The Black Colonel

Excerpt

TO J. T. M., WHO KNOWS THE

STORY OF THE BLACK COLONEL

Chapters and Contents

I. WE MEET IN THE PASS II. TRAPPED BY THE RED-COATS III. OVER THE HILLS OF HOME IV. THE OPENING ROAD V. A CAIRN OF REMEMBRANCE VI. THE FINGER OF FATE VII. A PARLEY AND A SURPRISE VIII. THE CONQUERING HERO IX. 'TWIXT NIGHT AND MORN X. THE WAY OF A WOMAN XI. THE CRACK OF THUNDER XII. RAIDERS OF THE DARK XIII. THE WOUND OF ABSENCE XIV. THE CARDS OF LOVE XV. NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE XVI. THE WOOIN' O'T! XVII. A SONG OF OTHER SHORES XVIII. MY GARDEN OF CONTENT

Personal and Particular

The strangest thing about this tale is that it happened, though not, may be, as I here relate it; which is merely to seek, in a humble spirit, the great company of George Washington, who could not tell—a story!

That of the Black Colonel came to me in scraps of talk from my mother when, as Byron grandly sang of himself, "I roved, a Young Highlander, o'er Dark Lochnagar," a wild landscape beloved of Queen Victoria, at Balmoral, for, you see, the eminences will come in. My mother had it from her people, a Forbes family long planted in the brave uplands of Deeside, and I was taken a generation nearer to it in the conversation of my grandfather, whose folk were on the no less brave uplands of Donside. Nay, he could remember, what my own father, born like him, and myself, in the Forbes Country, first stirred me by saying, when the Red Coats still garrisoned the Castle of Braemar and the Castle of Corgarff, old Grampian strongholds where they had been installed to overawe the Jacobites of the Aberdeenshire Highlands.

The "Seventeen-Forty-Five," with the "Standard on the Braes o' Mar . . . up and streamin' rarely" for Bonnie Prince Charlie, saw fiery times in those remote parts, and knew times of dule afterwards, and the difficulty about any authentic tale of events, is that, in its passage down time, from mouth to mouth, it necessarily loses immediacy of phrase, even of fable, and that rude frame of living and loving, fighting and dying, in which it was originally set. But human nature does not change, we only think it does in changed circumstances, and if Jock Farquharson, of Inverey, could return from the Hills of Beyond and read our chronicle of himself and others, why, he might recognize it, which would mean, perhaps, that some of the romantic colour, the dancing atmosphere, and the high spirit of adventure of those ancient years, has been saved from them. It was little he did not know about the gallantries and the intrigues of war-making and love-making, holding them the natural occupations of a Highland gentleman, even when he had become a "broken man" and an "outlaw"; as you may now, if you please, go on to learn, with many other things of surprise, diversion and quality.

J. M.

THE CALEDONIAN CLUB,
  LONDON,
    Midsummer Day, 1921.

I—We Meet in the Pass

We might have gone by each other in the Pass, the Black Colonel and I, if his horse had not kicked a stone as we came together. It struck my foot and then a rock, making a rattle in the dark night....