My father had
blown hot and cold in politics, for he was fiery and unstable by
nature, and swift to judge a cause by its latest professor. He had cast
out with the Hamilton gentry, and, having broken the head of a dragoon
in the change-house of Lesmahagow, had his little estate mulcted in
fines. All of which, together with some natural curiosity and a family
love of fighting, sent him to the ill-fated field of Bothwell Brig,
from which he was lucky to escape with a bullet in the shoulder.
Thereupon he had been put to the horn, and was now lying hid in a den
in the mosses of Douglas Water. It was a sore business for my mother,
who had the task of warding off prying eyes from our ragged household
and keeping the fugitive in life. She was a Tweedside woman, as strong
and staunch as an oak, and with a heart in her like Robert Bruce. And
she was cheerful, too, in the worst days, and would go about the place
with a bright eye and an old song on her lips. But the thing was beyond
a woman's bearing; so I had perforce to forsake my colleging and take a
hand with our family vexations. The life made me hard and watchful,
trusting no man, and brusque and stiff towards the world. And yet all
the while youth was working in me like yeast, so that a spring day or a
west wind would make me forget my troubles and thirst to be about a
kindlier business than skulking in a moorland dwelling.
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