The Fair Maid of Perth; Or, St. Valentine's Day by Walter Scott (popular romance novels txt) 📗

once, friend, what is it thou wouldst have of me? I am in no humour for dallying.”

“A hauberk for her chief, Eachin MacIan,” said the Highlander.

“You are a hammer man, you say? Are you a judge of this?” said our smith, producing from a chest the mail shirt on which he had been lately employed.

The Gael handled it with a degree of admiration which had something of envy in it. He looked curiously at every part of its texture, and at length declared it the very best piece of armour that he had ever seen.

“A hundred cows and bullocks and a good drift of sheep would be e’en ower cheap an offer,” said the Highlandman, by way of tentative; “but her nainsell will never bid thee less, come by them how she can.”

“It is a fair proffer,” replied Henry; “but gold nor gear will never buy that harness. I want to try my own sword on my own armour, and I will not give that mail coat to any one but who will face me for the best of three blows and a thrust in the fair field; and it is your chief’s upon these terms.”

“Hut, prut, man—take a drink and go to bed,” said the Highlander, in great scorn. “Are ye mad? Think ye the captain of the Clan Quhele will be brawling and battling with a bit Perth burgess body like you? Whisht, man, and hearken. Her nainsell will do ye mair credit than ever belonged to your kin. She will fight you for the fair harness hersell.”

“She must first show that she is my match,” said Henry, with a grim smile.

“How! I, one of Eachin MacIan’s leichtach, and not your match!”

“You may try me, if you will. You say you are a fir nan ord. Do you know how to cast a sledge hammer?”

“Ay, truly—ask the eagle if he can fly over Farragon.”

“But before you strive with me, you must first try a cast with one of my leichtach. Here, Dunter, stand forth for the honour of Perth! And now, Highlandman, there stands a row of hammers; choose which you will, and let us to the garden.”

The Highlander whose name was Norman nan Ord, or Norman of the Hammer, showed his title to the epithet by selecting the largest hammer of the set, at which Henry smiled. Dunter, the stout journeyman of the smith, made what was called a prodigious cast; but the Highlander, making a desperate effort, threw beyond it by two or three feet, and looked with an air of triumph to Henry, who again smiled in reply.

“Will you mend that?” said the Gael, offering our smith the hammer.

“Not with that child’s toy,” said Henry, “which has scarce weight to fly against the wind. Jannekin, fetch me Sampson; or one of you help the boy, for Sampson is somewhat ponderous.”

The hammer now produced was half as heavy again as that which the Highlander had selected as one of unusual weight. Norman stood astonished; but he was still more so when Henry, taking his position, swung the ponderous implement far behind his right haunch joint, and dismissed it from his hand as if it had flown from a warlike engine. The air groaned and whistled as the mass flew through it. Down at length it came, and the iron head sunk a foot into the earth, a full yard beyond the cast of Norman.

The Highlander, defeated and mortified, went to the spot where the weapon lay, lifted it, poised it in his hand with great wonder, and examined it closely, as if he expected to discover more in it than a common hammer. He at length returned it to the owner with a melancholy smile, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head as the smith asked him whether he would not mend his cast.

“Norman has lost too much at the sport already,” he replied. “She has lost her own name of the Hammerer. But does her own self, the Gow Chrom, work at the anvil with that horse’s load of iron?”

“You shall see, brother,” said Henry, leading the way to the smithy. “Dunter,” he said, “rax me that bar from the furnace”; and uplifting Sampson, as he called the monstrous hammer, he plied the metal with a hundred strokes from right to left—now with the right hand, now with the left, now with both, with so much strength at once and dexterity, that he worked off a small but beautifully proportioned horseshoe in half the time that an ordinary smith would have taken for the same purpose, using a more manageable implement.

“Oigh—oigh!” said the Highlander, “and what for would you be fighting with our young chief, who is far above your standard, though you were the best smith ever wrought with wind and fire?”

“Hark you!” said Henry; “you seem a good fellow, and I’ll tell you the truth. Your master has wronged me, and I give him this harness freely for the chance of fighting him myself.”

“Nay, if he hath wronged you he must meet you,” said the life guardsman. “To do a man wrong takes the eagle’s feather out of the chief’s bonnet; and were he the first in the Highlands, and to be sure so is Eachin, he must fight the man he has wronged, or else a rose falls from his chaplet.”

“Will you move him to this,” said Henry, “after the fight on Sunday?”

“Oh, her nainsell will do her best, if the hawks have not got her nainsell’s bones to pick; for you must know, brother, that Clan Chattan’s claws pierce rather deep.”

“The armour is your chief’s on that condition,” said Henry; “but I will disgrace him before king and court if he does not pay me the price.”

“Deil a fear—deil a fear; I will bring him in to the barrace myself,” said Norman, “assuredly.”

“You will do me a pleasure,” replied Henry; “and that you may remember your promise, I will bestow on you this dirk. Look—if you hold it truly, and can strike between the mail hood and the collar of your enemy, the surgeon will be needless.”

The Highlander was lavish in his expressions of gratitude, and took his leave.

“I have given him the best mail harness I ever wrought,” said the smith to himself, rather repenting his liberality, “for the poor chance that he will bring his chief into a fair field with me; and then let Catharine be his who can win her fairly. But much I dread the youth will find some evasion, unless he have such luck on Palm Sunday as may induce him to try another combat. That is some hope, however; for I have often, ere now, seen a raw young fellow shoot up after his first fight from a dwarf into a giant queller.”

Thus, with little hope, but with the most determined resolution, Henry Smith awaited the time that should decide his fate. What made him augur the worst was the silence both of the glover and of his daughter.

“They are ashamed,” he said, “to confess the truth to me, and therefore they are silent.”

Upon the Friday at noon, the two