Twelve Great Black Cats (3 page)

“It is not an old family ghost that was seen,” the agent said. “At any rate, not a
very
old ghost. In fact, it is the ghost of your late uncle, as I understand. They say he carries a great brass lantern and shakes it in their faces. Most alarming, I am sure.”

The new Laird looked at the agent in silence for a while. Then he got up to take his leave. “I'll look into it,” he promised, and went his way.

The new Laird of Thistleton went back to his hotel and told his wife what the agent had said.

“My goodness!” said she. “Poor Uncle Andrew! He must find it very uncomfortable to be a ghost. I wonder what makes him do it?”

“So do I,” said the new Laird. “And what's more, I mean to find out.”

They decided to go, not to Thistleton Manor, but to the village of Balnacairn. The village was only six miles from the manor, which was no distance at all, and the agent had said there was a very good inn where they would be able to stay. They felt that the inn would be the best place to carry on their investigations from, and besides, the new Laird's wife was not sure it would be a good thing for the baby if they went to stay at Thistleton Manor and Uncle Andrew were to appear and shake his big brass lantern at him.

Fortunately, they were able to find lodging at the inn, and the landlady was pleased when she learned that it was the new Laird and his family who were sheltering under her roof. Perhaps it was the pleasure that the honor thus paid gave her that loosened her tongue. At any rate, before a day had passed, she had told the new Laird and his wife all about the way the old Laird's ghost had appeared to Lang Tammas the carter and to Jamie the Post, and as the tenants had fled to the inn from Thistleton Manor, she could tell about their experiences too.

The new Laird and his wife were pleasant folk and friendly, and not the sort to set themselves up above others, as folk said, so the tenantry accepted them at once. It wasn't that they had anything against the old Laird, you understand, but they could see that this new man would make a very good laird. So nobody minded at all answering any questions the new Laird and his lady asked.

What the new Laird and his wife wanted to find out was, what kept the old Laird from resting quietly in his grave? What sort of man had he been when he was alive?

Well, folk said, he was a crabbed old creature, so he was, but he was just.

He worked his men hard, but then he was a hard worker himself. And he was honest. He always gave an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. He had a terrible temper and would fly into a sudden rage if anyone crossed him, but to tell the truth, he never was angry without a good reason. He couldn't abide dishonesty, being an honest man himself. He could stretch a penny farther than any other man, but a man could count on getting what was due him, although probably he'd get no more. He was an honest man, the old Laird was.

The minister, who had been the old man's only close friend, smiled when he was asked what the old Laird was like. “Not so bad as he liked to make out,” he said. “He was a bit crusty and short-tempered at times, but he was more honest than any other man I know. It would have been as impossible for the Laird to lie, or cheat, or steal, as for him to pick up Ben Nevis and hold it in one hand.”

Everybody did feel sorry for the new Laird and his lady, with them coming such a long distance only to find that the manor house was not habitable on account of the ghost. They would have helped gladly, but though they racked their brains, they could not say what was troubling the old Laird so that he could not rest in his grave.

The new Laird and his wife put their heads together and compared notes on everything they had been told.

“The old Laird was a terrible old curmudgeon,” said the new Laird.

“But he was honest,” said his wife.

“He was a penny pincher,” said the new Laird.

“But he was honest,” said his wife.

“He had a way at times of flying into a terrible rage,” said the new Laird.

“But he was honest,” said the Laird's wife. “No matter what anyone said about him, every single one of them said that he was honest. I don't think that a man as honest as your Uncle Andrew would be haunting Thistleton Manor just to keep you away. Not after he'd left it to you in his will!”

“I think you are right,” her husband said. “There's no doubt about his honesty. Everybody speaks of it.”

His wife said nothing for a while, then she said slowly, “There is something else about your uncle that everybody mentions. When they speak about his ghost, I mean. The tenants told the agent, Lang Tammas the carter and Jamie the Post told the folk here at Balnacairn. When anyone ever says anything about the ghost they say and he shook his big brass lantern in his face!'
Everyone
says it.”

They looked at each other for a minute in silence. Then, “Tomorrow,” said the new Laird, “we will go to Thistleton Manor.”

“And see if there is a big brass lantern there,” said his wife.

So the next day they left the baby with the landlady at the inn and borrowed a pony and cart from the landlord, and off they went.

They went up the drive and got out of the cart, and the young Laird opened the door with the key the agent had given him. They went into the house and searched from room to room, upstairs and down. Not a sign of a big brass lantern did they see—nor of the old Laird's ghost, for that matter.

“Uncle Andrew's lantern must be the ghost of a lantern,” the new Laird said, as they came down to the hall again.

His wife had gone to the other end of the passage and was standing before a door. “What door is this?” she asked, trying the knob. “It's locked. Where does it lead to?”

“Probably into the garden,” said the new Laird.

“I don't think it does,” said his wife. “The rooms on either side go back farther. I think it's a room—a small one.”

“Of course it is!” the new Laird said. “I know what it is. It's my uncle's estate office. The agent told me about it. He locked it up when he took charge of the estate, because there were private papers here and he wanted them to be kept safe. Wait a minute! I think he gave me the key.”

The key was found and the door was opened. The first thing they saw was the big brass lantern, standing alone on the shelf above the old Laird's desk.

The new Laird's wife took down the lantern. “Look,” she said. There was a tag tied by a string to the ring at the top. They saw that there were words written carefully on the tag. “The minister's lantern. Balnacairn,” they read. They looked at each other.

“Poor Uncle Andrew!” the new Laird's wife said. “All he wanted was for someone to take the lantern back to its rightful owner. It didn't belong to him, and he couldn't rest in his grave knowing it hadn't been returned.”

They took the lantern back to the minister that very day. He took it in his hands. “Why, I'd forgotten he had it,” the minister said. “I remember now. He borrowed it the last time he was here, before he died. He had stayed late, for we got to talking and never noticed the time, and it was dark when he started out for home. So I let him take the lantern to light him home.”

The next day the Laird and his wife and his bairn packed up and moved into Thistleton Manor. They were quite sure the old Laird's ghost was at rest, now that the lantern was back where it belonged. And they were right.

Folk kept a close watch for a while, but everything at the manor seemed to be going on very well, and as far as anybody could tell the ghost was gone for good. So Lang Tammas the carter began to haul his corn to the mill, and Jamie the Post to carry the post bags along the road past Thistleton Manor again, instead of taking the longer road the way they'd been going since they met the old Laird's ghost.

The new Laird and his wife called their second son Andrew after the old Laird, and he was very like him in temperament, for he was given to spells of being crabbed and crusty, often flying into a rage. But his mother said she did not mind, as long as he grew up to be as honest as the old Laird, because the old Laird, as everyone always said, was a very honest man.

The Ghost of Hamish MacDonald,
The Fool of the Family

THERE once was a time when the MacLeods and the MacDonalds got into an argument about something or other, and what it was nobody remembers to this day. It was on a lonely moor over the hills it started, some distance from the homes of either party, and the lot of them should have had more sense than to make trouble there, since they were on territory belonging to some other clan. Well, the argument became a quarrel, and the quarrel led to a fight, and before anybody knew what was happening, the two clans were lined up on the moor facing each other, ready to do battle, with every man panting with eagerness to prove his side was in the right.

The opposing clans were pretty well matched. There were one hundred and twenty MacLeods and one hundred and twenty-one MacDonalds, but the extra MacDonald did not matter at all, because although he was a very hale and hearty lad and able to fight well enough if he put his mind to it, he was the fool of the family and bound to do everything amiss.

Now it was the custom of the MacDonalds, when they made ready for battle, that each man of the clan would find himself a big stone and carry it in his hand to a place that was judged to be well out of the line of battle, which place was decided upon beforehand. There each warrior laid down his stone to make a cairn. After the fighting was over, each man who survived the battle went, then, to the cairn and took up his stone again. By counting the stones that remained upon the ground they could find out the number of their companions who had perished in the fray that day.

One by one, the MacDonalds laid down their stones, and Hamish, the fool of the family, laid his on the cairn with the rest. Then they all cast their kilts and their plaids aside, and taking their swords in their hands, they hurled themselves, barelegged and bare-armed, against the MacLeods with a great shouting of the MacDonald slogan, “
Dh'aindeòin co theireadh e
” (Gainsay me who dare).

Wherever the battle was thickest, there was Hamish, the fool of the family, wielding his sword with a will, but as he had a very bad habit of screwing his eyes tight shut every time he dealt a blow, he hit friend as often as foe, so that any warrior was unlucky who came within reach of his flailing sword.

As for himself, he had the good fortune of all fools, since those men amongst whom he fought were so intent on getting around him to fight with each other, that they seldom bothered to aim a blow at him.

Hamish might have gone on in this fashion, doing much to impede the efforts of both his own clansmen and their foes, if the pressure of the battle had not carried him close to the brink of a crag at the side of the moor. Fortune then favored the warriors in whose way Hamish had so manfully put himself, for, in some manner or other, he managed to trip over the blade of his own sword. With his face to the fighting men before him and his back to the top of the crag, he did not know his danger. He took a backward step and his feet found nothing to stand upon. Over the cliff he went, heels over head, and tumbled into the wee burn that ran below. He landed upon his head with a thump that might well have killed him entirely, had it not been for the special protection that Heaven gives to fools. As it was, his senses were knocked out of him, and he lay in a swoon, half in and half out of the burn, while the battle went on without him on the moor above.

His absence was not noticed by either the MacLeods or the MacDonalds, except for a feeling of relief that he was no longer in their way. Nobody saw him fall, nobody seemed to miss him at all, and the two clans went on fighting until the night began to fall.

With the gloaming the dewmists began to rise, and the warriors saw that there was little likelihood of either side winning that day. All the fighting had brought neither one clan nor the other to the point of victory. The chiefs then held a consultation under a flag of truce, and decided to call it a draw, and to consider as settled the original cause of the dispute, which most of the lads had already forgotten in the joy of fighting for it anyway.

Then the MacLeods went off one way and the MacDonalds went off the other. Although much blood had been spilt, none of the wounds seemed likely to prove fatal, and all of the clansmen were able to withdraw from the battlefield in good order, each on his own two feet. All, that is, except Hamish MacDonald, the fool of the family, who still lay at the foot of the crag in the wee burn.

The MacDonalds marched up to the cairn of stones, and there each man of them took up a stone in his hand. When each man had done so, there was but one stone left upon the ground.

“That would be the marker for Hamish, the fool of the family,” said the chief, and sent men to search about the moor to find the poor lad's body there. They hunted through the heather but not a sign of Hamish did they find, and at last the chief, who wanted to be well on his way before the night was darker, called them back again.

Everybody was puzzled that Hamish's body had not been found, but no one thought to look over the edge of the crag. What with the mist and the shadows of the gloaming, they'd not have been likely to see him anyway, down there.

“Leave it be,” said the chief. “The stone shall bide where it is. Happen he's still alive, and if it be so, he'll get it when he comes along, and if he's dead it will show that we've lost one man in the fight.”

So the MacDonalds gathered up their plaids and their kilts and put them on, and off they started on their journey home, leaving the one stone behind them lying alone on the ground.

They had not gone more than half a mile or so when they met the MacDonald piper who had come out to find them. He had not been in the battle with them that day, being himself away from home when the clan went off that morn. When they told him that all the warriors had come through the battle safely except for Hamish, who was missing, but whether dead or alive they could not say, the piper shook his head with concern.