Читать книгу Red Cap Tales, Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North - S. R. Crockett - Страница 17

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As soon as this part of the tale was finished, the audience showed much greater eagerness to enter immediately upon the acting of Donald Bean Lean's cattle-raid, and its consequences, than it had previously displayed as to the doings of Edward Waverley.

As Hugh John admitted, this was "something like!" The Abbey precincts were instantly filled with the mingled sounds characteristic of all well-conducted forays, and it was well indeed that the place was wholly deserted. For the lowings of the driven cattle, the shouts of the triumphant Highlanders, the deep rage of the Baron, stalking to and fro wrapped in his cloak on the Castle terrace, might well have astonished the crowd which in these summer days comes from the four corners of the world "to view fair Melrose aright."

It was not till the edge had worn off their first enthusiasm, that it became possible to collect them again in order to read "The Hold of a Highland Robber," which makes Chapter Seventeenth of Waverley itself. And the reading so fired the enthusiasm of Sweetheart that she asked for the book to take to bed with her. The boys were more practical, though equally enthusiastic.

"Wait till we get home," cried Hugh John, cracking his fingers and thumbs. "I know a proper place for Donald Bean Lean's cave."

"And I," said Sir Toady Lion, "will light a fire by the pond and toss the embers into the water. It will be jolly to hear 'em hiss, I tell you!"

"But what," asked Maid Margaret, "shall we do for the cattle and sheep that were hanging by the heels, when Edward went into Donald Bean Lean's cave?"

"Why, we will hang you up by the heels and cut slices off you!" said Sir Toady, with frowning truculence.

Whereat the little girl, a little solemnised, began to edge away from the dangerous neighbourhood of such a pair of young cannibals. Sweetheart reproached her brothers for inventing calumnies against their countrymen.

"Even the Highlanders were never so wicked," she objected; "they did not eat one another."

"Well, anyway," retorted Sir Toady Lion, unabashed, "Sawney Bean did. Perhaps he was a cousin of Donald's, though in the history it says that he came from East Lothian."

"Yes," cried Hugh John, "and in an old book written in Latin it says (father read it to us) that one of his little girls was too young to be executed with the rest on the sands of Leith. So the King sent her to be brought up by kind people, where she was brought up without knowing anything of her father, the cannibal, and her mother, the cannibaless—"

"Oh," cried Sweetheart, who knew what was coming, putting up her hands over her ears, "please don't tell that dreadful story all over again."

"Father read it out of a book—so there!" cried Sir Toady, implacably, "go on, Hugh John!"

"And so when this girl was about as big as Sweetheart, and, of course, could not remember her grandfather's nice cave or the larder where the arms and legs were hung up to dry in the smoke—"

"Oh, you horrid boy!" cried Sweetheart, not, however, removing herself out of ear-shot—because, after all, it was nice to shiver just a little.

"Oh, yes, and I have seen the cave," cried Sir Toady, "it is on the shore near Ballantrae—a horrid place. Go on, Hugh John, tell about Sawney Bean's grandchild!"

"Well, she grew up and up, playing with dolls just like other girls, till she was old enough to be sent out to service. And after she had been a while about the house to which she went, it was noticed that some of the babies in the neighbourhood began to go a-missing, and they found—"

"I think she was a nursemaid!" interrupted Sir Toady, dispassionately. "That must have been it. The little wretches cried—so she ate them!"

"Oh," cried Sweetheart, stopping her ears with her fingers, "don't tell us what they found—I believe you made it all up, anyway."

"No, I didn't," cried Hugh John, shouting in her ear as if to a very deaf person, "it was father who read it to us, out of a big book with fat black letters. So it must be true!"

Sir Toady was trying to drag away his sister's arms that she might have the benefit of details, when I appeared in the distance. Whereupon Hugh John, who felt his time growing limited, concluded thus, "And when they were taking the girl away to hang her, the minister asked her why she had killed the babies, and she answered him, 'If people only knew how good babies were—especially little girls—there would not be one left between Forth and Solway!'"

Then quite unexpectedly Maid Margaret began to sob bitterly.

"They shan't hang me up and eat me," she cried, running as hard as she could and flinging herself into my arms; "Hugh John and Sir Toady say they will, as soon as we get home."

Happily I had a light cane of a good vintage in my hand, and it did not take long to convince the pair of young scamps of the inconvenience of frightening their little sister. Sweetheart looked on approvingly as two forlorn young men were walked off to a supper, healthfully composed of plain bread and butter, and washed down by some nice cool water from the pump.

"I told you!" she said, "you wouldn't believe me."

All the same she was tender-hearted enough to convey a platter of broken meats secretly up to their "condemned cell," as I knew from finding the empty plate under their washstand in the morning. And as Maid Margaret was being carried off to be bathed and comforted, a Voice, passing their door, threatened additional pains and penalties to little boys who frightened their sisters.

"It was all in a book," said Hugh John, defending himself from under the bedclothes, "father read it to us!"

"We did it for her good," suggested Sir Toady.

"If I hear another word out of you—" broke in the Voice; and then added, "go to sleep this instant!"

The incident of the cave had long been forgotten and forgiven, before I could continue the story of Waverley in the cave of Donald Bean Lean. We sat once more "in oor ain hoose at hame," or rather outside it, near a certain pleasant chalet in a wood, from which place you can see a brown and turbulent river running downward to the sea.