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It seemed as if he wished his course to be as straight as that of the arrow to its mark. He arrived at length in a narrow and secluded cleuch, or deep ravine, which ran down into the valley, and contributed a scanty rivulet to the supply of the brook with which Glendearg is watered.
Every bit of vassail and silver work have we been spoiled of since Pinkie Cleuch, when I lost poor Simon Glendinning, that was the warst of a'."
"It's Long Sim o' the Cleuch," one said; "he's sib to Wat or he wadna be here. Sim likes his ain fireside better than the 'Bateable Land'." The companionship of others cheered him. There had been a time, before he brought Marion from Megget, when he was a well kenned figure on the Borders, a good man at weaponshows and a fierce fighter when his blood was up.
He rolled over, gripped his spear short, and with a swift turn struck upwards. The big man gave a sob and toppled down into a pool of the burn. Sim struggled to his feet, and saw that the raiders were beginning to hough the cattle One man was driving a red spear into a helpless beast. It might have been the Cleuch cow. The sight maddened him, and like a destroying angel he was among them.
But for him Scots saddles might have been empty and every beast safe over Liddel. The picture fairly ravished him. It carried him over the six miles of bent and down by the wood of hazel to where the Cleuch lay huddled in its nook of hill. It brought him to the door of his own silent dwelling. As he pushed into the darkness his heart suddenly sank... With fumbling hands he kindled a rushlight.
But he keepit on at me, and syne I said he maun be thinkin' o' my gude-brither frae the Cleuch that whiles lent me a haun'. He was a wersh-lookin' sowl, and I couldna understand the half o' his English tongue. I was getting restless those last days, and as soon as I felt myself fit I decided to be off.
I said I thought the fox had got right away, and would probably save his brush by taking refuge in some stronghold by Carlin's Tooth. 'Ay, he replied absently, then added, 'D' ye ken the name o' this cleuch? 'No, I replied; 'I come from the wrong side of the Border, finally succeeding, as I spoke, in drawing my mare's head out of the water.
A sturdy figure came down through the scrog of hazel and revealed itself as his neighbour of the Dodhead. Jamie Telfer lived five miles off in Ettrick, but his was the next house to the Cleuch shieling. Telfer was running, and his round red face shone with sweat. "Dod, man, Sim, ye're hard o' hearing. I was routin' like to wake the deid, and ye never turned your neck. It's the fray I bring ye.
"I am willing and brawly willing," said the man. "Then meet me at the Gled's Cleuch Head at the sun's setting," said the bird, and it flew away. Now it seemed to the man that in a twinkling it was sunset, and he found himself at the Gled's Cleuch Head with the bird flapping in the heather before him.
There would be ballads made about him; he could hear the blind violer at the Ashkirk change-house singing songs which told how Sim o' the Cleuch smote Bewcastle in the howe of the Brunt Burn ash against steel, one against ten. The fancy intoxicated him; he felt as if he, too, could make a ballad. It would speak of the soft shiny night with the moon high in the heavens.
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