CHAPTER XLIII.
THE VENGEANCE OF "YON."
Gash Gibbie surveyed the sight with a kind of twisted satisfaction. Hewent hirpling about the body round and round. He squatted with crossedlegs at its head.
"What think ye o' that?" he asked, "that's my mither. She's near asbonny as me, think ye no? Yon micht hae made her bonnier to look at, ginHe was to be so ill to her."
And the monster crouched still lower, and took the terriblescarlet-stained face and neck on his knees.
"Mither! mither!" he wailed, "I aye telled ye it wad come tothis--mockin' Yon disna do. A wee while, maybe, He lets ye gang on; butno for lang! Yon can bide His time, and juist when ye are crawin'croose, and thinkin' on how blythe and canty ye are--blaff! like aflaught o' fire--Yon comes upon ye, and where are ye?"
He took a long and apparently well-satisfied look at his mother.
"Aye, there ye lie, an' by my faith, ye are no bonny, mither o' mine.Mony is the time I telled ye what it wad be, afore Yon had dune wi' ye."
Small wonder that it chilled our blood to hear the twisted being cry outthus upon the mother that bore him. He seemed even no little pleasedthat what he had foretold had come to pass. So we stood, Wat and I, insilent amaze before him, as the storm continued to blare till the wholeheaven above us appeared but the single mouth of a black trumpet.
Sometimes we seemed to be in a large place, ribbed and rafted withroaring sound, upholstered with lightning flashes of pale violet andblue. Then again the next moment we were shut within a tent of velvetblackness like a pall, with only the echoes of the warring midnightrolling away back among the hills. There seemed no God of Pity abroadthat night to look after puir muir-wandered folk, but only mockingdevils riding rough-shod on the horses of the pit.
"Come away hame, Gibbie," said I, "ye can do her little good. I fearshe's by wi' it!"
"By wi' it!" quoth the natural, fleeringly. "Na, only beginning wi' it.D'ye no ken, hill-man-wi'-the-hirpling-leg, that Yon has gotten her. Ican see her stannin' afore Yon, wi' her face like red fire, a black liein her mouth and ill-intent in her heart. For as the tree falls, so dothit lie."
The imp seemed to have gotten the words at some field-preaching.
"Think ye I didna warn her?" he went on. "My braw chiels, ye hae gottenyour warnin' this nicht! Meddle na wi' Yon, neither dare Him to His facelest He be angry. For juist like Gibbie killin' a speckly taed, Yon canset His heel on ye!"
He stroked the hair off the dead woman's brow with a hand like a hairyclaw.
"Aye, an' ye were na sic an ill mither to me, though ye selled yoursel'to Ye-Ken-Wha! Whatna steer there is up there aboot the soul o' ae puirauld body. Hear till it----"
And he waved his hands to the four airts of heaven, and called us tohearken to the hills shaking themselves to pieces. "Siccan a steer aboota puir feckless auld woman gaun to her ain ill place! I wonder Yon isno' shamed o' himsel'!"
And the twisted man-thing put his hands to his brow and pressed thepalms upon his eyes, as if to shut out the unceasing pulsing of thelightning and the roar of the anger of God breaking like sea upon themountains.
"Sae muckle squandered for sae little--an' after a' but little pleasurein the thing! I dinna see what there is in the Black Man's service tomak' siccan a brag aboot. Gin ye sup tasty kail wi' him in theforenicht, he aye caa's roond wi' the lawin' i' the mornin'!
"Losh! Losh! Sae muckle for sae little. I declare I will cut oot thethree marks that my mither made on me, and gang doon to Peden at theShalloch. I want na mair sic wark as this! Na, though I was born wi' theBlack Man's livery on me!
"Preserve us!" he cried. "This is as fearsome as that year there was naemeat in the hoose, and Gash Gibbie brocht some back, and aye brocht it,and brocht it even as it was needed. And Kate o' the Corp-licht, shereadied it and asked nae quastions. But only tearin' belly-hunger giedus strength to eat that awesome meat. An' a' the neighbours died o'starvation at Tonskeen and the Star an' the bonny Hill o' the Buss--a'but Gib an' his mither, their leevin' lanes. But yae nicht Yon sentGibbie's sin to find him oot; or maybe the Black Thing in the Hole gatlowse, because it was his hour.
"And at ony rate puir Gibbie gat a terrible fricht that nicht.
"Wad ye like to hear? Aweel, puir Gibbie was lying on his bed up thatstair, an' what think ye there cam' to him?"
He paused and looked at us with a countenance so blanched and terriblethat almost we turned and ran. For the lightning played upon it till itseemed to glow with unholy light, and that not from without but fromwithin. It was the most terrifying thing to be alone with such amonstrous living creature, and such a dead woman in the lonesome placehe had called the "Nick of the Deid Wife." What with the chattering ofour teeth, the agitation of our spirits, and the flicker of the fire,the old dead witch seemed actually to rise and nod at us.
"So Gash Gibbie, puir man, lay and listened in his naked bed, for he hadgotten his fill that nicht, though a' the lave were hungry--an' that o'his ain providin'. But as he lay sleepless, he heard a step come to thedoor, the sneck lifted itsel', an' a foot that wasna his mither's cameinto the passage, _dunt-duntin'_ like a lameter hirplin' on two staves!
"An' then there cam' a hard footstep on the stair, and a rattle o'fearsome-like sounds, as the thing cam' up the ladder. Gibbie kenned nawhat it micht be. An' when the door opened an' the man wi' the woodenfeet cam' in--preserve me, but he was a weary-lookin' tyke.
"'Whaur came ye frae?' says puir Gash Gibbie.
"'Frae the Grave!' says he. He hadna muckle to say, but his e'en warlike fiery gimblets in his head.
"'What mak's your e'en bones sae white an' deep?'
"'The Grave!' says he. He hadna muckle to say, but he spak' aye mairdour and wearisome than ever.
"'What mak's ye lauch sae wide at puir Gibbie?'
"'The Grave!' says he. He hadna muckle to say, but syne he steppitnearer nearer to the bedside.
"'What made that great muckle hole in your side?'
"'You made it!' cried the ghaist, loupin' at Gibbie's throat; an' puirGib kenned nae mair."
And even as the monster shouted out the last words--the words of thespectre of his cannibal vision--Gash Gibbie seemed to us to dilate andlean forward to spring upon us. The wild-fire reeled about as though thevery elements were drunken, and Wat and I fairly turned and fled,shouting insanely with terror as we ran--leaving the silent strickenwitch with the face of blood, and the misshapen elf, her hell's broodprogeny, raving and shouting on the hillside--these two alone atmidnight in the "Nick of the Deid Wife."
"Aye, rin, rin," we heard him call after us. "Rin fast, and Yon willmaybe no' catch ye--till it is your hour!"
And truly Wat and I did run in earnest, stumbling and crying out in ourterror--now falling and now getting up, then falling to the runningagain without a single reasonable word. But as we came hot-foot over theRig of Lochricaur, we seemed to run into the sheeted rain. For where wehad been hitherto, only the blue dry fire had ringed us, but here we raninto a downpour as though the fountains of the deep of heaven had brokenup and were falling in a white spate upon the world.
We were wet, weary, and terrified, more than we had ever been in ourlives, before we reached the hermitage of the cave of Macaterick. Therewe found the women waiting for us, listening fearfully to the roar ofthe storm without, and hearkening in the lown blinks to Auld AntonLennox praying--while the lightning seemed to run into the cave, andshine on the blade of the sword he held gripped in his right hand. So westripped our wet clothes, and lay in the outer place all the night,where there was a fire of red peats, while the women withdrew themselvesinto their inner sanctuary. I could see the anxiety in their eyes whenwe came in, for they could not but discern the ghastly terror in ourfaces. But without any agreement between ourselves, Wat and I silentlyresolved that we should not acquaint any of the party with the hideousjudgments of that night, to which we had been eye-witnesses.