the Lilt of the Adventurer, which shall be now and ever and to the end of days. Then the melody changed to a fiercer and sadder note. He saw his forefathers, gaunt men and terrible, run stark among woody hills. He heard the talk of the bronze-clad invader, and the jar and clangor as flint met steel. Then rose the last coronach of his own people, hiding in wild glens, starving in corries, or going hopelessly to the death. He heard the cry of Border foray, the shouts of the poor Scots as they harried Cumberland, and he himself rode in the midst of them. Then the tune fell more mournful and slow, and Flodden lay before him. He saw the flower of the Scots gentry around their king, gashed to the breast-bone, still fronting the lines of the South, though the paleness of death sat on each forehead. "The Flowers of the Forest are gone," cried the lilt, and through the long years he heard the cry of the lost, the desperate, fighting for kings over the water and princes in the heather. "Who cares?" cried the air. "Man must die, and how can he die better than in the stress of fight with his heart high and alien blood on his sword? Heigh-ho! One against twenty, a child against a host, this is the romance of life." And the man's heart swelled, for he knew (though no one told him) that this was the Song of Lost Battles, which only the great can sing before they die. But the tune was changing, and at the change the man shivered, for the air ran up to the high notes and then down to the deeps with an eldrich cry, like a hawk's scream at night or a witch's song in the gloaming. It told of those who seek and never find, the quest that knows no fulfilment. "There is a road," it cried, "which leads to the moon and the great waters. No change-house cheers it, and it has no end; but it is a fine road, a braw road-who will follow it?" And the man knew (though no one told him) that this was the Ballad of Grey Weather, which makes him who hears it sick all the days of his life for something which he cannot name. It is the song which the birds sing on the moor in the autumn nights, and the old crow on the tree-tops hears and flaps his wing. It is the lilt which old men and women hear in the darkening of their days, and sigh for the unforgetable; and love-sick girls get catches of it and play pranks with their lovers. It is a song so old that Adam heard it in the Garden before Eve came to comfort him, so young that from it still flows the whole joy and sorrow of earth. Then it ceased, and all of a sudden the man was rubbing his eyes on the hillside, and watching the falling dusk. "I have heard the Song of the Moor," he said to himself, and he walked home in a daze. The whaups were crying, but none came near him, though he looked hard for the bird that had spoken with him. It may be that it was there and he did not know it, or it may be that the whole thing was only a dream; but of this I cannot say. The next morning the man rose and went to the manse. "I am glad to see you, Simon," said the minister, "for it will soon be the Communion season, and it is your duty to go round with the tokens." "True," said the man, "but it was another thing I came to talk about," and he told him the whole tale. "There are but two ways of it, Simon," said the minister. "Either ye are the victim of witchcraft or ye are a selfdeluded man. If the former (whilk I am loth to believe), then it behoves ye to watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation. If the latter, then ye maun put a strict watch over a vagrom fancy, and ye'll be quit o' siccan whigmaleeries." Now Simon was not listening but staring out of the window. "There was another thing I had it in my mind to say," said he. "I have come to lift my lines, for I am thinking of leaving the place." "And where would ye go?" asked the minister, aghast. "I was thinking of going to Carlisle and trying my luck as a dealer, or maybe pushing on with droves to the South." "But that's a cauld country where there are no faithfu' ministrations," said the minister. "Maybe so, but I am not caring very muckle about ministrations," said the man, and the other looked after him in horror. When he left the manse he went to a wise woman, who lived on the left side of the kirkyard above Threepdaidle burn-foot. She was very old and sat by the ingle day and night waiting upon death. To her he told the same tale. She listened gravely, nodding with her head. "Ach," she said, "I have heard a like story before. And where will you be going?" "I am going south to Carlisle to try the dealing and droving," said the man, "for I have some skill of sheep." "And will ye bide there?" she asked. "Maybe aye, and maybe no," he said. "I had half a mind to push on to the big town or even to the abroad. A man must try his fortune." "That is the way of men," said the old wife. "I, too, have heard the Song of the Moor, and many women, who now sit decently spinning in Kilmaclavers, have heard it. But a woman may hear it and lay it up in her soul and bide at hame, while a man, if he gets but a glisk of it in his fool's heart, must needs up and awa' to the warld's end on some daft-like ploy. But gang your ways and fare ye weel. My cousin Francis heard it, and he went north wi' a white cockade in his bonnet and a sword at his side, singing 'Charlie's come hame.' And Tam Crichtoun o' the Bourhopehead got a sough o' it one simmer's morning, and the last we heard o' Tam he was killed among the Frenchmen fechting like a fair deil. Once I heard a tinkler play a sprig of it on the pipes, and a' the lads were wud to follow him. Gang your ways, for I am near the end of mine." And the old wife shook with her coughing. So the man put up his belongings in a pack on his back and went whistling down the Great South Road. Whether or not this tale have a moral it is not for me to say. The king (who told it me) said that it had, and quoted a scrap of Latin, for he had been at Oxford in his youth before he fell heir to his kingdom. "One may hear tunes from the Song of the Moor," said he, "in the thick of a storm on the scarp of a rough hill, in the low June weather, or in the silence of a winter's night. But let none," he added, "pray to have the full music, for it will make him who hears it a footsore traveller in the ways o' the world and a masterless man till death." JOHN BUCHAN. From Blackwood's Magazine. THAKUR PERTAB SINGH: A TALE OF AN INDIAN FAMINE. PART I. THE VILLAGE. A wide plain, level as the face of the ocean, fading away into the horizon. Not a rise to break the dead even monotony, except that ridge of hillocks away to the east piled up from the sandy soil by the persistent efforts of the hot west wind. The fields are a dull grey color. Even here where the earth is light and sandy it looks hard and cruel. The short stubble shorn with a sickle to the very root by a hand that can afford to waste nothing, not even an inch of barley straw, is on the ground still. Amongst it are a few weeds; and they alone keep green, how you may well wonder. There are no hedges. The small fields, seldom larger than half an acre, are marked off from each other by low narrow ridges of earth a foot or two in width, forming boundaries which are respected by the plough. They bear a little creeping grass, succulent and sweet, good feeding for the cattle. Here and there on these narrow margins, especially where the corners of several a thorny fields meet, are thickets of shrub, and now and again a graceful acacia whose feathery leaves hardly throw a shade. Far away, planted probably along a road, you can see a straight avenue of large and spreading trees. Yes, it is the highroad, and on one side of it, the side nearest to us, there is what looks like a thick plantation. It is a mango grove, and you may be sure the village is not far from it. You cannot discern it, but if you look closely-the atmosphere is so dense with heat-haze and dust that every outline is blurred as by a channel fog,-you will make out a white spire, obtuse in shape, rising a few feet above what appears to be a mound of earth. That is the village temple, and the mound is the collection of mud houses which form the village. It is quite two miles away. The afternoon sun is beating fiercely down on the scorched earth. It strikes your head just under the shade of your hat. The wind is blowing hotter and fiercer than the blast from the stokehole of a steamer. Now and then it is seized with a fit of fury, and tears up the dust and sand from the earth it hates and casts them up in a blinding cloud. There on the road, where it finds a clear course marked out and given up to it, the wind whirls up the finely powdered earth into a dust devil and urges it along the track at racing speed. To hell with you, it says, to hell. mango grove do not seem to feel the heat. They are green and fresh, and their shade is grateful, yet the hot wind comes off from them with a heavy sickly breath. Up there on that withered branch is a crow sitting with his beak wide open gasping for air; there are more gasping crows on the trees beyond. In this weather one feels pity even for an Indian crow. Here on the outskirts of the village is a huge pipal-tree. How juicy and fresh its polished leaves look! It seems able to find moisture anywhere, even in the dry centuries-old bricks of that ruined wall from which another big tree of the tribe is growing. But this one has a whole territory to itself. Its huge trunk is like a fluted column, spreading out at the base to grip the earth, while the branches stretch out wide and low on every side for sixty feet and more. A little shrine built of bricks and smeared with red paint stands close in to one side of the trunk, and from one of the lower branches No wonder that there is no sign of hangs a round pot of baked clay with life in the fields. Ah! but there is water in it. A small hole in the bottom some. There, four or five fields off, is with a bit of rag lets the water trickle a man scuffling away at the ground. A down drop by drop on a smooth cone of hasty glance might miss seeing him, black stone, the symbol of fertility. his color mingles so with that of the The road narrows now as we near the earth. He is naked to the waist; he is village, and takes a gentle slope downscraping up grass from one of the ward-not that there is much difference ridges between the fields. When he in the level, but it has been worn down has gathered enough, he will take by the tread of men and cattle and the from his head the big coarse cloth grinding of the heavy misshapen cartwhich serves him as a turban, and will wheels ever since the village became a carry his grass in it. Farther off are village in the far-off time. Earth, too, others, men and women, occupied in a has been stolen from it after each like way. Others are cutting branches rainy season, to restore those high narfrom the thorny bushes, to be chopped row banks that protect the fields on up as fodder for the beasts. Until the either side from the cattle as they come rain comes, what else can be done? and go. For these fields near the Those whitish specks away there homestead are the best. It is easier to towards the sand-hillocks are cattle. cart manure to them, and they get all There will be a boy or two herding them, little black fellows with a scanty loin-cloth and a long bamboo, only you cannot see them. We will walk on to the village, where at least there will be shade and a drink of water to be had, although, if you are wise, you will bear with your thirst until the sun goes down. The trees in the the refuse from the houses. They can be watered, moreover, from wells and from the three or four slimy ponds or holes from which the clay was taken to build the mud huts and to make bricks for the better houses. Even now in this furnace of heat these fields are fresh and green,-this one with bright shoots of the sugarcane, the that with the tender glossy leaves of the young maize. Here and there near the best wells are vegetables of various kinds, or spices or tobacco in small neat plots, like the seed plots of a nursery-garden. For there is no waste here. The rent of this land is high, and it repays care and skill. of From the outside the village looks like a mud fort or prison. The walls stand up dreary and blank, the outer skin of mud rising in blisters and peeling off in the heat. Hardly a window looks outward; here and there you may see one high up in the wall some of the bigger houses. Its wooden doors or shutters are open to let in light and air, perhaps to allow the inmates to peep out occasionally. The roofs are flat. On some the big stalks of the giant millet are stored for fodder; on others are heaped pyramids of cow-dung cakes, the ordinary and almost the only fuel. well is a huge pipal tree. You can hear the peculiar whistling coo and the restless rustle of a flock of green pigeons in its upper branches. Behind the tree is the big gateway of the headman's house, which is built of small burnt bricks. On the other side, on a high plinth of earth, is an open shed spacious and airy, without side walls. That is the village choupal, which serves the purposes of a town hall or assembly rooms. There are quite a number of people there already, although the cattle are not yet home, and the day's field-work has not ended. They are squatting in a circle round a wizened grey-haired old man, who is evidently some one of note. He is the village accountant. He has a huge oblong book bound in coarse red canvas on the ground before him. It is open, and the strong black characters of the figures are clear and distinct even from where we stand. It is the Entering the village, the road be- village rent-roll, and he is explaining comes narrow and tortuous. It runs between the blank mud walls of the small yards which shut in the huts of the peasants. Low and rude doors of rough unpainted wood, polished only by the hands that open and shut them, give access to the road. Here and there a higher wall with quite a large gateway marks the house of some richer man-a trader perhaps, or one of the landowners. Narrower lanes now and again branch off to this side and to that from the main road, which grows more and more crooked as it approaches the centre of the village. Was it mere haphazard that made it so winding, or were these twisting lanes and the blank walls outside designed for defence? It may well be, for less than a century ago the Mahratta and the Pindari harried these plains. Landlord and Tenant. But here we are close to the headman's house. There is an open space, cramped, it is true, but still open compared to the lanes we travelled by. In the middle a big well, with raised and cemented margin; with posts and pulleys for the water-drawers: beyond the their accounts to some of the tenants. He has a rude pair of spectacles with thick clumsy frames upon his nose. His turban is large and white, and he wears a long white calico coat fairly clean, with tight pantaloons of the same material. The men round him are cultivators. They are in their ordinary working dress, a pagri or turban of coarse cotton stuff wound untidily round the head. No jacket or coat; a dhotee or cloth of a light brick or dirty white color festooned over the legs, giving the appearance of loose trousers. Their brown backs glisten in the light, and their muscles and sinews, hardened by toil, show through the skin. They are strong, well-fed men for the most part, but slight of limb compared with European peasants. There is a stir at the door of the headman's house. A tall, handsome man about fifty years of age comes out, Thakur Pertáb Singh, the landlord of the village. He is dressed much as the others, except that he wears a coat or tunic, and his clothes are cleaner and of better texture. He has a fine face, a well-formed nose, almost aquiline, the features regular, so far as they can be seen, for he wears a heavy moustache and a long beard divided in the middle of the chin and trained up on either side so as to mingle with the whiskers. A little behind him come two men of the same type, but much younger, in the full strength of youth. They are his sons. He has three others away from home who are native of ficers in the Bengal cavalry. The eldest has attained the highest rank open to an Indian, and the whole family glory in the distinction, and are proud of their connection with the army. For are they not Rajputs, soldiers by right of blood? The three men enter the choupal. Way is made for them, and they are treated with the greatest deference, partly no doubt because they are the landlords of the village, much more because they are high-caste men of an ancient stock, and most of the cultivators are of the same clan. "You owe ten rupees, Ram Pershad," the accountant is saying, "and must pay." you the "Here is the master," replies man addressed, "I will make my petition to him," and prostrating himself, he places his turban at the feet of the headman, who has just entered the choupal. "What is it all about?" he asks. "It is just this, sir," replies Ram Pershad, "I owe ten rupees, but I cannot pay; last crop, you know, sir, was a very poor one. This is the second bad year, and the village banker will not advance me another penny. If the rain would come I could sow my cotton, and my outlying sugarcane would improve, and I might have some credit then and be able to raise the money. As it is, I have not wherewithal to buy bread for my children, who are crying with hunger, and for my wife, who is ill. You know I have been in the village, father and son, these hundred years and more, as long as your family has owned it. But what can I do? It is the will of God; what will be, will be. I am helpless!" The old Rajput to whom he appeals has sat down on the ground a little apart from the crowd and to one side of the accountant. The rest are in a semicircle, with their faces turned towards him. As he listens a set, hard look comes over his face. Can you interpret that look? No, it is not obstinacy or cruelty or greed. It is more like despair. It is resentment against the hard destiny that is forcing him to do that which he would not. A number of others, defaulters likewise, join Ram Pershad in his appeal for mercy, until there is a babel of sounds. The accountant reads out from his books the sums due from each. What is passing through the old Rajput's mind? He would yield, and that gladly, to the pity that is moving him. But there is his own land to think of, his own family-above all, his own pride. Was he not the direct descendant of the ancient chief who brought the clan into this part of the country and was lord of the whole country-side? Eighty-four villages owned the sway of his ancestors for centuries-ay, for centuries-before the great company took possession of the land. His great-grandfather was the head of the clan when the company came, and for some years afterwards. It was at the first settlement of the land revenue that most of the villages were taken away from the lord and given to the villagers, his own clansmen and dependants. His grandfather was left with only twenty out of the eighty-four. It was tyranny and injustice; but the English sahibs were new and ignorant in those days, and destiny was hard. Since then, one by one the twenty villages have gone. They have been sold for debt, and bought by traders and bankers. His grandfather and his father may have been extravagant. But what would you have? Can a Rahtore Rajput live like a pariah? Can his sons remain unmarried, or can wives be had for nothing by men of his blood? Now he was left with only one village, that in which his fathers had lived, and where their home farms were. Was this too to be lost, and by him? It is mortgaged to that cringing Marwari, whose house stands over |