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Updated: June 28, 2025
But the country was by no means so craven as Lalor supposed. There were bold hearts and ready saddles still in Galloway. The signal from the top of the beacon tower of Marnhoul was seen and understood in half-a-dozen parishes. Not that the young fellows who saw the flame connected it with the two children who had taken refuge in the old place of the Maitlands.
I was also there, not indeed to welcome them, but because I had accompanied the party from the house of Marnhoul.
For me I was only a reader of English, a scribbler of verses in that language, a paltry essayist, with no sense of the mathematics and no more than an average classic. Therefore in the school I was a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water to my father. "Duncan is coming with me to bide the night at Marnhoul," said Agnes Anne, "and he is going to take 'King George' with him to scare the foxes!"
A band of little boys, all eager to see the pirn-mill in the Marnhoul wood, volunteered to accompany Louis home. They went on ahead, gambolling and shouting. Agnes Anne would have come also, but I suggested to her that she had better stay and help her mother. She gave me one look not by any means of anger.
They may also have argued that any one who could dispossess the ghosts and make Marnhoul once more a habitable mansion, was welcome to the tenancy. It was the Reverend Doctor Gillespie who, first of all the distinguished men of the parish, received in some slight degree the confidence of Miss Irma. Grandmother knew more, of course, and perhaps, also, Agnes Anne.
At such times my father almost purred with delight, and Agnes Anne said that it was "just sweet to watch him." But even this pleasure palled before the tidings from the Haunted House as edited and expanded by Jo Kettle. "Yes, Duncan had told him, and Sandy Webb had told him. There were daylight ghosts abroad about Marnhoul. Everybody on the coach had seen them "
Her life dates from that evening in our kitchen, even as mine did from the afternoon when one half the fools of Eden Valley were letting off shot-guns at the back windows of Marnhoul Great House, while Miss Irma withstood the others on the threshold of the front door.
While, therefore, we in the House of Marnhoul were in the wildest alarm at least Agnes Anne was forces which could not possibly be withstood were mustering to hasten to our assistance.
But nothing of great moment occurred till, on the same knoll from which he had summoned us to view the smoke of the ghost's afternoon fire at Marnhoul, we encountered Boyd Connoway. He was stretched at length, as usual, one leg crossed negligently over the other.
But the branches of Marnhoul wood stood up against the sky, black, serried and silent. The fields beneath spread empty and grey. The sough of the wind and the fleeing cloud of night was all they saw or heard. They were soon within the house again, happy to be there and the door barred stoutly upon them.
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