CHAPTER II

I COME TO MY JOURNEY’S END

On the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I saw
all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in the midst
of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh smoking like
a kiln. There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying
anchored in the firth; both of which, for as far away as they were, I
could distinguish clearly; and both brought my country heart into my
mouth.

Presently after, I came by a house where a shepherd lived, and got a
rough direction for the neighbourhood of Cramond; and so, from one to
another, worked my way to the westward of the capital by Colinton, till
I came out upon the Glasgow road. And there, to my great pleasure and
wonder, I beheld a regiment marching to the fifes, every foot in time;
an old red-faced general on a grey horse at the one end, and at the
other the company of Grenadiers, with their Pope’s-hats. The pride of
life seemed to mount into my brain at the sight of the red coats and the
hearing of that merry music.

A little farther on, and I was told I was in Cramond parish, and began
to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of Shaws. It was a
word that seemed to surprise those of whom I sought my way. At first I
thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit, and that
all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place
to which I was bound. But after two, or maybe three, had given me the
same look and the same answer, I began to take it in my head there was
something strange about the Shaws itself.

The better to set this fear at rest, I changed the form of my inquiries;
and spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his
cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the
house of Shaws.

He stopped his cart and looked at me, like the others.

“Ay” said he. “What for?”

“It’s a great house?” I asked.

“Doubtless,” says he. “The house is a big, muckle house.”

“Ay,” said I, “but the folk that are in it?”

“Folk?” cried he. “Are ye daft? There’s nae folk there--to call folk.”

“What?” say I; “not Mr. Ebenezer?”

“Ou, ay” says the man; “there’s the laird, to be sure, if it’s him
you’re wanting. What’ll like be your business, mannie?”

“I was led to think that I would get a situation,” I said, looking as
modest as I could.

“What?” cries the carter, in so sharp a note that his very horse
started; and then, “Well, mannie,” he added, “it’s nane of my affairs;
but ye seem a decent-spoken lad; and if ye’ll take a word from me, ye’ll
keep clear of the Shaws.”

The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful
white wig, whom I saw to be a barber on his rounds; and knowing well
that barbers were great gossips, I asked him plainly what sort of a man
was Mr. Balfour of the Shaws.

“Hoot, hoot, hoot,” said the barber, “nae kind of a man, nae kind of a
man at all;” and began to ask me very shrewdly what my business was;
but I was more than a match for him at that, and he went on to his next
customer no wiser than he came.

I cannot well describe the blow this dealt to my illusions. The more
indistinct the accusations were, the less I liked them, for they left
the wider field to fancy. What kind of a great house was this, that all
the parish should start and stare to be asked the way to it? or what
sort of a gentleman, that his ill-fame should be thus current on the
wayside? If an hour’s walking would have brought me back to Essendean, I
had left my adventure then and there, and returned to Mr. Campbell’s.
But when I had come so far a way already, mere shame would not suffer me
to desist till I had put the matter to the touch of proof; I was bound,
out of mere self-respect, to carry it through; and little as I liked
the sound of what I heard, and slow as I began to travel, I still kept
asking my way and still kept advancing.

It was drawing on to sundown when I met a stout, dark, sour-looking
woman coming trudging down a hill; and she, when I had put my usual
question, turned sharp about, accompanied me back to the summit she had
just left, and pointed to a great bulk of building standing very bare
upon a green in the bottom of the next valley. The country was pleasant
round about, running in low hills, pleasantly watered and wooded, and
the crops, to my eyes, wonderfully good; but the house itself appeared
to be a kind of ruin; no road led up to it; no smoke arose from any of
the chimneys; nor was there any semblance of a garden. My heart sank.
“That!” I cried.

The woman’s face lit up with a malignant anger. “That is the house of
Shaws!” she cried. “Blood built it; blood stopped the building of it;
blood shall bring it down. See here!” she cried again--“I spit upon
the ground, and crack my thumb at it! Black be its fall! If ye see the
laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and
nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him
and his house, byre and stable, man, guest, and master, wife, miss, or
bairn--black, black be their fall!”

And the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song,
turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my
hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled
at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest
me ere I carried out my purpose, took the pith out of my legs.

I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws. The more I looked,
the pleasanter that country-side appeared; being all set with hawthorn
bushes full of flowers; the fields dotted with sheep; a fine flight of
rooks in the sky; and every sign of a kind soil and climate; and yet the
barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy.

Country folk went by from the fields as I sat there on the side of the
ditch, but I lacked the spirit to give them a good-e’en. At last the sun
went down, and then, right up against the yellow sky, I saw a scroll of
smoke go mounting, not much thicker, as it seemed to me, than the smoke
of a candle; but still there it was, and meant a fire, and warmth, and
cookery, and some living inhabitant that must have lit it; and this
comforted my heart.

So I set forward by a little faint track in the grass that led in my
direction. It was very faint indeed to be the only way to a place
of habitation; yet I saw no other. Presently it brought me to stone
uprights, with an unroofed lodge beside them, and coats of arms upon
the top. A main entrance it was plainly meant to be, but never finished;
instead of gates of wrought iron, a pair of hurdles were tied across
with a straw rope; and as there were no park walls, nor any sign of
avenue, the track that I was following passed on the right hand of the
pillars, and went wandering on toward the house.

The nearer I got to that, the drearier it appeared. It seemed like the
one wing of a house that had never been finished. What should have been
the inner end stood open on the upper floors, and showed against the sky
with steps and stairs of uncompleted masonry. Many of the windows were
unglazed, and bats flew in and out like doves out of a dove-cote.

The night had begun to fall as I got close; and in three of the lower
windows, which were very high up and narrow, and well barred, the
changing light of a little fire began to glimmer. Was this the palace
I had been coming to? Was it within these walls that I was to seek
new friends and begin great fortunes? Why, in my father’s house on
Essen-Waterside, the fire and the bright lights would show a mile away,
and the door open to a beggar’s knock!

I came forward cautiously, and giving ear as I came, heard some one
rattling with dishes, and a little dry, eager cough that came in fits;
but there was no sound of speech, and not a dog barked.

The door, as well as I could see it in the dim light, was a great piece
of wood all studded with nails; and I lifted my hand with a faint heart
under my jacket, and knocked once. Then I stood and waited. The house
had fallen into a dead silence; a whole minute passed away, and nothing
stirred but the bats overhead. I knocked again, and hearkened again.
By this time my ears had grown so accustomed to the quiet, that I
could hear the ticking of the clock inside as it slowly counted out the
seconds; but whoever was in that house kept deadly still, and must have
held his breath.

I was in two minds whether to run away; but anger got the upper hand,
and I began instead to rain kicks and buffets on the door, and to shout
out aloud for Mr. Balfour. I was in full career, when I heard the cough
right overhead, and jumping back and looking up, beheld a man’s head
in a tall nightcap, and the bell mouth of a blunderbuss, at one of the
first-storey windows.

“It’s loaded,” said a voice.

“I have come here with a letter,” I said, “to Mr. Ebenezer Balfour of
Shaws. Is he here?”

“From whom is it?” asked the man with the blunderbuss.

“That is neither here nor there,” said I, for I was growing very wroth.

“Well,” was the reply, “ye can put it down upon the doorstep, and be off
with ye.”

“I will do no such thing,” I cried. “I will deliver it into Mr.
Balfour’s hands, as it was meant I should. It is a letter of
introduction.”

“A what?” cried the voice, sharply.

I repeated what I had said.

“Who are ye, yourself?” was the next question, after a considerable
pause.

“I am not ashamed of my name,” said I. “They call me David Balfour.”

At that, I made sure the man started, for I heard the blunderbuss rattle
on the window-sill; and it was after quite a long pause, and with a
curious change of voice, that the next question followed:

“Is your father dead?”

I was so much surprised at this, that I could find no voice to answer,
but stood staring.

“Ay,” the man resumed, “he’ll be dead, no doubt; and that’ll be what
brings ye chapping to my door.” Another pause, and then defiantly,
“Well, man,” he said, “I’ll let ye in;” and he disappeared from the
window.