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The two companies of the light cavalry division had marched out that afternoon leaving their barracks empty, swept and wholly ungarnished for the troops which were to arrive to replace them. Stranryan will long remember that twenty-fourth of May. In the evening there was a wind off the Loch, a little irregular but pleasantly fanning to cheeks heated with the good-night bumper.
So, though the moment of the attack was a surprise, its manner had long been foreseen. As Stair had repeatedly said, "The sea is never shut!" Landing parties from the Britomart and Vandeleur had marched up the Valleys, and the Preventive men of all the West of Galloway had quietly gathered at Stranryan in order to co-operate with them.
There were faction fights among the Irishry themselves. There were fights between all the Irish united and the douce burghers and tradesmen of Stranryan fights about eggs and chickens, fights about water and other privileges, fights which ended in sleepers being ousted from barns and stables, or triumphantly retaining possession thereof.
It was a sort of Court of the Young Lions, where herd-boys, out-workers of the daily-wage sort, turnip-singlers, Irish harvesters, Stranryan "strappers" and "lifters," crow-boys, and all the miscellany of a Galloway farm about the end of the Napoleonic wars ate from wooden platters, with only their own horn spoon and pocket-knife to aid their nimble fingers.
He knew of every change made in the garrison at Stranryan. Fergus and Agnew came nightly to the verge of the Wild. He met with Jean at the alder copse. To which Julian Wemyss added that it was also the foundation of good manners and good style.
But Jock had been early encountered near the abandoned guardhouse of the cavalry quarters, and there had been safely locked in with a loaf of bread and three gigantic tankards of ale. It was not likely, therefore, that the time of night would be cried in Stranryan by Jock McAdam's booming bellow. Jock was at peace with all the world and the town had better remain so also.
The Government sent down every year lists of "immediate requirements," which the council as promptly filed owing to the lack of any accompanying draft. To spend good siller "oot o' the Common Guid" and then look to a far-off Government to reimburse them, was an affair in which the shrewd burgesses of Stranryan very naturally declined to engage. Julian Wemyss's case threatened to be a curious one.
It is naught!" after the manner of their kind since the days of Solomon who had experience in such matters, for he was undoubtedly scandalously "had" in his traffic with the spice merchants. The gaol of Stranryan was also on the water front, and especially when the Irish harvesters landed among the products of the herring catch, it was the witness of complex and accumulated villainies.
Presently he came in sight of the house of Cairn Ferris with its doors and windows wrecked and broken, at the mending of which the joiners of the estate and others from Stranryan were at that moment busy. He passed a heap of broken furniture still huddled together and smoking in a corner, at which he stood still and cursed as he if had been Adam Ferris himself.
"Hoots, lassie," said her friend, "you Stranryan Irish or half-Irish are all for doing a thing like the banging off of a peeoye. But what matters a day or twa for a fine, strong lad in the best chamber of the Castle? Stair Garland is not tried yet and, what is more, he is not sentenced. And if he is sentenced, where will he serve his time?
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