one side of their mansion. "I see her 'way over yonder!" Scotty
seated himself beside her, flushed and heated with the unwonted
exertions of house-building.
"Oh, don't you love Kirsty," she cried, giving him an ecstatic shake.
"I do; an' I love you, too, Scotty, you're a dear!" Scotty looked
slightly uncomfortable, but not wholly displeased.
"Don't you love to run away off in the bush like this, and have nobody
to bother you?" she inquired next.
"Yes." Scotty could cordially assent to that. "When I get a man," he
said, in a sudden burst of confidence, "I'm goin' to live in a wigwam
like Big Wind an' shoot bears!"
"Oh, my!" she cried in delight. "I wish I could live with you, only I
don't want to be an ugly scraw, I want to be like Kirsty when I grow
big, an' live up here in the Oa, an' pile hay; but I'll have to be like
Auntie Eleanor an' wear a black silk dress, oh, dear!"
"Wouldn't you be liking a silk dress?" asked Scotty in surprise.
"No!" she cried disdainfully. "You've always got to take care of it.
I want a red petticoat like Kirsty wears, and I want to go in my bare
feet all the time, and live in the bush."
"Don't you go in your bare feet at home?" inquired Scotty in amazement.
"No," she admitted mournfully. "Auntie Eleanor says 'tisn't nice for
little girls, an' I have to play the piano every morning, an' not make
any noise round the house, 'cause you know my poor auntie has headaches
all the time. Do you know what's the matter with my auntie?"
"No."
"Well, don't you tell, it's a big secret; she's got the _heartbreak_!"
"The what?" cried Scotty in alarm.
"The heartbreak. Brian told me. Brian's our coachman, an' I heard him
tell Mary Morrison, the cook, and he told me not to never, _never_
tell; but I'll just tell you, and you won't tell, will you, Scotty?"
"No, never. Will it be like the rheumatics Granny has?"
"No-o, I 'spect not; it's when you have headaches an' don't smile nor
eat much; not even pie!" She gazed triumphantly into Scotty's
interested countenance. "That's what my auntie's got."
"Would she be catching it at school?" he inquired feelingly, moved by
recollections of an epidemic of measles that had raged in Number Nine
the winter preceding.
"No, she just got it all by herself. She was going to be married in
the church, 'way over in England, and she had a beautiful satin dress
and a veil and everything, and he didn't come!"
"Who?" demanded Scotty.
"Why, the gempleman; he was a soldier-man with a grea' big sword, an'
he got bad an' went away, an' my auntie got the heartbreak. An' that's
why she's sick an' doesn't want me to make a noise or jump."
Scotty looked at her in deep sympathy. "Won't she be letting you
jump?" he asked in awe.
"Not much," she said with a fine martyr-like air. "She says 'tisn't
lady-like, an' she's going to send me to a school in Toronto when I get
big, where it's all girls, and not one of them ever, ever jumps once!"
They stared at each other in mutual amazement at the conception of a
whole jumpless school.
"I wouldn't be going!" cried Scotty firmly. "_I'd_ jump--I'd jump out
of the window an' run away, whatever!"
Her eyes sparkled. "Oh, p'raps I could do that too! I'd run away an'
come to Kirsty. She doesn't mind if I jump an' make a noise, an'
Kirsty never makes me sew. Oh, Scotty, you don't ever have to sew, do
you?"
"Noh!" cried Scotty in disdain, "that's girls' work."
She sighed deeply. "I wish I was a boy! Harold never has to sew, but
Harold goes to school 'way in Toronto all the time an' maybe they don't
let him jump there. _I'd_ jump!" she cried, springing from the log and
laughing joyously, "oh, wouldn't I! Last tag, Scotty!" and she was
once more off into the woods and Scotty after her.
Such a happy day as it was, but it was over at last, and after they had
eaten their supper, where Kirsty served it to them in their playhouse,
Scotty went to the house to bid the old woman good-bye, and started for
home.
The little girl followed him sadly and slowly to the edge of the
clearing.
"When'll you come back again?" she asked pleadingly.
"I'll not know," said Scotty patronisingly, "I don't often play with
girls."
The blue sunbonnet drooped; its owner's assurance and independence had
all vanished. "You might come next Saturday," she suggested humbly.
"Well," said Scotty handsomely, "mebby I'll be coming."
"I'm going to ask Kirsty if I can't go to school with you some day!"
she cried audaciously.
Scotty looked alarmed. In reality he was most eager to return and
resume housekeeping in the fence-corner, but to have this stranger go
to school with him would never do. The boys would laugh at him, and
already he had sufficient trials with Betty Lauchie since Peter stopped
going to school.
"Oh, it's too far!" he cried hastily, "an' there will be an awful cross
master there!"
"I don't care, you wouldn't let him touch me, would you?"
"If you don't ask Kirsty, I'll come over all next Saturday, an' mebby
she'll be letting you come to my place; it's nicer than school."
So thus comforted, Isabel climbed the stump and swung her sunbonnet as
long as the slanting sunlight showed the little figure running down the
fast darkening forest-pathway; and just before the shadows swallowed
him up, he turned and waved his cap in farewell.
VII
THE AVENGING OF GLENCOE
Now the dewy sounds begin to dwindle,
Dimmer grow the burnished rills,
Breezes creep and halt,
Soon the guardian night shall kindle
In the violet vault,
All the twinkling tapers
Touched with steady gold
Burning through the lawny vapours
Where they float and fold.
--DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT.
The sound of a tinkling bell, crossing the pasture in tuneful harmony
with the music of the summer evening, had come to a pause in the
barnyard, and the boys had gone out with their pails to the milking.
Scotty came capering up the path from the barn, making mischievous
snatches at Granny's rosebushes, which surrounded the house all abloom
in their June dresses. He seldom returned from his evening task of
bringing home the cows in such good time. Generally he lingered in the
woods until he had almost worn out even Granny's patience, and caused
Callum to threaten all kinds of dire punishments, which were never
inflicted. But to-night he had been very expeditious, and with good
reason; for hadn't Granny warned him that Isabel might arrive at any
moment? She had come to Kirsty's a few days before, and Weaver Jimmie
had promised that, if the lady who ruled his heart was in a
sufficiently propitious mood to admit of his leaving her door intact,
he would, without fail, bring the little visitor over that evening.
She and Scotty had become quite intimate since the first summer of
their acquaintance. Miss Isabel was possessed of a vitality and high
spirits that sometimes became unbearable to her invalid aunt; so every
summer, to her own delight and Miss Herbert's relief, she was packed
off to the home of her old nurse. For Kirsty John's mother had been a
servant in the Herbert family in her youth; and when the little Isabel
had been left an orphan in the Captain's family, Kirsty herself had
been nurse-maid to both her and Captain Herbert's little son.
Sometimes, too, during the winter, when her cousin was away at school,
the child came for a lengthy visit to her Highland home, for Miss
Herbert had often to go to the city for medical attendance, and her
brother always accompanied her, glad of an opportunity to be with his
son. Indeed, the family at Lake Oro had what Kirsty called a bad habit
of "stravogin'." She declared they were always "jist here-away
there-away," and never settled down like decent folk in one place. But
then there was no accounting for the ways of the gentry, and these
people were half English and half Irish, anyway, and what could a body
expect? She was thankful herself that the wee bit lassock had some
good Scotch blood in her, anyway. Kirsty often shook her head over her
little charge, declaring that if the father or mother had lived, or
even the Captain's wife, who was a smart, tidy body, even if she was a
lady, the wee one would have had better care. Not but that the
Captain's folk were fond of the lamb; Kirsty declared it was clean
impossible not to love her; but what with a poor girnin', sick body for
an aunt, and an uncle who was such a gentleman he didn't know whether
the roof was falling in on him or not, was it any wonder the bit thing
was wild?
Whatever neglect Miss Isabel may have suffered troubled her not a whit.
For neglect spelled liberty and always contributed to the general
joyousness of her existence. Her poor aunt's illnesses, even, were
associated in her childish mind with the keenest delight, for they
brought her what she enjoyed most in the world, many days spent in the
Oa. Nominally her home was with her old nurse, but she really spent
the greater part of her time at Scotty's home. And here Weaver Jimmie
became indirectly a partaker in the joy of the little one's presence;
for Kirsty entrusted her girl to him in her journeys between the
clearings; an honour of which Jimmie boasted from one end of the Oa to
the other, and fulfilled his commission with a vigilance that kept his
lively young charge in a state of indignant rebellion.
In the meantime Scotty had grown to like this new comrade and to
respect her. Of course she was only a girl, but she was immeasurably
superior to Betty, for she rarely cried, was always merry, had a
marvellous inventive genius and never failed of some new and wonderful
scheme for enjoying life and escaping work. His big, generous heart
experienced no jealousy, but only a great pride in her, when she
usurped his place and became the centre of interest and admiration in
his home. One visit had been sufficient to establish her as the ruler
of Big Malcolm's household. Everyone came at her beck and call; Rory
fiddled, Callum danced, Old Farquhar sang, and Hamish spun impossible
yarns at her command. And Granny, who was the most abject subject of
all, would fondle her golden curls, calling her Margaret, the name of
her own little girl whom she had lost, and would let her help make the
johnny cake for supper, apparently not a whit disturbed by the fact
that everything in the room was strewn with flour. Big Malcolm himself
seemed to forget that she belonged to the man against whom he had sworn
lifelong enmity, and like the rest, opened his heart to her
unreservedly. And she returned his affection with all the might of her
warm happy nature. She called him "Grandaddy," as Scotty did, and
would climb upon his knee and coax and tease him into doing things that
even his grandson would not have dared to ask.
The little visitor always came at a time that Scotty found very
convenient, just when the closing of school had deprived him of Danny
Murphy's companionship; and to-night he looked forward to her coming
with more than usual pleasure, for he needed her help and advice. Of
late the boy's tender heart had been worried by signs of discord at
home. Something he could not fathom was wrong with Callum. That old
trouble that had arisen between him and Grandaddy the first winter of
the prayer meetings had been suddenly aggravated. Scotty had heard
rumours at school, and was vaguely conscious of the cause of the
dissension. Isabel was so quick, perhaps she could help him to find
out just what was wrong and suggest a remedy.
"Yon's a queer-lookin' thing comin' over the bars, Scotty," said his
grandfather, smilingly, from his place at the doorway.
Scotty turned eagerly; yes, there was a little blue figure scrambling
hastily over the fence into the pasture-field, followed by Weaver
Jimmie, as anxious and flustered as a hen with a wayward duckling. A
joyous scream announced that she had really come.
"It's her!" shouted the boy. "It's wee Isabel!"
He darted down the hill to meet her, but Callum was there first.
Callum was on his way up from the barn, and the little blue figure flew
to him and made the rest of the journey to the house perched
triumphantly upon his broad shoulder, screaming with delight, and
calling upon Scotty, her own dear Scotty, to come and meet her.
But for all his joy, as she approached Scotty drew back shyly behind
the rosebushes. The first meeting with Isabel was something of an
embarrassment, for she always pitched herself upon him and insisted
upon kissing him, more than once sometimes, if he wasn't watchful, and
it was certainly an unseemly thing for a boy of his size to be kissed
by anybody. But the ordeal was soon over, and when they had all
rejoiced over her and measured her height against the door-frame, where
two niches showed how she and Scotty had stood last summer, and admired
her growth, and warned Scotty to take care or she would soon be as tall
as he was, the elder folk gave their attention to Weaver Jimmie and
left the children to their own devices.
As usual the Weaver was the bearer of important tidings.
"It's a fine job Tom Caldwell thinks he's got this time!" he declared
with an embarrassed hitch of one big foot over the other, and a rather
nervous glance towards Callum.
"What's that?" inquired Rory, coming up to the door with his two pails
of foaming milk. "We always like to know what our relations will be
doing," he added with a sly chuckle.
Weaver Jimmie looked more embarrassed than ever. He attacked his
whiskers and became so absorbed in their subduing that his audience
grew impatient.
"Out with it, man!" cried Callum, and thus adjured, the Weaver told his
story. When he had finished, it appeared that a much graver danger
than a Fenian raid threatened the Glen, for what should Tom Caldwell
and all those Irish louts from the Flats be up to now but an
Orangemen's raid!
Big Malcolm removed his pipe and glared at the speaker.
"What is it ye will be saying, man?" he demanded harshly. Weaver
Jimmie looked encouraged, and avoiding Callum's eye, he gave further
details. Tom Caldwell had lately been the means of organising an
Orange lodge in the Flats, and at their last meeting the brethren had
decreed that, upon the coming 12th of July, they must have a
celebration. It was to be no ordinary affair either, Pete Nash himself
told him; but such a magnificent spectacle as the pioneers had never
yet witnessed. Pete had received orders to prepare dinner for fifty
guests and whiskey for twice as many. There was to be a grand rally
early in the morning at the home of Tom Caldwell, who was to personate
the great Protestant monarch, and at high noon a triumphal march up
over the hills and down into the Glen to the feast,--with fifes and
drums and a greater display in crossing the Oro than King William
himself had had in crossing the historic Boyne.
Big Malcolm sat silent, his fists clenched. He was a Glencoe
MacDonald, and, like all his clan, had an abhorrence of the name of
Orange running fiercely in his veins. But he was saying to himself
over and over that he who had repented of all his strife, who had set
his face firmly against the evils of the day and become a leader of the
new movement that was bringing the community into a higher and better
life, he certainly must not be the one to stir up dissension. And yet,
to have a celebration in their own glen in honour of the MacDonalds'
betrayer!
"It will be a low, scandalous, Irish trick!" he vehemently burst forth.
Weaver Jimmie's eyes brightened. "They would be needing to learn a
lesson, whatever," he suggested tentatively.
"Malcolm," Mrs. MacDonald's voice came in gently, "we will surely not
be forgetting that Tom Caldwell would be joining us at the meetings
these last winters, and indeed we would jist all be praying together
that the Father would be putting away all strife from our hearts."
Callum cast his mother a look of gratitude; for, though generally the
first to scent the battle from afar and hasten its approach, for very
good reasons of his own he was on this occasion strongly inclined for
peace. Big Malcolm looked at the gentle face of his wife and the fire
died out of his eyes.
"Hoh!" he exclaimed disdainfully, "I will not be caring; let them have
their childish foolishness if it will be doing them any good, whatever!"
Weaver Jimmie looked disappointed, but, seeing no encouragement in the
faces about him, he reluctantly dropped the subject. The conversation
soon turned from war to a topic even nearer Jimmie's heart, for Rory
had brought out his fiddle and now struck up gaily the song of the
cruel Jinny and the hapless weaver.
Before the departure of the guests Scotty found an opportunity to
confide his troubles to Isabel. He could not tell her exactly what was
wrong, for that meant confessing that Callum and Grandaddy were capable
of mistakes. But he vaguely hinted that he was worried over their
hero. Callum was going to do something, something strange and new, but
just what he could not discover. Isabel was equally perturbed. Why
not ask Granny? she suggested. She would tell them. But no, Scotty
explained, that was just what they must not do, for it was something
that made Granny sad. But Peter Lauchie knew; Peter had told him that
the shanty at the north clearing was to be fixed up for Callum to live
there, after harvest; and then he laughed and would tell him no more.
As usual Isabel was quick to suggest a way out of the difficulty. Why
should they not go over to Peter's place some day and _make_ him tell
all about it? She wanted to see Betty again, anyway, and perhaps
Hughie would put up a swing for them in the barn again.
This was a fine plan, and the next week they proceeded to put it into
execution, and with Kirsty's permission set off early one morning for a
day's visit at Long Lauchie's. Isabel was almost as well known there
as Scotty himself, so he soon managed to leave her in Betty's company
and go off to the fields to seek Peter.
By judicious and persistent questioning he learned the confirmation of
his fears. Yes, Peter and all the boys knew what the trouble was.
Callum was to be married, and to an Irish girl at that, and of course
all the MacDonalds were highly disgusted.
Scotty listened in dismay. Callum to be married! That itself was bad
enough, people were always laughed at and chaffed when they got
married, and he writhed at the thought of his hero being in such an
ignominious position. But to be married to an Irish girl! Surely the
MacDonalds would be disgraced forever.
And yet Scotty's heart forbade his taking sides against Nancy. She was
Irish, certainly a deplorable fact, but still she was Nancy; and though
she had not been at school for some time, the boy had not forgotten
her. He sighed deeply over the complexity of human affairs. This,
then, was the cause of their unhappiness at home, of Grandaddy's
muttered threats and Granny's distressed looks.
He did not understand that there were stronger objections to Nancy in
Granny's mind than the girl's nationality. Big Malcolm's wife was
growing old, and the work of the farmhouse weighed heavily upon her.
Ever since Callum had grown up she had cherished the hope that one day
she would have sweet, trim Mary Lauchie, the finest girl in the Oa, and
a MacDonald at that, to take the reins of government in her household.
The loss of Mary would have been disappointment enough, but Callum's
new choice was a great trial to his patient, gentle mother. The
thought of Nancy Caldwell as a daughter-in-law, even though she was to
live at the north clearing, instead of with her, filled her with fear.
For Nancy had a reputation that had spread beyond the Flats. Since the
day she left school, where she had defied McAllister at his best, she
had ruled supreme in her own home from sheer dauntlessness of spirit.
Many were the tales told in the Oa of her wild outlandish doings; how
she would dress up in her brother's clothes and drive madly all over
the country; how she could ride an unbroken colt bareback, and shoot
like a man, things which everyone in the Oa knew no right-minded young
woman could ever learn. And hadn't Store Thompson's wife been, as she
declared, clean scandalised by seeing the hussy cross the Oro at the
spring floods, standing erect in a canoe and spreading out her skirts
to the gale, "Makin' a sail o' mesilf!" as she had laughingly declared
when she leaped ashore.
Scotty could not force himself to tell Isabel the disgraceful truth; he
was very quiet and gloomy as they walked homeward through the
golden-lighted forest. But Isabel had had a grand day with Betty and
had forgotten all about the original purport of their visit. She
danced along at his side full of busy chatter. Didn't he love all Long
Lauchie's folks? She did; for Betty was a dear and Mrs. Lauchie was
'most as nice as Scotty's Granny. But she loved Mary most of all,
because she was so kind and so good. And did Mary have the heartbreak
too, like her auntie? No; Scotty did not see how that was possible;
for Mary had never had a dress ready for a wedding; nor a fine soldier
man who did not come. But Isabel was sure he was mistaken. Yes, that
was certainly what Mary had, for her face was so pale, and she had the
same look in her eyes that her auntie had when her wedding day came
round, only Mary's eyes were kinder. But Scotty was not interested in
Mary. Callum absorbed all his thoughts, and he left Isabel at Kirsty's
and hurried home.
He found the boys all gone and his grandfather sitting alone by the
door. Big Malcolm was not smoking, which was a bad sign, and his
grandson saw by the look in his eye that he was not at peace. In his
perturbation over Callum's difficult case the boy had not noticed that
a new undercurrent of excitement was running through life's everyday
affairs.
For, though Big Malcolm had, with wonderful self-control, put aside his
indignation at the Orangemen, all the MacDonalds had not done so.
Weaver Jimmie had gone up over the hills of the Oa like a bearer of the
fiery cross, and wherever he appeared the beacon-fire of anger had
blazed forth. The Orangemen celebrating! The MacDonalds arose as one
man, and in all the inherited fury of generations, combined with as
much more produced for the occasion, banded together and swore that
before the soil of this, their new home, should be polluted by a
celebration in honour of the MacDonalds' betrayer, it should first be
soaked with the MacDonalds' blood!
To do Tom Caldwell justice, he did not at all comprehend the enormity
of the offence he was about to commit. Of course the Orangemen
anticipated some trouble among their Catholic brethren, but rather
looked forward to it as part of their entertainment. For though Pat
Murphy and his friends prophesied death and destruction to the
procession and all that had part or lot in it, what matter? The
country had been growing far too quiet since the fighting MacDonalds
had taken to praying instead of pugilism, and a little row at the
corner would just stir things up a bit and make it seem like old times.
But while they gleefully looked for tempests in the Flats, they were
innocently oblivious to the fact that the formerly peaceful hills of
the Oa had been converted into raging volcanoes. Occasionally vague
rumours of an eruption in the MacDonald settlement did float down to
King William and his men, drilling in the long June evenings, but they
drowned them in the tooting of fifes and the banging of drums and went
gaily on to their doom.