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Still keeping high up upon the pony tracks of the moors, she passed eastwards to the Cree, crossed it, and with Godfrey McCulloch to aid her, she carried the fiery cross along the shore-side of Solway to the great arch of the Needle's Eye, which is at Douglasha', in the parish of Colvend.
Her father and all her folk were smugglers, as, I understand, are the most of the farmers along the Solway side. Some of these she could doubtless have married, but Kate herself had always looked higher. The son of a farmer over the hill, from a place called the Boreland of Colvend, had wintered sheep on her father's lands. I suppose that was how it began, but in addition the lad had ambition.
The young Earl would come in his inspection to a company of Solway-side men stiff-jointed fishers of salmon nets out of the parishes of Rerrick or Borgue or, as it might be, rough colts from the rock scarps of Colvend, scramblers after wild birds' nests on perilous heuchs, and poachers on the deer preserves of Cloak Moss, as often as they had a chance.
"I was from home most of the day, and when I came in, with a hunger sharp-set with half-a-dozen hours struggling with the wind, Bridget bade me be off at once to the Dutchman's Howff, which is in Colvend, just where the Boreland march dyke comes down to the edge of the cliff. I was to wait there on the edge of the heugh till one came and called me by name.
But he realized that he had already used the razors, and besides it would be idiotic, in his present awkward position, to strain at any gnats after swallowing such a camel as the marriage on the Colvend shore. Besides, he had the sense to see that any obstinacy would terribly offend Patsy.
He will remember what happened to Luke Finney and James Tynan when they thought to lift the hundred pound reward out for Captain Maxwell of the Scaur." "What was that?" said the youth at his elbow. "Have you not heard? It is a Colvend story, too," said McCulloch. "We took them out into mid-channel and tied each man to an old anchor with his fifty pounds in jingling gold about his neck.
We could see the flash of their guns a long distance, and cries came to us mixed with the thunderclap of the schooner's guns. The Colvend men would have turned back to help, but they had received strict orders to put us on shore, whatever might happen, the which they did at Killantringan.
"Many of them were Kirkbean men, near kinsfolk of Kate o' the Shore, and others from Colvend Hislops, Hendersons and McKerrows, long rooted in the place. But when we were in mid-passage, we were chased and almost taken by a schooner that fired cannon and bade us heave to, but the Kirkbean men, who had Kate o' the Shore with them, bade our boat carry on, and engaged the pursuer.
Lads from all Galloway were there, shock-headed Vikings, with far-looking blue eyes, from Kirkmaiden to Leswalt, black, hook-nosed Blairs and McCallums from Garlieston sat beside Rerrick and Colvend men with deep-set eyes, the fine flower of the Free Trade, men whose forefathers had run cargoes for a hundred and thirty years into the same ports, and refused King's service for many thousand, though perfectly obedient to their own lords and war committees.
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