and a
dying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode. In the mirk
night, with his broken bridle and his head swimming, he dug his spurs to
the rowels in the horse's side, and the horse, that was even worse off
than himself, the poor creature! screamed out like a person as he went,
so that the hills echoed with it, and the folks at Cauldstaneslap got to
their feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces.
The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of the
house and fell there on the threshold. To the son that raised him he
gave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way up the thieves had
seemed to him to be at his heels, but now the hallucination left him--he
saw them again in the place of the ambuscade--and the thirst of
vengeance seized on his dying mind. Raising himself and pointing with an
imperious finger into the black night from which he had come, he uttered
the single command, "Brocken Dykes," and fainted. He had never been
loved, but he had been feared in honour. At that sight, at that word,
gasped out at them from a toothless and bleeding mouth, the old Elliott
spirit awoke with a shout in the four sons. "Wanting the hat," continues
my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly follow, for she told this tale
like one inspired, "wanting guns, for there wasna twa grains o' pouder
in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than their sticks into their hands,
the fower o' them took the road. Only Hob, and that was the eldest,
hunkered at the door-sill where the blood had rin, fyled his hand wi'
it, and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o' the auld Border aith. 'Hell
shall have her ain again this nicht!' he raired, and rode forth upon his
earrand." It was three miles to Broken Dykes, down hill, and a sore
road. Kirstie had seen men from Edinburgh dismounting there in plain day
to lead their horses. But the four brothers rode it as if Auld Hornie
were behind and Heaven in front. Come to the ford, and there was
Dickieson. By all tales, he was not dead, but breathed and reared upon
his elbow, and cried out to them for help. It was at a graceless face
that he asked mercy. As soon as Hob saw, by the glint of the lantern,
the eyes shining and the whiteness of the teeth in the man's face, "Damn
you!" says he; "ye hae your teeth, hae ye?" and rode his horse to and
fro upon that human remnant. Beyond that, Dandie must dismount with the
lantern to be their guide; he was the youngest son,