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William Hazlitt - "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays"

Gilbert Parker - "The Battle Of The Strong [A Romance of Two Kingdoms], Volume 1."

Edward Salisbury Field - "Cupid's Understudy"

Unknown - "The Bible, King James version, Book 3: Leviticus"

Bob Son of Battle

A >> Alfred Ollivant >> Bob Son of Battle




"If David did strike you, you drove him to it," she said, speaking in
calm, gentle accents. "Yo' know, none so well, whether yo've bin a
good feyther to him, and him no mither, poor laddie! whether yo've
bin to him what she'd ha' had yo' be. Ask yer conscience, Mr.
M'Adam. An' if he was a wee aggravatin' at times, had he no
reason? He'd a heavy cross to bear, had David, and yo' know best if
yo' helped to ease it for him."

The little man pointed to the door; but the girl paid no heed.

"D'yo' think when yo' were cruel to him, jeerin' and fleerin', he
never felt it, because he was too proud to show ye? He'd a big saft
heart, had David, beneath the varnish. Mony's the time when
mither was alive, I've seen him throw himsel' into her arms,
sobbin', and cry, 'Eh, if I had but mither! 'Twas different when
mither was alive; he was kinder to me then. An' noo I've no one;
I'm alone.' An' he'd sob and sob in mither's arms, and she, weepin'
hersel', would comfort him, while he, wee laddie, would no be
comforted, cryin' broken-like, 'There's none to care for me noo; I'm
alone. Mither's left me and eh! I'm prayin' to be wi' her!'

The clear, girlish voice shook. M'Adam, sitting with face averted,
waved to her, mutely ordering her to be gone. But she held on,
gentle, sorrowful, relentless.

"An' what'll yo' say to his mither when yo meet her, as yo' must
soon noo, and she asks yo', 'An what o' David? What o' th' lad I left
wi' yo', Adam, to guard and keep for me, faithful and true, till this
Day?' And then yo'll ha' to speak the truth, God's truth; and yo'll ha'
to answer, 'Sin' the day yo' left me I niver said a kind word to the
lad. I niver bore wi' him, and niver tried to. And in the end I drove
him by persecution to try and murder me.' Then maybe she'll look
at yo'--yo' best ken hoo--and she'll say, 'Adam, Adam! is this what I
deserved fra yo'?'

The gentle, implacable voice ceased. The girl turned and slipped
softly out of the room; and M'Adam was left alone to his thoughts
and his dead wife's memory.

"Mither and father, baith! Mither and father, baith!" rang
remorselessly in his ears.

Chapter XXIII TH' OWD UN

THE Black Killer still cursed the land. Sometimes there would be
a cessation in the crimes; then a shepherd, going his rounds, would
notice his sheep herding together, packing in unaccustomed
squares; a raven, gorged to the crop, would rise before him and
flap wearily away, and he would come upon the murderer's latest
victim.

The Dalesmen were in despair, so utterly futile had their efforts
been. There was no proof; no hope, no apparent probability that
the end was near. As for the Tailless Tyke, the only piece of
evidence against him had flown with David, who, as it chanced,
had divulged what he had seen to no man.

The 100 pound reward offered had brought no issue. The police
had done nothing. The Special Commissioner had been equally
successful. After the affair in the Scoop the Killer never ran a risk,
yet never missed a chance.

Then, as a last resource, Jim Mason made his attempt. He took a
holiday from his duties and disappeared into the wilderness. Three
days and three nights no man saw him.

On the morning of the fourth he reappeared, haggard, unkempt, a
furtive look haunting his eyes, sullen for once, irritable, who had
never been irritable before--to confess his failure. Cross-examined
further, he answered with unaccustomed fierceness: "I seed nowt, I
tell ye. Who's the liar as said I did?"

But that night his missus heard him in his sleep conning over
something to himself in slow, fearful whisper, "Two on 'em; one
ahint t'other. The first big--bull-like; t'ither--" At which point Mrs.
Mason smote him a smashing blow in the ribs, and he woke in a
sweat, crying terribly, "Who said I seed--"

The days were slipping away; the summer was hot upon the land,
and with it the Black Killer was forgotten; David was forgotten;
everything sank into oblivion before the all-absorbing interest of
the coming Dale trials.

The long-anticipated battle for the Shepherds' Trophy was looming
close; soon everything that hung upon the issue of that struggle
would be decided finally. For ever the jus-. tice of Th' Owd Un'
claim to his proud title would be settled. If he won, he won
outright ~--a thing unprecedented in the annals of the Cup; if he
won, the place of Owd Bob o' Kenmuir as first in his profession
was assured for all time. Above all, it was the last event in the six
years' struggle 'twixt Red and Gray It wa~ the last time those two
great rivals would meet in battle. The supremacy of one would be
decided once and for all. For win or lose, it was the last public
appearance of the Gray Dog of Kenmuir.

And as every hour brought the great day nearer, nothing else was
talked of in the country-side. The heat of the Dalesmen's
enthusiasm was only intensified by the fever of their apprehension.
Many a man would lose more than he cared to contemplate were
'Th' Owd Un beat. But he'd not be! Nay; owd, indeed, he was--two
years older than his great rival; there were a hundred risks, a
hundred chances; still: "What's the odds agin Owd Bob o'
Kenmuir? I'm takin' 'em. Who'll lay agin Th' Owd Un?"

And with the air saturated with this perpetual talk of the old dog,
these everlasting references to his certain victory; his ears
drumming with the often boast that the gray dog was the best in
the North, M'Adam became the silent, ill-designing man of six
months since--morose, brooding, suspicious, muttering of
conspiracy, plotting revenge.

The scenes at the Sylvester Arms were replicas of those of
previous years. Usually the little man sat isolated in a far corner,
silent and glowering, with Red Wull at his feet. Now and then he
burst into a paroxysm of insane giggling, slapping his thigh, and
muttering, "Ay, it's likely they'll beat us, Wuflie. Yet aiblins there's
a wee somethin'--a some- thin' we ken and they dinna, Wullie,--eh!
Wullie, he! he!" And sometimes he would leap to his feet and
address his pot-house audience, appealing to them passionately,
satirically, tearfully, as the mood might be on him; and his theme
was always the same: James Moore, Owd Bob, the Cup, and the
plots agin him and his Wullie; and always he concluded with that
hint of the surprise to come.

Meantime, there was no news of David; he had gone as utterly as a
ship foundered in mid-Atlantic. Some said he'd 'listed; some, that
he'd gone to sea. And "So he 'as," corroborated Sam'l, "floatin',
'eels uppards."

With no gleam of consolation, Maggie's misery was such as to
rouse compassion in all hearts. She went no longer blithely singing
about her work; and all the springiness had fled from her gait. The
people of Kenmuir vied with one another in their attempts to
console their young mistress.

Maggie was not the only one in whose life David's absence had
created a void. Last as he would have been to own it, M' Adam felt
acutely the boy's loss. It may have been he missed the ever-present
butt; it may have been a nobler feeling. Alone with Red Wull, too
late he felt his loneliness. Sometimes, sitting in the kitchen by
himself, thinking of the past, he experienced sharp pangs of
remorse; and this was all the more the case after Maggie's visit.
Subsequent to that day the little man, to do him justice, was never
known to hint by word or look an ill thing of his enemy's daughter.
Once, indeed, when Melia Ross was drawing on a dirty
imagination with Maggie for subject, M'Adam shut her up
with:

"Ye're a maist amazin' big liar, Melia Ross." Yet, though for the
daughter he had now no evil thought, his hatred for the father had
never been so uncompromising.

He grew reckless in his assertions. His life was one long threat
against James Moore's. Now he openly stated his conviction that,
on the evenful night of the fight, James Moore, with object easily
discernible, had egged David on to murder him.

"Then why don't yo' go and tell him so, yo' muckle liar?" roared
Tammas at last, enraged to madness.

"I will!" said M'Adam. And he did.

It was on the day preceding the great summer sheep fair at
Grammoch-town that he ful-. filled his vow.

That is always a big field-day at Kenmuir; and on this occasion
James Moore and Owd Bob had been up and working on the Pike
from the rising of the sun. Throughout the straggling lands of
Kenmuir the Master went with his untiring adjutant, rounding up,
cutting out, drafting. It was already noon when the flock started
from the yard.

On the gate by the stile, as the party came up, sat M'Adam.

"I've a word to say to you, James Moore," he announced, as the
Master approached.

"Say it then, and quick. I've no time to stand gossipin' here, if yo'
have," said the Master.

M'Adam strained forward till he nearly toppled off the gate.

Queer thing, James Moore, you should be the only one to escape
this Killer."

"Yo' forget yoursel', M'Adam."

"Ay, there's me," acquiesced the little man. "But you--hoo d'yo'
'count for your luck?"

James Moore swung round and pointed proudly at the gray dog,
now patrolling round the flock.

"There's my luck!" he said.

M'Adam laughed unpleasantly.

"So I thought," he said, "so I thought! And I s'pose ye're thinkin'
that yer luck," nodding at the gray dog, "will win you the Cup for
certain a month hence,"

"I hope so!" said the Master.

"Strange if he should not after all," mused the little man.

James Moore eyed him suspiciously. "What d'yo' mean?" he asked
sternly. M'Adam shrugged his shoulders. "There's mony a slip
'twixt Cup and lip, that's a'. I was thinkin' some mischance might
come to him."

The Master's eyes flashed dangerously. He recalled the many
rumors he had heard, and the attempt on the old dog early in the
year.

"I canna think ony one would be coward enough to murder him,"
he said, drawing himself up.

M'Adam lent forward. There was a nasty glitter in his eye, and his
face was all a-tremble.

"Ye'd no think ony one 'd be cooard enough to set the son to
murder the father. Yet some one did,--set the lad on to 'sassinate
me. He failed at me, and next, I suppose, he'll try at Wullie!" There
was a flush on the sallow face, and a vindictive ring in the thin
voice. "One way or t'ither, fair or foul, Wullie or me, am or baith,
has got to go afore Cup Day, eh, James Moore! eh?"

The Master put his hand on the latch of the gate, "That'll do,
M'Adam," he said. "I'll stop to hear no more, else I might get angry
we' yo'. Noo git off this gate, yo're trespassin' as 'tis.

He shook the gate. M'Adam tumbled off, and went sprawling into
the sheep clustered below. Picking himself up, he dashed on
through the flock, waving his arms, kicking fantastically, and
scattering confusion everywhere.

"Just wait till I'm thro' wi' 'em, will yo'?" shouted the Master,
seeing the danger.

It was a request which, according to the etiquette of shepherding,
one man was bound to grant another. But M'Adam rushed on
regardless, dancing and gesticulating. Save for the lightning
vigilance of Owd Bob, the flock must have broken.

"I think yo' might ha' waited!" remonstrated the Master, as the little
man burst his way through.

"Noo, I've forgot somethin'!" the other cried, and back he started as
he had gone.

It was more than human nature could tolerate.

"Bob, keep him off!"

A flash of teeth; a blaze of gray eyes; and~ the old dog had leapt
forward to oppose the little man's advance.

"Shift oot o' ma light!" cried he, striving to dash past.

"Hold him, lad!"

And hold him the old dog did, while his master opened the gate
and put the flock through, the opponents dodging in front of one
another like opposing three-quarter-backs at the Rugby game.

"Oot o' ma path, or I'll strike!" shouted the little man in a fury, as
the last sheep passed through the gate.

"I'd not," warned the Master.

"But I will!" yelled M'Adam; and, darting forward as the gate
swung to, struck furiously at his opponent.

He missed, and the gray dog charged at him like a mail-train.

"Hi! James Moore--" but over he went like a toppled wheelbarrow,
while the old dog turned again, raced at the gate, took it
magnificently in his stride, and galloped up the lane after his
master.

At M'Adam's yell, James Moore had turned.

"Served yo' properly!" he called back. "He'll lam ye yet it's not wise
to tamper wi' a gray dog or his sheep. Not the first time he's
downed ye, I'm thinkin'!"

The little man raised himself painfully to his elbow and crawled
toward the gate. The Master, up the lane, could hear him cursing
as he dragged himself. Another moment, and a head was poked
through the bars of the gate, and a devilish little face looked after
him.

"Downed me, by--, he did!" the little man cried passionately. "I
owed ye baith somethin' before this, and noo, by--, I owe ye
somethin' more. An' mind ye, Adam M'Adam pays his debts!"

"I've heard the contrary," the Master replied drily, and turned away
up the lane toward the Marches.

Chapter XXIV A SHOT IN THE NIGHT

IT was only three short weeks before Cup Day that one afternoon
Jim Mason brought a letter to Kenmuir. James Moore opened it as
the postman still stood in the door.

It was from Long Kirby--still in retirement--begging him for
mercy's sake to keep Owd Bob safe within doors at nights; at all
events till after the great event was over. For Kirby knew, as did
every Dalesman, that the old dog slept in the porch, between the
two doors of the house, of which the outer was only loosely closed
by a chain, so that the ever-watchful guardian might slip in and out
and go his rounds at any moment of the night.

This was how the smith concluded his ill-spelt note: "Look out for
M'Adam i tell you i know hel tn at thowd un afore cup day--f aiim
im you. if the ole dog's bete i'm a ruined man i say so for the luv o
God keep yer eyes wide."

The Master read the letter, and handed it to the postman, who
perused it carefully.

"I tell yo' what," said Jim at length, speaking with an earnestness
that made the other stare, "I wish yo'd do what he asks yo': keep
Th' Owd Un in o' nights, I mean, just for the. present.

The Master shook his head and laughed, tearing the letter to
pieces.

"Nay," said he; "M'Adam or no M'Adam,, Cup or no Cup, Th' Owd
Un has the run o' ma land same as he's had since a puppy. Why,
Jim, the first night I shut him up that. night the Killer comes, I'll
lay."

The postman turned wearily away, and the Master stood looking
after him, wondering what had come of late to his former cheery
friend.

Those two were not the only warnings James Moore received.
During the weeks immediately preceding the Trials, the danger
signal was. perpetually flaunted beneath his nose.

Twice did Watch, the black cross-bred chained in the straw-yard,
hurl a brazen challenge on the night air. Twice did the Master,~
with lantern, Sam'! and Owd Bob, sally forth and search every hole
and corner on the premises--to find nothing. One of the
dairy-maids~ gave notice, avowing that the farm was haunted; that,
on several occasions in the early morning, she had seen a bogie
flitting down the slope to the Wastrel--a sure portent, Sam'l
declared, of an approaching death in the house. While once a
shearer, coming up from the village, reported having seen, in the
twilight of dawn, a little ghostly figure, haggard and startled,
stealing silently from tree to tree in the larch-copse by the lane.
The Master, however, irritated by these constant alarms, dismissed
the story summarily.

One thing I'm sartino'," said he. "There's not a critter moves on
Kenmuir at nights but Th' Owd Un knows it."

Yet, even as he said it, a little man, draggled, weary-eyed, smeared
with dew and dust, was limping in at the door of a house barely a
-mile away. "Nae luck, Wullie, curse it!" he-cried, throwing
himself into a chair, and addressing some one who was not
there--"nae luck. An' yet I'm sure o't as I am that there's .a God in
heaven."

M'Adam had become an old man of late. But little more than fifty,
yet he looked to have reached man's allotted years. His sparse hair
was quite white; his body shrunk and bowed; and his thin hand
shook like an aspen as it groped to the familiar bottle.

In another matter, too, he was altogether changed. Formerly,
whatever his faults, there had been no harder-working man in the
country-side. At all hours, in all weathers, you might have seen
him with his gigantic attendant going his rounds. Now all that was
different: he never put his hand to the plough, and with none to
help him the land was left wholly untended; so that men said that,
of a surety, there would be a farm to let on the March Mere
Estate come Michaelmas.

Instead of working, the little man sat all day in the kitchen at
home, brooding over his wrongs, and brewing vengeance. Even the
Sylvester Arms knew him no more; for he stayed where he was
with his dog and his. bottle. Only, when the shroud of night had
come down to cover him, he slipped out and away on some errand
on which not even Red. Wull accompanied him.

So the time glided on, till the Sunday before the Trials came
round.

All that day M'Adam sat in his kitchen, drinking, muttering,
hatching revenge.

"Curse it, Wullie! curse it! The time's slippin'--slippin'--slippin'!
Thursday next-- but three days mair! and I haena the proof --I
haena the proof! "--and he rocked to and fro, biting his nails in
the agony of his impotence.

All day long he never moved. Long after sunset he sat on; long
after dark had eliminated the features of the room.

"They're all agin us, Wuflie. It's you and I alane, lad. M'Adam's to
be beat somehow, onyhow; and Moore's to win. So they've settled
it, and so 'twill be--onless, Wullie, onless--but curse it! I've no the
proof! "--and he hammered the table before him and stamped on
the floor.

At midnight he arose, a mad, desperate plan. looming through his
fuddled brain.

"I swore I'd pay him, Wullie, and I will. If I hang for it I'll be even
wi' him. I haena the proof, but I know--I know!" He groped his way
to the mantel piece wth blind eyes and swirling brain. Reaching up
with fumbling hands, he took down the old blunderbuss from
above the fireplace.

"Wullie," he whispered, chuckling hideously, "Wullie, come on!
You and I--he! he!" But the Tailless Tyke was not there. At
nightfall he had slouched silently out of the house on business he
best wot of. So his master crept out of the room alone--on tiptoe,
still chuckling.

The cool night air refreshed him, and he stepped stealthily along,
his quaint weapon over his shoulder: down the hill; across the
Bottom; skirting the Pike; till he reached the plank-bridge over the
Wastrel.

He crossed it safely, that Providence whose care is drunkards
placing his footsteps. Then he stole up the slope like a hunter
stalking his prey.

Arrived at the gate, he raised himself cautiously, and peered over
into the moonlit yard. There was no sign or sound of living
creature. The little gray house slept peacefully in the shadow of the
Pike, all unaware of the man with murder in his heart laboriously
climbing the yard-gate.

The door of the porch was wide, the chain hanging limply down,
unused; and the little man could see within, the moon shining on
the iron studs of the inner door, and the blanket of him who should
have slept there, and did not.

"He's no there, Wullie! He's no there!" He jumped down from the
gate. Throwing all caution to the winds, he reeled recklessly across
the yard. The drunken delirium of battle was on him. The fever of
anticipated. victory flushed his veins. At length he would. take toll
for the injuries of years.

Another moment, and he was in front of the good oak door,
battering at it madly with clubbed weapon, yelling, dancing,
screaming vengeance.

"Where is he? What's he at? Come and tell me that, James Moore!
Come doon, I say, ye coward! Come and meet me like a. man!"

'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots wham Bruce has aften led--
Welcome to your gory bed
Or to victorie!'

The soft moonlight streamed down on the white-haired madman
thundering at the door, screaming his war-song.

The quiet farmyard, startled from its sleep, awoke in an uproar.
Cattle shifted in their stalls; horses whinnied; fowls chattered,
aroused by the din and dull thudding of the blows:. and above the
rest, loud and piercing, the. shrill cry of a terrified child.

Maggie, wakened from a vivid dream of David chasing the police,
hurried a shawl around her, and in a minute had the baby in her
arms and was comforting her--vaguely fearing the while that the
police were after David.

James Moore flung open a window, and, leaning out, looked down
on the dishevelled figure below him.

M'Adam heard the noise, glanced up, and saw his enemy.
Straightway he ceased his attack on the door, and, running beneath
the window, shook his weapon up at his foe.

"There ye are, are ye? Curse ye for a

-coward! .'urse ye for a liar! Come doon, I say, James Moore!
come doon--I daur ye to it! Aince and for a' let's settle oor
account."

The Master, looking down from above, thought that at length the
little man's brain had gone.

"What is't yo' want?" he asked, as calmly as he could, hoping to
gain time.

"What is't I want?" screamed the madman. "Hark to him! He
crosses mi in ilka thing; he plot-s agin me; lie robs me o' ma Cup;
he sets ma son agin me and pits him on to murder me! And in the
end he--"

"Coom, then, coom! I'll--~---"

"Gie me back the Cup ye stole, James Moore! Gie me back ma son
ye've took from rue! And there's anither thing. What's yer gray dog
doin'? Where's yer--"

The Master interposed again:

"I'll coom doon and talk things over wi' yo'." he said soothingly.
But before he could withdraw, M'Adam had jerked his weapon to
his shoulder and aimed it full at his enemy's head.

The threatened man looked down the gun's great quivering mouth,
wholly unmoved.

"Yo' mon hold it steadier, little mon, if yo'd hit!" he said grimly.
"There, I'll cooni help yo'!" He withdrew slowly; and all the-time
was wondering where the gray dog was.

In another moment he was downstairs, un--doing the bolts and bars
of the door. On the other side stood M'Adam, his blunderbuss at
his shoulder, his finger trembling on the trigger, waiting.

"Hi, Master! Stop, or yo're dead!" roared a voice from the loft on
the other side the yard.

"Feyther! feyther! git yo' back!" screamed Maggie, who saw it all
from the window above-the door.

Their cries were too late! The blunderbuss. went off with a roar,
belching out a storm of sparks and smoke. The shot peppered the
door like hail, and the whole yard seemed for a moment wrapped
in flame.

"Aw! oh! ma gummy! A'm waounded~ A'm a goner! A'm shot!
'Elp! Murder! Eh! Oh!" bellowed a lusty voice--and it was. not
James Moore's.

The little man, the cause of the uproar, lay-quite still upon the
ground, with another figure standing over him. As he had stood,
finger on trigger, waiting for that last bolt to be drawn, a gray
form, shooting whence no one knew, had suddenly and silently
attacked him from behind, and jerked him backward to the ground.
With the shock of the fall the blunderbuss had gone off.

The last bolt was thrown back with a clatter, and the Master
emerged. In a glance he took in the whole scene: the fallen man;
the gray dog; the still-smoking weapon.

"Yo', was't Bob lad?" he said. "I was wonderin' wheer yo' were. Yo'
came just at the reet moment, as yo' aye do!" Then, in a loud voice,
addressing the darkness: "Yo're-not hurt, Sam'! Todd--I can tell
that by yer-noise; it was nob'but the shot off the door warmed yo'.
Coom away doon and gie me a hand."

He walked up to M'Adam, who still lay-gasping on the ground.
The shock of the fall and recoil of the weapon had knocked the
breath out of the little man's body; beyond that he was barely hurt.

The Master stood over his fallen enemy and looked sternly down
at him.

"I've put up wi' more from you, M'Adam, than I would from ony
other man, " he said. "But this is too much--comin' here at night
-wi' loaded arms, scarin' the wimmen and childer oot o' their
lives, and I can but think meanin' worse. If yo' were half a man I'd
gie yo' the finest thrashin' iver yo' had in yer life. But, as yo' know
well, I could no more hit yo' than I could a woman. Why yo've got
this down on me yo' ken best. I niver did yo' or ony ither mon a
harm. As to the Cup, I've got it and I'm goin' to do ma best to keep
it--it's for yo' to win it from me if yo' can o' Thursday. As for what
yo' say o' David, yo' know it's a lie. And as for what yo're drivin' at
wi' yer hints and mysteries, I've no more idee than a babe unborn.
Noo I'm goin' to lock yo' up, yo're not safe abroad. I'm thinkin' I'll
ha' to hand ye o'er to the p'lice."

With the help of Sam'l he half dragged, half supported the stunned
little man across the yard; and shoved him into a tiny
semisubterraneous room, used for the storage of coal, at the end of
the farm-buildings.

"Yo' think it over that side, ma lad," called the Master grimly, as
he turned the key, "and I will this." And with that he retired to bed.

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