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Thus thought the glover, not aware that the strictest proclamations were issued, prohibiting any of the two contending clans, their friends, allies, and dependants, from coming within fifty miles of Perth, during a week before and a week after the combat, which regulation was to be enforced by armed men.
Glover, a clergyman of the Church of England, who had devoted the greater portion of his life to the study of genealogy, wrote to Queen Victoria a letter in 1869, informing her that he had discovered her to be descended in an unbroken line from King David.
"I should think so, indeed," cried Marjorie, in a horrified voice; "perfectly disgraceful, I call it." "That's what the last man who was executed said," declared the Court Glover. After it was all over he said, "Well, I was never so disgracefully executed before in all my life; and I hope the next time you chop off my head, you'll get some one else to do it."
Evidently the jostling of his sorrel forbade. He turned his head to the front again, and, slumping low in his saddle, began frantic use of spur and quirt. But the sorrel had lost his stride, and before he could regain it Jim and Johnson had dashed alongside. Jim swung close and looked at Glover. Glover returned the gaze, and again appeared about to speak.
This veteran, torn and broken by many a gale and lightning-stroke, was a gallows in the last century, and Goody Glover had swung from it in witch-times. On tempestuous nights, when the boughs creaked together, it was said that dark shapes might be seen writhing on the branches and capering about the sward below in hellish glee.
To speak plain, what would Catharine have thought of me in the ceremonial?" "We approach the shallows now," thought Simon Glover, "and without nice pilotage we drive right on shore." "Most women like show, Eachin; but I think my daughter Catharine be an exception.
And the fireman asked another question; if they were by the Point tank, would the water hold till they got to Medicine Bend? No one could answer. There was but one thing to do; to keep in motion. They started slowly. The alternatives were discussed. Glover, pondering, cast them all up, his awful responsibility, unconscious of her peril, watching him from the fireman's box.
The last, stepping forward, and turning a stern look on the alarmed pottingar, broke out as follows: "Thou walking skeleton! thou asthmatic gallipot! thou poisoner by profession! if I thought that the puff of vile breath thou hast left could blight for the tenth part of a minute the fair fame of Catharine Glover, I would pound thee, quacksalver! in thine own mortar, and beat up thy wretched carrion with flower of brimstone, the only real medicine in thy booth, to make a salve to rub mangy hounds with!"
Whitney, raising her tone one note above every other protest. "And you staked all on so wretched a chance?" exclaimed Gertrude. "Why, Devil's Gap is the stock feature of every guide, good, bad, and indifferent, at the Springs." "I have staked more at heavier odds," returned Glover, taking the storm calmly, "and won. Have you made but one trip, when you first came, do you say?"
Jim was mounted on the gray, bending low in the saddle, racing in frantic pursuit of Glover. Mounted on the sorrel, Glover was well in the lead, speeding straight into the west, riding at right angles to the ridge, galloping hard for the open desert. The echo of the shot reverberated again faintly, and around them closed a tense silence. Others were making for the open.
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