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The gunners were nearly all Germans and Austrians and they fought well. They splashed the valley with shrapnel, and during the few moments' lull when the yeomanry were lost to view behind the mound they set their shell fuses at zero to make them burst at the mouth of the guns and act as case shot. They tore some gaps in the yeomen's ranks, but nothing could stop that charge.
I know better. I have lived among fiddles all my life, embryotic, Silurian fiddles, splintered from cornstalks, that blessed me in the golden afternoons of green summers waving in the sunshine of long ago, sympathetic fiddles that did me yeomen's service once, when I fell off a bag of corn up garret and broke my head, and the frightened fiddles, not knowing what else to do, came and fiddled to me lying on the settee, with such boundless, extravagant flourish that nobody heard the doctor's gig rolling by, and so sinciput and occiput were left overnight to compose their own quarrels, whereby I was naturally all right before the doctor had a chance at me, suffering only the slight disadvantage of going broken-headed through life.
The other lassie wouldna have done it. Maybe not. But a' the lads I knew well were turning out and going to the fight, and what was to hinder a poor, wild lassie, that nobody cared about, from going, too? Ay, and being there at the break, the sore, sore break, in Antrim town?" Neal heard the tramp of the yeomen's horses on the road. He heard their voices, their laughter, their oaths.
Bursting into yeomen's houses and peasants' huts, stripping all of their substance who did or did not swear fealty to Edward; thus robbing the latter, and exacting contributions from the former; while vain prayers for mercy and unanswered cries for redress echoed dolefully through the vale of Bothwell, they sped gayly on, as if murder were pastime and rapine honor.
The result far exceeded their expectations, and every post brought generous donations in cash and in kind. Even the children contributed eagerly to the Yeomen's Fund, and one poor woman gave a shilling towards the cost of providing a bed in the hospital, "in case her son might have to lie on it."
They were all pretty in design, and as solid as might be, but countryfied in appearance, like yeomen's dwellings; some of them of red brick like those by the river, but more of timber and plaster, which were by the necessity of their construction so like mediaeval houses of the same materials that I fairly felt as if I were alive in the fourteenth century; a sensation helped out by the costume of the people that we met or passed, in whose dress there was nothing "modern."
People did talk of a foolish engagement in his youth to one of his yeomen's daughters, and of a wealthy old aunt who ruled the roast; though her well-grown nephew, not being returned for a rotten borough, voted with dignity for so many thousands of his fellow-subjects in the Commons.
Many young men of talent had espoused the Clarke faction, and, under the guidance of Dooly, Campbell, and Clarke, were doing yeomen's work for the cause. Among these was Charles J. McDonald, whose fine character and family influence rendered him conspicuously popular. This popularity he retained to the end of his life.
Well-dressed ladies were in the meeting-house in silks and cambrics, the sunburnt necks in contiguity with the delicate fabrics of the dresses showing the yeomen's daughters. Country graduates, rough, brown-featured, schoolmaster-looking, half-bumpkin, half-scholarly figures, in black ill-cut broadcloth, their manners quite spoilt by what little of the gentleman there was in them.
There were many boys living in Crosbey-Dale and the village; yeomen's and farmers' sons, to be sure, but, nevertheless, lads of his own age, and that, after all, is the main requirement for friendship in boyhood's world.
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