



Produced by Al Haines.





                             *THE GREY MAN*


                                   BY

                            *S. R. Crockett*



                           _POPULAR EDITION_



                                 LONDON
                            T. FISHER UNWIN
                            ADELPHI TERRACE
                                  MCMX




                                  _To
                              W. R. NICOLL
                      are affectionately inscribed
                  these Chronicles of a Stormy Time--
                              in memory of
                unforgotten Days of Peace and Quietness
                        spent with him and his._



                        [_All rights reserved_]




                               *CONTENTS*

      I. The Oath of Swords
     II. The Lass of the White Tower
    III. The Second Taunting of Spurheel
     IV. The Inn on the Red Moss
      V. The Throwing of the Bloody Dagger
     VI. The Crown of the Causeway
    VII. My Lady's Favours
   VIII. The Laird of Auchendrayne
     IX. Cartel of Contumely
      X. Sir Thomas of the Top-Knot
     XI. Sword and Spit
    XII. The Flitting of the Sow
   XIII. The Tryst at Midnight
    XIV. The Adventure of the Garden
     XV. A Midnight Leaguer
    XVI. Greybeards and Dimple Chins
   XVII. The Corbies at the Eagle's Nest
  XVIII. Bairns' Play
    XIX. Fighting the Beasts
     XX. The Secret of the Caird
    XXI. Mine Ancient Sweetheart
   XXII. A Marriage made in Hell
  XXIII. A Galloway Raid
   XXIV. The Slaughter in the Snow
    XXV. Marjorie bids her Love Good-night
   XXVI. Days of Quiet
  XXVII. On the Heartsome Heather
 XXVIII. Warm Backs make Braw Bairns
   XXIX. The Murder among the Sandhills
    XXX. I seek for Vengeance
   XXXI. The Blue Blanket
  XXXII. Greek meets Greek
 XXXIII. The Devil is a Gentleman
  XXXIV. In the Enemy's Country
   XXXV. The Ogre's Castle
  XXXVI. The Defence of Castle Ailsa
 XXXVII. The Voice out of the Night
XXXVIII. A Rescue from the Sea
  XXXIX. The Cleft in the Rock
     XL. The Cave of Death
    XLI. The Were-Wolf of Benerard
   XLII. Ane Lochaber Aix gied Him his Paiks
  XLIII. The Moot Hill of Girvan
   XLIV. The Murder upon the Beach
    XLV. The Man in the Wide Breeches
   XLVI. The Judgment of God
  XLVII. The Place of the Legion of Devils
 XLVIII. The Finding of the Treasure of Kelwood
   XLIX. The Great Day of Trial
      L. The Last of the Grey Man
     LI. Marjorie's Good-night
    LII. Home-coming




                             *THE GREY MAN*



                              *CHAPTER I*

                          *THE OATH OF SWORDS*


Well do I mind the first time that ever I was in the heartsome town of
Ballantrae.  My father seldom went thither, because it was a hold of the
Bargany folk, and it argued therefore sounder sense to give it the
go-by.  But it came to pass upon a time that it was necessary for my
father to adventure from Kirrieoch on the border of Galloway, where we
dwelt high on the moors, to the seaside of Ayr.

My father's sister had married a man named Hew Grier, an indweller in
Maybole, who for gear's sake had settled down to his trade of tanner in
Ballantrae.  It was to his burying that we went.  We had seen him snugly
happed up, and the burial supper was over.  We were already in a mind to
set about returning, when we heard the sound of a great rushing of
people hither and thither.  I went aloft and looked through a gable
window upon the street.  Arms were hastily being brought from beneath
the thatch, to which the laws of the King had committed them under the
late ordinance anent weapons of war.  Leathern jackets were being
donned, and many folk cried 'Bargany!' in the streets without knowing
why.

My Aunt Grisel went out to ask what the stir might be, and came in again
with her face as white as a clout.

'It is the Cassillis folk that are besieging the Tower of Ardstinchar,
and they have come near to the taking of it, they say.  Oh, what will
the folk of Ballantrae do to you, John, if they ken that you are here?
They will hang you for a spy, and that without question.'

'That,' said my father, 'is surely impossible.  The Ballantrae folk
never had any great haul of sense ever since Stinchar water ran; but yet
they will hardly believe that Hew Grier, decent man--him that was your
marrow and lies now in his resting grave, poor body--took on himself to
die, just that I might come to Ballantrae to spy out the land!'

But my aunt, being easily flustered, would not hearken to him, thinking
that all terrible things were possible, and so hid the two of us in the
barn-loft till it should be the hour of the gloaming.

Then so soon as the darkening came, putting a flask of milk into my
pocket and giving a noble satchel of cakes to my father, she almost
pushed us out of her back door.  To this day I remember how the unsteady
glare of a red burning filled all the street.  And we could see
burghers' wives standing at their doors, all looking intently in the
direction of the Castle of Ardstinchar upon its lofty rock.  Others set
their heads out of the little round 'jaw-holes' that opened in each
gable wall, and gossiped shrilly with their neighbours.

My father and I went cannily down by the riverside, and as soon as we
turned Hew-the-Friar's corner, we saw all the noble tower of Ardstinchar
flaming to the skies--every window belching fire, and the sparks fleeing
upward as before a mighty wind, though it was a stirless night with a
moon and stars floating serenely above.

Down by the waterside and straight before us we saw a post of men, and
we heard them clank their war-gear as they marched from side to side and
looked ever up at the castle on its steep, spitting like a furnace,
flaming like a torch. So at sight of them my father turned us about
sharply enough, because, in spite of what he had said to my Aunt Grisel,
he had much reason to fear for his neck.  For if, on the night of a
Cassillis raid, one of the hated faction should be found in the town of
Ballantrae, little doubt there was but that a long tow and a short
shrift would be his fate.

We climbed the breast of the brae up from the waterside, intending to
make a detour behind the castle.  My father said that there would be an
easy crossing at Heronford, where he knew a decent man that was of his
own party.  Thence we could make up the glen of the Tigg Water, which in
the evil state of the country was as good and quiet a way back to
Minnochside as one might hope to find.

It seemed a most pitiful sight to me, that was but a young lad (and had
never seen a fire bigger than a screed of muirburn screeving across the
hills with a following wind at its tail), to watch the noble house with
all its wealth of plenishing and gear being burned up.

I said as much to my father, who swung along with his head bent to the
hill <DW72>, dragging my arm oftentimes almost from the socket, in his
haste to get us out of such unwholesome company as the angry folk of
Ballantrae.

'It is an enemy's house!' he replied very hastily.  'Come thy ways,
lad!'

'But what harm have the Bargany folk done to us?' I asked.  For this
thing seemed strange to me--that Kennedy should strive with Kennedy,
burn castle, kill man, harry mow and manger, drive cattle--and I never
be able to make out what it was all for.

'Hold your breath, Launcelot Kennedy!' said my father, testy with
shortness of wind and going uphill, 'or right speedily you will find out
for what!  Is it not enough that you are born to love Cassillis and to
hate Bargany?'

'Are the folk of Cassillis, then, so much better than the folk of
Bargany?' I asked, taking what I well knew to be the chances of a civil
answer, or of a ring on the side of the head.

It was not the civil answer that I got.

And, indeed, it was an ill season for query and question, or for the
answering of them.  In time we got to the angle of the castle, and there
we were somewhat sheltered from the fierce heat and from the glare of
light also.  From the eminence we had gained, we could look away along
the shore side.  My father pointed with his finger.

'Boy, do you see yon?' he whispered.

I looked long and eagerly with my unaccustomed eyes, before I could see
in the pale moonlight a dark train of horsemen that rode steadily
northward.  Their line wimpled like a serpent, being pricked out to our
sight with little reeling twinkles of fire, which I took to be the moon
shining on their armour and the points of their spears.

'See,' said my father, 'yonder goes our good Earl home with the spoil.
Would that I were by his side! Why do I live so far among the hills, and
out of the call of my chief when he casts his war pennon to the winds?'

We looked all round the castle, and seeing no one, we made shift to get
about it and darn ourselves among the heather of the further hillside.
But even as we passed the angle and reached a broken part of the wall,
there came a trampling of iron-shod hoofs.  And lo! a troop of horsemen
rode up to the main castle gate, that which looks to the north-west. It
was all we could do to