The Great Right-Of-Way Case

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Title:     The Great Right-Of-Way Case
Author: S. R. Crockett [More Titles by Crockett]

The Vandal and the Visigoth come here,
The trampler under foot, and he whose eyes,
Unblest, behold not where the glory lies;
The wallower in mire, whose sidelong leer

Degrades the wholesome earth--these all come near
To gaze upon the wonder of the hills,
And drink the limpid clearness of the rills.
Yet each returns to what he holds most dear,

To change the script and grind the mammon mills
Unpurified; for what men hither bring,
That take they hence, and Nature doth appear

As one that spends herself for sodden wills,
Who pearls of price before the swine doth fling,
And from the shrine casts out the sacred gear.

Glen Conquhar was a summer resort. Its hillsides had never been barred by the intrusive and peremptory notice-board, a bugbear to ladies strolling book in hand, a cock-shy to the children passing on their way to school. The Conquhar was a swift, clear-running river coursing over its bed of gneiss, well tucked-in on either side by green hayfields, where the grasshopper for ever "burred," and the haymakers stopped with elbows on their rakes to watch the passer-by. The Marquis had never enforced his rights of exclusion in his Highland solitudes. His shooting-lodge of Ben Dhu, which lay half a dozen miles to the north, was tenanted only by himself and a guest or two during the months of September and October. The visitors at the hotel above the Conquhar Water saw now and then a tall figure waiting at the bridge or scanning the hill-side through a pair of deer-stalker glasses. Then the underlings of the establishment would approach and in awe-struck tones whisper the information, "That's the Marquis!" For it is the next thing in these parts to being Providence to be the Marquis of Rannoch.

The hotel of Glen Conquhar was far from the haunts of men. Its quiet was never disturbed by the noise of roysterers. It was the summer home of a number of quiet people from the south--fishing men chiefly, who loved to hear the water rushing about their legs on the edges of the deep salmon-pools of the Conquhar Water. There was Cole, Radical M.P., impulsive and warm-hearted, a London lawyer who had declined, doubtless to his own monetary loss, to put his sense of justice permanently into a blue bag. There was Dr. Percival, the father of all them that cast the angle in Glen Conquhar, who now fished little in these degenerate days, but instead told tales of the great salmon of thirty years ago--fellows tremendous enough to make the spick-and-span rods of these days, with their finicking attachments, crack their joints even to think of holding the monsters. Chiefly and finally there was "Old Royle," who came in March, first of all the fishing clan, and lingered on till November, when nothing but the weathered birch-leaves spun down the flooded glen of the Conquhar. Old Royle regarded the best fishing in the water as his birthright, and every rival as an intruder. He showed this too, for there was no bashfulness about Old Royle. Young men who had just begun to fish consulted him as to where they should begin on the morrow. Old Royle was of opinion that there was not a single fish within at least five miles of the hotel. Indeed, he thought of "taking a trap" in the morning to a certain pool six miles up the water, where he had seen a round half-dozen of beauties only the night before. The young men departed, strapped and gaitered, at cock-crow on the morrow. They fished all day, and caught nothing save and except numerous dead branches in the narrow swirls of the linn. But they lost, in addition to their tempers, the tops of a rod or two caught in the close birch tangles, many casts of flies, and a fly-book which one of them had dropped out of his breast-pocket while in act to disentangle his hook from the underlip of a caving bank. His fly-book and he had descended into the rushing Conquhar together. He clambered out fifty yards below; and as for the fly-book, it was given by a mother-salmon to her young barbarians to play with in the deepest pool between Glendona and Loch Alsh.

When these young men returned, jolly Mr. Forbes, of landlords the most excellent, received them with a merry twinkle in his eye. In the lobby, Old Royle was weighing his "take." He had caught two beautiful fish--one in the pool called "Black Duncan," and the other half a mile farther up. He had had the water to himself all day. These young men passed in to dinner with thoughts too deep for words.

Suddenly the quiet politics of the glen were stirred by the posting of a threatening notice, which appeared on the right across the bridge at the end of the path, along which from time immemorial the ladies of the hotel had been in the habit of straying in pairs, communing of feminine mysteries; or mooning singly with books and water-colour blocks, during the absence of the nominal heads of their houses, who were engaged in casting the fly far up the glen.

Once or twice a surly keeper peremptorily turned back the innocent and law-abiding sex, but always when unaccompanied by the more persistent male. So there was wrath at the table-d'hote. There was indignation in the houses of summer residence scattered up and down the strath. It was the new tenant of the Lodge of Glen Conquhar, or rather his wife, who had done this thing. For the first season for many years the shooting and fishing on the north side of the Conquhar had been let by the Marquis of Rannoch. From the minister's glebe for ten miles up the water these rights extended. They had been leased to the scion of a Black Country family, noble in the second generation by virtue of the paternal tubs and vats. The master was a shy man, dwelling in gaiters and great boots, only to be met with far on the hills, and then passing placidly on with quiet down-looking eyes. Contrariwise, the lady was much in evidence. Her noble proportions and determined eye made the boldest quail. The M.P. thanked Heaven three times a day that he was not her husband. She managed the house and the shooting as well. Among other things, she had resolved that no more should mere hotel-visitors walk to within sight of her windows, and that the path which led up the north side of the glen must be shut up for ever and ever. She procured a painted board from a cunning artificer in the neighbouring town of Portmore, which announced (quite illegally) the pains and penalties which would overtake those who ventured to set foot on the forbidden roadway.

There were enthusiastic mass meetings, tempered with tea and cake, on the lawn. Ladies said impressive things of their ill-treatment; and their several protectors, and even others without any direct and obvious claim, felt indignation upon their several accounts. The correct theory of trespass was announced by a high authority, and the famous prescription of the great judge, Lord Mouthmore, was stated. It ran as follows:--

"When called to account for trespass, make use of the following formula if you wish the law to have no hold over you: 'I claim no right-of-way, and I offer sixpence in lieu of damages,' at the same time offering the money composition to the enemy."

This was thought to be an admirable solution, and all the ladies present resolved to carry sixpences in their pockets when next they went a-walking. One lady so mistrusted her memory that she set down the prescription privately as follows: "I claim no sixpence, and I offer damages in lieu of right-of-way!"

"It is always well to be exact," she said; "memory is so treacherous."

But this short and easy method with those who take their stand on coercion and illegality was scouted by the Radical M.P. He pointed out with the same lucidity and precision with which he would have stated a case to a leading counsel, the facts (first) that the right-of-way was not only claimed, but existed; (second) that the threatening notice was inoperative; (third) that an action lay against any person who attempted to deforce the passage of any individual; (fourth) that the road in question was the only way to kirk and market for a very considerable part of the strath, that therefore the right-of-way was inalienable; and (fifth) that the right could be proved back to the beginning of the century, and, indeed, that it had never been disputed till the advent of Mrs. Nokes. The case was complete. It had only to go before any court in the land to be won with costs against the extruder. The only question was, "Who would bell the cat?" Several ladies of yielding dispositions, who went fully intending to beard the lion, turned meekly back at the word of the velveteen Jack-in-office. For such is the conservative basis of woman, that she cannot believe that the wrong can by any possibility be on the side of the man in possession. If you want to observe the only exception to this attitude, undertake to pilot even the most upright of women through the custom-house.

The situation became acute owing to the indignant feelings of the visitors, now reinforced by the dwellers in the various houses of private entertainment. Indignation meetings increased and abounded. A grand demonstration along the path and under the windows of the lodge was arranged for Sunday after morning church--several clergymen agreeing to take part, on the well-known principle of the better day the better deed. What might have happened no one can say. An action for assault and battery would have been the English way; a selection of slugs and tenpenny nails over the hedge might possibly have been the Irish way; but what actually happened in this law-abiding strath was quite different.

In this parish of Glen Conquhar there was a minister, as there is a minister in every parish in broad Scotland. He was very happy. He had a cow or two of his own on the glebe, and part of it he let to the master of the hotel.

The Reverend Donald Grant of Glen Conquhar was an old man now, but, though a little bowed, he was still strong and hearty, and well able for his meal of meat. He lived high up on the hill, whose heathery sides looked down upon the kirk and riverside glebe. His simplicity of heart and excellence of character endeared him to his parish, as indeed was afterwards inscribed upon enduring marble on the tablet which was placed under the list of benefactions in the little kirk of the strath.

The minister did not often come down from his Mount of the Wide Prospects; and when he did, it was for some definite purpose, which being performed, he straightway returned to his hill-nest.

He had heard nothing of the great Glen Conquhar right-of-way case, when one fine morning he made his way down to the hamlet to see one of his scanty flock, whose church attendance had not been all that could be desired. As he went down the hill he passed within a few feet of the newly painted trespass notice-board; but it was not till his return, with slow steps, a little weary with the uphill road and the heat of the day, that his eyes rested on the glaring white notice. Still more slowly and deliberately he got his glasses out of their shagreen case, mounted their massive silver rims on his nose, and slowly read the legend which intimated that "Trespassers on this Private Road will be Prosecuted with the utmost Rigour of the Law."

Having got to the large BY ORDER at the end, he calmly dismounted the benignant silver spectacles, returned them to the shagreen case, and so to the tail-pocket of his black coat. Then, still more benignantly, he sought about among the roots of the trees till he found the stout branch of a fir broken off in some spring gale, but still tough and able-bodied. With an energy which could hardly have been expected from one of his hoar hairs, the minister climbed part way up the pole, and dealt the obnoxious board such hearty thwacks, first on one side and then on the other, that in a trice it came tumbling down.

As he was picking it up and tucking it beneath his arm, the gamekeeper on the watch in some hidden sentry-box among the leaves came hurrying down.

"Oh, Mr. Grant, Mr. Grant!" he exclaimed in horror, "what are you doing with that board?"--his professional indignation grievously at war with his racial respect for the clerical office.

"'Deed, Dugald, I'm just taking this bit spale boardie hame below my arm. It will make not that ill firewood, and it has no business whatever to be cockin' up there on the corner of my glebe."

The end of the Great Glen Conquhar Right-of-Way Case.

[The end]
S. R. Crockett's short story: Great Right-Of-Way Case

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