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“Maybe,” said he, “Roy Campbell may miss something from the ‘Back o’ Beyont’ the morrow’s morn, that a score of casks of Isle of Man brandy will not make up for.”

So saying, he took his way back through the low, overgrown cavity of the runnel. When he was midway he heard a step coming across the heath, brushing through the “gall”[1] bushes, splashing through the shallow pools. A foot heavily booted crashed through the half-concealed tunnel, not six inches from where the young man lay, a gun was discharged, evidently by the sudden jerk upon the earth, and the air was rent above him by a perfect tornado of vigorous Gaelic–a good language, as has been said, for preaching or swearing.

[Footnote 1: The bog-myrtle is locally called “gall” bushes.
It is the most characteristic and delightful of Galloway scents.]

“That’s Roy himsel’!” said the young man. “It’s a strange chance when a Kennedy comes near to getting his brains knocked out on his own land by the heel of an outlaw Highlander.”

Once on the hillside again, he kept an even way over the boulders and stones which cumbered it, with less care than hitherto, as though to protest against the previous indignity of his position. But, Kennedy though he might be, it had been fitter if he had remembered that he was on the No Man’s Land of the Dungeon of Buchan, for here, about this time, was a perfect Adullam cave of all the broken and outlaw men south of the Highland border. A challenge came from the hill-side–“Wha’s there?” Kennedy dropped like a stone, and a shot rang out, followed immediately by the “scat” of a bullet against the rock behind which he lay concealed.

A tramp of heavy Galloway brogans was heard, and a half-hearted kicking about among the heather bushes, and at last a voice saying discontentedly–

“Gin Roy disna keep Kennedy’s liftit beasts in the hollow whaur they should be, he needna blame me gin some o’ them gets a shot intil their hurdies.”

“My beasts!” said Kennedy to himself, silently chuckling, “mine for a groat!” He was in a mood to find things amusing. So, having won clear of the keen-eyed watcher, the young man made the best of his way with more caution to that northern gateway he had called the Seggy Goats.

There he turned to the right up a little burnside which led into a lirk in the hill, such as would on the border have been called a “hope.” As he came well within the dusky-walled basin of the hill-side, some one tall and white glided out to meet him; but at this moment the moon discreetly withdrew herself behind a cloud, mindful, it may be, of her own youth and of Endymion’s greeting on the Latmian steep. So the chronicler, willing though he be, is yet unable to say how these two met. He only knows that when the pale light flooded back upon the hillside and cast its reflection into the dim depths of the hope, they were evidently well agreed. “It is true what I told you,” he is saying to her, “that my name is Hugh Kennedy, but I did not tell you that I am Kennedy of Bargany, and yours till death!”

“Then,” said the girl, “it is fitter that I should return to the ‘Back of Beyont’ till such time as you and your men come back to burn the thatch about our ears.”

The young man smiled and said–“No, Flora, you and I have another road to travel this night. Over there by the halse o’ the pass, there stand tethered two good horses that will take us before the morning to the Manse of Balmaclellan, where my cousin, the minister, is waiting, and his mother is expecting you. Come with me, and you shall be Lady of Bargany before morning.” He stooped again to take her hand.

“My certes, but ye made braw and sure of me with your horses,” she said. “I have a great mind not to stir a foot.”

But the young man laughed, being still well pleased, and giving no heed to her protestations.

* * * * *

So there was a wedding in the early morning at the Manse of the Kells, and a young bride was brought home to Bargany. As for old Roy Campbell, he was made the deputy-keeper of the Forest of Buchan, which was an old Cassilis distinction–and a post that exactly suited his Highland blood. Time and again, however, had his son to intercede with him not to be too severe with those smugglers and gangrel bodies who had come to look upon the fastnesses of the Forest as their own.

“Have ye no fellow-feeling, Roy, for old sake’s sake?” Kennedy would ask.

“Feeling? havers!” growled Roy impolitely, for Roy was spoiled. “I’m a chief’s man noo, and I’ll harbour nae gangrel loons on the lands o’ Kennedy.”

So the old cateran would depart humming the Galloway rhyme–

“Frae Wigtown to the Toon o’ Ayr,
Portpatrick to the Cruives o’ Cree;
Nae man need hope to bide safe there,
Unless he court wi’ Kennedy.”

“Body o’ MacCallum More,” chuckled the deputy-keeper of the Forest of Buchan, “but it was Kennedy that cam’ coortin’ to the ‘Back o’ Beyont’ that time, whatever, I’m thinkin’!”