Chapter IX: The Red Priest of Applecross

I heard, with the utmost alarm, the relation of all that had passed, and felt assured that my doom and the doom of our people were sealed. To Mr. Snaggs, Callum had said nothing more than I would have said, but the chances are that, had I encountered him, my bearing might have been more violent.

'The glen will be swept like Glentuirc,' said Callum, as we descended the hill slowly and thoughtfully; 'swept bare as my hand, devil a doubt of it.'

'And the old jointure-house, Callum--our last home on earth--sick and ailing as my poor mother is, how is she ever to be got out of it?'

'Never alive, I fear me.'

I shuddered at his answer, for he as well as I knew the strange old tradition connected with it.

Lachlan Mohr Mac Innon, about twenty years before his fall at Worcester, had been seized by a covenanting and reformatory spirit, and while the fervour lasted, had demolished an ancient chapel of St. Colme, and with the stones thereof, built the said jointure-house. This was considered an act of sacrilege so deep, that the Mac Donalds of Keppoch, and other Catholic tribes, were on the point of marching in hostile array to Glen Ora, when the influence of a wandering monk of the Scottish mission restrained them. This personage, whose adventures have been given to the world as the Capuchino Scozzese, and who is still remembered in Ross-shire as the Red Priest of Applecross, cursed the deed in Latin and Gaelic, and predicted, that as Lachlan Mohr had built a house for the dowagers of his family to live in, not one should ever _die_ there; and strange enough, though it had been inhabited for about two hundred years, no member of our family was ever known to pay the debt of nature within it; though many who were sick, ailing, or longing for death, after dwelling long there, perished by violent ends or sudden diseases elsewhere.

Angus Mac Innon, who fought at Culloden, left a widow, a daughter of Barcaldine, who attained a vast age, and lived beyond a century, attenuated, bed-ridden, sickly, and querulous, in the last stages of emaciation and second childhood. Longing for a crisis to her sufferings, in the same year in which her present Majesty ascended the throne, she insisted on being conveyed on a pallet into the open air, and, like the Lady May, of Cadboll, to defy fate, and test the truth of the terrible prediction. Four of our people, Alisdair Mac Gouran, Ian Mac Raonuil, Red Gillespie, and Mac Ian, the father of my fosterer, bore her slowly and carefully on a palliasse; and whether it might be the result of fancy acting on a highly-nervous temperament, or the weakness of a system worn away with age, I know not; but to the no small horror of her bearers, the aged widow of Angus expired at the instant she was passing the threshold.

Now, my mother had long been sickly and almost bedridden, and thus though I could scarcely put much faith in the prediction of the Red Priest of Applecross, which had been impressed upon me in childhood by my nurse, the mother of Callum Dhu, as something to be spoken of in whispers, and thought of with awe, yet I looked forward with vague apprehension to our expulsion from the house; as she was wont to affirm that she was so feeble and worn by time, that the life in her was not natural, and that if once she passed _the door_ of the fated mansion, her doom would be similar to that of Angus' widow. A strange terror seized me with this thought, for my mother was my only tie to the glen, to my country--to existence itself!

Weary of dark conjectures, and with a heart full of dim forebodings, while Callum and Minnie were in another part of the house, I entered my mother's little parlour. She was again seated at a little tripod table, with her bible and her knitting before her.

'You know all, Allan,' said she, anxiously.

'Yes, mother,' said I, and flinging myself into a chair, I pressed my hands upon my temples, and then we relapsed into moody silence.

My mother sighed deeply.

What need was there for words to express our anxious thoughts? From time to time I gazed earnestly at my only parent--my only living relative. Age had traced deep lines upon her pale sad face; but care had planted furrows deeper still. We sat long silent; at last she said in a trembling voice--

'The evil day is coming, Allan, when the fire on this hearth--so long boasted as the highest in Scotland--will be quenched at last.'

I bit my lips till the blood came. Poverty had made me as powerless as if a wall of adamant enclosed me, and I could see no means of extrication from our present difficulties.

'Even money if we had it would not satisfy them, mother,' said I.

'Why?'

'Because Sir Horace is resolved on having this house pulled down, and a new shooting-box built in its stead.'

'A little time, Allan--dear Allan--would have made _me_ least independent of this poor dwelling, unless indeed the curse that was laid on Lachlan Mhor----'

'Oh, mother, do not speak or think of that!' I exclaimed, hastily, while half kneeling and half embracing her, 'there is to be a gathering on the Braes, and a shooting-match. Miss Everingham gives a hundred sovereigns--think of that, mother, a hundred sovereigns to the best rifle-shot. I may win them, or Callum, and that prize would pay a portion of our debts; hear me, mother, dear mother! and if I lose, there is still hope for us in Callum. We have done this man, Sir Horace, a service--Callum Dhu saved him from a dreadful death at the Black Water--might we not ask a little time, a little mercy at least, for your sake, mother?'

'No! I would rather perish than stoop to sue from such as he, for mercy or for grace. No, no; if it is written in the book of fate that the stranger shall rule here, then let our glen be swept bare as the Braes of Lochaber. But oh, _mo mhac! mo mhac!_ (my son! my son!) your home and grave will lie in a land that is distant far from mine.'

'Mo mhathair! mo mhathair!' I exclaimed in a wild burst of grief at her words, which I vainly endeavour to give here literally in English; 'even when you are gone, I cannot go to that distant land beyond the Atlantic. There is no heather there, nor aught that speaks of home; the broad salt sea shall never roll between your resting-place and mine. I will trust to the honesty, the manliness, and the sympathy of Sir Horace; he will never be so cruel as to unhouse the widow of a brave Highland officer, who carried the colours of the Black Watch at the Battle of the Pyramids, and led three assaults at Burgos and Badajoz.'

My mother was a Scottish matron of the old school--a genuine Highlander, with all a Highlander's impulsive spirit, warmth of heart and temper--their pride and their prejudices if you will; but honest prejudices withal, of that bluff olden time which scorned and spurned the cold-blooded conventionality of the new. My suggestions or hopes of temporizing with Sir Horace, whom she could never be brought to view otherwise than as a sorner in the land, and usurper of our patrimony, though the poor man had bought it legally, honestly, and fairly at its then market-price, brought on such a paroxysm of irritation, sorrow, and weakness, that I became seriously alarmed for her life, and committed her to the care of Minnie and old Mhari, whose _fion-na-uisc a batha_, or wine distilled from the birch, was considered in Glen Ora a sovereign remedy 'for all the ills that flesh is heir to;' and was deemed moreover very conducive to strength and longevity.

I was now summoned by Callum, who earnestly begged my company, if I could spare an hour with him.