"Nor am I making any comparisons, Pate Oliphant," said the minister with a smile; "but what is all that," he cried, as a sound as of shouting and tumult came to them over the cliffs on the breeze which is always fresh (or salt as the case may be) blowing off the Firth over the Fife braes.

They had walked far in their talk, and were now near the old village of St Monance, with its old kirk dating from the days of King David, that "sore sanct for the crown." The sound evidently came from that quarter, and both the men quickened their steps accordingly. The village consisted then, as now, of a straggling line of red and moss-grown cottages, parallel – if any parallel could be to a coast cut up in zigzags by the line of rocks – with the margin of the sea. It was entirely a fisher village, the boats drawn up high in the rocky openings of the beach, almost on a level with the houses, and nets spread everywhere, drying, or mending, or being baited at every point. But in the centre of the "toun," where the space between the houses and the sea was a little wider, was a little crowd of fishermen, their dark figures lighted up by a touch of brighter colour in a kirtle or petticoat, and the white specks of the mutches which every decent woman wore. They were all circling round a gayer figure in their midst, Mistress Jean to wit, uplifted on her pony, with her hair flowing under her riding-cap, the highest light in the picture, as her delicate face was, among all the ruddy, weather-beaten, glowing countenances round. Jean had, it was evident, been making something like an oration to her assembled vassals, and her eyes shining, her hair waving, her arm in the air, had kindled the fishers to enthusiasm. "We are Oliphants all," she was saying as the minister and Pate came up, "every one kin, far off or near, and hey for the silver crescents and bonnie Kellie Castle, that never owned master since the days of Bruce but – " she stopped with the pause of natural eloquence as her kinsman pushed into the crowd: then waving her whip, cried with all the force of her young voice, and a daring which brought the blood to her cheek, "Pate Oliphant's line, and mine."

Never was a touch more effective. As he pushed forward, scarcely hearing what she said, there rose a general shout, "Pate Oliphant and the bonny Leddy; Leddy Jean and the kind house o' Kellie! We're for them and nae land-loupers. The Bruce's blood and the auld name!"

"Mistress Jean," said Pate, "what do you here? This is no court of law, to judge between you and him that, right or wrong, is no land-louper, but the head of our name."

"Land-louper yourself, Pate Oliphant!" cried Jean, in high indignation. "Let go my bridle! If you will not tell the lads, what is left to me but to do it? and you, if you will not speak, be silent, sir! for though I do you all honour, and name you with myself, you are but my vassal like the rest. And that you ken!"

Pate's bonnet was in his hand, and he bowed low; but he held her bridle without flinching, though pony and rider both rebelled. "It is not safe for a spirity creature like this," he said, "the roaring of those loons so near her lug. Silence, lads! The lady understands, without more of your rowting, that you're all leal, and her friends."

The men had slunk a step backward in dismay at what seemed to them a family quarrel. They brightened again, and answered, "Ay, that are we!" "To our last drap o' blood!" "And yours too, Maister Pate!" – with a subdued clamour, daunted by his look, for he was not a man to trifle with, as they knew.

"My bonny bairn," Mr Melville was saying at the other side, "if you will curb your pony to an auld man's pace, I would fain go with you. There's danger baith for man and beast here."

"And what do I care for danger?" cried Jean; "it's just half the pleasure. Bid Pate Oliphant let go my bridle. Do you think, me that am 'most in arms for my rights, I will be guided by him?" She touched the excited pony with her whip, which made a bound, scattering the fisher-folk. But not Pate, who, setting his teeth, and digging his heels into the earth, held her with a grasp of iron. Jean had the whip raised again, with the intention, it seemed, this time, of striking him, when the minister called out to her —

"Slip down, lassie! the little beast is wild wud; she'll dash you against the rocks; she'll have your brains out: slip down, slip down, and you'll take little harm."

"Leddy, ye canna haud her a minute longer," cried a fisher – one rushing on each side to pluck her from her saddle. But the girl blazed over them, her hair waving in their faces, her blue eyes darting fire.

"Away!" she cried. "Away! Hold off! She may master you and me, but she'll not master Pate!"

CHAPTER VIII

There ensued after this a very dark time in the life of Peter Oliphant of Over-Kellie. When Jean found that not she, any more than the pony, could master Pate, she withdrew altogether her favour and friendship from him. Shut up within the old house, which Lord Oliphant after that one demonstration of taking possession left unvisited, she passed the lingering spring and summer, often seen about the country roads on her pony, but keeping up a seclusion within, quite uncongenial to her temper, and which even Margaret from Over-Kellie was not allowed to break. The suit at law, brought before the courts by her kinsman and next friend on her behalf as a minor, – that Sir Walter's will might be set aside as barred by her right of succession, and also as procured by undue influence, when in his age and weakness he was no longer able fully to exercise his faculties, – excited for a moment her hottest wrath. She burst forth upon Maister Melville, who gave her the information, with blazing artillery of looks and words, of which he avowed that could the first have slain him he would now have been a lost man. But the mild divine, being full of experience and observation, believed he saw behind all this fury a certain exultation. "How daured he, after denying me, and contradicting me, and leaving me here to eat my heart, while he went off to his plough, the dastard, no to answer his lady's call! And I doubt not he's laying his furrows and sowing his grain as if there was no such person as Jean Oliphant shut up in Kellie," the girl cried, glowing with rage and curiosity and eagerness. "You can tell him that it's he that is the land-louper, and no credit to his gentle blood, to turn his back on the auld house and upon me."

"No back of his has been turned on any lawful risk," said the minister; "on certain destruction no brave man will run if he is other than a fool. Ken you what your kinsman is doing, Mistress Jean? He is risking his whole living, with the chance of loss that will banish him the country – and that not for himself, as once he thought, but for you."

"Banish him the country!" said Jean, with blanched lips.

"Ay, my little maiden, you ken not either the risk or the pain. You think it is but to out with the flag, and load the arquebus, and the right will prevail; whereas it would be death to many a bonny lad, and destruction to many an honest house, and no hope to do more."

"All that," she cried, with an impatient wave of her hand, "is over and gone, since he refused and would not stand by me, nor be my captain as I bade him; but to gang to the law is one thing and be banished the country is another. And who would banish him the country for standing by his – next friend? if that is what you call it," she added, in a subdued voice.

The minister smiled within himself to see how swiftly she had accepted the position, notwithstanding her first revolt; but he proceeded to explain to her that the law cost much siller, and Peter had little but his land and his old house; and if the plea lingered long – as it might well do – till all his money was spent, there would be nothing for him when he had secured a living for his mother but to quit Scotland, either for the foreign wars, like so many of the Scots, or to sail away to one of the New-found-lands over the seas, where folk said there were estates for the asking, a fine caller climate, none of your tropiques, a new Scotland cold but fair. And then Jean wept, and declared that she would not have it, that no man should risk life or land for her cause: and afterwards dried her eyes and waved her golden locks, and declared that it was even like him, just like what was to be looked for from Pate, and showed that he was the maist fulish lad in all the land, as she had always said. But even after this she would not come forth nor make friends, though Margaret, when next she came to the Castle gate, was brought up to the hall, and many kisses passed between the girls, and still more kind words.

The cause was heard, by good fortune, with less delay than was feared, and it was thought at first with much prospect of success. Pate himself, being anxious, made more than one visit to Edinburgh, which indeed was a journey in those days.

But, alas! there was no longer any occasion for hope, when one day in July when the sun was at its hottest, and the genial earth warm through and through, and the corn turning red against the blue of the sea, as I saw it but the other year, glowing as if it would take light and flame – Pate Oliphant, just come back, and weary with the journey, stood hard by his own hall-door, leaning upon the wall, his bonnet low on his brow, and his heart full of trouble. He had flung out of the big room from his mother's questions and his sister's outcries of sympathy and distress, feeling that he could not bear even the sympathy, much less the questions: how was this, and how was that? when all he could tell or think of was just that the cause was lost. Oh, easy enough to see how it was, if they would but think, instead of asking questions! My Lord Oliphant had friends enow; he was a Lord of King James's Court; he was sib to all the nobles, and even to one of those carles on the judges' bench, with their muckle wigs and their weariful tongues. A losing litigant is prone to be doubtful of the impartiality of the law. Pate Oliphant could not but feel that, had he been Oliphant of Kellie (as he ought to have been), any suit of his would have been more safe to end as he wished.

He was standing there, idly lashing the air with the riding-switch that was still in his hand, his bonnet low on his brow, and his heart in his bosom, when there came suddenly into the silence of the afternoon a sound of horse's hoofs at the gallop on the rough road that led to the house. Margaret, who had come out after her brother, cried out with a start, "Hear till her! It is Jean's powney, the little wild beast – wild like her mistress. It's our Leddy Jean."

"Leddy, puir lassie!" cried the Mistress; "no more Leddy, if a' be true, Margaret, than you or me."

"And even so worthy of the more respect," cried Pate, rousing from his despair. There was no mistaking the breakneck gallop, which seemed to join the two, pony and girl, in one personality. Jean's one idea now, clearly told by every flying beat of the hoofs upon the road, was a fiery desire to get there, to fling herself upon the protection or sympathy of her friends. Pate flung his bonnet on the ground, and hastened to throw open the gate, receiving her with uncovered head and reverential gesture, as if she had been a queen. But Mistress Jean, in hot haste, too impetuous to pause, flashed past him like a gleam of sudden light – her golden locks flying, her complexion bright with haste and excitement. She drew up before the door, and flung herself from the pony's back without waiting for any aid. "They have come, they have come!" she cried, with only breath enough to say the words. She was so keen, however, to tell her story, that the immediate painful meaning of it was lost in eagerness. "Here am I, flung upon you like a stone, fired out upon you like a bullet out of a gun," she cried, with a laugh of excitement. "O Pate Oliphant! if ye would but have done it, you and me would have been in harness this day, and the silver crescents flying out-owre the grey wall! for they are come – they are come!"

"The silver crescents," said Pate, "are their cognisance as well as yours and mine: and they have won the day."

"Listen to me," cried Jean, shaking her half-curled locks about her ears, her eyes blazing, her countenance, in her excitement, undismayed. "I was sitting quiet in the great window, thinking no harm, when in a moment there arose sic a tumult as if a haill army had broken in; and before I could say more than a word to old Marjory, there they were, bursting up ilka stair, some from the west tower, some from the south, with a clatter of rapiers by their side, and spurs on their heels – the villain sound," she cried, "and them no better than reivers upon a poor maiden – but notwithstanding," she added, pausing with a sigh, "a bonnie noise!" She cast a sudden glance at Pate, standing there in the dust of his journey, the sun shining on his bared head. He had no swingeing rapier, but a whinger in his belt and a spur on his heel, for use and not for show, a subdued figure, not like the gallants in their bravery. He felt this glance to the bottom of his heart, divining something of it, but not Jean's instant second thought, that not one of them, fine as they might be, was such a bonnie lad!

"I am telling ye," cried Jean, renewing her tale with a flush upon her cheeks which came from her own consciousness of that thought, "that they all burst in in a moment, men's voices, and the jingling and the clattering of them, that filled the hall. It is well for me that I never stop to think, as the Mistress says; for if I had stoppit, or thought, or lingered a moment, I would have been in their hands, the popinjays! and no time for parley. I just flashed up 'most before I saw them, divining in my heart, and slippit behind the curtain that is over yonder sma' door, Margaret, you will mind? I just lingered to see that it was safe, and heard their outcry, 'Where is she?' and 'Call forth the leddy,' which proved they had not seen me – though one cried there was some person gone forth, and another that he had heard a step – which was a muckle lee, whoever told it," cried Jean, pausing in her childish sense of triumph yet injury; "you ken whether I have a foot like a trooper, to be heard among armed men."

"Thus I got to the stable," she went on, "like an arrow from a bow: and Jaicque, who is faithful, and me, that have saddled her many a day, we got on her gear before you could turn round, and away by the back of the outhouses, and the bridle-path by Kellie Mill, and never a soul to hear us or see us, all the gaping fools about being out to see the gallants' train. And here I am," she cried, suddenly pausing and looking round. Up to this moment her tone had been almost joyous, her bearing almost gay, in the heat of excitement and novelty, which were life to this young creature. She stopped, and her countenance changed. She looked round upon them – the Mistress at the stair-head wringing her hands, the young master of Over-Kellie standing at the pony's head, with a sobered wistful look of discouragement and downfall, nobody, as it seemed, sympathetic but Margaret, who, excited like herself, half crying, half laughing, had clasped the hands which still held the bridle, caressing them in the absence of other means of showing her pity and her love. "Now I am here," repeated Jean, slowly, a sudden cloud of surprise and dismay sweeping over her, "but you are not glad to see me. O Pate Oliphant, Pate Oliphant, take your hand from my bridle! Next of kin you may be, but no next of heart!"

"You silly lassie!" cried the Mistress, taking, though she was a little timid and cautious in her elder days, but two steps down the four stairs.

If I had space I would tell how Jean came to understand the saddened looks of her next of kin, and how Pate discovered that no popinjay of them all was in her eyes half the man that he was, though he had refused to take up arms or spend men's lives in a hopeless cause. They had to subdue their pride to the acceptance of their fate, which was much harder upon Peter Oliphant – born, you would have said, to no better – than on Mistress Jean, though her proud cousins called her no more than the Gudewife of Over-Kellie, scorning her blood and her rights. But the family kept their homely life there unbroken for many generations, keeping up the old name and kindly tradition long after the Lords Oliphant, though this is no brag of a child of Over-Kellie, but a sad saying, were, like the Flowers of the Forest, a' wede away. There was another lawsuit, of which no better came; but Peter Oliphant of Over-Kellie, though no more than a bonnet-laird, no doubt, "with his bairns and his oyes all around him, oh," came to be more or less a contented man. He knew French to a certain degree, as has been said, thanks to Maister Melville, whose breeding and education had been much in foreign countries; and though he pronounced it like good broad Scots, and was no professor for the grammar, here is this little composition of his in that language, beaten out as he went about his fields through many a quiet day, and pondered his life and the life of man in the long silence of the years. À tout pourvoir had been the proud device of his youth, when everything seemed within his power; but this was what he put into that old tongue of gallant device as the burden of his age, with the accent of Scotland and of long life —

"Ayant pourvu
Autant qu'a pu,

quoth Pate."

And may we all say as much, however humbly, his descendant prayeth, at the end of the dim valley from whence begins to glow over the dark braes the rising of a better sun.

[The Lord Oliphant, perhaps harshly treated above, was a man of many troubles and difficulties, much like those of Sir Walter of Kellie, whom he succeeded. He, too, died with no son to follow, and would have passed over his daughter; and a romance of mingled lawsuits and royal interference might well be made out of his history and that of his successors – but this must be for another hand. As dates are the useful things that are most apt to fail in family tradition, I do not attempt to say which of his successors sold Kellie Castle – to them a useless and unnecessary burden, though so dear to those who lost it – to the family of Erskine, who took from it in later days a title, and made it their home.]