty temper to such a heat that he resolved at once to clear up the matter by giving chase to Ian Dhu.

The trio took the route which Grantoch had seen Sutherland take, and their keen eyes kept them close on his track after it quitted the watershed. At length they came in full view of him as he now strode rapidly along the side of the hill. Their object was to detect him in the act of poaching, confident that Inchgarry would this time prosecute, and hopeful that the incendiarism would also be brought home to him. To avoid being observed in their turn, they now crouched along amongst the tall heather, till within a few hundred yards of where they had seen Ian Dhu last halt. Stewart then proposed to advance alone on all-fours to reconnoitre. As he thus cautiously approached the poacher, he observed that he had leapt into the dry channel of what is termed a winter stream, and was looking along the barrel of his weapon—a rifle—which he held resting on the bank at the opposite side of the channel to that on which Stewart now lay. Ian Dhu’s face was if possible more haggard and wild than ever, while the hand which grasped the rifle shook as if with ague or palsy. His glance was directed towards a spot some hundred yards distant, where the heather shewed blackened as if by recent fire. Now and again the maniac—for he had every appearance of being bereft of reason—would start up with an impatient cry and gesture, as though disappointed by the non-appearance of some object for which he waited. At last, in view of the puzzled and somewhat terrified keeper, he brought the rifle to his shoulder, and with steady deliberate aim, fired at an object unseen by the keeper. The echoes which the sharp report awakened were mingled with a piercing cry!

Ian Dhu had not time to complete his attempted spring from the channel of the stream before his shoulder was seized in the strong grasp of Donald Stewart. He turned to face his captor; then with a scream of terror, which for the moment paralysed the stout-hearted keeper, tore himself free and dashed down the mountain like a hunted stag. Donald, with the two under-keepers, who had rapidly approached, watched him in silence as he sped from rock to rock. Pursuit was useless. Following him with their eyes as he disappeared and reappeared among the inequalities of the ground, they at last observed, with a thrill of horror, that he did not turn aside in his descent from a well-known point at which the hill sloped almost precipitously for several hundred feet. With blanched faces and upraised hands they saw Ian Dhu pause for a moment on the dangerous verge, and take the awful leap.

The three keepers resolved at once to make a detour to the spot where he must have fallen, and for this purpose hastened down the shoulder of the hill. They had not proceeded far when Grantoch called the attention of the others to a groaning sound proceeding from some spot near them. Stewart believing it to be the dying moans of a wounded stag, answered his faithful comrade rather rudely and hurried on. His course happily took him to the very spot where the man, whom Ian Dhu’s last bullet had reached, lay bleeding and apparently dying. To the horror and amazement of all, it proved to be Forbes the sub-factor. Stewart, with a sensitiveness that did him credit, left the wounded man in the charge of Grantoch and their companion, and hurried off himself to procure assistance. With as much speed as the task would admit, he returned to the spot, leading a sure-footed pony, and on this, supported alternately by the keepers, Forbes was conveyed by easy stages to his own house.

The wound proved mortal; but before his death he made a statement which threw light upon the mysterious events of that fatal morning. Along with Ian Dhu he had concocted a scheme for Stewart’s destruction. He it was who had instructed Sutherland to fire the heather, calculating shrewdly that the circumstance would unfailingly call the keeper to the spot, in all likelihood alone, his trusty assistant being fully employed at that early hour. Ian, lying in wait with Forbes’s rifle, was to have shot the head-keeper whenever he appeared on the scene. The explanation of his own unfortunate presence was extremely simple. When he believed the dark deed accomplished, he had become anxious to recover the rifle from Ian Dhu, seeing that, in the event of capture, its possession would open up a suspicious inquiry respecting his own share in the dastardly business. This motive sealed his own fate. The impatient and vengeful Ian had not paused to reckon the chances of a mistake, but had pressed the trigger the moment he saw a human figure moving through the high heather towards the scene of the fire. Stewart, so happily deterred from his first purpose of visiting the burning hill, thus escaped the doom intended for him.

‘And what were the fortunes of the other characters in your sad story?’ I asked of the chief.

‘Oh! You see that cottage over there with the sweet bit of garden in front, ornamented with rockeries and ferns? That is the home of Archie Guthrie and his wife, nÉe Effie Stewart. The fairy scarcely deserves the name now, having lost much of her elfish slenderness and activity, but is after all, perhaps, a prettier heroine as the gardener’s wife, and less dangerous to my young male subjects. A coquette she certainly never was; but discreet and prudent to a rare degree. I am at a loss to divine what the source of her strange power was, but am thankful she is now Mrs Guthrie.’

I laughed at the naÏve remark.

‘As for Stewart,’ continued Inchgarry, ‘he has married well—the daughter of one of my wealthiest tenants. Grantoch has got a chief charge on an estate in the West Highlands, taking with him the buxom servant whom Stewart brought from Badenoch. So you see they are all doing well. And for my own part, the revelations which were made at the time of the tragedy fully awakened me to the duty of weighing carefully the complaints of my “people,” and of charily guarding against too free an investiture of power over them to an ignorant, malicious, or interested servant. I spend more time here than formerly, and am gratified by the increased contentment and prosperity of those under my care. The story, you will now perceive, though sad, is not without its moral.’