"Ay," said Peter, "I laid his head in the grave – muckle good as that did me; for sure, as you say, it was my right."
"And is it true about the testament?" asked his sister.
"It canna be true – I will not believe it: it is but the ill-will of Maister Playfair," said the Mistress; "they were ever against our house."
"Mother, mother, what has the writer to do with it? he cannot alter what Sir Walter says. But maybe it is not so ill as we thought," said Margaret, with devouring eyes on her brother's face.
"Let me be! let me be! I would like a stoup of your ale, mother. The roads are very heavy both for man and beast."
"You are tired, my bonnie lad! Na, I'll not say another word," said the Mistress, while Margaret flew down-stairs to get him the refreshment he asked. "We might have thought if we had not been so taken up concerning the news. Na, na, I will not hurry you, my Patie. Just take your time, my bonnie lad!"
And she seated herself on the settle near the fire, and took up, not without a little ostentation and with a sigh of excitement, her habitual work. Margaret stood gazing on the other side of the table while he drank, and their united force of curiosity and suspense moved him more by repression than it had done by utterance.
"Well, then," said Pate, "hear this: my Lord Oliphant – that is the head of our name – if I were ten times over the first of it in Fife, no mortal man can contradict that."
A sob of opposition and protest came from the overcharged bosom of the Mistress. Mortal man she was not, but woman; and therefore resistant to every statement which diminished the importance of those she loved.
"The head of our name," repeated Pate, with a wave of his hand, in fine acknowledgment of an allegiance which was not agreeable to him. "There is therefore excuse, if excuse were wanted. It is no alienation; but might, in the language of some persons, be conceived a giving back."
Pate was not without his share of schooling; he could be sententious, which has always been a possibility to a Scotsman, when he chose.
"Given back!" said the quick Margaret, "but it never came from thence. Look at the Buik, and look at the tree. It was no fief of Aberdalghie, but won by our awin spear and our awin bow."
The women were wild with this outrageous pretence; but Pate, whose heart, he thought, was broken, bent his head down on his hands and spoke no word.
Afterwards he began to tell them what had happened, which they listened to with cries of indignation and wrath. If it had been the Prince of Scotland (or of Wales, as it was heard with indignation that the heir of the crown was now to be called) who had tried to push forth Pate from his lawful place, his mother and sister would have risked their loyalty to resist it. But a young popinjay of a Master of Oliphant, as Robbie Beatoun had justly said! And then by degrees they elicited from Pate all he had heard about Sir Walter's incompetence, and how Sir John and the Writer between them had swayed his mind, in spite of all that Maister Melville, good friend and true, had been able to do.
"I am no for fechting," said the Mistress. "I've seen more of it in my time than I would desire to see again; but to sustain a mortal wrong, and not to say a word – I would raise the country afore I would abide that."
"I would rather sell my shoon off my feet, and my gown off my back!" said Margaret, ever the first to see what was the real question.
"Whisht, mother, whisht! If it was to raise the country and haud the Castle against whoever should oppose! Ah!" cried Pate, with a sigh, "that was the way in the former days, when there was a king in Scotland."
"And what for no?" cried the Mistress, with a gleam of war in her eyes; but then she threw her apron over her head and began to cry. "The Lord forgive me," she said; "to bid the lads to fecht, that are aye o'er ready; and me that have seen the son brought in stiff and stark to his ain mother's hearthstane! Oh no, my Patie, no! I am an ill woman to think such thoughts."
"If that were the way of it!" cried Pate. "But the strong hand will not serve us, mother; and he is the chief of our name. How could I rouse the fisher-lads at St Monance, that are most Oliphants, against the head of our own name?"
"There's not one of them but would follow you, Pate. It is you that are the head of the name!"
"Whisht, Peggy! – to their death and the ruin of their sma' houses, and starvation to their bairns – me that should rather feed and fend them!" Peter half turned with a wave of his hand towards the motto rudely carved upon the mantelpiece, "À tout pourvoir." He pronounced it as his equal might do to-day, Aw toutt pourvoïre. "If ye ken nothing else, you ken the meaning of that."
The women turned their eyes to it sadly, both answering, yet with reluctance, to the spell. "Indeed it was an ill day it was pitten there," said the Mistress, shaking her head. "Your father, honest man – and blessed be his rest! – was just wud of these auld words. Never was there a crown-piece to ware upon unthankful folk but yon was what he said. Yon fishers in St Monance! He would point it to me that would have held him back, and says he, 'Ye dinna understand, Marg'ret, but I understand. The haill tot provided for: that's what it means – and the honour of my name.' 'Laird, laird,' I aye said, 'you are far o'er muckle taken up with the honour of your name.'"
"Not so," said Pate.
"Never so!" cried young Margaret, kindled and shining forth, her eyes "keen with honour" in a glow of youth and brightness against the old dull panelled wall.
"And that is just what cuts deepest," said the young man – "the law, and the siller: it is either to abide the wrong, or to risk the pickle land and the old rooftree, and your living, mother. Say that Peggy is safe in Rob Beatoun's hands. But there is you and me, and them that hang upon us. Me, I could go away to the wars in Germany, where there's ever place for a Scot, like many a kinsman before me; but that would be no pleasant issue for my mother."
"O Pate! Pate!" she cried, otherwise speechless, holding up her hands in an agony.
"And the plea at law," he went on. "The plea at law! there's something that is as devouring as the grave. And it's that is the only way. Look, mother! shall I take your living and mine and fling it to thae dogues? I might get righted of my wrong; but if not we would be beggars, with a wallet on our back and a staff in our hand. And what would come of the name then, or the old o'erword of the name? My heart is just broken," cried Pate, with a wild movement of his arms. "Run the risk of everything we yet possess – or else brook the wrong. How is a man to decide? Whiles I think I would sooner perish than brook the wrong – "
"You must not do it, you must not do it!" cried the mother and daughter in one breath.
"Or be counted among the dyvors at the horn," cried Pate. "The broken men that have neither land nor dwelling to their name. The Lord preserve me! but I am in a sore strait. Dishonour one way and ruin the t'other. To be stripped of all, or to sit still like a coward and brook the wrong and the shame."
At this moment the attention of the agitated group was suddenly diverted. The sound of a horse's hoofs, urged in a headlong gallop along the road, had been audible for a minute or two: and now there rang into the air the sudden clash of the swinging gate, the bringing up of a horse upon the paved yard, and the sound of some one flinging from the saddle. "Where are they? in the big room?" some one cried: and the door swinging open admitted Mistress Jean from the Castle, breathless with haste, excitement, and agitation, her fair face glowing, her bright hair waving, her riding-skirt splashed with the heavy mud of the road. "Oh take me in!" she cried. "Oh save me, Leddy; I have no place to hide my head, and Kellie has come into a stranger's hands."