PART II.

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE McBRIDES

A Romance of Arran

by

JOHN SILLARS

Fifth Impression

The Ryerson Press, Toronto

William Blackwood and Sons

Edinburgh and London

1922

TO

_MY MOTHER_

LIST OF GAELIC NAMES AND EXPRESSIONS.

Crotal, lichen.

"A traill," you sluggard.

Cleiteadh mor, big ridge of rocks.

Bothanairidh, summer sheiling.

Birrican, a place name.

Rhuda ban, white headland.

Bealach an sgadan, Herring slap.

Skein dubh, black knife.

Crubach, lame.

Mo ghaoil, my darling.

Direach sin, (just that), (now do you see).

Lag 'a bheithe, hollow of the birch.

Mo bhallach, my boy.

Ceilidh, visit (meeting of friends); ceilidhing; ceilidher.

Cha neil, negative, no.

Mo leanabh, my child.

Cailleachs, old women.

Og, young.

Mhari nic Cloidh, Mary Fullarton.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

CHAP.

I. WHICH TELLS OF THE COMING OF THE GIPSY

II. MAKES SOME MENTION OF ONE JOCK McGILP, AND TELLS HOW BELLE

BROUGHT THE WEAN IN THE TARTAN SHAWL INTO THE HOUSE OF NOURN

III. IN WHICH I CHASE DEER AND SEE STRANGE HORSEMEN ON THE HILL,

AND A LIGHT FLASHING ON THE SEA

IV. I MEET JOCK McGILP AND HIS MATE McNEILAGE AT THE TUBS' INN,

AND LEARN WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE WEAN IN THE TARTAN SHAWL

V. MIRREN STUART'S ERRAND

VI. WE TRAMP THROUGH THE SNOW TO McKELVIE'S INN

VII. WE SAIL IN McKELVIE'S SKIFF TO THE HOLY ISLAND

VIII. THE DEATH OF McDEARG, THE RED LAIRD

IX. MIRREN STUART BIDS HER DOG LIE DOWN

X. DOL BEAG IS FLUNG INTO A FIRE

XI. THE BLAZING WHINS

XII. McALLAN'S LOCKER

XIII. DAN McBRIDE SAILS FROM LOCH BANZA

XIV. WE RETURN

XV. THE STRANGER ON THE MOORS

XVI. I HAVE SOME TALK WITH McGILP IN McKINNON'S KITCHEN

PART II.

XVII. I TURN SCHOOLMASTER

XVIII. THE FIRST MEETING

XIX. THE RIDERS ON THE MOOR

XX. "THE LOVE SECRET"

XXI. DOL BEAG LAUGHS

XXII. THE SHAMELESS LASS

XXIII. HELEN AND BRYDE McBRIDE REST AT THE FOOT OF THE URIE

XXIV. THE HALFLIN'S MESSAGE

XXV. I RIDE AGAIN TO McALLAN'S LOCKER

XXVI. A WEDDING ON THE DOORSTEP

XXVII. MARGARET McBRIDE KISSES HELEN

XXVIII. IN WHICH BETTY COMPLAINS OF GROWING-PAINS

XXIX. THE RAKING BLACK SCHOONER

XXX. TELLS WHERE BRYDE MET HAMISH OG

XXXI. BRYDE AND MARGARET

XXXII. BRYDE AND HELEN

XXXIII. HOW JOHN McCOOK HEARS OF THE PLOY AT THE CLATES

XXXIV. WHAT CAME OF THE PLOY

XXXV. DOL BEAG LAUGHS AGAIN

THE McBRIDES.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

WHICH TELLS OF THE COMING OF THE GIPSY.

It was April among the hills, waes me, the far-away days of my youth,

when the hills were smiling through the mists of their tears, and the

green grasses thrusting themselves through the withered mat of the

pasture like slender fairy swords. April in the hills, with the

curlews crying far out on the moorside, past the Red Ground my

grandfather wrought, and where again the heather will creep down, rig

on rig, for all the stone dykes, deer fences, and tile drains that ever

a man put money in. I never knew why it was they called it "Red

Ground," for it was mostly black peaty soil, but my grandfather would

be saying, "It will be growing corn. Give it wrack, and it will be

growing corn for evermore."

They tell me he was a great farmer for all he was laird, and never

happier than at his own plough tail, breaking a colt to work in chains;

and he it was who improved the stock in cattle and horse in our glens,

for he would be aye telling the young farmers, "Gie the quey calves

plenty o' milk, as much as they'll lash into themselves. Be good to

them when the baby flesh is on them, and they'll grow and thrive, and

your siller'll a' come back in the milking."

The countryside clavered and havered when he bought his pedigree bulls

and his pedigree mares. "It's money clean wasted," said the old

farmers, "for a calf's a calf no odds what begets it, and a horse that

can work in chains and take its turn on the road is horse enough for

any man, without sinking money in dumb beasts, and a' this sire-and-dam

pother." It would anger the old man that talk, ay, even when he was

the old frail frame of what once he was,--like a dead and withered

ash-tree, dourly awaiting the death gale to send it crashing down, to

lie where once its shade fell in the hot summer days of its youth,--and

the blood would rise up on his neck, where the flesh had shrunk like

old cracked parchment, and left cords and pipes of arteries and veins,

gnarled like old ivy round a tree.

Querulous he was and ill-tempered with the scoffers. "Man, if I had

twenty more years I would grow hoofs on your horse and udders on your

in-coming queys." Well, well, I'm fond of this farming, but I have set

out to tell a tale, which in my poor fancy should even be like a

rotation of crops, from the breaking in of the lea to the sowing out in

grass, with the sun and winds and sweet rains to ripen and swell the

grain--the crying of the harvesters and the laughing of lassies among

the stocks in the gloaming, the neighing of horse and the lowing of

kine in the evening.

On that morning so long ago Dan and I were ploughing stubble, and I

followed my horses in all joy, laughing to see them snap as I turned

them in at the head-rigs, and coaxing them as they threw their big

glossy shoulders into the collar on the brae face. So the morning wore

on as I ploughed, with maybe a word now and then to Dick, and a touch

of the rein to Darling, and the sea-gulls screaming after us as the

good land was turned over. The sun came glinting through the hill

mist, and the green buds were bursting in the hedgerows for very

gladness.

I was free from the college, free from the smoke-wrack and the grime of

the town, free to hear the birds awake and singing in the planting

behind the stackyard, and I breathed great gulps of air and felt clean

and purged of all the evil of the town; for if there is vice in the

country, it is to my mind evil without sordidness.

I remember my foolish thoughts were something like these, even though

my reading should have taught me better, for the Garden of Eden was a

fine place to sin in by all accounts, yet the environment did not

mitigate the punishment. In these young days, when my body glowed from

a swim and my eyes were clear, I thought the minister too hard on that

original iniquity.

It was coming on for dinner-time--lowsin' time, as we say in the

field--when Dan shouted--

"Hamish," says he, "who'll yon be that's travellin' so fast above the

Craig-an-dubh?"

"I will be telling you that, Dan, when she's half a mile nearer."

"Ye hinna the toon mirk rubbed out your een yet, Hamish, or ye would

ken the bonny spaewife. I've been watchin' her this last three 'bouts."

"Dan, Dan," said I, "do you think of nothing but women and horses?

Have ye never learned the lesson of Joseph?"

"Man, Hamish," says he, with a whimsical smile and a hand at his

moustache, "ye should put a' things in their proper order. Horses and

weemen noo. It's not a bad thing--a while wi' a lass after the horses

are bedded and foddered, but horses first; and as for Joseph"--his

smile broadened until I could see his teeth--"if it had been Dauvit the

leddy had met on the stair, the meenisters wid never hiv heard a cheep

about it. . . .

"It's a fine lesson yon, I aye think, for auld men to be preaching, but

deevil a word about their ain youthfu' rants. Ye're a lusty lad

yirsel', and there's many a cheery nicht among the lasses wi'

petticoats and short-goons, and I'll teach ye hoo tae whistle them oot

if ye would leave your books and come raking wi' Dan."

We had unyoked the horses and got astride, and when we came to the gate

there was the bonny spaewife carrying a bairn in a tartan shawl. Dan

drew up, and I also; so there we stood, the horses in an impatient

semi-circle on the road, Dan and I on horseback, and the woman looking

up at us.

She had the blackest eyes I ever saw, and hair black and curly as a

water-dog's clustered over her head, and the wee rain-drops clung about

the curls round her ears and brow. Her nose was delicate and

faultless, and her complexion was that born of sun and rain and wind.

There seemed a smile to play round her red lips, and a sombreness about

her eyes (so that she held mine fixed), until Dan spoke.

"I think, Belle," said he, "you're gettin' bonnier, and if it wasna for

the wean I would leave a kiss on your bonny red mouth."

Round the pupils of her black eyes a little ring began to glow, as

though a light came from a great distance through darkness, her white

teeth bit on her under lip, and she stepped closer to Dan's horse.

"Haud away, woman, haud away, for the love o' your Maker; the stallion

canna thole weemen about him."

I fear me the town had taken some of the game out of me, for when I saw

the big dark horse flatten his ears, the wicked eyes rolling, and the

great fore-hoofs drumming on the road, ready to leap and batter the

woman and her bairn to a bloody pulp fornent me, my stomach turned, as

we say, and I felt sick and giddy. Many a morning had I stood at the

loose-box door and watched the devil in the horse and the devil in the

man battle for mastery, and aye the horse was cowed. Even on the

mornings when I heard Dan's step, soft and wary on the cobbles, before

the sun was up, and knew by the look of him, and the gruffness in his

voice, that he had travelled many a weary mile from his light-o'-love,

and that sleep had not troubled him, I would hear the stable door

opening and Dan whistling like the cheery early bird as he opened the

corn-kist. After the morning feed the battle began, for Chieftain had

a devil, but I think Dan had seven of that ilk.

"It's him or me, Hamish," he would croon, "him or me, but I'm likin'

myself a' the time"; and he kept the lathering, plunging devil off

himself, whiles with his fists, and whiles with a short stick.

"I'll handle him were he twice as big and twice as bad. I'll hae nae

gentlemen among the horse when there's lea to plough!" and the fight

would go on. But Dan was the only man who could handle Chieftain, and

there seemed a kind of laughing comradeship between them.

I have digressed that you might see with my eyes the queer uncanny

thing that happened on the road there between the woman and the horse.

I have told you the spaewife--if spaewife you would call her, for I

think sorceress fitted her better--I have said she came close to

Chieftain's head, her black eyes fairly lowing; and as the brute, his

skin twitching, gathered himself to rear on her, she hit him full on

the mouth with her little brown hand, and hissed a word at him in her

own tongue. As the word struck my ears I felt myself tingle to my

finger-tips, and the world seemed to go quiet all round me. The

horse's ears went forward, and he stretched his great neck, and there

he was quiet as an old pony, nibbling with his lips at the woman's

shawl and hair.

And the woman looked at Dan.

A kind of half laugh, half sigh, left his lips.

"I wish," said he, "I had your gait o' handlin' horse. It's desperate

sudden, but it's sure, as our friend Hamish wid observe. Maybe, my

dear, you'll hiv a spell tae turn the horse tae himsel' again and

something extra, an' I'm no' sayin' but what I would be likin' him

better, for sittin' here on a quate beast that sould be like the

ravening devil o' holy writ is no' canny."

"Spell," said the girl, for indeed she was little more, and under her

brown skin I could see the darker red rising. "Spell, ye night-hawk!"

and her broad bosom heaved with the rage in her, and her body trembled

with living anger.

"I come o' folk, ye reiver, that lay down and rose up among their

horse, in the black tents, that loved and hated among their horse, that

lived and died among their horse, and ye would talk to me o' spells.

Did I but say the word to that black horse, not you nor any o' the folk

ye cam' crooked among would straddle him and live to boast o' it after."

Dan sat his horse like a statue. It makes my old eyes moist and my

throat choky to this day to think of it, for I loved him through

everything. Could he have had command of heavy horse, and won his rest

on some glorious field, brave, headstrong, devil-may-care Dan; but

there he sat and looked on the Cassandra, and his eyes were laughing

from his stern face as he took a turn on the rope reins.

"Back, my bonny horse," said he to Chieftain, and there was a kind of

joyous lilt in his voice. "Draw away your pair, Hamish, and this lan'

horse o' mine. We'll miss our dinner maybe, but I've an unco hankering

after this word."

Away down in my heart I knew what was coming, and I watched the woman

loosen her tartan shawl and lay her infant in a neuk among the hedge

roots.

"I'm waitin' now, my dear," said Dan, "and in case I dee I'll tell ye I

think I could break you in, for I like the devil temper bleezin' in

your bonny black een, and your lips would warm a deein' man. My dear,

I think I could be your man for a' ye say I cam' crooked; for spaewife

or no--God's life, ye're awfu' bonny, Belle."

The gipsy gave a little lilting laugh.

"You," says she--"you. I'm not saying but you're a pretty man, and

I've good looks enough for baith--if I loved ye; but, man, my love

would be a flame. Wid ye burn with me, lad; wid ye burn?"

"I think I would too," said he, "for your een have started the bleeze

a'ready, and I'm dootin' it'll finish in brimstane."

"Ay, ay, Dan; I'm spaein' true. I jibed at you, although you did not

say the word o' the glens o' the wee creatur' under the hedge there, as

ye might have. Ye've good blood in ye, lad, and I'm loving your

spirit, but I'm the Belle o' your death, Dan, the Death-Bell. Now!"

No words of mine can convey my impression of that scene. There were

the hills, silent and grandly contemptuous, there was a rabbit loping

across the road to the hedge foot, and there the road the woman had

come stretched upwards; but as she spoke some subtle essence seemed to

flood her veins, her sombre eyes flashed, her cheeks glowed darkly, and

she trembled so that I could see her clenched hands flutter like

segans.[1] It was not excitement, but to my mind as though some vital

powerful force had taken possession of her body and shook it, as an

aspen quivers in a gale.

The power seemed to grow stronger and stronger as she spoke, until with

her word it seemed to break free and envelop us.

Where I have written "Now" she leaned rigidly towards Chieftain and

almost hissed, so sharply came a word between her teeth. With some

such sound, I think, will the devil unshackle his hounds. Well for me

that my horses were rugging at the hedge, or I had never been troubled

more with headache.

For the stallion reared his huge bulk into the air with a scream of

brute rage. I have never heard such a sound since, and never wish to

again. He turned like an eel, his mouth agape, and the veins round his

nostrils like cord. His great gleaming teeth snapped like a trap at

his rider's legs, and snapped again after he had a blow on the head

that might have stunned him, and at the hollow sound of it I felt my

teeth take an edge to them. Twice he reared and fell backwards, and

twice Dan was astride as he rose. I could see the sweat running down

his face and the bulging of the muscles as his knees pressed and clung

to the heaving spume-spattered flanks. I think he knew he was fighting

for his life, but his smile seemed graven on his face, though it looked

like the smile of a man in sore distress. I knew every muscle felt

red-hot, and time would give the victory to the stronger brute. And

then I saw the change like a lightning-flash. Dan's shoulders haunched

themselves, his head was low and stretched forward, and a look of the

most devilish ferocity came over his face, his lips were pulled down,

and his eyes almost hidden under the bunched and corrugated brows.

There was a knotted rope rein in his hand, and his arm, brown and bare

to the elbow, and hard as an oak branch, rose, and I saw his teeth

clench till the muscles on his jaws stood out like crab-apples.

"Ye wid fecht wi' me," he crooned--"me, damn ye, me." At every

reiterated word the rein fell, and the weals rose on the stallion's

neck and flank, and he snorted and screamed with rage.

"Woman," said I, having led the other horses away and returned--"woman

or devil, whatever you are, ye have made a horse mad this day, and now

the man's mad. Will ye put an end to this business before worse

happens, for the horse is worth siller if the man's regardless, and

there's many a lass will greet herself to sleep till the fires of her

youth are burnt out if harm comes to Dan McBride. Have ye no pity for

your ain sex?"

"Peety," she cries--"peety for a wheen licht-heided hussies that lo'e

the man best that tells the bonniest lees, or speaks them fairest. Na,

na, ma lad, nae peety. I'm watchin' a man that has tied their strings

and kissed their bonny ankles, when he should have let them dry his

sweat wi' their hair an' his feet wi' their braws.[2] Oh, why, why,"

she kind of wailed--"why will the King aye gang the cadger's road, and

ken himsel' a king, and the cadger a cadger." The horse, panting and

grunting at every breath, had breenged to the knowe on the roadside,

and still the knotted rein fell; and then with a mighty plunge he

reared up, balanced an instant on hind-legs, and then crashed backwards

and lay, and I felt my heart give a mighty beat as Dan sprang on the

brute's head and lay there, horse and man done.

"Come, you," snarled the man, as though he spoke to a dog; and the girl

went to him.

"Quate the brute," said he, "for he's trimmlin' sair, and I like his

temper a' the better for no' bein' broken."

"Ay, I'll quate the brute, easy as I wid yoursel'."

You may think you know a man till something happens, and you find him a

stranger, and so I found, for at her words the man sprang to his feet

as she soothed the horse.

"Say ye so," said he, and took her by the shoulder--"say ye so. I've

broken many a horse afore this ane, and, Belle, I'll break you," and I

watched the swarthy flush rise on the girl's face, and looked at the

man's eyes and saw the reason of it.

"Wheest, lad, wheest," she cried; "let me go to the wean."

"Wean--ye never had a wean. . . ."

And then she did a queer thing. She bent her dark head till I could

not see her eyes, but only the smooth eyelids and dark lashes, and she

put her little brown hand over the man's eyes and stood a picture of

humility, with a sad little smile on her face.

"Don't break me . . . yet," she murmured, and I saw Dan kiss her hand

as she slid it down over his lips, and her face brightened like a

flower in sunlight.

And there were the horses, rugging at the hedge where I had tethered

them; and Chieftain on his feet, shaky and foam-flecked, and trembling

at his knees; and the gipsy lass's wean greetin' at the hedge foot,

with one wee bare arm clear of the shawl, seeming to beckon all the

world to its aid.

And Belle the gipsy lass lifted the child and wrapped her in the shawl,

and took the road in front of us. I had mind of Belle when she was the

bonniest lass among a wheen of black-avised Eastern folk, that camped

for many's the year on the ground of Scaurdale, where my uncle's

friend, John o' Scaurdale, farmed land; but I was not prepared for her

strange powers on horse, or for the beauty of her, and I think Dan was

of my way of thinking also, for at the stable door says he: "I think,

Hamish, a fee from John o' Scaurdale would not be such a bad thing with

a lass like Belle to be seeing in the gloaming."

[1] Ires--"flags."

[2] Costly apparel.

CHAPTER II.

MAKES SOME MENTION OF ONE JOCK McGILP, AND TELLS HOW BELLE BROUGHT

THE WEAN IN THE TARTAN SHAWL INTO THE HOUSE OF NOURN.

Nourn was home to me in my holidays and vacations from the college, and

here I was back again for good, having become Magister Artium and well

acquainted with the plane-stanes and glaber of the town of

Glasgow--back again to the green countryside on my uncle's land of

Nourn, concerned more about horses and cattle beasts than with the

Arts, and with enough siller left me by my parents to be able to follow

my inclinations.

My uncle--the Laird of Nourn, as he was called--had married kind of

late, a common habit where the years bring strength and not eld; and

Dan, his brother Ewan the soldier's son, had been at Nourn since he

could creep, being early left an orphan.

On the Sunday after the coming of Belle the gipsy I lay long abed. In

those days my cousin Dan and I made a practice of sleeping above the

horses, "to be near them," as Dan said; but for myself I aye thought it

would be that he might the easier slip out at night, and in again in

the morning, and nobody the wiser.

In the years I would be at the college Dan had become airt and pairt of

every wildness in the countryside, and in these times every man with

red blood in him was concerned with the smuggling or the distilling of

whisky,--and that is the reason that mothers were wishful that their

sons should be able to "take a horse by the head and a boat by the

helm," for these would be very needful attributes in a handy lad.

And lying there in bed I minded how I once fell in with Jock McGilp,

the captain of the smuggler _Seagull_, a man that sailed the _Gull_

like a witch, and cracked his fingers at the Revenue cutters, and this

was the way of it.

When I was a lonely boy, dreaming dreams of ages past and long ago, I

had a favourite haunt. I made my way to the graveyard and lay among

the long lush grass, for the grass grew nowhere so long or so full of

sap as in the graveyard, and I thought of all the great warriors of our

glens whose bones had been laid in this place, and shivered to think of

the hot red blood stilled in death, and the grass roots creeping

downwards like tentacles into the chinks of the wood, and sending up

great fat greasy blades that sweated in the sun. I hated the grass

roots, and dreamed horribly of them piercing into my heart, and drawing

the life-blood to feed the bloated sweaty leaves, but the graveyard had

an awful fascination for me. Sometimes old men would wander inside the

dyke and move slowly to a rude stone and sit there, and I would hear

great sighs bursting into the quiet afternoon, when the sun always beat

down. But I liked the old men for being there when the ivy rustled on

the ruined old chapel wall when the wind was lost, and the starlings

flew affrighted from their nests over the mural tablet that told all

men to--

FIR GOD

16--

And I feared God very much, and spoke to Him often in my lonely

wanderings, when I saw wee men in green coats among the heather, but

oftener on the soft green turfy bits on the hill. And one awful time

when the hill road was all silent and the grasshoppers hidden and

quiet, an eerie humming came into my ears like a language I could not

understand, and I felt myself waiting for something. Round the turn of

the hill before you come to the old quarry it came, and I stopped

stricken as a rabbit when a snake sways before it, for there came

towards me a thing like a dog--but such a dog--its shaggy coat was

white and its ears only were black, and as it passed its tongue lolled

out, and it looked at me through blue eyes with black rims, and I think

I feared that thing more than God. But always before I left the

graveyard for my hill road home I crept up to a window, and looked into

a part of the chapel that was walled off and dark. Great brambles grew

in this space and nettles of phenomenal size, with ugly fleshy-looking

clots of seeds on them. A gnarled ash-tree had grown and broken the

wall, but over against the broken wall were great stones, and one of

these I liked best of all, for it made the blood tingle down my back

and my eyes see visions. On a warm Sunday I lay half in the window

resting on the sill, for the walls were very thick, and I gazed at the

foot of the great stone where a plumed helmet was carved, and a sword

in its sheath; and round the helmet and sword battle-gear lay as though

the warrior had flung down his harness as he rested. In imagination I

had girt me with the sword, the plumed helmet was on my head, when my

feet were seized and a rumbling voice cried--

"Can ye read?"

"Ay."

"Read that stane. I'm no' a bawkin."

"BLENHEIM.

BAMILLIES.

OUDENARDE.

MALPLAQUET."

"Thayse the battles; read the man's name.

"MAJOR EWAN McBRIDE."

"Ay, ay; come oot," and I was pulled out of the window, and an enormous

man stood before me, looking at me with a queer smile, and scratching

his neck till I could hear the hairs of his whiskers crickle and snap

like breaking twigs.

"D'ye ken who Major Ewan McBride was?"

"No."

"Well--Dan's faither; he was kilt; he's no in there at a'--it's a

peety, for things wid hiv been different.

"Eat ye your pease-brose and keep clear o' the weemen, and ye'll be as

great a man as him, but never say a word tae Dan. Says you, when ye go

home and see him wi' nobody aboot, says you: 'Jock McGilp was saying

the turf's in and the gull's a bonny bird.' Mind it noo; '_The turfs

in_' and '_the gull's a bonny bird_.'"

And that night so long ago, when Dan and I kneeled on the stone-flagged

floor beside one another and listened to my uncle pray and pray and

pray in Gaelic, I whispered--

"Dan."

"What?"

"Jock McGilp was saying . . ."

Uncle gave a great pause after asking "a clean heart," and Dan

whispered--

"Come nearer, ye devil, and don't speak so loud, or a' the servants 'll

be damned and sent to hell for lack o' attention."

"Jock McGilp was saying the turf was in and the seagull's a bonny bird."

"Wheest noo and listen, ye graceless deevil. . . ."

For a week after that I never saw Dan, but my uncle got sterner and

sterner, and when Dan returned, loud voices I heard in the night and

slamming doors, but Dan was whistling among his horses at cock-crow,

and told me I took after my mother's folk and would be a man yet. . . .

But on this April Sunday, after the week of ploughing stubble, we lay

long and listened to the pleasant rattling of horse chains, and

rustling of bedding, when the horses pawed for their morning meal.

There was the sun, well up on his day's journey, and a whole day to be

and enjoy him in. And we rose and took our breakfast, and daunered to

the far fields, and inspected the young beasts, picking out the good

ones with many a knowing observation on heads and pasterns and hocks,

and then round the wrought land, and over the fields where a drain had

choked, and the rushes marked its course. We mapped out how this

should be mended and strolled back to the stable, and lay in an empty

stall where some hay had been left, and waited until dinner, with the

shepherd's dogs lying watching their masters, and the herds and

ploughmen telling terrible stories of one Mal-mo-Hollovan. Into this

peaceful scene came rushing a lass with the word that the Laird was at

church, as he should be, and Belle the gipsy wanted speech wi' the

mistress.

"An' why no', my lass?" said Dan; "she'll no' bite the mistress."

"The black eyes o' her, and the air o' her,--speech wi' the mistress,

indeed--the tinker!"

"Jean," said Dan, "be canny wi' Belle, or she'll put such a spell on ye

that ye'll no' hear your lad whistling ootside your window, and the

first thing ye'll ken he'll be inside, and you maybe in your sark."

"Ye ken too much aboot sich truck and trollop and the wey in by

windows," cried Jean, her face like the heart o' the fire; for her lad

was looking sheepishly at her from the corn-kist.

"Well, well, let Belle alane, or I'll be puttin' mysel' in Tam's

place," and poor Tam could only grin with a very red face.

And so it came that Belle made her way to the old room where the

mistress, my uncle's wife, was abed, after the birth of her son, about

whom the women-folk talked and laughed in corners, and looked so

disdainful at poor men-folk, that Dan said--

"It's a peety for the wean, wi' a' these weemen waitin' till he grows

up. I'm dootin' he'll be swept oot o' his ain hoose wi' petticoats,

and take up wi' the dark-skinned beauties in the far glens, like Esau."

And sorely put out were the women when Dan, referring to the heir, said

he'd come in time for the best o' the grass.

"If the colt has got plenty o' daylight below him, and middlin' clean

o' the bane, he'll thrive right enough!" The heir of all Nourn a leggy

colt! There was nothing but black looks and pursed-up lips till even

the easy-going cause o' the change said drily enough: "They're damned

ill tae leeve wi' whiles, a man's ain weemen-folk, Hamish, an' I meant

the bairn nae ill either."

Well, Belle was ta'en to the old room where the mistress, my uncle's

wife, lay abed--her they ca'ed the Leddy, a fine strapping woman, with

kindly hands to man and beast and a wheedling, coaxing way with her,

though she could be cold and haughty at times, for she came of fighting

stock, and could not thole clavering and fussing, and I think she would

not hasten her stately step to be in time for the Last Judgment, for

the pride of her.

The room was fine and cool, with a wood fire spluttering in the great

stone fireplace, and the light playing on the carved pillars of the

canopied bed, and blinking on the oak panels; but it was a fine room,

with deerskin rugs here and there on the floor, and space to move about

without smashing trumpery that women collect round them, God knows why,

except to hide the lines of the building.

My aunt lay there on the great bed, her dark hair damp and clinging to

the white brow, and one arm crooked round her child, and she was gazing

at his head where the hair was already thickening, when Belle came to

the bedside.

"It's not red," said my aunt. "I feared it would be red, for there are

red ones here and there in his house . . . look, woman, it's not red;

it will not be red."

"Na, na, it's fair, Leddy--fair and fause; but it'll darken wi' the

years, never fear. What ails ye at rid, Leddy--the prettiest man in

these parts is rid enough?"

"Poor Dan," cried my aunt, with a bright smile and no hesitation. "The

Laird tells me he's wasted enough keep for many bullocks laying the

yard with straw lest his horses should wake me in the mornings, but

I've missed his songs lying here. They were merry enough too in the

fine spring mornings if the words were . . ." And a delicate flush

crept over her neck and face, and she smiled a little as at the fault

of some wayward boy.

The door was opened softly, and a tall woman entered--a tall woman with

a world of sorrow in her wise old eyes, and years of patience in the

clasp of her hands.

"Betty," cried the patient--"Betty, is everything done well, now I'm

tied to my son," and she put her cheek to the downy head.

"The weemen are flighty and the lads are quate, and the hoose will no'

be itsel' till ye will be moving about again, an' Miss Janet's lad

will . . ."

"I will not have Dan called that, Betty," says my aunt. "Ewan

McBride's lad he is, if ye must deave me with his forebears . . ."

"My dearie, my ain dearie, did I not nurse his mother when she grat

ower his wee body and a' the warl' was turned on her, and her man at

the great wars. Ech, ech, a weary time, and her crying to him in the

nicht, and throwin' oot her white arms in the stillness and crying: 'My

brave fierce lad, my brave wild lover, come back and let me dee wi'

your arms aboot me.' Ay, and her wild lad, her kindly lad, lying stark

on yon bluidy field and the corbies maybe at his bonny blue een. I

love Dan, for I took him frae his mither's caul' breast; but ech, why

will he be shaming his name, and shaming his ain sel'--but I shouldna

be haverin', my dearie . . . and here's your soup now."

Jean--she of the stable raid--with a haughty look at the gipsy, who had

stood in a corner by the fire all this time, came with the bowl of

soup, but Belle slid forward noiselessly.

"Is it soup, Jean?" says she, and the wench stopped. "Skim the fat off

it, then, for I saw a hussy like you gi'e her mistress soup like

that--and she died." My aunt sat up in her bed, her face very stern

when Betty talked of Dan shaming himself and his name.

"I will know this," she cried. "I am not ill any more--who is the

woman?"

Jean would have spoken at this, but the gipsy whispered: "Begone, or

I'll turn your hair white as the driven snaw," and the wench fled with

her soup, and spilled most of it in the stone-flagged corridor leading

to the kitchen, where she sat and trembled and grat her fill, every now

and again catching her yellow locks to make sure no change had started

yet.

So here we have Betty whispering--

"Don't vex yoursel', my Leddy; it's juist the lassie's clavers, for

Jean cam' in frae the stable, where she had nae right to be, except to

be seein' her lad--they ha'e lads on the brain the lassies noo--and

greetin' that young Dan had shamed her before the men, and a' because

o' a tinker body like Belle here, although the great folk will treat

her so kindly; no' that I mean her any harm," she added (erring on the

safe side, for Belle's eyes had begun to glow finely); "and then in

came Kate and Leezie wi' a tale o' a wean, tied in a tartan shawl,

lying in a biss in the wee byre. Then and there they faithered and

mithered the bairn, the useless hussies. . . ." The mother's haughty

eyes turned to the gipsy.

"I never found you lying, Belle. Is this story true?--a bonny family

is this to be among," she cried, her hand pressing the child closer,

and maybe she pressed him too tightly, for the boy doubled his baby

fist, his wee voice whimpered, and his outflung arm struck his mother

in the face.

"Oh, oh," she cried; "will you turn on me too, and leave me for

farmer's wenches and tinker women like the lave of your folk?"

The gipsy lass was on her knees at the bedside.

"Lady," she cries, and her face was finely aglow, "nae wonder ye

grieved aboot the colour o' the bairn's hair. Are ye a' Dan mad?"

Then when she saw the anger in the mother's eyes she cries--

"Ye'll maybe be in a mood to listen to the truth now."

"I'm in a fine mood to have ye whipped from my doors, ye

shameless . . ."

"Ay, shameless, madam, if I love I'll be that, but if I have a man I'll

share him wi' nane, and you'll not be yourself to be believing these

false tales; and you, Betty, I had thought ye had seen sorrow enough

without brimming your cup over. It's true I left a wean sleeping in

the sweet hay; was there harm in that? She's lain wi' me in the stable

lofts and outlying barns these many nights, but the wean is nane o'

mine. It's an ill bird that fouls its ain nest, Betty, and when a' the

auld wives are shakin' their mutches at the end o' peat stacks and

sayin', 'This'll be another o' _his_; ye might have asked yourself

_how_? The poor wee mitherless mite; her feet will be on the neck o'

her enemies, and, mistress, maybe I can tell ye why. I hinna leed tae

ye yet, and ye can whip me from your doors if ye will, but hard, hard

will it fa' on them that raise the scourge."

Such a look passed between these two, so full of meaning, that my aunt

told Betty to leave her.

"And keep better manners among your wenches," said she, "for I will not

have Dan tormented with the baggage; and tell him I hope my son will

grow tall and strong like him, for I will be mindful of his kindness."

"Indeed, indeed, he would be very good, my dearie," cried Betty,

anxious to make amends. "When ye were taken ill he lay in the kitchen

the lang night through, and his horse saddled and bridled ready in his

stall; ay, and he would not go to bed for the Laird himsel'. Indeed,

many a wild night he galloped through, and him oot in the morning when

the doctor had left."

Belle had slipped out as the old woman was speaking, and now came back

with her tartan bundle; and when Betty had left the room the gipsy took

from the shawl a wean that cried so lustily that it wakened the heir to

all Nourn.

As the women whispered and crooned over the bairns, their cries

resounded through the house, and made it no place for men-folk.

But crossing the yard, Betty beckoned me with a crooked forefinger.

"Who's wean is that, think ye, Hamish, that Belle brought here?"

"I think you should be asking Belle," said I.

"Ask here or ask there," says Betty, "the wean has a look o'--dinna be

feart, my lad--the wean has the look o' John o' Scaurdale. And that,"

says she, "would be fair scandalous."

But after Betty's jalousing I had a word or two with Dan McBride, my

cousin.

"Wean," says he, "and Betty thinks the bairn has a look o' John o'

Scaurdale. It beats me, the cleverness of that woman. This is the

story I got from Belle, Hamish. It's a little dreich, but it will be

as well that ye should ken."

"Well," says Dan, "when ye were at the College in the toon and learning

yer tasks, there was a lass came to stop at Scaurdale, a niece she was

to the Laird there (a sister's wean, I am thinking), very prim and

bonny she was, and fu' o' nonsensical book-lore. She took a liking to

the place, and there are some that pretend to ken, that say she took

mair than a liking to the Laird's son. I would not say for that; he

was a brisk lad for so douce a lady. Well, well, Hamish, they cast

out, and away goes the lass in a huff to her ain folk, and then back

comes the word o' her wedding (some South-country birkie her man was,

o' the name o' Stockdale, if I mind it right), and when that word came,

John o' Scaurdale's son was like to go out at the rigging. We'll say

naething about that, Hamish; ye ken what came on him: his horse threw

him at the Laird's Turn yonder, and he never steered--he was by wi' it."

"What has this to do with Belle's wean?" said I.

"Belle's wean! Man, Belle never had a wean. That bairn is

Stockdale's; and I'm hearing," said he, "that Scaurdale's niece, the

mother of it, sent word to her uncle to take away the bairn, for her

man turned out an ill-doer, and it's like she would be feart. But I

ken this much, Hamish, Belle is waiting word from Scaurdale, and," says

he, "they ken all the outs and ins of it, our friends here, and

whenever it will be safe the wean will go to John o' Scaurdale."

"Scaurdale is not so far from here," said I. "Could Belle not have

taken the bairn there at the first go off?"

"I thought ye had mair heid, Hamish. There's aye plenty o' gossips in

the world, and Scaurdale will want this business kept quiet."

"In plain words," said I, "the wean has been stolen away from her

father with the mother's help."

"That's just it precisely, Hamish; and what better place could she be

hidden than here, with Scaurdale and your uncle so very friendly, and

this so quiet a place?"

CHAPTER III.

IN WHICH I CHASE DEER AND SEE STRANGE HORSEMEN ON THE HILL,

AND A LIGHT FLASHING ON THE SEA.

The corn was in the stackyard and the stacks thatched, and all that

summer Belle and her wean stayed with us, the lass working at the

weeding and the harvesting, and the wean well cared for, for the

mistress remained not long abed after the spaewife's coming. Belle's

wean might be "a tinker's brat" in whispered corners in byres and

hay-sheds, where the wenches could claver out of hearing, but the

Laird's son got no better attention than the tinker's brat when the

mistress was near.

And now that the corn was secure and the stackyard full, the deer came

down from the hills and lay close to till nightfall, and then wrought

havoc in the turnip-drills, and I noticed that, like cows in a field of

grain, they spoiled more crop than they ate, both of potatoes and

turnips; and, indeed, it angered a man to see his good root-crops

haggled and thrawn with the thin-flanked beasts, like the lean cattle,

and I thought to go round the hill dyke with the dogs on an October

evening, and harry them back to their heather and bracken again.

It was early in the evening, so I took my stick and daunered to the

hay-shed (which was next to the planting) behind the stackyard, for I

liked the noise of the wood, and would lie on the hay and listen to the

scurry of the rabbits, the rippling note of the cushats in the

tree-tops, and watch for the coming of the white owls that flitted

among the trees. And as I lay on the sweet-smelling clovery hay there

came over me a drowsiness, for I had been early abroad, and I dovered

and dovered till sleep and waking were mingled, and strange voices came

into my ears; and then I knew the voices, and felt myself go hot all

over, for I could not move or I would be discovered with the rustling

of the hay.

"I have waited long for ye, my bonny dark lass, waited when I was

shivering to take ye in my arms," and I could see Dan lean forward and

look into Belle's black eyes, one great arm round her shoulders and his

hand below her chin, and she was bonny, bonny in the blink o' the moon.

"Ye were a good lad," says she, smiling up at him; "it whiles made me

angry ye would be so good, and I would be lying at night thinking ye

had forgotten the gipsy lass, and would be assourying[1] wi'

red-cheeked, long-legged farmer lassies; and then ye would be coming to

my window and knocking, and I was glad, and listened and listened for

ye to be coming, although ye would not be knowing from me at all, and I

would be cold, cold to ye. . . ."

"My dear, it's news to me," cried he, in great wonder, "for never a

knock did I knock," and his eyes were laughing down at her.

"What!" she cries; "what! And who would be daring?"

"That's just what I cannot say, for the lads think ye're no' canny some

way, but maistly because the weemen hiv them under their thumbs, so I'm

thinkin' it must just have been Hamish."

It was on the tip of my tongue to cry out at that, but I saw by his

face that he could not help hurting gently whatever he liked, and he

had no thought for me at all, but waited for the girl to speak. The

great sombre eyes were looking up at him, and the moon glintin' on her

teeth as, her red lips parted, a brown hand fluttered about the man's

breast.

"You would be knocking. I am wantin' you to be knocking," she cried,

"for I am only a wicked gipsy lass. . . ."

I saw the man stretch her back with a straightening of his arm; I saw

the limber length of him, the lean flank and the curve of his chest, as

he half lay on the hay.

"I am wishing ye to be knocking," he mimicked in a half-fierce,

half-laughing voice, "for I am only a wicked gipsy lass"; and again,

"My dear, my dear, I'm not seeing much wickedness in a' this, and so I

must be creeping out and knockin' on a lass that will not be saying a

civil word to me, let alone a kiss in the gloamin'."

"Oh," she lilted, "oh, so you would be knocking to that unkind lass;"

and then in a far-away voice, "Will you be remembering that place where

I found you, when I would be running a wild thing like a young

foal? . . ."

"Bonnily, Belle, bonnily I mind ye--a long-legged, black-maned filly ye

were, and the big eyes o' ye, I began to love ye then. . . ."

"It would be terrible and you lying in the stall beside your horse at

that place, and them not going near you, and you only a boy. I will be

dreaming of the horse tramping your face yet."

"I'll teach ye something better to be dreaming than that, dear lass,

for I was only a boy then, and I was carrying a man's share o' French

brandy, more shame to me. I had nae sense at all, to be lying beside

the horse, and him a kittle brute too; but I'll aye be mindin' ye

coorieing ower me, and greetin' for a' that, when the men o' the

_Seagull_ were feart tae venture into the stall, being sailors and

strange wi' horse."

Among the hay there I remembered the loud voices and the slamming of

doors in the night, and Jock McGilp and his message about the "turf

being in"; and here it was coming round that these two had met then,

and I somehow had helped to bring them together.

"I will be asking you to do me a service the night," I heard the girl

say.

"I'm thinkin' that, my dear, will it be ridin' for the priest, for

indeed you're such a _wicked_ lass I see nae ither way for it. I canna

aye be knockin' when your wickedness keeps me in the caul' . . . ."

"Come," she cried, rising, "come, for we will have been dallying too

long, and I did give my word to Scaurdale. I will not be listening any

more to your talk."

"Where fell ye across that grizzly dog, John, Laird o' Scaurdale?" said

Dan as they rose.

* * * * * *

So I waited until the hay was all quiet and the lovers gone, and I got

the dogs and went after the deer.

Outside the dyke I found them herded, their sentinels posted like an

army resting, and away they headed, the collies at their heels, and me

racing through bracken and heather and burn, after seeing them clearing

a rise and disappearing, the big antlers like branching trees. Away

and away I followed, till the dogs' barking was faint in the night and

the three lonely hills were looming before me, and I saw the wild-fire

glimmer on the peat-bogs and the moon going down as I whistled and

whistled for the dogs.

And as I waited I heard the thud, thud, thud of horses galloping, and

then the jangle of bridle-chains, and I lay down in the heather. Two

horsemen passed me, wrapped in their riding-cloaks, and after a while a

light jumped out on the hillside, and I knew the horsemen had stopped

at the old empty shepherd's house, and I made my way there, for since

old McCurdy died the house had been empty. I could hear the dogs

barking away among the hills, and the rustle of the night-folks among

the dry heather as I cautiously rounded the "but and ben," and there at

the door were the two horses that had passed me. Quietly I crawled

into a clump of heather and lay a-watching, and turned in my mind

everything I might be a witness to, and found no answer. Then, away

behind me, I heard a horse neigh, and the tethered horses answered, and

a gaunt figure, white-haired and martial, stalked through the door, and

I knew John, Laird of Scaurdale, waited, he and his man.

I heard a laughing voice on the night wind.

"It's a great thing to have a lass on the saddle wi' ye, Belle, ye can

kiss her at every stride," and Belle's answer must have been kissed

into silence, for I never heard it.

There came Dan on our best horse, an upstanding raking bay, and in

front of him was Belle with the wean in the tartan shawl. The servant

lifted Belle from the saddle, and Dan, looking awkward in the glow from

the window, held the tartan bundle, then handed it to the gipsy, and

all of them went in, and I was left alone on my heather tussock. Maybe

ten minutes passed, and the servant came out and led the horses to the

back, where there was a sheepfold and a well, and I heard him drawing

water, and in a little time he entered the house, an empty sack in his

hand, and I knew the horses were at their feed, and crawled up to the

lighted window and peered in. The Laird was striding up and down the

narrow room, his fierce old face twitching, the body-servant stood by

the door like a wooden man, and Dan, as though the ploy pleased him,

smiled at the gipsy, who held the wean.

The Laird's words came clearly--

"She would have the false knave, she was afraid o' my stern lad and

would have the carpet-knight--the poor wee lass; but she minded her

cousin--she minded my boy at the end o' a' when she hated the

Englishman. I ken fine how her pride suffered before she sent me word,

but the word cam' at the hinder end. Belle," said he, stopping his

march, "ye have done finely wi' your lad an' a'."

"It's not me he'll be lookin' at, sir," wi' a toss of her head.

"The bigger fool him; it was a' grist that cam' to my mill when I was

mowing down the twenties."

"Ay, Laird," says Dan wi' a bold look, "I've heard it said ye kept the

ministers in texts for many a day, and the sins o' the great made the

poor folks' teeth water from wan Sunday till the next."

"I had thought them more concerned wi' brewing their whisky and

poaching than in the inside o' a kirk," growled the Laird, for he was

choleric when reminded of his past by any but his own conscience, which

had turned in on itself, and grown morbid as a result.

"It's a grand place the kirk, sir; I've seen and heard enough there to

keep me cheery a' week. There was the time when we walked there in

droves, and would be takin' a look at the beasts in the parks as we

went, and often the beasts would be turned on the roadside, for a man

might buy on Monday what he only saw on Sunday. Once, going by

Hector's, the lassies wi' their shoon in their hands, were walkin'

easier barefit and savin' shoe leather, and a young Embro' leddy, wi' a

hooped skirt wi' the braidin' like theek rope on a stack, and

high-heeled shoon, looked disdainfu' at them. Well, well, the pigs

were on the roadside at Hector's, and they kent the barefit lassies;

but the grand lady they didna ken at all, and one caught her gown by

the braidin' and scattered away reivin' and tearin', and set the lady

spinning like a peerie, and the lassies laughed and cried 'suckie,

suckie,' and put on their boots to go into the kirk, well put on, and

in a rale godly frame o' mind."

Belle had the wean wrapped in the cloak the servant had provided and

was croonin' ower it, and the body-servant was waitin' for orders, and

there stood Dan and the Laird as though loath to part, and them on

business that might mean worse than burnin' stackyards. And it came to

me that Scaurdale was not the man to be cherishing any tinker's whelp,

not even if he had fair claim to.

"And what lesson did ye get that day, Sir Churchman?"

"Pride goeth before a fall," says Dan, "but that was a bad day for me."

"And how?" cried Scaurdale, and I could see he was wasting time on

purpose.

"Indeed it was no fault o' mine, for between the shepherds' dogs

huntin' aboot till the church scaled, and the pigs lookin' for

diversion, a kind o' hunt got up, and a pig came into the church wi' a'

the collies in full cry and made a bonny to-do among the Elect. The

poor beast made a breenge and got a hat on its snout, and then a fling

o' its heid ended matters, and there was the pig in the deacon's hat,

and sair pit aboot was the pig, and sairer the deacon.

"Aweel, I was reproved and reminded o' the time when I had had a sermon

a' tae masel'; but the end crowned a', for I had killed an adder that

morning on the road, and put the beast in my pouch for Hamish. In the

middle o' the sermon, after the Gadarene swine and the dogs were

outside, the adder somewie cam' alive and crawled on to the aisle, and

the minister eyed it, and then me, and I felt hot and caul', for I

didna ken o' any new evil that might hiv reached him, and I didna see

the beast till the preacher stopped and pointed.

"'Man o' evil,' he cried, 'take the image o' your father and go hence,'

and so I'm clean lost," said Dan, wi' a comical sigh.

I had just time to lay myself flat in the heather before the servant

came out and walked to the top o' the rise. I could see the loom o'

him against the skyline, for the moon was now very low, and then he

whistled, and Dan came leading the horses, and the gipsy carrying the

wean. I crawled to the rise but farther away, and prayed that the dogs

had gone home and would not get wind o' me. For a while they stood,

Dan and the body-servant at the horses' heads, and the Laird a little

apart, and then I heard Dan--

"Yon's him at last," says he, and I saw a light glimmer for a little

away out at sea, and the servant ran back to the hut and brought the

lighted lantern, and three times he covered it with his cloak, and

three times he swung it bare, and I saw the long black shadow of the

horses' legs start away into the darkness, and then away out to sea a

flare glimmered three times and all was dark.

"Easy going," says Dan; "McGilp has nae wind to come close in, and it's

a long pull to the cove."

The Laird swung himself to the saddle, and as the servant mounted,

Belle made to give him the tartan bundle, but John, Laird o' Scaurdale,

trusted none but himself on a night ride over the road to Scaurdale.

"Give me the wean," says he, and loosened his cloak. Belle held the

wee bundle to him, and he put it in the crook of his arm.

"Ye will be a great one and whip the tinkers from your door, my dear,"

whispered Belle to the sleeping infant, "but ye've lain in the heather,

and listened tae the noises o' the hill nights, and the burns, and the

clean growing things, and maybe ye'll mind them dimly in your heart and

be kind when ye come to your kingdom."

At that Scaurdale leant over his saddle.

"Ye'll never be in want if ye knock at my door, so long as the mortar

holds the stanes thegither."

"Good night to you, Sir Churchman; I'm in nae swither whether I would

change places wi' ye the night, but weemen are daft craturs, poor

things, and I've had my day."

Then there came the swish, swish o' galloping hoofs in dry bracken, for

Scaurdale was a bog-trooper and born wi' spurs on, and I heard the

whimper o' the wean, and a gruff voice petting. Belle was greetin'

softly, and as Dan made to lift her in the saddle--

"I will not be sitting that way again," she cried; and I know, because

her heart was sore, she must be sharp with a man that had done nothing

to anger her that I could see.

"Aweel, I was aye a bonny rinner," says Dan. "When I was herdin' and

the beasts lay down behind the black hill in the forenoon, I could rin

tae the Wineport and back before they were rising." I laughed to think

how we estimate time in the college by the rules of Physics, and how

the herd on the moorside did, and wondered who but he could say how

long a cow beast would lie and chew her cud, and how many miles a man

could run in the time she took to chew it.

"I will not be having you running at all, and, indeed, you have been

kind and good to me. But why should I be going back to that place when

the thing is done I came to be doing? I will go away to my own folk,

and you will be forgetting me."

"I'll never be forgettin' you," says he, calling her pet words that

made me wish myself far enough away, for I was shy of lovers' talk, and

he held her to his breast and spoke quickly, and turned and caught the

bridle of his horse.

"No," cried the lass--"no, I will not be staying here," and I was glad

the moon was clouded at her words, "and you will not be seeing me till

I am grown old and wrinkled like a granny."

At that he gathered her in his arms, and for a while I saw only his

head and not her face at all, except just a blur that looked pale, and

then I heard her say--

"You will be saying that to all these other women, for you will be

wicked."

"Not wicked any more, lass. I'll just be loving you, and why are ye

turned soft; where is the lass that asked me would I burn?"

"Indeed, it is just with you I will be too gentle, I think, all my

days, for ye will be a brute and a baby, all in one, and yet you would

be aye kind to me. I could not be tholing another man after ye."

"I think I would not be tholing that either, my dear," cried he in a

fierce voice, "but the lantern has to be lighted and the fire. Maybe

ye'll let me do that much for you," and this time I saw her smiling,

and clinging to him with both her hands.

At the door she waited till he had made the horse comfortable in the

stone fanks,[2] and when he joined her she stretched her arms up and

pulled his head down.

"I am wishing to do this," she said, and kissed him on the mouth. "You

will not be loving any more but me," and she struck him lightly but

with fierce abandon on the cheek, and I heard him laughing, and then

the door opened and closed, and I had all the hills to myself. A great

loneliness came over me, and I wished the dogs had waited.

And as I made my way home, I thought of that little whimpering wean in

the crook of Scaurdale's arm, and wondered how she would fare on board

the _Gull_, for by Dan's word I kent McGilp had shone the flare away

seaward. Scaurdale, it seemed, would be hiding the wean in fair

earnest now, and McGilp I kent would whiles be on the French coast.

But never a word did I get from Dan for many's the day about Belle, or

McGilp, or Scaurdale--we talked of horses and sheep, until the coming

of Neil Beg.

[1] Courting, clandestine courtship.

[2] Sheepfold.

CHAPTER IV.

I MEET JOCK McGILP AND HIS MATE McNEILAGE AT THE TURF INN, AND

LEARN WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE WEAN IN THE TARTAN SHAWL.

We were at common work enough, Dan and me, in the Blair Mhor when the

night clouds were banking behind the Blackhill to swoop down on the

fast flying winter afternoon. Indeed, it was a matter of a braxy ewe,

and the poor beast lay at the hedge-side and the blood clotting at her

throat, for Dan had bled her, and the briars o' many a brake trailed

behind her.

"Braxy and oatmeal, Hamish," says he, "there's many a lusty lad reared

on worse; but we'll be hivin' tatties and herrin' for a change, and

plenty o' sour milk tae slocken the drouth o' it."

And as he stooped to tie the ewe's clits together to make her a handier

load, I looked round me at the cold bare trees, asleep till the spring

would waken them with sap. The hills were bleak and barren, the rocks

harsh and cold with no warm crotal on them, and just the reek from the

houses rising into the frosty sky.

The night was just down on us, when I heard the lilt o' a whistle,

clear as a whaup's, and with a great melody. To us there came

whistling a kilted lad, his knees red as collops, for he had waded the

burn, and the cheeks o' him glowing like wild roses.

"Ah-ha, Neil Veg," cries Dan, for he made a work wi' weans always, "is

it stravagin' after the lassies ye are this bonny nicht?"

"Indeed no, it iss not that; it's yourself I'll be after," shrilled the

lad, wi' a burning face.

"And what for will ye be after me, Neil Veg?"

"I will be tellin' you by yourself alone, for my father will be sayin'

to me, 'Did you find him, and him alone? '"

At that Dan took him a step aside, with a wink to me not to be minding,

and the lad delivered his message in Gaelic and sped away, and his

clear whistle came back to us.

"A brave lad, Hamish," says Dan; "he'll have listened to a' the ghost

and bogle and bawkin stories since he could creep, and yet he'll

whistle himsel' safe ower the hill and be too proud tae run, an' I'm

thinkin' every muircock that craws, and every whaup that cries, out on

the peat-hags, will be a bogle in his childish mind."

"There's truth in that," said I, "and I wish I could be hearin' the

stories, for you have not the way o' telling them. Ye will not be

believing them."

"Come ye raikin' wi' me the night and maybe ye'll be hearing some o'

them," says Dan, and so when the horses were bedded and the kye

fothered, we slipped through the planting and took the old peat road

for it, and that I was to hear stories was all that he would tell me.

We came out on the old road to the cove, and rough enough passage we

made, for a hill burn that crossed the bare rock o' the road had frozen

and melted and frozen again, so that on the worst o' the hill we took

our hands and knees for it, and even that comedown to a hillman was

better than breaking our necks over the rocks on the low side, for the

track was whiles no more than a scratch along a precipice.

When we came on to good heather again Dan stopped me.

"Bide a wee, bide a wee, James," and he took a step from me, and there

came at my very ear the lone night-cry of a gull, so weird and

melancholy a sound, that but for a low laugh beside me again I would

have sworn the bird had passed in the darkness.

"Listen," says he; "I startled ye first with your Christian name, and

ye were so made up wi' it, ye wid believe a gull brushed your lug; but

listen, Hamish, listen."

From out of the night came the answer, and in my mind there came the

picture I had often watched, the grey night seas and the lonely gull

flying low, and ever and anon voicing its cry as though it mourned the

lost spirit of the deep.

"There's just the two roads, you see, the shore road and the hill road,

and a strange foot carries far, and there's aye a lad on the watch when

the 'turf's in.'"

So that was Wee Neil's message; McGilp and his crew would be ashore, as

many as could be spared from the schooner, and we were making for the

Turf Inn, and as we travelled I asked why it came to be called that.

"It's a long story," said Dan, "but maybe ye'll have noticed a hole in

a smiddy wall, where they will be throwing out the ashes. Well, in

this lonely place here, there werena many to trouble, and it cam' to be

known that a man could get a dram if he paid for it, and as much as he

liked to be payin' for. Well, well, a stranger cam' in one day and

asked refreshment and got it, and then he plankit down a gowden guinea

and waited for his change, for the stranger was a ganger, and here was

a capture just waitin' for him.

"Well, he waited and waited and cracked away wi' the lass, for there

seemed nobody about but just Meg the gleevitch, and she had talk eno'

for five men, and a trim pair o' ankles forbye.

"'I'll be goin' now, mistress,' says the stranger, rising.

"'I'm sorry for that,' says Meg, and looked as if she meant it.

"'If ye'll just give me my change. . . .'

"'Change!' she cries, 'God save us, change; we sell naething here,' and

she lifted the guinea oot the old jug on the shelf and handed it back.

'I thought it was just a present,' says she, makin' eyes at him, 'for a

thankfu' man's free wi' his siller. Ye were lucky to get the only drop

o' drink in the hoose,'--and that was true enough, for the time they

had been talkin' and Meg kiltin' her skirt tae kind o' divert the

stranger's attention, the lads had the keg in a safe place. Aweel, and

so he had just to take shank's mare for it. I'll come back tae the

hole in the wa'. There was one in the old house, and Meg cut a divot

and stuffed the hole wi' it if there was nae danger, and if she had

word o' excisemen or gaugers on the lookout for smuggling she took the

turf oot, and that's how the place got it's name (and why we pass the

word that the 'turf's in' if there's word o' a run), but it must have

hurt Meg to gie back the guinea, for she's a wild long eye for siller."

We were now close to a white house, stone built and thatched, set among

big plane-trees, and looking to the sea. At the door I heard Gaelic

songs and great laughing, and then we went inside. At first I saw

nothing but two ship's lanthorns, swung from hooks such as we use to

hang hams on, and the blazing fire, where a ship's timber burned with

wee blue flames licking out, as the fire got at the salt of the seven

seas. Then I made out the swarthy faces turned to us, and heard Dan's

name voiced by the revellers, and a woman, stout built and perky but

still young, that I took to be Meg the gleevitch, from her bird-like

way of making little rushes, or, as we express it, "fleein' at things,"

brought us steaming glasses of toddy, so strong that I think she had

watered the whisky with more whisky, for the tears started to my eyes

as I drank my first drink. But I felt fine and warm inside for all

that. Captain McGilp, as tough a looking seaman as ever shook out a

reef, hoisted himself beside Dan. He had not mind of me, I think.

"We did yon business o' Scaurdale's," he whispered, "and got the len'

of a cow to keep the wean in milk, and I'll no' say but I forget where

the beast came frae, for it's in the barrel now, what's left o't. The

wean's in France in a convent among the nuns, where I'm envying her her

innocence," and the captain became so wild and heedless in his speech

that I drew away. "Ho, my cockerel," says he, "Miss Mim-mou

(mim-mouth), that's the bonniest wie I ken o' gettin' yir wesan cut,"

and to Dan, "There's a lot o' the stallion to that colt." This would

mean that I resembled my father, the minister now dead, for he survived

my mother, the Laird's sister, by but a few years.

"Let the lad be, Jock McGilp, or you and me'll be cuttin' wesands,"

says Dan, and I could have flown at the burly smuggler's throat for the

joy of Dan's backing.

"It'll be his first night, hey? Well, look at McNeilage there; he's

been drunk fifteen flaming years."

"A bonny mate that--fifteen flaming years."

The mate slowly lifted his head, which had sunk on his massive chest,

and as I saw his face I grew amazed, for he resembled nothing so much

as a good-living, well-fed minister.

"I ha' used the sea, Cap'n, in my time. I loved the nuns and the

virgins in San Iago afore we made a bonfire o' it, ay the holy nuns,

but they skirled. Here's tae them, they were good while they lasted,"

and the unholy wretch smacked his lips as though he relished the memory

more than the drink.

"Sanny McNeilage, they ca' me. I've seen what I've seen and what ye'll

never see--I've seen the decks red for a week and all hands drunk;" and

then he turned to me, and his face shone with kindliness, "Are ye any

man wi' a cutlass, my lad?"

"No," says I, for my blood boiled at the thought of the nuns, "I wish I

were."

"So do I," says he in a pitiful voice.

"All that was before your mother died," says a young lad at his elbow,

fierce Ronny McKinnon, and the mate put his head in his arms and his

shoulders shook with his greetin', while nods and winks went round the

godless crew.

"She was English, my poor old mother," he cried, "and I would lay down

my damned soul for her, but she died fifteen year ago, and she could

not say 'wee tatties' in the English when she slipped her cable, for

she turned into Gaelic--yes," and he looked up, the tears in his eyes

and rolling down his cheeks. I think I never saw anything so hateful,

but then I saw his hand at his hanger and his big shoulders haunching.

"Will any o' ye be denying it?" he murmured in his pitiful voice, and

then through the tears I saw the devil mocking, and knew why the crew

hastened to reassure him.

Meg, the gleevitch, kept the drink going and threw more wood on the

fire. "Drink up," she cries, "it's a rid tinker's night this."

"Why red tinkers, Meg?" says Dan, raising his head from close confab

wi' the captain.

"Ye ken the story fine," says she, "how the weans hiv the red hair tae

keep them warm maybe, lying oot."

"Not me, my lass," says Dan; "sit down here beside me and tell us."

And as we took our drink she told us of the red tinkers and when they

took to the road.

"Indeed, and that will be a good story too," said an old shepherd by

the fireside, with his dogs at his feet, "and I will be tellin' you

another, if you will be caring. . . ."

It wore on to the small hours of the morning, and cocks began to crow,

and yet we sat. Indeed, by that time I was seeing two fires, and I

knew that most of the crew slept as they sat or sprawled, and the mate

was again weeping and leering round for some one to fight, as though

his seeming gentleness would entice a stranger. Dan was parrying with

Meg, for in her story she had made great stress on a gipsy lass, and

all with knowing looks in Dan's direction; but at last we made our

homeward way, of which I remember little, except that Dan had me on his

back on the worst of the road, and I was singing.

Next morning I was ill, and black looks I got at the breakfast,

although my aunt was kind enough and I caught her smiling at me, for I

suppose I must have cut a queer enough figure, but my uncle was very

stern. After I had made some pretence of eating, I rose, and he asked

me, in his grandest manner, to come to him in an hour.

He was among his books, for he was more of a bookworm than his folks,

and standing in front of the fire as I entered.

"Hamish," said he, "I thought more of ye. Dan is no model to follow,"

says he; "forbye, your head is not so strong, if that be any excuse for

drink and devilry on his pairt. I ken of his ongoings, but I hold my

peace, for he minds his work, and I have a promise to his father, my

brother, that's lying far frae his kith and kin in the field of

Malplaquet. Let this be a warning to ye, Hamish, for this morning ye

were looking lamentable," says he, "just lamentable."

CHAPTER V.

MIRREN STUART'S ERRAND.

The shame of my first night's ploy at the Turf Inn lay heavy on me for

a while, and then I would be thinking of the swarthy crew with their

knives and their fierce oaths at the cards, of the spluttering glowing

fire and the old men of the glens in the glow of it, and when I heard

the wind moan and cry in the planting in the night, I longed to hear

the old dread stories of a people long dead who had raised great stones

on our wind-swept moors, and marked their heroes' resting-places with

cairns.

Something of this I told to Dan as we gathered in the sheep from the

far hills on the day before the big storm. I mind it fine, the grey

heavy sky, the bursts of wind that rose ever and anon in the hills, and

died away with an eerie cry, and made me think that all the winds had

word to gather somewhere, and were hastening to the feast like corbies

to a dying ewe.

There was the smell of snow in the air, and the moss pools were frozen

hard, and beautiful it was to see the stag-horn moss entombed in the

clear ice, and the wee water-plants, pale and cold and pitiful, at the

bottom of the pools. Round the far marches we gathered--the wild shy

wethers, seeing the dogs, paused as if to question the right of the

intruders, and then bounded away like goats, and in my mind's eye I see

yet the whitey-yellow wool where the wind ruffled the fleeces. Dan was

very quiet that day, speaking seldom except to the dogs.

"There's something no canny coming, Hamish," said he; "I feel it in my

banes. We're but puir craturs when a's said and done. A pig can see

the wind, and there's them that can hear the grass growing, but a man

just breenges on, blin', blin', and fou o' pride."

And again, "Ye've a terrible hankerin' for bawkins,[1] Hamish. I

whiles think ye will be some old Druid priest come back that's

forgotten the word o' power, but kens dimly in his mind that the white

glistening berries o' the oak and the old standing stanes are freens.

Ye're no feart o' bawkins, and ye're never tired o' hearing about them.

Aweel, it's a kind o' bravery I envy ye, for weel I mind that first

time I heard the Black Hound o' Nourn bay. I can feel the tingle of

fear run in my bones yet when I think o' the dogs leaving me alane in

that unchancey wood, and that devil beast near me in the dark."

By this time we were at Bothanairidh, maybe a heather mile from

Craignaghor, the flock heading quietly in and the dogs at heel, and at

a bare hawthorn tree Dan stopped.

"An' this, Hamish, will be another o' your freens," said he. "There's

many a lilting laugh hidden in the ears o' this old tree, for here it

was the cailleachs cam' tae spin in the long summer forenights, when

everybody left their hames and took their beasts tae the hill for the

summer. There were no dykes or hedges in those days, and the beasts

had to be herded on the hill if the crops were to come to anything.

Aweel, the men a' went to the fishing and a' the weemen stayed at

Bothanairidh, and in the evenings the young lassies would be making

great laughing while the cailleachs span; and once, long long ago, when

the crotal was young on the rocks on the moors, there came a swarthy

lad and said fareweel tae his lass under this tree. There was red wild

blood in the boy, and before he came back he had seen a many men swing

from the yard-arm. Ay, when he did return, he met a red bride, for

another had awaited his coming.

"'This will be the bride ye are seeking,' snarled he that waited, and

gave the sailor the dagger where the throat dimples above the

collar-bone. And they say the swarthy lad writhed him up against the

old tree and laughed.

"'As long as this tree stands,' he cried, 'you'll never hold to your

coward heart the lass ye have done the dirty killin' for,' and died.

Well, Hamish, I'm no' hand at stories, but the old hawthorn had aye

flourished white until then, and after that the flourish was fine rich

red, and when he that slew the swarthy lad sought to tear the tree

down, his hair changed colour in a night, and the strange folks' mark

was on him, and he wandered in the hills and died."

As we stood, I fitted into Dan's brief story--for his tale seemed to me

to resemble more the headings of a story than a real story,--I fitted

in a background of great wind-swept spaces, of bare rocks and cold

heather and that poor love-maddened outcast wandering alone, and

wondered what black pool cooled his brow at the last of it, and there

came to my ears a distant cry, and so sure was I that I had imagined

it, that I never turned to look, till Dan's laugh roused me.

"Come away from the standin' stanes and the heroes' graves. That wasna

the skirl o' a ghost, but a hail frae a sonsy lass--but what gars her

risk her bonny legs in yon daft-like wie beats me."

"I think," says I, "yon'll be Finlay Stuart's Uist powny; there's none

here has the silver mane and tail. . . ."

"Imphm," says Dan; "imphm, Hamish, as Aul' Nick said when his mouth was

fu'. Yon's Finlay's beast, and I'm thinkin' o' a' Finlay's lassies,

there's just wan wid bother her noddle tae come here away, and that's

Mirren; but wae's me," said he, with his droll smile, "she's set her

cap at the excise-man, they tell me."

The lass drew up her pony beside us, and, man, they were a picture,

these two--her hair, blown all loose, rippling like a wave, and the

flush of youth glowing in her face and neck, and her eyes shining, and

the noble Hieland pony, with his great curved neck and round dark

barrel, and the flowing silver mane and tail. To me she bowed coldly

enough, but with all the grace of one whose men-folk called themselves

Royal, or maybe from Appin--especially in their cups. Although it

seems the Royal Stuart race were none too particular whatever, but Dan

had always his own way with the lassies.

"Has the de'il run away wi' the excise-man, Mirren, that you're risking

horseflesh among the peat-bogs?"

"No," she cries, "no, but I wish he would be taking the whole dollop o'

them to his hob, and then maybe decent folks would be having peace."

"That would stamp ye Finlay's lass if I didna ken already," says Dan.

"Ken me," cried the maid; "I'm well kent as a bad sixpence--a lass that

should ha' been a lad wi' work to do or fighting, instead o'

sitting--sitting like a peat stack, or"--with a fine flare o'

colour--"like a midden waiting to be 'lifted.'"

"Ye're hard to please, my dear; there's many a lad wid be sair put oot

if ye took to the breeks. . . ."

"It will not be this gab clash I came to be hearin', Dan McBride, but a

most private business."

"Oh, don't be minding Hamish, my lass; he canna pass a rick o' barley

but his eyes and mouth water. It's _just lamentable_," said he.

Her red lips took a curl at that, and then her speech came all in a

rush.

"I've heard--oh, do not be asking me how I will be hearing these

things, but the preventive men are lying at the cove waiting for the

_Gull_, and I thought maybe if she came the night, wi' a storm comin'

from the southard and them trying to make the port, they might all be

taken away and transported, and he would be among them. . . ."

"Gilchrist the exciseman, Mirren?"

"Why will ye be naming that man to me?" she cried, in a burst of

passion. "Is it not bad enough to be doing that I let him tell me

their plans, and him not knowing where I carry them."

"I might have kent the breed o' ye wouldna be content wi' an exciseman,

Mirren. Aweel, Hamish and me will just be having a sail this night,

storm or no', and the _Gull_ can coorie into mony's the neuk among the

rocks; but whit bates me is how they fun' oot the cove."

"It would just be Dol Bob that told," whispered Mirren.

"The dirty slink," cried Dan. "I'm thinking there will be some talk

between that man and me soon; but I'm no good enough looking to be

thinking ye rade here to warn me, Mirren, so I'll be tellin' Ronny

McKinnon tae keep his heart up yet when the _Seagull's_ here, but ye'll

hiv a big handfu' wi' Ronny."

"I would not be having him less," she cried, a little pleased as I

thought; and then, as she turned to go, "There's a bonny wild lass at

McCurdy's old hut, Dan, and she told me where to look for ye. Ye might

tell her Mirren Stuart was speiring for her kindly, and thinking

naething of Dan McBride, for the look she gied me out o' her black een

made me grue." [2]

So Belle was still at McCurdy's hut. But Dan was thoughtful again, and

never spoke till we had the sheep in the low sheltered fields.

But coming home he was whimsical. "Are they not droll now, the

lassies, Hamish--here's Mirren Stuart, namely for her good looks, and

for the bold spirit of her. Many's the house she has saved with that

same Hielan' pony, for Gilchrist, a game lad among gangers, canna keep

anything from Mirren, and here she is among the heather wi' word o'

treachery, and d'ye ken who she will be doing it for?"

"No," said I, "except this McKinnon ye spoke of."

"Ay, McKinnon, just wild Ronny, that she cast out wi' years ago when he

was a decent farmer's son, close to her own place in the Glen yonder at

the far end o' Lamlash, before he slipped away on the _Seagull_."

"I am wishing, Dan," said I, "that ye kent less about the smugglers."

"A man must be doing something, Hamish, to get any pith out o' life.

This is what I am thinking we will be doing the night. We will tell

the Laird that it will be as well that somebody should be giving an eye

to the sheep he has wintering at Lamlash and the South End, and then we

will make for McKelvie's Inn at Lamlash and get a boat across to the

Holy Island, and gie McGilp a signal frae the seaward side o' it, where

it will not be seen except in the channel. McKelvie at the Quay Inn

will ken a' about that. There's a man in the island ye will be glad to

meet if he's in his ordinar--McDearg they ca' him--and after that,

Hamish, we will stravaig to the South End and see the sheep there and

come back hame again. Are ye game for it?" says he.

"Ay, Dan, but there's just this--who is this Dol Beag?"

"Dol Beag has a boat and a wife and weans, and he's a sour riligous

man, keen for siller at any price. Well, I'm hoping the gangers have

paid him well by this time, for I am thinking he will not enjoy it

long."

[1] Fearsome apparitions.

[2] Shiver involuntarily.

CHAPTER VI.

WE TRAMP THROUGH THE SNOW TO McKELVIE'S INN.

With the afternoon came snow, round hard flakes like wee snowballs, dry

and silent and all-pervading, and the hills were changed, and there

came on the sea that queer mysterious snow light, and then the wind

rose skirling, sweeping the uplands bare and filling the quiet hollows.

At supper-time the gale was at its height, the roar from the iron-bound

shore was like giants in battle, and I knew that on the black rocks the

spray was rising in drifting white smoke, and the rocks trembling to

the onset of the seas.

Behind the stackyard, in the old trees, the crows were complaining

bitterly with their hard clap-clap tongues, and now and then a great

crashing warned of the death of some old storm-scarred veteran of the

wood. But it was fine, the music of the storm, the blatter of the snow

and the wailing cry of the wind, before a great devastating blast came.

Fine to think that the stackyard was safe and sheltered, and the beasts

warm and well, were tearing away at their fodder all unconcerned, and

that the sheep were in the low ground of many sheltering knowes and

sturdy whin-bushes, comfortable as sheep could well be, and the thought

came to me of how Belle was faring in her lonely sheiling. When the

supper was made a meal of and the horn spoons of the lads still busy,

Dan had a word with my uncle, for my aunt was mainly taken up watching

each new trick of her bairn these days.

"This snaw," says Dan, "will likely haud, and I would like fine to ken

if a' these hogs ye hiv wintering over the hill will be getting enough

keep.[1] I'm thinking Hamish and me will be as well tae inquire the

night before it gets worse outside, for worse it'll be, and we'll be

back as soon as the weather betters."

At this my uncle takes a turn round his room with a thoughtful frown on

his brow.

"No pranks," says he; "I'll have no gallivanting, but I ken fine ye

have an interest in the beasts. . . . Ye can go," and as we turned to

leave the room, he wheeled round with outstretched arm and his white

finger pointing.

"No pranks, mind. I'll have no pranks."

"God's life," says Dan, as we muffled ourselves for our tramp--"God's

life, Hamish, he's queer names for things, that uncle o' yours; there's

nae prank in my heid this night--a queer prank it would be no' tae warn

McGilp,"--and as we tramped through the kitchen where the lassies were

coorieing over the fire telling bawkin stories, and edging closer to

the farm lads for comfort when the gale moaned and whined in the wide

chimney--as we tramped through, old Betty took Dan by the sleeve.

"Let go, ye old randy," cried he, in a great pretence of terror. "I'm

thinking the old ones are perkier than the young ones these days. . . ."

"Och, my bairn, my bairn," cried the old woman, her two hands on him,

"will ye not be stopping in this night, this devil's night? It's nae

hogs that's taking ye trakin' weary miles this very night, and fine ye

ken the hogs are weel, but ye're just leadin' the young lad astray

efter some quean that'll be stickin' tae him like the buttons on his

coat.

"Wae's me, wae's me, will ye not have enough truck wi' the wenches

already that ye mak' me lie eching and pechin' and listening for the

death-watch on sic a nicht,"--and at that Jean giggled hysterically and

crept closer to Tam, and the old dame turned on her like a flash.

"Wheest, ye besom, wi' your deleries; there's trouble enough aboot the

night without you skirling like a craking hen. It's no' your kind I'm

feared for, ye useless one, but these wild hill lassies, for when the

devil is loose among the hills, he gars the wild blood leap in their

veins, and the wind tae loose the knot o' their lang hair--ay, and

he'll bring the man that'll gar them tingle at his touch, and send the

red blood flaming in their cheeks."

Dan's smile was broader and broader, and I noticed the red blood

flaming in the cheeks of our own sonsy dairy lassies, Liz and

Betty. . . .

"Ye were bred in the hills yourself, old mother," says Dan, and put an

arm round the withered old neck, "and I'm kissing you for that," and we

went out into the smother of the snowstorm.

At the byre end the old rowan-trees were creaking and groaning to the

violence of the gale, the bourtree bushes were flattened near to the

ground, and everywhere was white. The driven snow melted on my tongue

as I gasped, and I felt the flakes melt in my eyes; but we followed the

road by instinct, for where the hedges should have been only a black

blur showed. On the low road it was not so bad; but when we took the

hill road again, I fain would have turned my back to the gale, and

stood like a stirk on a wet day, but I powled on after Dan, thinking

shame of my coward heart. Below us the sea roared like a cold, cold,

cruel hell; the maddened anger of the breakers made me shiver with

dread, and the gloating, horrible grumbling as the seas rumbled into

the coves made a cold sweat break on my back and limbs. But I bent my

head before the gale and clawed my way upwards with numbed fingers

clutching like talons to the heather, and prayed that the roots might

hold. So we toiled upwards, Dan always leading, and sometimes I saw

him turning and knew he was speaking; but the wind cut the words as

they left his lips, and bore them tearing and shrieking to the sea

below.

Before we gained the top of the hill I saw Dan climbing upwards from

the old peat track, and I followed dumbly as he led me into an old

quarry, long since disused except by the sheep on the warm summer days,

and there we lay almost exhausted, content just to know that the storm

rushed over our pitiful retreat, and it seems droll to me now that I

spoke scarcely above my breath; but then it seemed as though the

storm-king might hear me if I raised my voice.

But when Dan spoke the black anger was trembling in his voice.

"They're lying there snug and dry in our cove, d---n them, and that

poor _Gull_ straining and crying out there, reaching for her hame, and

them ready to pounce on her crew, the crawling slinks,"--and I knew he

was thinking of the Preventive men.

In a while we crawled to the path again, and clawed our way to the top

of the hill, and there below us was a wondrous sight. The sea ran

inwards in a noble bay, and the bay was almost landlocked with an

island, but down below us was a myriad twinkling lights, hundreds of

them, rising and falling. The snow had taken off for a little, and a

hazy moon hurrying behind grey clouds showed us the ships tossing and

straining at their cables. Some of the lights seemed to move slowly

past the others, and these I took to be vessels dragging their anchors.

We stood looking down a while, for with the stopping of the snow a

weight seemed to be lifted from us, and then made our way downwards

towards the sea. After our fight upwards, the descent seemed easy and

almost calm, although the wind was howling still; but we were close to

farmed land now, and company, and once in a field sheltered by the wood

of the Point, we came on sheep, standing and lying close in by the

trees, and Dan bawled into my ear, "The hogs are doing finely, Hamish;

I hadna expected to see them," and I remembered that we were wintering

sheep with old Hector of the Point as well as Easdale and Birrican. We

struck the shore road and passed the big rock, and the sea was washing

over the road, carrying spars, and bamboos, and sailors' beds, and

leaving them high and dry on the fields by the roadside.

Groups of noisy seamen passed us with a great clop-clopping of

sea-boots, and many little thatch houses we hurried by, until we came

to the Quay Inn, where there were many people gathered, and pushed

ourselves through drunken, quarrelling sailors to the counter.

[1] Forage.

CHAPTER VII.

WE SAIL IN McKELVIE'S SKIFF TO THE HOLY ISLAND.

Through the throng of bearded sailors we strode and made our way to the

kitchen of the Quay Inn. A place sacred to kenspeckle folk it was, and

from its smoke-stained rafters hung many pieces of bacon and dried

shallots, and there were also bunches of centaury, and camomile, and

dandelion root, and bogbean, for the goodman's wife was cunning in

medicines of the older-fashioned sort. In this place the noise from

the common room was not so plainly heard, and indeed it gave me the

impression of a haven from the boisterous spirit there.

As I stood before the blazing fire, guiltily conscious of the puddle of

water at my feet where the snow had melted, Dan left the kitchen by a

door leading to a yard and stables, and I heard him speaking to some

one; and then when he came back there was the goodwife with him, and

Dan cried for a long hot drink, for the flesh was frozen on his bones.

At that the goodwife, with many "to be sures" and "of courses," hurried

herself here and there, and all the time she would be talking of the

sheep in this terrible weather, and of our long tramp across the hill;

and then she handed us the drink, and would not be having any payment

at all for it, for were we not freens of her ain folk (however far

out), and strangers too, moreover? And then the low door opened, and

the innkeeper entered from the taproom, a dark man, very heavy across

the shoulders, and a little bent on his legs like a sailor. I had seen

him as we entered, black-bearded, silent, with his two swarthy sons,

eyeing his company from below pent-house brows. His eyes, blue and

keen, took us in from stem to stern, as the sailors say, and he came

close to Dan before the fire, and--

"Ay," says he, "it'll be the boat again," and his voice was a growl.

"Just that," says Dan, sipping his drink, and then he talked quickly,

and I heard him tell of Mirren Stuart's message and of Dol Rob Beag's

treachery (for he had taken the word to the Preventives of where McGilp

kept his cargo in the cove above the Snib before it was carted inland,

or stowed in many an innocent-looking smack bound for the mainland).

"Dol Rob Beag will be slipping his cable one of these fine nights,"

growled the listener; and then, "There's just the caves at the Rhu

Ban," [1] says he.

"I had that in my head," says Dan, "for the gangers are in the Cove at

Bealach an sgadan, and McGilp will be in the Channel. McDearg o' the

Isle House is in this to his oxters. There's just nothing for it but

to show a glim on the seaward side o' the Isle, and McGilp will take

the _Gull_ to the Rhu Ban when the wind takes off; but, man, it's

risky, devilish risky, wi' the bay fou o' boats."

"It's the deil's own night," agreed the innkeeper, "black as pitch and

blowing smoke, but the snow will be helping us too," and then we sat

before the fire all silent for a while, the goodwife busy with her

infusions and brews.

"Will ye be remembering the night they pressganged McKillop?" thus

suddenly to Dan.

"A droll night's work yon."

"Ye see," turning to me, "this Neil McKillop would be a likely lad,

clever on the boats, and clever wi' the snares--ay, clever, clever--and

kept his mother well. Ay--well, there came a night like this, but not

so much wind, and the pressgang boat slipped into the bay, and nobody

knowing, and ashore came the crew o' her, and many's the likely lad

they took, and among them Neil McKillop. The boat would just be

shoving off from the old Stone Quay when his mother came there in her

white mutch.

"'Give me back my son, my only son,' she cried, standing on the

quay-head; 'you will not be taking away the one that keeps me in meat

and drink, me an old, old woman. Och, bring him back, my lad, and I'll

be blessing ye and praying for ye in your bloody wars.'

"At that a tarry breeks up with an oar and skelps a splash o' water at

the old woman, and laughed at her with the wind blowing her skirts, and

showing her lean shanks.

"'Go back to your weeds and your snakes, ye witch," he cries in the

Gaelic; 'we'll make a sailor-man out o' your whelp,' and the oars began

to plash.

"Down on her knees went the old _cailleach_. 'Bring him to me, ye

hounds, before I put a curse on ye,' and she tore her coorie from her

head, and the wind tore through the strands of her white hair, and they

rose like elf-locks. High above her head she threw her arm, her

fingers stiff and pointing, there on the quay-head, an awesome sight in

the mirk of a half moon.

"Then slowly, slowly, softly she began--

"'Cursed be ye all, seed, breed, and generations o' ye. The madness o'

the sea come on ye in the still night watches, friendless, friendless

on the face o' the waters be your lives, and your deaths too foul for

the sea to be giving you a cleanly burial.' Then in a skirl o' rage,

her face working, 'The foul things o' the deep shall reive the flesh

from ye in your death, and in your lives ye shall mourn for the quiet

streams o' fresh water and the sight of green things growing--and

never, never, never get nigh them. . . .'

"In the boat the men lay on their oars, with faces white below the tan

o' wind and weather, and then hurriedly she came astern, and Neil

McKillop sprang on the quay, and to his mother, and the pressgang boat

shot into the haze off the land, and the mother and son went back to

the croft on the hillside."

His tale finished, McKelvie drained his glass at a gulp, and his lips

pressed together as though he were unwilling that even the volatile

essence might escape, and then--

"We'll go," says he. "Robin!"

At his word one of the swarthy sons entered and stood waiting, and

through the open door to the common room I saw groups of sailors,

asleep on the floor before the fire, and asleep on the benches where

they sat; yet some hardened drinkers kept the drink going.

"Ye see, Hamish," Dan whispered, "there's a big sea running, and these

sailor boys would rather risk the floor than their wee boats."

I felt a sinking at my heart, for I knew that the sailors were sweirt

to risk their lives, yet there was not one timid face among them, but

many bold and truculent--men used to risk their lives, and maybe

enjoying the risk. But I held my peace, for I thought shame of my

terror, and before Dan too. So the four of us went out quietly the

back way and came to the quay, where we found a boat on the lee side,

afloat, and with the mast stepped, and all ready for hoisting the sail,

and I wondered if Dan's talking to the goodwife in the inn yard had had

anything to do with it, for the boats at that time of the year were

mostly upturned on the beach, and indeed most of the dingies and gigs

from the ships were also drawn up.

Robin McKelvie slipped down the quay-wall as nimbly as a cat, and

busied himself with the sail, doing what I know not, though I prayed he

might not loosen any reef, and his father followed, more slowly, for he

was a heavier man, but wonderfully active in a boat. Then Dan bade me

climb down, and I scrambled down and found my feet on a gunwale just as

I expected to feel the water, so I sat down in the boat suddenly, and

Dan was beside me in a wee while.

Robin had the sail up, and made fast, as his father cast off and took

the tiller, and the roar of the sea all round me as we sailed from the

lee of the quay at first filled me with fear, but soon I felt the skiff

rise to the first sea, and I forgot my terror in watching the helmsman.

"Ay, ay," he spoke softly; "they're coming now, the three sisters," and

his eyes seemed to pierce the gloom for the three rolling curling waves

as he shouldered the skiff over them. Sometimes I watched the water

curling over the gunwale, and wondered if ever again I would reach the

land, and then a wave would break somewhere near, and the helmsman

would mutter--

"I ken ye; I will be hearing your whispering," and it seemed to me as

if he were a cunning old warrior in the midst of well-tried foes, wary

and courageous, and always winning through. But in the middle of the

bay the waves rose madly round us, the stout skiff was tossed like a

cork, now perched giddily on the crest, and now racing madly to the

trough, and then to the crest again with a horrible side motion (which

I think seamen call yawing), most fearful of all. But McKelvie spoke

to his boat as I have heard horsemen speak to their horses.

When a squall struck us and the skiff lay down to it, he would croon

softly--

"You will not be killing yourself, lass--easy, easy,--oh, but you are

eager for the sea," and I knew that I was watching a master hand, a man

cunning in the moods of the sea; but as I sat he bade me bale the water

out of the boat, for it was slushing about high over the floor-boards,

and these had come adrift, and were moving with every motion, so I

baled with a will, glad for something mechanical to do, to keep my eyes

off the menacing waves which seemed to rush up to devour us, and as if

we were too poor a prey, spurned us away. Then I saw that we were in

calmer water, and the steep shore of the Isle seemed close to, and the

light of the white house clear, and in a little time the sail came

rattling down, and the skiff's keel grated on the flat gravel, and we

sprang ashore and put the anchor on the beach though the tide was going

back.

And as we made our way over the gravelly shore I saw a crouching figure

rise from among the wrack and come to us.

"Oh, oh; have ye come for me, father? Have ye come for me at last?"

and a girl flung herself into McKelvie's arms, and hung there crying.

"Wheest, lass, wheest," commanded the innkeeper sternly.

"Oh, I just crept as near the sea as I could go, for oh, yon hoose is

no' canny, and a' day the ravens from the Red Rocks have walked in at

the doors, fluttering and croaking, and the Red Man is crying that he's

gaun tae his hame the night; and McRae piping to him a' day, and him

drinking and blaspheming. . . ."

"If McDearg's gaun the night, we'll maybe hae news tae stop him, my

dear," said Dan. "Anywie, ye're surely no' feart of a raven's

croaking?"

With that we started for the Isle House, the whitewash of it looking

yellowish against the snow, and all about us the flapping of wings and

the crying of sea-birds as our feet scrunched on the gravel.

"I canna go there," cried the lass. "I just canna; let me bide in the

boat," and then, as she saw her brother take the lantern from the bows,

she ran to him.

"Take me wi' ye, Robin. I'll speil tae the Goat's Ledge wi' ye; but

oh, do not be making me go back there. . . ."

"Wheest, my lassie, my poor wee lassie," said her father; "there's nae

harm will come on you, wi' your father and Robin beside ye; but you

will not be mentioning any Goat's Ledge, for the devil himself will

carry word to the Preventives."

So, standing some way from the skiff, we held a council of war, and at

length Robin took his lantern and left us to climb to the Goat Ledge

and make the warning signal, should M'Gilp be in the channel, and we

others made for an outhouse, where we left McKelvie's lass content

enough wi' two collies, for she was at her service in the Isle House,

and they kent her. We left her there sitting on a bag of corn and the

dogs at her feet, and made our way through the yard to the house.

[1] Bhuda ban=white headland.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DEATH OF McDEARG, THE RED LAIRD.

While we were still in the yard the door opened, throwing a scad of

light over the snow, and a high screiching voice came to us--

"Come in, lads, come in; the lassies are weary waiting for their lads,

the poor bit things, sair negleckit on this weary isle, wi' nane to see

their ankles but scarts[1] and solangeese."

And as we entered she held out a dry wrinkled hand.

"Prosperous New Year, Young Dan. Six bonny sons Auld Kate wishes ye,

tall braw lads that'll no feel the weight o' your coffin; but if a'

tales be true, you'll no' be in want. Ech, they're clever, clever,

your lassies. Same to you, McKelvie. Your lass has ta'en the rue the

day. Happy New Year, young sir; you'll be a McBride too," and the old

withered crone peered at me through eyes bleared, as it seemed to me,

with the peat reek of a hundred winters.

I was sore amazed at our welcome, for it was not near New Year, and I

wondered if the scad of light on the snow, shining on us, had taken the

old woman back to her younger days, but Dan took me out of my amazement.

"Humour her, Hamish; humour the weemen. A new face is New Year to Auld

Kate that keeps house tae McDearg."

"Och, it's the lassies will be the pleased ones, coiling the blankets

round them; it's Auld Kate that kens," and then she gave a screitchy

hooch and began to sing in her cracked thin voice--

'The man's no' born and he never will be,

The man's no born that will daunton me.'

It's that I used to be singing to your grandfather, Dan, when I was at

my service in Nourn. He had a terrible grip, your grandfather, and the

devil was in him; but he's deid, they're a' deid but Auld Kate. But

we'll have a dram, and you'll be seeing the Red Laird." And in a

little I saw that there was more than old age the matter.

There came the noise of piping in that strange house, and we tramped

along a stone-flagged passage, and entered a room looking to the sea,

and there, before a great fire, was McDearg, an old man, with evil

looking from his eyes. He sat in his great chair, his head on his

breast, and his shepherd, with the pipes on his knee, sat listening.

"A brave night, a brave night, and the devil on the roof-tree, McBride.

What seek ye o' the Red Laird? The _Gull_, say ye; the Preventives--to

hell wi' the Preventives; there's a bonny cove at the Rhu Ban, lads;

but ye're in good time to see the devil coming for Red Roland."

A terrible squall struck the house and moaned round the gables, and the

lowes blew into the room.

"D'ye hear him, the laughing o' him, and his blackbirds spying all

day--ay, the Ravens from the Red Rocks; but they have nae terrors for

Roland McDearg."

A long time he was silent, and then slowly the words came--

"McRae, McRae (for the McRaes were all pipers), play me back, back till

I hear my mother laughing, in the evening, till I see the grass, green,

green and beautiful in the sun, and the golden ben-weeds swaying to the

breeze, and I am a boy again--I, Red Roland, searching among the

heather, with the scent o' wild honey around me, searching for the shy

white heather to bring coyly to my lass, and bravely the sun shines

among the hills, and the hawk's brown wings flutter in the blue vault.

Play me back, McRae, till I hear the water wimpling on the hill burns,

when I lie flat to drink, the brown peaty water, McRae, and the sheep

looking at me before they run. The sun and the sea and the wild winds

o' my youth, McRae; bring them back to me before I go."

As he spoke, the Red Laird lolled his head on the back of his chair.

His eyes were closed, and his mind looked backwards; and as he cried

for the sun and the growing grass and the wave of the wind in the hay,

his hand rose and fell. And McRae, McRae the piper, looked long into

the glowing fire, looked till his harsh face softened and the smiling

came round his eyes, and softly, softly he played. And in his playing

I saw the goodman bend over his wife and whisper. I saw her face glow

in the evening sun, and I heard her laughter, clear and sweet like

diamonds ajingle, as she struck him playfully, and walked stately and

slow to the green where her children played on the lush grass, and ever

and ever she looked over her shoulder for her man, because he was her

lover still. And I saw a boy moving among the crags, the honey dust

round his knees, and ever and ever his eyes searched the heather, and I

heard his cry of gladness as he fell down beside the lucky heather,

white and chaste as a virgin.

And I looked at Dan and saw him far away in his youth, and even

McKelvie looked not comfortable. But the Laird was all happy, a boy

again with all his days before him, and when McRae made an end of his

piping, said Dan with a queer sigh--

"A great gift, Hamish, to be drowned in drink," and as I watched the

piper gulp his usquebach I kent what he meant.

But at his stopping, the Laird rose. "Let be the days o' innocence,

McRae. The March, The March, now, and the onset o' battle. Dirl it

out, dirl it out, for Red Roland was first in the charge, and the cries

o' fear made the blood tingle in his back, the women screaming, and the

men crying, and the red blood flowing, and my father's sword dauntless

in the van--bring it back, McRae. Make my cauld blood hot as in my

manhood."

When he cried for the battle-music, his clenched fist beat the air, his

long locks tossed like an old lion's mane, and the war love shone in

his eyes. A great change came on the piper. He stood his full height,

as straight as a young larch tree, and a cold deadly pride came on his

face, and then with a great swing he threw the drones to his shoulder,

his arm caressed the bag, and his foot beat, beat, beat like a restive

horse, till he got the very swing of his pibroch.

Then with that fine prideful swing of his shoulders he started to

march, and I saw the clansmen gather, wet from the mountain torrents,

with knees red-scarred by the briars of many a wood. I heard the

clamour of their talk, and the high note of their anger, and then

swiftly, silently, below a pale moon I saw their ranks lock and the

grim march begin, onward, onward to the southlands.

And then I heard the wail of the southern mothers, and the laughing cry

of the clansmen as the foemen stood to arms, the wild devilish lilt of

it for glory or a laughing death, and all around a black, black land,

lighted alone with blazing farms, and the broad red swathe where the

hillmen trailed. Came the very struggle, the gasping for breath, the

cry of the fallen, the hand-to-hand grip, and then the great blare of

triumph, and the Red Laird yelled aloud--

"Through, by God, through!"

"I've lived my life, McBride, my ain wild life, and the sadness is

coming on me, to leave my bonny hills and the cold splash o' a summer's

sea. The sadness o' the silent peaks and the gloom o' the hidden

valleys, McBride--ay, but it's fine, the sadness, better than the

heated joys o' the south." And again McRae played, looking into the

heart of the fire, and the far-away look in his eyes, and as he played

I felt a lump rise in my throat, for a sorrow I kent not, except that

the wind moaned eerily through the thatch, and grey and gurly grew the

sea, with the black jackdaws flying low inshore. The uneasy cattle

were lowing in the byre, and the rain fell in great drops from the

leafless trees--fell on the cold wet earth, and the fire on the hearth

was out, and cold white ash marked where nevermore would peat be

lighted; and oh! I heard the wail of the mourners, and saw the sobbing

daughter cling to her mother, and the youngest son leave for the wars,

the last of his house and name, and his name forgotten in the glens

already.

"Stop him, stop him," I cried; "there's cold death at my very side, and

his breath on my cheek like an east wind," and I would have run from

the room.

"Death," cried the Red Laird--"death. I flouted him in my youth; I

wrestled with him and flung him from me. I laughed at his cold eyes

across a naked sword, and spurned him on the heather; but now in my

age, when my bones are brittle and my arms shrunk, he creeps behind me

again, sure, sure o' his prey," and as he spoke he crouched like a

stealthy enemy, one groping hand outstretched. Then he flung himself

upright, his eyes flashing, dauntless as a lion.

"Come then, Death, to the last grips wi' Red Roland; ay, your cold hand

is at my throat, old warrior--ay, but mine is firmer yet. The Onset,

the Onset, the blare o' it, the madness o' it for Red Roland's last

fight," and at his words the swinging lamp went out with the last great

gust of the gale, and in the darkness came the crash of a fallen man,

and Red Roland lay dead in the red glow of his own fire. And as we

stood there, Robin McKelvie came in with the word that the _Gull_ was

battling in the channel.

* * * * * *

And they carried the dead man and laid him decently on his bed.

Behind Robin, the house servants, stout dairymaids from the mainland,

stood awhisper, their sonsy red cheeks pale and mottled with fear, and

among them came the bullock-feeders; for the Red Laird fattened stock

for the mainland markets, and had his own quay, where the carrying

vessels moored in these days, and from the kitchen came the moaning of

old Kate.

"Ochone, ochone, he's gone, the strong one, and I mind me when his back

was like a barn door and the love-locks curling on his brow," and she

came into the chamber wringing pitiful, toil-worn hands, and the

servants after her, ashiver to be left alone in the dim passage. Round

the fire they huddled, none speaking except in whispers, as though they

feared the great unseen Presence; and as they sat in that eerie silence

there came the hollow clop-clop of sea-boots in the passage, and I saw

the serving maids stiffen and straighten as they sat, and a look of

terrible fear came on their faces.

And McKelvie's lass skirled, "He's coming," and cooried back in a

corner.

"Can ye not hear the tramping?" and she thrust an arm before her head

as a bairn will to escape a cuff.

With that the door opened, and McKelvie entered in high sea-boots, but

the fear did not leave them, for the Laird was wont to wear sea-boots

when the weather was bad on his rocky isle; and with their minds all

a-taut for warnings and signs, the tramping in the flagged passage was

fearsome enough. Indeed, I breathed the more freely myself when

McKelvie entered with Dan at his heels.

Dan had a stone jar in his hand, and he poured a stiff jorum, and held

it to auld Kate, greetin' at the fireside.

"The Red Laird's gone tae his ain folk, cailleach," says Dan, standing

straight and manly beside the huddled old woman. "Good points he had

and bad, but he's finished his last rig and taken the long fee.

"Drink tae the memory o' him, Kate: ye kent him weel, and he had aye a

dram for a ceilidher."

"Ou ay, Dan, mo leanabh, ou ay; but I cannot thole the thought o' his

spirit fleeing among the cauld clear stars, for there's nae heaven for

him if his ain piper is no there to cheer him, or mak' him wae. Och,

ay, I'll tak' the dram, but I'll be sore afraid there's plenty o'

pipers in hell wi' the devils dancing on hot coals tae their springs,

and he'll maybe be well enough."

As Dan put round the drink the doleful mood lifted a wee, and the lads

started to tell stories.

"I mind me," said Donald, the shepherd--"I mind o' a night I had on the

hills at the time o' the lambing, and in the grey o' the morning, when

the rocks are whispering one to another, and will be just back in their

places when a man comes near them, and when ye hear voices speaking not

plainly, because o' the scish o' the burn on the gravelly mounds, but

if ye listen till the burn is quiet a wee, ye'll be hearing the

laughing o' the Wee Folk at their games.

"Mora, in the grey o' the morning, I would be just among the sprits[2]

above the loch-side, when there came an eerie '_swish, swish_' at my

side, slow and soft. I thought it would be a hare, and I stopped to

let her get away, for I would not be crossing her path, but see her I

could not, and I turned round to speak to 'Glen,' and there was no dog

there at all.

"Ay, well, I whistled and I whistled in that dreary place till the

noise of it put a fear on me, and I started on again, and there at my

side was the swish, swish in the sprits, and I would be poking my crook

among them, but when I would be stopping it would be stopping, and I

felt my hair bristle on my neck for the fear on me; but I pushed on,

looking at my feet and all round me, till something inside of myself

made me be looking up, and there was something before me, wi' eyes

glowering at me--oh, big, big it was, as a stack o' hay, and it was in

my path, and I shut my eyes and stood, for it would kill me. And when

nothing would be happening I opened my two eyes, and it was not there,

and then I looked round with just my head, and aw!"--and a shudder went

through the shepherd, and he gulped at his drink,--"it was just at my

own very shoulder grinning at me. And I ran and ran, skirling like a

hare, and it behind me--ran till I felt my heart beating in my throat,

and ran through burn and briars and hedges till I ran into the barn and

fell on the straw, and remembered no more."

"And why," says I, "did you not run into your ain house?"

"Are you not knowing that?" says Donald. "If I had run to my house and

the door shut, I would just be fallin' dead on the doorstep."

"There's McGilp," says Dan. "He aye carries a sail needle in his kep

lining, and he'll say it's just to be handy, but it's aye been in the

same place. An' what will it be for, Neil Crubach?"

Neil looked up, his blue eyes hazy with dreaming things out of the

past. His face was very beautiful, and his body massive and strong,

but he halted on his leg, and could walk but lamely.

"Oh," says Neil, with a kindly smile, "you will be knowing that surely,

and you a McBride, and reared among the rocks and the bonnie heather.

"It will just be that when our forefathers would be among the hill sat

night, many and many's the time the evil one would be coming to them

and speaking, and sometimes he would be coming in the form of a black

dog, like the Black Hound o' Nourn, wi' a red tongue lolling from his

mouth, and sometimes he would be a wild cat louping among the rocks,

hissing and spitting wi' his eyes lowin', and the old wise ones in the

far glen found the power in the unknown places in the hills, and they

said to the young hunters and warriors, 'Aye be carrying steel, for

steel will sever all bargains,' but a skein-dubh is the best to be

carrying in the hills, for a devil will not come near the black-hefted

knife wi' a strong bright blade--no," and Neil Crubach smiled, and

looked among the red embers for his dreams.

And then, still looking into the embers, he began to speak in his

soft-voiced way--

"They're bonnie wee things, the Wee Folk, and merry as the lambs in

June.

"When my leg would be troubling me sorely in my mind, and me a lad fit

to break a man's back, and to fling the great stone from me like a

chuckle--ay, in these long-ago days, there was a lass, and, och, she

was just to me in my mind like the sun rising from the sea on a summer

morning, and I could have taken her away in my own arms, for I would be

fierce like my folk, in their hate and their love, and whiles I would

be feeling in me the wish to be killing her nearly just to watch her

eyes opening like the sky when the white woolly clouds are drifting

apart, and among the hills when I wandered I would be dreaming of

holding her in my arms, for they would be great arms in these old days;

and one day she came, and I told her all that was in my heart, and she

said never a word, but just put her white round arms on my shoulder and

her head on my breast."

For a long time he was silent, and I saw the servant lassies look at

one another, their terrors all forgot in the beauty of his picture, for

there was colour in his very tone.

"I would be carrying her in my arms, for was she not but a mountain

flower, but when I would have taken her up I saw her eyes with a great

pity in them for my lameness, and I felt hell rising in my heart, for

were not my folk straight in their limbs, and nimble as goats among the

rocks? and then she saw my face, and I think there would be black

murder in it, but for myself, not for my white flower, for Neil Crubach

I hated when my love looked on this poor limb (it was only a little

shorter, but I knew the pride that was in his race).

"Then my love looked into my soul.

"'Neil,' she said, and drew my head down to her--'Neil, my hero, take

me up,' and I took her up, and she lay curled in my arms, with her lips

at my neck, and then she whispered, 'Neil, you will not be angry if I

say it now.'

"'Never angry, mo ghaoil,' and my heart stopped to be listening.

"'I wish--I just wish, Neil, mo ghaoil, that you would be more lame, for

my mother will be seeing us too soon, and I want aye to stay here.'"

Neil was just thinking aloud.

"A year, just a wee year, with her smiling at her spinning, and

running to meet me in the far fields to be carried home--ay, she would

be calling my arms 'home,'--and when we would be ceilidhing she would

be saying, 'Neil, it will be time your lass was "home," and her eyes

would be laughing at me, and no one else would be knowing at all.'

"A year, a wee year, and she lay like a white flower, still and cold,

and all my love could not make her hear.

"And I sat by her silent spinning-wheel and waited till she should come

back night by night; I forgot the old kirkyard, for how would the earth

be keeping my love from coming to me, and as I sat came my old mother,

and she was wise and gentle to her lame son.

"'My son, if you would be lying behind the wee hill when the moon is

young, maybe you would be forgiving your old mother'--for when she was

sad she blamed herself for the fall that left me lame, even when I

laughed and made nothing of it in her hearing.

"Behind the wee hill I lay when the moon was young and the grass was

cool on my brow, and I would be hearing the breathings of the hills in

the silence as they slept, and the moon sailed behind a black cloud and

all the world was dark, and I heard a great laughing in the dark near

me like diamonds and pearls sparkling, so wee was the sound and so

bright the laughing, and then the moon sailed out clear silver in a

blue sky, and there were all the Wee Folk at their games on the short

turf. Bravely, bravely were they dressed in their green coats, and

near me, sitting and looking with longing eyes I saw my own love, and

she was looking down a wee, wee track in the grass, but it seemed to me

hundreds of miles. And my love cried and waved as she looked down the

path, and I heard her laughing, my own love, and then, 'Hurry fast,

Neil, and take me home'; and again I heard her laughing joyously, and

then in the track of grass, away and away, I saw a-coming one that

halted on his foot, and he was away and away, but my love clapped her

hands, and ran down the path with her arms stretched out to be carried

home, and I saw all the Wee Folk run to welcome the one that halted on

his foot, and I knew that the path that they were travelling so fast

was just Time, and slowly, slowly only can Neil Crubach march, but she

is running to meet me--my love."

By this time old Kate had forgotten her troubles, and was away back in

her youth, when, if all accounts be true, there were few, few fit to

hold a candle to her wild beauty or devilry.

"Och, the nights like this would not be hindering the ploys when my leg

was the talk o' a parish, and my cheeks like the wild red rose. We had

a' the lads to pick and choose among, Bell and me; and mora, it was not

gear they cam' courting for.

"There was a time we slept in the bochan to be nearer the beasts, we

would be telling the old ones, but maybe it was not for that at all,

for your grandfather was raiking then, Dan McBride, it kinna runs in

the breed o' ye. Ay, well, we were in bed, Bell and me, when the Laird

o' Nourn whistled low outside. 'The devil take ye, Kate,' Bell would

be crying, 'he'll be in,' for there was only divots in the window in

the bochan. 'He will that,' says I, and I saw the divots tumbling, and

in he came assourying wi' two o' us, and us feart when he gied his

great nicker o' a laugh, for fear he would be awakening the old folks,

or rouse the dogs, although they kent him well enough, a rake like

themselves."

"Was he no' the auld devil?" says Dan with a laugh; "two o' ye, and the

best-looking lassies in the countryside."

"He wasna aul'," cried Kate--"aul'; he was as like you as two trout.

He got us two suits o' sailors' claes and he cam' tae see us dressed in

them, and bonny sailors we made, Bell and me, and we went to the Glen

and called on our uncles. It was dark inside, and they were sitting

ower the fire talking slow and loud, and we went in.

"'What will you be wantin' here in God's name?' said Angus.

"'We've nae money and nae meat,' said I, 'and our ship has sailed

without us, and we're starving.'

"'Starving, John, starving, will ye be hearin' the poor sailor lads.

We have not got any money, John, to be giving, but gie the lads an egg

apiece, John, an egg apiece; and John brought us an egg, and then Bell

winked at me, and 'Ye hard old scart,' says I in the Gaelic, and he got

up on his feet, for he would be knowing my voice, and he could not be

understanding it at all, and when we had finished our devilry I gave

him the egg what I was fit and ran, and Angus would be crying--

"'Give me the graip, John; give me the graip. Angus will kill boas

(both).'

"So an' on the night wore through; whiles we would be telling old

stories, and there would be times when we sat silent except for auld

Kate whimpering at the fireside.

"These were the days and these were the nights, ochone and ochone, for

the like o' them we'll be seeing nevermore."

And in the morning the women made a meal, moving stealthily about the

house and keeping together when the men went out to their beasts--for

birth or death, wedding or christening, the beasts must be looked to,

and that's good farming. The seas were breaking white in the bay and

the ships lay at the stretch of their cables, but although we searched

long and ardently, we could not find the _Seagull_. We were downcast

and silent, and no man looked at his neighbour, for the fear was on all

of our hearts that McGilp and his crew were lost, and at last I voiced

my dread to the innkeeper.

"Ye do not ken McGilp to be speaking that way," said he, and his voice

was hoarse as a raven's croak. "We could not have run a cargo last

night wi' the sea like a boiling pot; and if the _Gull_ had anchored

off the Rhu Ban Cove there would be plenty to be wondering why she was

there. No, no, my lad; there's sailor men on the _Gull_, and a wee

thing will not frighten them. She just ran before it, man, and she's

standing off and on till the night."

And so it proved, for that night McGilp himself was rowed ashore, and

his eyes were red as a rabbit's wi' the lashing o' the sea, and the

white salt was dried on his beard.

With him was McNeilage, his mate, his face red and shining like a

well-fed minister, and the drink to his thrapple.

"A great night last night," said he. "Och, a night like the old

roaring times when every ship on God's seven seas was a fortune for the

lifting."

We were on the shore at the Rhu Ban, working and toiling at the cargo

with the oars muffled, and no man speaking above his breath, and when

we had the cargo in the coves, and the seaweed and trash from the shore

concealing it, we made our way to the outhouse where McKelvie's lass

had waited, for there were friends of the dead Laird's in the house,

and new men are hard to trust in the smuggling. And at the outhouse I

spoke to fierce Ronny McKinnon as he stood among the crew.

"Ronny," said I, "there was a bonny lass putting herself about for ye,

or ye might have been listening to mice cheeping instead o' the waves

out there."

"I've been in many's the ploy," says Ronny, "and the lassies liked me

well enough, except just one."

"Would her name be Mirren now?" said I.

"I'll no' say but it might just be that," says Ronny, with a thinking

look in his eyes.

"There was a lass o' that name, on a Hielan' pony, met Dan and me at

Bothanairidh the day before the snow," says I. "She talked about ye

for a while."

"She would be having nothing good to be saying," says he with a laugh.

"For everything I did was a fault except just I would be sitting at

home with my old mother, and so I just fell in wi' McGilp, and left the

lassies to claver among themsel's for a year or two, for they will have

too many cantrips for a simple man."

"It would just be that lass that told us about the Preventives lying in

the cove near the Snib, and she was sore feart a lad Ronny McKinnon

would be transported."

"And would she be saying just that," says Ronny.

"She would just," says I.

"It's no like her temper at a', but I'll be thanking her for that kind

thought," says he, and commenced to his whistling o' pipers' tunes.

[1] Cormorants.

[2] Boghay.

CHAPTER IX.

MIRREN STUART BIDS HER DOG LIE DOWN.

It was after the burial of the Red Laird that we returned to the Quay

Inn in McKelvie's skiff, and this time we had McKelvie's lass and Ronny

McKinnon with us. The _Seagull_ was at anchor now over near Donal's

Point, for McGilp had much business to attend to. Little skiffs had

flitted in the night through the darkness of the bay. The cove was

empty, and in the sand ballast of many a smack sailing for the mainland

ports, there was that hidden that the smacksmen prized more than their

honest cargoes of coal or potatoes. Ronny McKinnon had been aye about

the cove, concealed in the daytime and busy in the night, for McGilp

trusted him much, and McKelvie's skiff had made a run with only the

innkeeper and swart Robin on board, except for a keg or two concealed

beneath a sail and a tangled long line. At the Quay Inn Mrs McKelvie

made a great work with her lass, and would not be letting her do a

hand's turn, but just sit and be resting, and every one was very merry

about the place. The two sons were scattering clean sand on the floor,

and the fine scent of cooking in the kitchen was wafted to the tap-room

and made my very teeth water for a square meal, for the sea had made me

hungry. Ronny left us at the inn and made his way homewards, and I

would be hearing his cheery cries to the folk he passed, for he would

be everybody's fair-headed laddie, and maybe Mirren Stuart would be

feeling surer of her man when he would be sitting at home with his old

mother, for it seemed to me that the lassies that would be passing had

very bright eyes, and that they would be looking back often too.

We sat down to a meal in the kitchen, Dan and me, and he kept them all

in crack. For the mistress he promised to gather bog-bean when the

time came, and she was in her very element; and there sat Dan McBride

with Gude kens what evil in his head, his eyes smiling at the old dame

and listening how she cured a young lass of a stomach complaint with

the wee round caps of the wilks--"for mind you," says she, "each wee

round cap will lift its ain weight o' poison frae the stomach."

"And the coosp,[1] now, mistress; Hamish here will no' be believing me,

but there's de'il the halt better for the coosp than"--and so his talk

went on, and him not believing one word. And when her mother would be

rattling among the plates on the dresser, Dan would be bending over and

speaking to the lass, and looking into her eyes, and the gruff old

father saying never a word, and the two sons arguing where it was that

Dan had jumped the Nourn burn when the bridge was carried away with the

big spate. And when we had our fill o' eating, we followed Ronny up

the Glen, for Dan would ken how the hogs were doing there now he was

this length, and so we tracked through the Glen, leaving Finlay

Stuart's house behind us. As we passed I saw a lass in the stable, and

I wondered if Ronny had seen his mother yet.

It was just the long weary road to the South End that Dan and me

travelled, so the reader can follow Ronny, for he told me his story

long after of his coming when we needed him most. And this was the

story that he told me:--

"Man," said Ronny, "when I took my leave o' ye at the Quay I just

thought yon day would see it settled between Mirren and me, once and

for all, and I'll no' be denying a queer happy feeling, for I felt I

could be conquering everything that day; but maybe it was because o'

the siller I had in my spluchan to be giving to my old mother, for if

the want o' it will not be making a lad miserable, the having o' it

will aye keep his spirits up.

"I would be thinking, inside of myself, that she would be sitting in

the kitchen, my old mother, and shooing the wee white hen away from

layin' in the bed, and then I would be coming in so quiet, and be

putting my hands over her eyes, and she would be kenning me, and

laughing, and greeting, for that I was back. Then I would be making

her spread her brat over her knees, and be throwing the siller into her

lap and listening to the cries o' her. But whiles among these thoughts

I would be making pictures o' a limber long-legged lass that could work

horse like a man, and would be on the hill after sheep when her

neighbours would be stretching themselves in bed, and rubbing the sleep

from their eyes. And I was seeing her standing on the top of the hill,

wi' the morning breeze playing with her brown hair, wi' the clear

sparkle in her eyes and her lips curled to whistle on the dogs, and aye

I would be wondering if I would get a sight o' her when I passed her

father's place.

"When I came near, there was the great barking o' dogs, and a

black-and-tan collie came at me wi' the burses ridged on his back and

his white teeth showing.

"'Chance, ye old fool,' said I, and at that he gave a yelp, and came at

me daft to be seeing me, and jumping to be licking my face. I got him

to heel, although, mind you, it did my heart good, his welcome, for we

were long friends, and there were few, few that Chance would welcome.

But I would aye be liking the dog since the first time I put my arm

round Mirren, and that was years ago. She would have thrown it from

her that time, for she was like a quick-tempered boy, but at her angry

movement the old dog girned at me, and the rumble o' his growl made us

look, and there he was ready to spring at me, and it makes me laugh

yet; for Mirren, my own quick-tempered lass, fondled my hand at her

waist to quieten him.

"'Mirren,' said I, and I took my arm away, 'there's just nothing for it

but you should put your arm round me, for I can see you will only be

tholing mine for the sake o' my skin.'

"'There will be many a blue sea below your feet before Mirren Stuart

will be doing that,' said she, and I let her go a step in front of me,

maybe to see the fine swing o' her, and her free mountain stride.

"I was thinking o' that time when we came to the gate o' Finlay's

place, Chance and me, and the snow had been cleared from before the

stable, and when I looked, there was the Uist pony standing at the door

and Mirren busy at the grooming o' him, and her hair was tousled a wee

and curled at the nape o' her neck, and her sleeves turned back.

"I put my arms on the gate and stood watching her, for many a night I

would be thinking of her and me away, and then maybe because she would

be feeling an eye on her, she turned round.

"'Will ye aye be my lass yet, Mirren?' and I was proud to see the red

flush rise to her cheeks.

"'How many would that be making, Ronny?' she cried, and came half way

and stopped.

"'Just the one, Mirren,' said I, and opened the gate and came beside

her.

"'Ye will have changed then since last I kent ye.'

"'Indeed, and I think ye're bonnier yoursel', lass, and I would not be

believing that possible,' and we walked to the stable door wi' old

Chance at our heels.

"'They will have surely been teaching you nice talk, the stranger

lassies, Ronny.'

"'Mirren, dear,' said I, and put my hand on her shoulder, 'we will not

be talking that way any more, you and me,' and at the stable door o'

Finlay Stuart's place I put my arm round the shoulders of his proud

lass Mirren, and held her back, and made her look at me.

"'My lass,' said I, 'in a wee while I will be kissing my trysted wife.'

"'Look at the dog, Ronny, first,' said Mirren, but her eyes were

laughing.

"'I will be hearing him without looking away from you,' said I.

"And with that I bent my head to kiss her, but her face was turned away

from me, and even then I was hearing the growling o' the collie, and

wondering where he would be fastening on me. Then with my head quite

close to her, I whispered--

"'Will it not have been any good at all, dear, all my love for you?

Will you be sending me away from you after all?'

"Then as I waited, she said a queer thing--

"'Chance! Chance! _lie down_!' and at that the laughing came on me,

and my own lass turned her dear face to me glowing, and with a look of

mingled pride and shame she looked at me and put her arms round my neck.

"'I will not be a great hand at saying love talk, Ronny,' she

whispered. 'I can just be holding you tight, but take me if ye will be

having so poor a lass, for I will have been loving you all to myself

all the time.'

"And when a wee while was passed and we found ourselves in the stable

(for a lass has always an eye for who may be looking), Mirren Stuart

gave me a look of great scorn, but playfully.

"'It will be as well that one o' us is farmer enough to mind the

beasts,' said she, and went out and took the garron into his stall, for

he had been clean forgot, and stood looking longingly into his stable

and the wind raising a pook o' hair on his tail."

* * * * * *

"Well, when the lassies, Mirren's sisters, were by wi' teasing us, I

sat down to a meal in Finlay's kitchen, and when I rose on my legs to

be going, my lass flung a shawl round her, and wondrous bonny she was

in that shawl, and we left by the back road to be seeing my mother, and

the lassies flung bachles at us 'for luck.' And although Mirren was

not out o' my sight in the house, yet I will be quite sure they kent we

were for the marrying, for I got a glimpse o' Peggy, a rollicking

tomboy o' a lass, rubbing herself against Mirren's shawl and crying,

'It's me that will be going off next.'

"And Anne, a ruddy lass, whispered--

"'Now that you will have the lad you were speaking about through your

sleep, Mirren, maybe ye'll be giving me your garters,' and between one

and the other o' them, it was a red-faced, brave-looking lass that

stood wi' me in my mother's kitchen.

"And my mother, that I had been wearying for a sight o' for three years

past, my old mother, kissed the lass first, and then--

"'You will have managed to bring him to his senses at last, Mirren

dear,' said she; and then I found that these two had been having the

great confabs when I would be away, and my wife has told me since, when

she was new-fangled wi' me, and very loving, that she would just be

going there to be listening to my mother's stories about me, when I

would be a wean; and although I will be telling her that the things I

am remembering most are the skelpings I would be getting, she just will

be laughing at me.

"'It is not one half of what you would be deserving, my man,' she says.

"So and on, there we sat wi' the red glow of the fire shining on my old

mother's face, making her look hearty and well in her white mutch, and

glinting on Mirren's eyes when she turned to speak, and lowing in the

copper o' her hair, and I would be content to sit and listen to these

two, till Mirren had to be going. On the road home she made no

complaints when I put my arm round her, for was she not my own lass

now. Moreover, it was dark. We were at our first good-night under the

rowan-trees beside the byre, for rowans will keep the fairies away, and

it is good farming to have them where the beasts will be walking under

them every day. We were loath to part, Mirren and me, and she would be

lying against my breast, when there came the figure of a man running,

and I kent him for Gilchrist the excise-man.

"'Stop a wee, my lad; stop,' says I. 'What will be hurrying ye?'

"'That damned McGilp has escaped us again,' said he, 'and Dan McBride

has killed Dol Rob Beag.'

"'Run, Ronny, run,' cried Mirren, and pulled me to the stable. 'Dan

will be needing all his friends before the morning,' and she had the

bridle on the garron, and I was on his back like a flash, and making

for the Quay Inn before she was done speaking."

[1] Coosp=chilblain on the heel.

CHAPTER X.

DOL BEAG IS FLUNG INTO A FIRE.

And now you will be coming to meet Dan and me on the long road back

from the South End, and coming on with us like a good comrade, for Dan

that day walked like a man that was fey, and I, who would be thinking I

kent him, might just as weel have been walking with a stranger. Below

the shoulder o' the big black hill, before ye come to the Laird's Turn,

he halted.

"Man, Hamish, the hills are just vexed wi' me this day," said he, "and

I ken a' their moods, as weel as a bairn kens his mother."

"To me," said I, and I would be searching about in my mind for the

right words, like a pedant, for was I not college-bred--"to me," said

I, "they aye look just grandly contemptuous," and, mind you, my heart

went out to the great strong man at my side because of the soft place

in his warm heart for the grim old hills, for I would aye be feared to

talk that way to him, for fear of his laughing.

"I ken what ye mean by grandly contemptuous too," said he. "I have

felt that way when I would be gathering sheep, and looking up at the

crags and the rocks above me, and the head o' the hill would be turned

from me in disdain, and I would be feeling like the wee red ant

crawling on the beard o' a warrior, asleep on a glorious battlefield.

I canna just be putting the right words to it, but, man, I feel it

inside o' me.

"There's days in the early summer mornings before the heat-haze has

lifted when a man can see the hills lying on their backs wi' their

faces to the sun, like giants resting, and he can see the smile on the

brow o' them when the sun beats down, and it's fine to be imagining

that they're laughing to one another; and on these days the hills are

aye friendly to a man, and when he lies down among the heather the

spirit o' the hills will be knowing him, and his forebears, since the

hills were established; but ah! they will be glooming at me the day.

"There's a frown on the brow o' the Urie, and his face is hidden from

me, and listen to the grumbling and flyting o' the burn. They're a'

vexed, Hamish, but we're to have company down through the glen, for

yonder will be Sandy Nicol driving his stots to the bay."

We made up on the drover, a wild unkempt man with a great red beard

wagging on his broad chest, and fierce blue eyes that seldom winked,

and it seemed to me that his dogs--for two deep-chested, lean-flanked

black collies slunk at his heel--it seemed to me that they kent his

mind before he spoke a word, for they worked the wild hill-bred stots

like the dogs the old folk will be telling about.

"Ye would be looking to the hogs," said he, as if he had kent us from

the hillside and no greeting was needed; and as he spoke I thought of

an old door swinging on rust-eaten hinges, for his voice was deep and

harsh, as though he opened his mouth seldom to speak; and indeed such

was the case, for he lived on his farm among the hills alone with his

dogs.

"It's no great day this to be travelling beasts," said Dan, as we

walked at the tails o' the little herd.

"Ay, but this is just the day for Sandy. Nae fears o' the evil eye wi'

the snaw on the road, for there's something clean aboot snaw, and auld

wives are at their firesides, wi' their ill wishes and evil eyes."

"You will ken the Red Laird's deid and buried, Sandy?"

For a wee while after Dan's question we three walked in silence, and

then the drover turned his wild face to us.

"We watched the devil coming for him yon night; we watched his coming,

ay, away far out on the sea, the black stallions stretched to the

gallop like racing hounds, and the hoofs o' them striking white fire

frae the water, and the flames o' hell curling and twisting round the

wheels o' his chariot. Ay, we watched oor lane, the dogs and me, and

his whip was forked lightning, and his voice drooned the roar o' the

gale."

I felt a grue slither through me when the man stopped, for his harsh

voice intoned his words like some dreadful chant.

"Ye would be late out that night," said Dan, and again we were silent

till the drover spoke, and the thought came to me that he arranged all

his words in his mind, and then loosed his tongue to them.

"They were round us, that night, evil spirits and evil beasts, and they

would be lifting the thatch from the roof; and we went out, the dogs

and me, and a' the great rocks on the hillside would be jumbling and

jarring thegether, for all the evil ones were loose from the pit, and

tumbling the hills, and setting them straight, and the blue lowes were

rissling on the hill-tops. But I would be holding my steel in my hand,

and we sat and watched, the dogs and me."

"Was it the skein-dubh you would be holding?"

"It would not be the black knife, Dan McBride; it would just be this."

At that Sandy Nicol showed us a small object, which seemed to me to be

a twisted horse-shoe nail wrapped round about with wool; but he would

not be letting it go from his palm, and when I would have examined it

closer he put it past.

"It's not Sandy that would be droving without his steel," he cried.

"Would you aye be carrying that?" said I; for he looked so wild and

lawless that it was not in me to be believing that he trusted to aught

save his dirk.

"There was a time no, mo bhallach," said Sandy Nicol, "a time when I

would be selling back-calvers and stots to the Red Laird for the

mainland markets; and it would just be the wee Broon Lass o' Ardbennan

that saved the beasts--for, ye see, I did not always stay ma lane, and

when my mother would be failin' and her joints stiffening like a' aged

beasts, the milking would aye be done and the byre mucked when she got

up in the morning. Oh, but she was the wise one, for she would be

leaving the best o' the cream in a basin, and maybe a bannock, for the

wee Broon Lass, for my mother would be seeing her flitting among the

battens. And before she went away she would be telling me: 'Never be

offering her boots or claes when the snaw comes, Sandy, for the Broonie

o' Lag 'a bheithe[1] left in sore anger for that they pitied her in the

snaw.'

"Direach sin, it was a fine day I started to drive the back-calvers and

stots, and the sun red wi' a fine-weather haze, and the roads hard and

dry, and it was maybe two hours I was on the road and the beasts

settled, when there came a woman on the road and a shawl about her

head, and I kent her for a devil's black bairn that could be telling

her ain folk when the rain would come in the harvest, and when the

butter would come on at the kirning.

"A bad unchancy woman; ye'll ken the breed o' them, for they will be

sore feart o' clean burn-water, but they'll be coorieing ower a fire a'

day, and talking to the black cat, and I had it in my mind to be

turning when I saw her, for did she not come into the byre at Dyke-end

when the beasts were at their fother, and she stood and she eyed them.

"'So bonny,' says she, 'so bonny and fat and glossy, and the wee bit

speckled quey calves they'll be leaving,' and with that she walked up

the byre and ran her hand over the tors of the beasts, crooning away to

herself; and another month saw the last of the kye pic calved.

"Well, well, I stood when she came to me, and she smirked at me.

'Seven braw beasts, and not a lame yin among them,' says she, and

tittered a wee bit laugh that set the dogs girning through their bare

teeth; and then she went her way, and her laughing coming back to me,

and we would not be far on when the first of the beasts was hirpling;

and one after the other the lameness came on them, till I could just

have sat down and grat that I had not set the dogs on the witch.

"I would just be turning the beasts on the road for a wee, when there

came the wee Broon Lass among the bracken on the hillside, and then I

left the road and took the dogs with me, and we hid on the low side,

for fear to anger the wee Broon Lass. She went among the beasts, and

they would be kenning her, and lowing quietly like calves, and she

would be lifting their feet, and then there would be a hole in the

clits o' them a'. And the wee Broon Lass, she blew and she blew into

the hole, and went on to the next, and in a wee the beasts were walking

sound, and taking a bite at the sprits and the scrog on the roadside,

and I lay close till I saw the wee one near the rise o' the hill, and

started the beasts again, and the lameness came near them not any more,

but aye I would be carrying the steel after that."

In the middle of the glen we left Sandy Nicol with his dogs and his

travelling beasts, and before we turned the bend where the nut-trees

were I looked back, and there he came on slowly with the sunset light

on him as he came, and I saw him looking to the great rocks on his left

hand as though he waited the coming of something not of this world; and

again he would be looking down through the bare trees to the dark glen

where the burn was muttering and grumbling coldly, and it was strange

to me that these wild men, so terrible in their anger, would be

believing all these old stories, until the thought came to me that it

would just be the poetry and imaginings of the Celt, alone among the

hills that are aye on the very point of speaking to their children; for

a man, and a bold man, will be seeing and hearing strange things among

the hills, when the mist comes down, when he will have listened to the

stories of hate and love and clan feuds of his folks since he could be

listening, clapped on his creepie stool close to his mother's skirt,

and his head against her knees.

* * * * * *

There was great company gathered at the Quay Inn when we entered,

although many of the ships had sailed, but there were sailors too, for

the bay was not handy for owners to come at, and the Quay Inn was a

favourite, so that it was no uncommon thing for ships to be wind-bound

for days, and even weeks, and there would be the great fights between

the men from the ships and the lads from the glens. But there was no

trouble when we entered at all, for with the snow and the hard frost

outside, the great fire was the cheery place to be sitting at, and

indeed there must needs be ill blood between men if they will not be

agreeing over the best of drink, and fine company to be drinking it

with.

But it was as if every one was well pleased and with no worries, for I

saw no men whispering, with heads close, but every one happy to

recklessness, and already there was the darker red flush on the faces

that told of drink taken, and then I saw that many of the men gathered,

had been to the cove at the Rhu Ban in their skiffs, and were met here

to celebrate the run in their ain way. A great shouting they made when

Dan stood among them, his eyes shining, for a ploy of this kind was

meat and drink to him, and they made room for us by the fire; while

McKelvie brought steaming glasses, and winked and nodded, and would be

looking wise as though we might ken something about his wares that he

would not be telling everybody, till indeed I could not keep back the

laughing to see the grave stern man so far gone with his own liquor.

And as we sat I would be watching a sailor with a knife at his hip, and

the lithe swing of the mountaineer in his carriage--a Skye man, I was

thinking; but he stood silent against the jamb of the fireplace, and

his eyes were dreamy and sad, and in myself I knew he was seeing his

own place, and him outward bound. When the night was wearing on it

came his turn to sing, and with his song I knew that my thinking was

right, for his song was a farewell to Skye. Now I know not the words,

but the air will haunt me whiles when the days are shortening, and the

pictures he painted will never be leaving my mind.

For I saw the dark sad hills of Coulin, and the sun blood-red on the

peaks, and the heavy dark night clouds tinged and burnished with gold,

and the sea was all silent, with the wee waves rippling on the shore.

And on the shore was a maiden looking away and away to sea, and the

nets all unheeded at her feet, and the seagulls not heeding her at all,

and the great sorrow was in her eyes, in the very poise of her; and I

wondered where was the lithe lad she should be having to love her, for

her eyes would aye be looking at the empty sea. . . .

When my mind was wandering on pictures of sadness, of an empty sea and

great grim silent hills, the inn door was pushed open, and the cold

swirl of frosty night air made the roysterers turn, and in there came a

thick-set junk of a man. Always to my mind, Dol Rob Beag, for he it

was, had a look of a Joonie doorie, being all run to shoulders, and no

neck on him at all. His arms hung well to his knee, giving the man the

appearance of a powerful animal. His face was brown as a smack's sail,

and his eyes red and shifty as a ferret's.

"What is it ye waant here?" growled McKelvie with a lowerin' look, and

there was silence from the others; and the men put their drink down

where it would not spill if there should be a scrimmage. Dol Beag put

a hand to his beard, and his shifty eyes fixed on the innkeeper.

"Ceevility," says he, "from a man in the public. I'm wantin' that, and

I'll be payin' for whatever drink I'll tak. Put a refreshment before

me, McKelvie, and go back again to your affairs."

There's no denying the man had a cold-steel bravery in him, and a grim

smile flickered on his face as he watched McKelvie, for no Hielan'man

born can thole being likened to a menial, and the dark blood of hatred

glowed on the innkeeper's face.

"I ken the ceevility I would like to be giving to you, Dol Beag," says

he, and put a drink on the table, and lifting the coin tendered in

payment he hurled it behind the fire. "I would not be thinking myself

clean if I kept your money."

Dol Beag was on him before his words were out.

"The hell take you," he girned through clenched teeth, and his knife

left his hip. "Ye'll lick where that lay, McKelvie, ye--ye--maker of

meats for sailors," and the sweat rolled off his brow, and his voice

was a skirl of rage.

McKelvie grabbed a horse-pistol from among his kegs.

"Ye hound, I'll put a hole in ye that will be hurrying the gaugers tae

fill wi' siller," and as quick as light he levelled the pistol and drew

the trigger. The room was filled with brimstone smoke that gripped the

back of the throat, but Dol Beag was unhurt, and creeping like a

powerful beast on his enemy. (The heavy bullet had smashed through the

eight-day clock.) McKelvie was retreating warily to his barrels again,

and I wondered if he had another pistol, when Dan laid his hand on Dol

Beag.

"Stop a minute," said he; "there's some talk due to me before ye kill

McKelvie."

"Ay, ay, wan at a time, McBride; I'll be feenishing the stickin' o'

this pig before I will start on you, and you can be countin' your

bastards again," and with that he whipped round on Dan like an eel with

his dirk hand high. But a spring took Dan clear, and before Dol Beag

could follow, Dan had him in the air spitting like a cat.

"Ashes to ashes," says he, "dhust to dhust," says he, in a thick blind

rage, and hurled Dol smash between the stone jambs to the back of the

fire.

I saw Dol Rob Beag's neck take the corner of the jamb, and heard the

wrench, and then the singeing smell started, and I pulled him out from

the fire and the Skye man flung a stoup of water on him.

"Give him the whisky quick," cried swart Robin McKelvie; "put it down

his throat," but Dol Beag lay still.

A young man at the door--the same exciseman, Gilchrist, that trotted at

Mirren Stuart's coat-tails--cried in a thin voice, "Christ, he's deid;

ye'll swing for this, Dan McBride," and disappeared in the night. With

that the sailors made for the door, driven by that fear of the law with

the long arm and the ruthless grasp; but Dan stood for a while looking

on his handiwork in dour silence.

"He brought it on himself, Hamish," says he; "but, man, I'm sorry for

his wife's sake."

"Out, man, out," I cried at him; "there's nae time for sorrow," and

there came the clop-clop of a galloping horse on the frozen road, and

Ronny McKinnon flung himself among us.

"The back door, damnation, the back door," he cried, and pushed Dan

before him. "Will ye wait till that wasp's bink is buzzin' aboot yer

lugs?"

We followed McKinnon through the kitchen and into the yard behind the

inn, and a great fear came on me, for the yard was overhung with a

bush-covered precipice, and the long icicles glittering, and there was

only the track round to the main road open.

"We're trapped, Dan; we're trapped."

"Trapped nane. Follow me, ye gomeril; there's a track up the broo,"

whispered McKinnon, and swung himself among the lowest of the bushes,

and we followed.

"I ken the very branches to put my hand on," says he, "and where every

stane is, for many's the night I ran the cutter for the auld wives."

We were half-way up before Dan spoke.

"I never kilt a man before," says he in a low whisper.

"Ye did weel for a beginner," says that wild young sea-hawk. "Nobody

will be blaming ye for botching the work." And as we struggled up he

hissed a fierce sea oath at me, when my clumsier boot dislodged an

icicle that tinkled like breaking glass in the yard below us.

"On, man, on," he whispered. "Ye'll need a' your start, for the gang

will hunt ye doon like a mad dog."

"Fareweel, Hamish," says Dan, and put his hand to mine on the cliff

head. "I'll harrow my ain ploughing."

"Go on, man, go on," I cried; "they're coming," for lights were

flashing on the road, and loud voices raised. We had gained a bare

half-mile on the cliff face, for the road up was "round about," and

Ronny was impatient.

"Och, will ye wait for the hangman's rope?" in a fierce whisper below

his breath. "There's a hidie-hole I ken, but little good it'll dae ye

when the hitch is on your thrapple." And we started the long race to

the hills, picking out the patches behind the dykes where the ground

was bare.

[1] Lag 'a bheithe=the hollow of the birch.

CHAPTER XI.

THE BLAZING WHINS.

McKinnon was first in that long race and I next to him, for Dan would

not let me out of his sight lest I should lag behind and get rough

handling, although indeed, except the gaugers would yelp questions at

me which I might not find easy to answer, there was little I had to

fear, but it was always in Dan's mind that he had the charge of me.

The land was cultivated on a stey[1] face of maybe a half-mile before

the hill common started, and over the common (where in the summer the

cattle and hens were taken) the heather was patchy with bog hay, and

short crisp turf in places. It was this wrought land I feared most,

for the snow was not swept in wreaths, leaving darker patches, but lay

like a white napkin over the land, and a black object could be seen

from a great distance. But there was a belting of beech-trees and

Scots firs marching two farms; and coorieing in sheuchs, where the ice

crinkled in metallic splinters under our feet, we crawled to the

belting, and were able to stand upright again, at which I breathed a

sigh of relief, for my back had a pain like a band of hot iron with the

long bending. We scrambled among the trees, and lay a moment, for

there was a roughness of bushes and briars, and the snow had been blown

off the branches, so there was little likelihood of our being seen. We

lay breathing hard and peering through the bushes for signs of pursuit

(for the exciseman who cried the news at Finlay Stuart's, not knowing

his listener, would have roused his pack by this time), and that Rob

Beag was in their pay secretly there was now little doubt. It would be

short shrift for Dan if he were caught. Maybe two minutes we lay, and

I could have counted every beat of my heart, as it rose with a great

thud against my chest, and I felt the blood throb in my head like a

prisoner dashing against his cell. The noise of a fall of snow from

the fir branches seemed loud as thunder, although we must have been

quiet enough, for I mind me of the rabbits loping from the burrows

daintily, and sitting up very boldly, almost under reach of a

shepherd's crook from me.

"They will have taken roun' the road," says Ronny; "they'll be on us

before we see them if we lie here."

On we went in single file in the belting. Briars swung back and cut me

across the face, branches tore at us in passing all unheeded, and once

my leg, to the knee, sunk into a hole and threw me bodily; but I pulled

myself out, and was lame for six steps maybe, and forgot about it.

When we were half-way to the hill common there came sharp and clear

through the night the neigh of a horse.

"The doited fules," cries Ronny. "They've ta'en the horses to ride a

man doon among the hills."

"Let me once win the peat bink," says Dan, "and I'll wander the devil

himsel'." And from the ring in his voice I kent his dark mood had

passed, and waited to see him take the lead; but no, he herded me from

behind, but cheerily now. We had crossed a high road, and entered the

belting of trees again, and along this road the gangers would come, and

our spoor was written plain.

"There will be the collieshangie when they see our marks in the snaw,

but they'll founder their horses on the brae and ill-use time tae nae

purpose, if just we get ower the common."

From the high ground we could see the road for half a mile and the

hunters in full cry, some on horseback and some afoot.

"Horse and foot," says Dan at my ear. "A grim chase, Hamish. I wish

ye had left me, lad."

A terrible curse from Ronny made me think our flank was already turned.

"The devil blast them. The whuns, I clean forgot the whuns," and he

called on the Almighty to blast and destroy every whin-bush that ever

grew.

Amidst the torrent of oaths that buzzed around me I remembered hearing

of the whin planting. In these days keep for beasts was scarce, and

the crofters would be cutting green whins, and pounding them between

flat stones and feeding cattle and horse with them. Indeed, to this

day you'll see the flat stone yet at many a byre-end, although it is

never used now except maybe to set a boyne on on washing days; but the

poor cow beasts were terribly fond of the whins, and they'll tell you

yet, the old folks, that when they were herding in their young days,

when the beasts got scattered, they would take a whin bush and light it

to windward, and let the whin smoke drift down the wind, and the beasts

would come running, for they liked the charred whins with the sap still

in the jags. Here and there they planted whins, for at one time they

had to go all the way to the castle for them, and on one side the

common was a great dense bank of them, thick as corn, and well grown.

"They'll be round us like collies round a marrow bane," said Ronny, and

as he spoke there was a shout from the highroad, and Dan laughed.

"This is where the kirn starts," and looking over my shoulder as I ran

I saw the horsemen spread out like a fan (on either side the belting)

where we crossed the road, and the men on foot were on our heels.

They knew of the bank of whins we must struggle through, and relied on

their horses' speed to take them round the planting and catch us coming

out while the men on foot harried our rear. It was 'twixt devil and

deep sea, and the smuggler cursed himself for leading us into the clove

hitch.

Between us and the whins was a burn with steep earthy banks, and too

wide and deep to risk horses over. So the horsemen on our left made

for a slap[2] where a rough peat-track crossed the burn, but those on

our right kept straight on, like the road to Imachar. At the lower end

of the whins the burn was shallower and the banks low.

We flung across the stream, carrying down an avalanche of loose earth

and stones after us, and breenged into the maze of prickly bushes,

winding through those that the snow had been blown off. But mostly the

bushes were dry and bare of snow, and this indeed proved our safety.

We were nearly through the clumps when the horsemen on our right

crossed the burn with a great floundering and splashing, and those on

our left came galloping over the peat-track, and the first horseman

galloped past us, so close that I heard the squeak of the saddle

leather. We were crouched in a wee burn winding among the bushes; for

they grew strongly on either side, and left a little tunnel which one

could creep through without much hindrance, and as the riders drove

their unwilling beasts among the whins we crawled upwards like cats.

While the men on foot beat for us, and the horsemen kept wary eyes for

a movement to betray us, we crept from the whins and crawled like

adders belly flat up the little stream, over which dry bracken still

hung and straggling whin bushes, like soldiers marching away from the

main body. We had crawled maybe fifty yards, when McKinnon turned his

face to me, and the blood was drying on his cheeks and brow where the

whins had marked him.

"Stop," his lips only moved; and I stopped and turned to Dan, for he

still had the rear-guard.

The burn had worn out a round hole under our bank, and we crawled in

and lay there, and never, never will I forget the cold of that pool and

the streak of light above us, for we lay in a brook that a sheep could

walk over, and indeed its very narrowness was our safety, for it surely

had been watched else. And while we lay in the frozen cold of the

pool, the water tinkled and gurgled and laughed, and went plout-plout

at my knees, as though it was a hot summer day and we were stooping to

drink.

"We must just lie here like rats," whispered the smuggler, and I held

my chin to stop the chattering of my teeth, "for this burn gets

narrower than a sheep drain. We must just steep in the water and think

of the whisky."

We could hear the swishing among the whins, and the shouts of the

rabble behind us, and the clatter of horses' hoofs on the shingle of

the burn, and the splashing.

"They're in there like rabbits in a patch of corn in the harvest,"

cried one man.

"By God, if I could only get that Ronny McKinnon under my bonny blue

hanger," said Gilchrist, the ganger that had the soft side for Mirren

Stuart.

"One good prog wid pay for this night's daftness," growled his leader,

and again came Gilchrist's voice--

"Was I tae ken McKinnon was ootside Finlay Stuart's and a dozen o' ye

in the kitchen."

"Umph," sniffed Ronny, "it's the great company that gathers at

Finlays," and indeed Mirren Stuart saved many's the house at that time,

for the gangers and excisemen went after her sisters, while old Finlay

smiled grimly, and Mirren got hold of the secrets.

"If a man runnin' like that Gilchrist can blurt oot the news and keep

runnin', it's maistly truth, but if he stops and begins to walk, and

twist his mouth before he speaks, he's makin' lies," said McKinnon, and

turned himself in the water.

The searchers were beginning to tire of beating.

"Roast the devil oot." "Ay, gie McBride a taste o' the fire."

"I'm thanking God for a fool," said Dan, "if the whins will just burn,

but whins are dour revengefu' bushes."

"Burn," says Ronny--"burn; they'll hiv a bleeze ye'll see for twenty

miles--we're bate, Dan."

"Na, na," says Dan. "Wait you, yonder's a twinkle, anither. Man,

they'll mak' a bonny lowe, and waste a heap of good keep."

Men were rushing hither and thither with flaming branches, and already,

when the breeze freshened, you could hear the roar and crackle. The

great lilac flames leapt ten feet in the air, and the night rained

stars. The sparks fell above us like fire-flakes, and some came down

and sizzled out in our pool.

When the flames were roaring like a hurricane, Dan spoke softly--

"We'll go now."

"Are ye daft?" said Ronny.

"Ye don't ken the effect o' a fire like that," said Dan. "A man must

look at it, and see the lowes ploofin' into the sky, and the sparks

fleein'. He canna help himsel'. The horses will be needing a lot o'

handling too, and the men on the low side'll just hiv tae run tae

winward or lie in the burn, for the heat o' whuns is terrible. They'll

a' face the flames waitin' till we run oot like bleezin' deevils, and

they're sae sure that we will start every moment, they will not lift

their eyes for fear they will be missing the sight o' us."

"We must just risk it," said I, "for I'm like to freeze here."

Dan put his head out of our hole and crawled out, and I followed, and

Ronny last. We could feel the air warm, and the night was clear as

day, and yet the searchers stood gazing at their fire as Dan had said.

We crawled flat like snakes, keeping among dark patches as much as we

could, till we came to the turf dyke, and still our pursuers tended the

fire. Slowly and softly we crossed into heather, and lay for a minute.

Then, looking down across the common, Dan threw back his head and

laughed in his silent fashion.

"We're among our ain heather now, Hamish," says he. "In an hour we'll

be among the peat hags. I've a mind tae whistle them up."

"I've lain long enough in the water, Dan," said I.

"Aweel," says he, "we'll just make McAllan's Locker for it; eh, Ronny?"

And again we started to run, zigzagging to the dark bits till we

crossed the first rise, and we stood looking back. The whins were all

ablaze and the trees in the belting standing out clear, and the little

figures still running with the torches.

[1] Steep.

[2] Opening.

CHAPTER XII.

McALLAN'S LOCKER.

Over the first rise of the hills was a long dreary waste--treeless,

awesome, desolate. Whiles, as we ran, a curlew would rise, and its

long whirling cry rose in the night, filling the ears and leaving an

emptiness afterwards in the silence, for things not canny to be

filling. Once we startled a herd of red-deer feeding round the mossy

lips of a frozen pool, and away they galloped. One lordly stag wheeled

with antlers high, gazed at our flight, and vanished, leaving us in

that dreadful stillness, and a cold eerie wind whined and sighed over

us. We spoke little, having no breath to spare, for the ground was

growing more steep and broken towards the second rise, up which we

clambered, sliding and falling, grasping frozen heather till we reached

the top. The hill was now a riddle of peat hags and binks, like a

bee's skep, a place of treachery and slimy death, although the frost

would have most of the sinking pools in its iron hand; but we never

stopped the long stride that seemed so slow to me at first. Dan bent

and twisted through the peat banks like a hound on the trail. Here was

a place where folk had wrought, cutting their fuel for generations; and

God knows what memories were lurking here from the old days, what

ghosts of love and hatred, what spirits of tears and laughter. Would

the race never end? My tongue, dry and swollen, stuck raspily against

the roof of my mouth. Round my lips was a hot fire, for I had grasped

a handful of snow and melted it in my mouth as I ran. We were past the

peat hags, and the ground fell away under our feet; the heather got

scantier and sprits more common, until we had descended, maybe, five

hundred feet into a wide valley with a level plain at its heart, with

many clumps of stunted birches and hardy firs. Here was the great

grazing for young beasts in the summer, away here in the glen, but now

only stillness and desolation. A wide burn rumbled and splashed on its

gravelly banks in front of us, and we could hear the deep noise of a

waterfall.

"Hold in to the fall," cried McKinnon, and his voice was hoarse as a

raven's.

"I ken this like the back o' my hand," said Dan, and led us, with never

a break, to an easy crossing.

And now we took the greatest care of our going, for a great hill rose

before us steep, as it seemed to me, as the wall of a house, and then

all our care was made useless, for the snow began again.

Slowly, blindly we clambered and spelled up the hillside, now numb with

cold, now fiery hot, Dan always in the lead, and me groaning at his

hurdie.

"Keep a stout heart, Hamish; this is the last o't."

We were now, as it were, on a ladder on the hill face, for there were a

succession of great holes like steps, on each of which three men could

stand--the giant's steps, the old folks called them.

At the back of the step where we three lay was a grey rock, as though

the earth had been worn away, leaving the rock partly bare. As we lay

Dan struck it three times with a stone about the size of a

putting-ball, and a great low baying sounded, and my blood ran cold,

and then the grey rock moved inch by inch, and I heard a great rift of

Gaelic, and Dan went crawling like a snake through the hole, and myself

and McKinnon at his heels.

"Welcome, hearty welcome; whatever drives ye sae fast. Welcome to

McAllan's Locker."

"It's latish for ceilidhing," said Dan. "I'm hoping me and my friends

are not putting ye out in any ways, but just a shakedown o' breckans is

all we're asking, and thankful for it."

"Better the bottom o' the locker than the end o' the cable. Sit ye

doon and warm yourself."

I was sore done wi' the long running, and lay on the rook floor with my

head on my arms, and I felt as a hound feels after a long chase, till

the caveman answered Dan. At the first I thought his tongue had been

malformed as he stood in the light, for a growling and grumbling came

from his throat; and as he growled, from the darkness of the chamber a

great brindled dog stalked to his side and stretched his fore-paws,

opened a mouth like a red pit, and whined with outstretched curling

tongue.

"He would tear down a stag, him," says Dan, nodding at the brute.

Again came the growling rumbling from the stranger.

"Hark tae him, Marr; hark tae him--a stag. Ho, ho, ho! He would tear

a man's throat oot at his first leap," and man and dog rumbled and

growled in devilish mirth. "Sing tae me, dog--sing," and the man threw

his head up, and there came the long greeting howl of a dog baying the

moon, and dog and man howled in unison, with swaying bodies and heads

thrown upwards.

"God, but the open hill's a bonny place," said McKinnon, and a shiver

went over him. In this terrible place we lay the night--a great gloomy

forbidding place in the belly of the hill. Shiver on shiver went

through me as I looked round me. The walls were rock, bare and dry,

converging high up in the gloom; for there was just the peat fire and a

cruisie alight. Once, as though disturbed in its sleep, I heard a

rock-pigeon "rookatihoo coo-a" away above me in some cranny that must

open on the hill face. The smoke curled up in a rude dry-stone chimney

for about five or six feet against the rock, and the bulk of it still

ascended in a column, although the chimney stopped, but a waving pall

hung over the cave, swaying and undulating in long waves and streamers,

and the air below was cool and fresh. There were great carvings on the

walls--warriors and ships, galleys and horses a-rearing, and on a flat

stone projecting from the chimney, and serving as the brace or

mantelpiece, were models of ships made from the breast-bones of birds,

some quite large and others very small, and needing an infinite deal of

patience. There were rough stools and a table, all of which must have

been made inside the cave, and, indeed, the bark was dry and brittle on

the legs. Great bundles of heather, fashioned like narrow beds, lay

along the wall in the firelight, and like a dark unwinking eye the

light glimmered on a pool. There were square steps cut in the rock

down to the pool, which was shaped like a horn spoon with the handle

cut off short, and the water entering it from a crack in the rock,

noiselessly as oil, trickled silently away in a little sloping gutter

to the back of the cavern. Who first discovered the cavern I never

knew, but by the fire lay, twisted and blackened, the hilt and half of

a sword, and in a corner a black and rust-pitted breastplate. The back

part of the cave narrowed, and through a passage the Nameless Man

passed to bring us meat and drink. Have you walked on a bare moor road

in the pit mirk wi' a drizzle of soft mist in a silence you could hear?

Have you felt the fear coming over you, like a cold hand on your heart,

when ye knew that a thing gibbered and mouthed at your side? Well, the

thought o' that man, the Nameless Man, brings fear to me in a lighted

room.

For he was a dead white man, his hair, lank and white, hung round his

shoulders, his beard was slimy and soft as a white hare's, face and

hands cold, dead white, and his features were frozen.

No trace of any feeling showed on his face. His voice and his laughter

rumbled from his throat, leaving his face unchanged, only his pupils

waxed and waned like a cat's in the dark. He was covered with a

patchwork of skins and tatters of cloth, and as he set meat before us,

venison, it came to me that he must hunt his food in the dark, always

in the dark. That cold whiteness was not of the good God's sunlight.

As we ate, Dan told him some of our story, and the Nameless Man sat, a

handful of his beard in his hand, his elbow on the table, and his eyes

growing and fading.

"I'm sair feart I left him deid," said Dan. "If they come for us, dog,

when we're lying at the still and the good water turnin' to fine

whisky--and the good nice water, trickling and dripping through the

rocks for a hundred years--if they creep upon us, dog, what will we be

doing, you and me, Marr? Ho--ho--ho! killing them, eh? Leaving their

bones wi' the white bones away in there--the old, old bones," and dog

and man made a howling of laughter. I knew then that this was the

watcher of a smugglers' still; for let the gang o' Preventives do their

worst, whisky would still be made in the hills.

It came to me then why the folk would be leaving peats for the wee

folks, as they said, when they would be taking down the creels from the

hills; for the Nameless Man threw more on the fire from some hidden

store, likely nearer his worm, when we had finished eating. The great

dog lay at the rock by which we entered, and I saw that the stone was

swung on a balance; but if there was a way to open from the outside I

never knew till long after. McKinnon and Dan lay talking, but I was

silent for the most part, thinking of the sword and the armour, and of

the people who fashioned the well, and wondering about the old, old

bones away through the dark passage into the heart of the hill. The

far, far-away stories were in my mind of Finn and his warriors, of his

great dogs and his queens. Did Ossian the bard tune his harp to great

deeds, and to lovely women of the land of the Ever Young, in the cave

of the past? Into my musings--for sleep had nearly come over me--broke

the voice of the Nameless Man.

"I gave her to drink of the foamy milk--warm, and the bubbles of froth

in it. 'Drink, my lost lass,' said I, 'for ye loved me well once,' and

all the time I would be telling her that death was coming with the

white milk. And she took up the fine nice milk and drank, because she

had loved me well once, she that loved me yet but feared--the coward,

the soft, soft, white coward that would lie on another man's heart

after I had keeled her for myself. Ay, she took up the milk and drank,

and I took my ways, and they came running to Glen Darruach to tell me

she had died.

"Oh, oh! the dark, the dark, and never more the sun shining on the

bonny blooms of dark Darruach, never mair the white lambs running, and

the gleam on the wing of the moorcock.

"Ay, they would be for the killing of me, and I lay among the rafters,

under the thatch of my mother's house, and listened to them miscalling

me, the black killer--the bloody man that had the black art and the

evil eye; and it came over my heart to catch them by the hair, and pull

them up to me as they were speaking, and let my black knife kiss their

hearts. It was all red, red before me, up there under the thatch, and

them down below, and my sisters shaking when they saw me watching down

in the dark. It's droll, droll--because a soft white coward died--they

would kill me, me that would kill a man when I drew my dirk--ho, ho, ho!

"I lay hid among the rocks above the Herring Slap, alane day and night,

and the blue rockdoos left their nestlings and circled above my lair,

till I was feart that folk wid see them, and come peering down and get

me. But a herrin' skiff took me away from that place in the dark of

the night, and I drifted to the warm South Seas and the darkling women

and the white glistening houses; but she came with me, she that had

died. I would be seeing her rising before the bows o' the ship, rising

from the sea, and waving on me to follow, and the weather was worse and

worse at her every coming. An' there was a man o' the Western Isles in

the crew, and he had the sight, and would be telling o' the woman

rising from the sea, and her hair blowing over the yeast o' the waves,

and her eyes staring, staring, and the waving of her hand when I was at

the tiller; and so bad the weather got, and the sickness among the

crew, that the captain swore he would send the woman's man to her, and

he lay aft in his cabin, and drank rum till his boy was feart to

venture near him; and then he came on deck--a fine wild man, all in his

finery o' lace and golden earrings, and he called his sailors aft to

make choice of the woman's man. There was many there that would have

been making choice of me, but my hand was quick on the dirk, and no man

spoke above a whisper, and then I looked over the bows, and I would be

seeing her coming, and the man of the Western Isles cried out in his

fear--

"'She's wavin', she's wavin', Chrisht's mercy.' He was pointing to the

grey seas, and the froth was on his lips.

"And as he was standing gazing I creeped round behind him like a cat,

so quiet, and I had my arms round him before his eyes were winking.

"'Go to your wet love,' I cried, and I flung him over the rail by the

poop, and the captain was at the laughing.

"'The curse is lifted, my lads,' he roared. 'Crowd the sail on her.

Heigh-ho for the North and the gay adventures!' But after that there

were two to be watching in the darkness when I took the tiller--ay, and

I crawled from the sea at last, and came to the hills again--in the

dark.

"Oh, the dark, the dark, and never mair the sun shining on the heather

howes of dark Glen Darruach." As we lay on the heather beds the

Nameless Man wandered through the cave, and the booming of his voice

rumbled in the heart of the hill, as he wandered through unknown

galleries in the dark. The day came at last, and I saw a wee shaft of

light filter down some way on the cavern walls, but we could only lie

still till the dusk would come again, and we might make our way among

the hills, for after our sleeping Dan and Ronny and me had a great

confab.

"I canna lie here like a rat in a hole a' my days," said Dan.

"Ye'll never sleep sound till there's many a mile o' blue sea between

you and Dol Beag's hunters," said I. "If we could pass the word for a

skiff. . . ."

"We're daft, we're clean daft," cried Ronny. "McGilp is lying at the

north end, standing off and on. If we can just make Loch Ranza, ye're

safe."

"Ay," said Dan. "I'm thinking it's the Low Country now for me, Hamish.

Whatever money is due me, ye'll leave wi' McGilp, and he'll find a way

for sending it on. I'm sair sweirt tae part frae my bonny horses for

yon mauk's sake. . . . And there's the bonny spaewife, Hamish; if

anything comes wrong tae that lass I'll be relying on you." And then

for a long time he sat brooding at the fire.

In the afternoon a change came over the Nameless Man. He crawled on

his knees about the cave, whining and howling like a beast. He glared

at the black pool, and pointed.

"She's there in the water." And then with a yell to the dog, "Had her,

Marr; tear her sinery; rive her sinery, good Marr." And he hissed the

hound on to his vision, and the dog, frenzied at his crying, breenged

into the pool, and the man whined with joy, and caressed the soaking

coat. Later on in the day, after we had had a meal, he sat at the

passage-way and eyed us, and the dog girned and showed his teeth.

"They'll no come creepin' into the dim places where the queer things

are hidden, no--spying and spying." And when we paid no heed to his

ravings, except that we kept the fire bright and had armed ourselves,

he lay down and slept across the passage-way, his head on the hound's

flank. At every movement of our bodies the growling rumbled to our

ears, and the bristles rose on the dog's back. But when it was nearly

dark the sleeper wakened, and we left the dreadful place called

McAllan's Locker, and took to the hills again.

CHAPTER XIII.

DAN McBRIDE SAILS FROM LOCH RANZA.

For a while we lay silent on the giant's step of McAllan's Locker, and

I felt my spirits lighten to be outside of that place. The hills were

silent, but from the cave came a baying and growling of dog and man, at

first as from a distance, and growing louder and louder, as though the

Nameless Man and his grim hound ranged through the unknown caverns. We

three sprauchled upwards, for we had no relish to meet these two, and

as we neared the rise of the hill the baying filled the night, and

suddenly the great hound bounded down the hillside with great twisting

leaps, and at his heels the wild figure of his master followed. In the

valley they played like gambolling puppies, rushing at one another and

wrestling, with whiles the brute worrying the man playfully, and whiles

the man kneeling on the dog; then away they would dash separately,

wheeling and leaping and rubbing their flanks in the snow. For a long

time the game went on, and then the players slunk closer, the shaggy

heads thrust skywards, and the long whining cry rose on the night; then

away they ranged, running flank to flank through the peat hags and over

the rise of the hill we had crossed the night before.

"He'll be a bold man that shepherds these hills in the lambing," said

Dan.

All through this night we held our course a little to the west of the

pole-star, though McKinnon and Dan had travelled the way before. We

were now in the middle of the great barren range, frowning mountains

menaced our path, and burns rumbled in the darkness; and when Dan spoke

his voice was thick with anger--

"I lifted a snipe o' a man, and I flung him the back of the fire. What

is there in that to be running from?

"If the man has freens, I'll meet them a' wherever they like; but this

running sticks in my gizzard. It's just ain brother tae caul' fear,"

and we marched on in grim silence.

On the mountains my feet were almost without feeling at all with the

cold, and my clothes sticking to my shoulders with sweat; and on the

last of the hills McKinnon clapped like a startled hare.

"Look at yon," he whispered; "they're to win'ward o' us after a'."

Far below us a little light flickered and blinked on the hillside, and

we watched it, hardly breathing, and again I heard my heart begin to

pound.

After some wee while of watching, Dan grunted--

"Umph!" says he. "Ye see droll things in the hills when ye're rinnin'

for dear life. Yon's just Tchonie Handy Ishable and his lantern."

"I never would be believing that story," said Ronny.

"Man, if I had the time I would get his secret this night," says Dan.

"Ye see, Hamish, yon's an old man down yonder, and they'll be saying he

pays the Duke's rent in the big money. They've the story of how he

found a hoard o' it among the hills; and it's likely enough, for many's

the bold stark lad took to the Southern Seas from these glens. Och,

an' I ken folk mysel' that found an iron pot o' doubloons in the peat

bink; but aul' Tchonie, he just takes what he will be needin', and he

takes it at night when the folks are abed. They used to be following

him, but he was skilly among the rocks, and they would maybe come on

his lantern sitting lighted, and once they found a dagger stuck at the

entrance to a cave to keep the wee folk from shuttin' it when a man was

inside; but they were never able to get the secret, for Tchonie Handy

Ishable would be sittin' over his peat fire when the lads came back in

the mornin'."

At the screich o' day we came from Glen Chalmadale into the thatched

village of Loch Ranza. At a house some way back from the others

McKinnon stopped us.

"The man that lives here is a farmer and a fisherman," said he, "and a

very po-lite man in his taalk moreover, for I know him well," and he

mimicked the Loch Ranza speech, which, indeed, is very proper speech,

and I was very startled at one time to hear the very weans with the

polite way of it.

"Ye will be havin' the dogs on us," says Dan in a low voice; "and

there's folks here that are unfreens o' mine."

"Alaister Jock has weans enough to do without the dogs," says Ronny,

"for dogs are unchancy beasts in the smuggling nights, and Alaister

himsel' will be always up wi' the drake's dridd."

In a little time Ronny came back to us, and we made our way into

Alastair's house, a place where a grown man could stand broad-soled on

the clay floor and touch the rafters of the roof with the flat of his

palms. The peat fire was smouldering on the floor, and the reek made

its way out at the rigging. Alastair himself, a tall stooped man with

a red beard and a thin beak of a nose, brought peats and threw them on

the fire.

"There was one came for you in the night yesterday," says he to Dan in

his very proper polite way. "I would not be having her in my house at

all, for I am a reeleegious man with a family to rear before the Lord.

I put her into the byre with the kye, for she is of the land of Egypt,

the house of bondage; and my wife sprinkled a little meal and a little

saut over the rumps of the kye to keep away her spells, for we must

meet spell with spell--not that I will be believing in these evil-doers

of the Black Art."

"Och, I kent, I kent," cried Dan, long before Alastair had done with

his speaking, and disappeared through a door which gave me a glimpse of

a cow's head looking over its biss, and it struck me that the byre was

the handy place to get at in Loch Ranza. Ronny and Alastair were

thrang at the talking, with the farmer laying off with his hands, and

wagging his head like a minister in the pulpit, and all in a voice so

raised in tone that I believed from hearing him what our folks say,

that when two farmers are ploughing at the north end they can talk

comfortably across three fields, and they are great at the handling of

their skiffs and bold sailors. I heard Dan--

"Och, my lass, my ain lass; it went sair against my heart to be leaving

without seein' you at all."

I heard her brave voice with a crooning quiver like a mother's.

"I ran, I ran all the long road, for I kent it all from the first o'

it," and in the dimness of the byre I could see these two clinging to

each other.

"Is it the sight[1] ye think ye have now, my droll dark lass?" says

Dan, looking down at her, one arm holding her away from him and the

great love in his eyes.

"There's whiles I come near to hating you when you will be talking like

that," said the swarthy girl. "Mirren Stuart brought me word."

"You'll be glad to be rid o' me then. You'll be forgetting me soon,"

and the man let his arm drop from her shoulders, and the cold

intolerant pride of his voice stung like a whip-lash, for he never

could thole that the woman he loved could even have a thought different

from his own, let alone a love-hatred.

I expected a proud heart-breaking lie from the sombre beauty, but for

all his answer she crept close, and clung to him with both hands, and

hid her face on his breast; then holding him at the stretch of her arms

she raised her head, and looked Dan in his eyes.

"Oh, man," she cried, "I have that that will keep me in mind o' ye,

shameless, shameless that I am," and two great tears rose in her eyes,

the first tears I ever saw there, but Dan lifted her in his arms like a

baby.

"Was ever there such a mother for a bold man's son," I heard him cry in

a voice of love and pride and laughter.

In Alastair's kitchen the thought came to me then what will the son of

these two be--the father strong as a mountain ash, and with the cruel

arrogant pride of a long-bred race behind him, his own will his only

law, and the queer twist of tenderness for old stories and old songs

and his love for all nature--a stark man, who would reach out and take

what he desired; and the mother fiercely tender, wildly, passionately

loving her chosen man, all the dark East in her black eyes, all the

deadly South in her blazing angers--a graceful, hard, blue steel blade

of Damascus, with jewel-encrusted hilt and sheath of velvet. What was

the son of these to be?

Alastair slipped out quietly, and Ronny and me sat at the fireside.

"We'll manage," said McKinnon, "for the gomerils have let us slip at

their bonfire and lost us. The goodman here is McGilp's man, and his

skiff's ready, and the _Gull_ will be close in behind the point at high

water. It will just be good-bye to Dan McBride wi' the turn o' the

tide."

"But how can this godly man be a smuggler?" said I, more to make talk

than anything else.

"Godly men must live like ither folk," said Ronny.

For a while we sat there till Dan and Belle joined us, and the lass

could not be letting go of her man, the brave proud lass. I watched

her hand quivering in his great brown one, and her eyes following his

every change of look, and her face was all sorrow. I came near to

hating Dan McBride too.

In the grey of the morning we made our way stealthily to the shore by

the point.

Dan and the gipsy stood some way from us, on the cold dark shore head,

and I think we had all a lowness of spirits, for that place is more sad

and mournful than any place I have ever seen.

"You'll set McCurdy's hut to rights for my dark wife," said Dan to me,

"and let it be her own place, and the money that is lying with my

uncle, you'll be giving her when she needs it," and there he went on,

keeping up her heart with his talk, and his eyes were straining

longingly to the loom of hills in the dimness, like a man saying

farewell, and I think the gangers and Dol Beag were clean forgot.

There came to our ears the low swish-sch of a boat gliding and

slithering over wrack, and the beating of wings in the air as the

sea-birds left the beach, and Alastair's boat grated on the gravel of

the shore.

"Will ye no' come wi' me, my dear," cried Dan to the lass as she clung

to him, and I had a twinge of jealousy that I was all forgot.

"Oh, fain, fain wid I be to travel wi' ye, my man, the cool long roads

and the waving green meadows; but oh! ye hivna the nature o' my

folk--there will be the great battles calling ye, and I would be trying

to keep ye beside me, till ye grew weary o' me. But you will remember

always and always in your wanderings you will never be thinking of me,

but just that I will be loving you somewhere," and with a great cry,

"Have I no' loved ye--can I ever be forgetting ye?"

When Dan would have taken her to his heart, she sprang away, her eyes

blazing.

"Do not be petting me," she cries. "I am not a bairn to be quieted.

Tell me ye love me--I want my ain fierce lover that wid make me kneel

to him because he loved me--the love in his eyes and the strength o'

his hands,--oh, I have loved a man." And then the man answered, and

she saw the sorrow of parting in his face.

"My ain brave lass" . . . and at his words she came to him--"I will be

waiting for you all the long days, for I will be with you again; but

oh! it were better for all that ye never set your boot on these shores,

for then the storm-clouds will gather, and the lightning will leap in

the scarred mountains--my love, my love; but my heart cannot be brave

enough to forbid you to come back to me." And for an instant the wild

fierce woman clung to her lover, then fled from the shore. Dan stepped

into the waiting boat in silence, his head on his breast, and a word

from McKinnon or me, I think, would have kept him; but we said our

farewells, and Alastair set to the sculling, and we watched the

receding boat from the shore head until she drew close to the

_Seagull_, and we saw Dan climb on board, and the skiff returning.

As we walked back to Alastair's, we saw Belle standing on a ridge of

high ground, with the morning light behind her--dark against the light,

and her eyes straining to the sea; and as we came closer I spoke,

thinking to take her away from her sorrow, but her dark eyes remained

fixed on the schooner, as though she had never heard me. There was a

little mist hanging over the sea.

We sat down to a meal of salted herrings in Alastair's kitchen, the

weans round us still sleepy and barefooted, and with tousled red locks,

which they flung from their eyes with a gesture very like a spirited

Hielan' pony tossing its mane; and when I looked from the door

again--which I was glad enough to do, for the reek was a little nippy

to my eyes--as I looked from the door I saw Belle returning, and with

her no other than Robin McKelvie of the Quay Inn. There was no sign of

the _Seagull_, for a fog had come down on the firth, and even the

melancholy pleasure of seeing Dan's ship again was taken from me.

McKelvie stood at the door, and his face was red with running, and

streaked with white in places with fatigue.

"My father thought ye would make for this place. Rob Beag's no' dead,"

he said; "the devil has more for him to do yet."

[1] Second sight.

CHAPTER XIV.

WE RETURN.

We made the great to-do in Alastair's kitchen between the exceeding

gladness of the news and the foolishness of our flight, and Alastair

himself was rowing in the fog after the _Gull_--only Belle said no

word, but went quietly behind a rick of peats close to the house, and

I, following her in my slow useless way, came on her suddenly, her arms

outstretched to the empty sea, and such a look of anguish on her face

that I was silent. No words at all came from her, but her bosom rose

and fell as she battled with her sorrow.

"The man's not deid," said I, for I felt that was the great news, but

little did I know the woman.

"Dead," she cries--"dead," and laughed. "Would that dog's death have

brought a tear to my eyes. Hamish, Hamish, I have lost my man."

And wondrous fierce and beautiful she was as I left her.

We made our way back by the drove road, Ronny McKinnon and me, and we

were silent for the most part, for there was that in my throat to keep

me from speaking, for Dan was gone, and no rowing would get him back,

and who could get word to him.

There was the whiteness and stillness of snow over everything, and I

mind me how my mind would cling to wee things, like the footprints of

rabbits, and the wee bits of grey fur here and there, and the flight of

cushies in the trees, to come back with a start to the _Gull_ away out

in the Firth, and Dan on board of her.

Silently we ate our bannocks at a little burn under some stunted trees

and close to the shore, and wearily trailed on; and just at the

darkness I made out the lights of the big house, and came into the

kitchen, where Ronald McKinnon had a meal. He took away over the hill

for his mother's house then, as he said, but I'm thinking maybe Mirren

Stuart would have another way of it, and at his going I went to that

grim man, the Laird.

He was with his back to a red fire of peats, and looked dourly at me.

"What new devilry is this?" says he, and bit his lip. "Here are women

and men gane gyte wi' the tellin' o' death and murder--and where is Dan

McBride?"

"There is nae murder that I ken," said I, "and the hogs are doing

finely."

I believe the man had clean forgot about the sheep.

"Hogs," quo' he; "deil tak' the braxy beasts. Sir, where is Dan

McBride?" and at that I told him.

"And there's more yet," said I, for I had passed my word. "There's

more to tell yet."

"Ay," said he, "there will be. Well, tell on."

And I told him of Belle and the old hut. He was not so very

ill-pleased.

"See that the woman has what she will be needing," said he--"a cow and

such-like, Hamish, and peats and gear and plenishings. Poor lass, poor

lass. Hech, sirs, this will no' make bonny tellin' to the mistress.

The mistress will no' be pleased wi' this--she'll be in need o' siller

too."

* * * * * *

So it was on the first good day, with the sun red through a frosty

haze, and the snow melted for the most part, we yoked the horses to the

creels, and took gear and plenishing and peats to McCurdy's hut away in

the hills over beyond the peat hags, and it was a weary cow beast that

trailed behind, tied to the spars.

When we came over the last rise and stood to breathe the horses, I saw

Belle at her door, shading her eyes under her flattened palms from the

rays of the sun, and watching for us; and the horses looked in wonder

to see a house so far among the hills, and tossed their ropy manes.

Man, they were the great little horses we had these days, with little

heads such as I have seen in the paintings of Arab steeds, and an alert

eager look to them, broad forehead, and soft neat muzzle. Close

coupled they were, with a great girth, broad chest and sloping

shoulders, and legs like iron. But it was the pride and the strength

of them I never tired of, and it may be there was truth in the talk of

the old folk, that the Hielan' horse was come off Spanish or Moorish

horses of the Armada. But none could tell me if these Arab horses

would be having the silver tail and mane of our little horses. And as

I stood looking, I thought me it was a dreary wild place for a lass to

be living her lane, with the muirfowl for company and the great geese

flying north in the spring, and the bleating of sheep in the mist.

So all that winter I worked by the cottage; on the dry days thatching

and building, keeping a little horse to take me over the peat road in

the gloaming.

In the mornings I would be at it with mattock and spade delving hard at

the founds, and I had the great days sliping stones. Indeed, I became

so strong and proud of myself that you will see to this day on that

hillside the dents I struck on great boulders, that now I would be

sweir to move. I had with me an old man from the Lowlands, very good

at the building of dry-stone dykes, a knowledgeable man in many ways,

but especially in trees and gardens and such-like. The byre we built

was not very big, and very dark, but it was cosy, too, under the

crooked joists, and covered with heather scraws and thatch. In the

loft I put flat boards across the joists, and made a square hole in the

doorway, and brought hens and cocks to be making the place more

homelike.

All this was on my uncle's hill land, but I had my way of it, and

jaloused maybe that the mistress was putting in her good word, for she

had aye a soft side for young Dan. When I told him about breaking in

from the moor, he hummed and hawed and gloomed at me. "This will mean

the less sheep," says he.

"There's a wean coming," said I, and felt the blood rise in my face to

be saying it. "Has he to be put in the heather, and die maybe in a

sheuch like a braxy ewe."

"Tut," says he, his colour rising a bit; "these are no words to be in

the mouth of a boy," but I kent I had him on the soft side. "A man

must be dacent to his ain blood," said he, and that was the last of it.

So we had the great days at the burning of heather, and when I would be

running with a kindling here and there, and watching the lowes lick

into the dry scrog with a hiss before the breeze, I would be thinking

much of Dan and Ronny McKinnon and me in the blazing whins, and the

gangers and excisemen and riff-raff of that kidney hallooing round us.

Belle loved this burning and the very fierceness of the flames, with

the eerie gloaming falling, and she would not be heeding the cries of

Old Betty (for Betty was much with her these days for company) to be

keeping indoors.

"Hamish," she would say, coming close to me in the ruddy light, and the

dark cheeks of her glowing and her eyes flashing--"Hamish, I have that

in the heart of me." And as she stood thus pointing to the fires, all

lit up and wild and beautiful, I thought there must surely have been

away back in her story a priestess who tended fires in some far Eastern

land.

Well, well, it's fine to be thinking back on these far-off days, and

the work we made at the dyke-building round the first park, and how we

gathered the lying stones and rousted out the deeper-set ones; and the

dyker made all grist that came to his mill, for he would split up

considerable boulders with great exactness and skill, a feat that never

came easily to me. Then there were the stone drains to be making, and

the great talking about the run of the water, and the lie of the land,

and the niceness with which we laid those drains! They were all joys

to me. I dreamed green meadows and well-kept dykes and good beasts.

And then the ploughing--a sair job ploughing heather roots--and the

furrows I drew would have brought the laughing to Dan McBride; but the

soil was not so black, but where the rabbits had burrowed there was

good green grass among the red scrapings. The sowing and the harrowing

were the easy job after that, and I mind me how I leaned on that dyke

and gazed on the first three acres won out of the hill, when the green

breard was showing, as a man might gaze on his first-born son. In

these night trakings in the hills I learned the shape of every stunted

bush and tree, and the place of every rock on either hand, and many's

the droll ploy I came into. Ye'll still see the track yet down from

the peat hags like a scar on the hillside, but the stories of the road

are lost in the swirling mists, and carried away in the winter gales.

There was a burn running over the road down from the little loch with

the green rush islands, where the sea-birds build, and the staghorn

moss is boot-deep, and in that little plouting burn there was grand

water to be making the whisky. And in the gloaming have I seen a

lonely man with his dog at heel, hurrying by the burn-side, through the

bare birch trees, and disappearing to his night watch in some cunning

place on the hillside. And once at the place where there is now a

little holly-tree, gnarled and full of years, I met the limber lads

with the kegs on their backs, and carrying the worm and all the gear

for the whisky-making. And we buried everything in the peat hags below

the three hills, for the excisemen were close on us, and there they

lie, kegs and stoups, to this day; and would not the whisky be fine to

be drinking now, but maybe a little peaty.

CHAPTER XV.

THE STRANGER ON THE MOORS.

It would be well on into May, for the men were thrang with work, and

the lassies at the big house haining a bit of bannock to be putting

under their pillows for fear of hearing the cuckoo, when first I heard

the strange whistling. It is not a very lucky thing to be hearing the

cuckoo and you wanting food, and I think this is just a haver of the

old folk to be making the young ones rise early on the fine clear

mornings; but many's the first bite I ken was taken from below the

pillows, and the cuckoo crying like all that.

There was a thick bit of a wood behind the stackyard at the big house,

and as I lay listening to the sounds of the early morning there came

often of late this clear melody, not loud but sweet and thrilling, as I

had heard Ronny McKinnon whistle and Dan too, and the words of that

tune are not to be talked about; but when I went quietly to the

planting one morning there was only the little moving of birds in the

greyness of the morning and the stillness of the wood.

I came back to the kitchen and rummaged the aumary for something to be

eating, and made my way to the stable and put a feed before my beast,

and watched him hard at it and the other beasts stamping and rattling

at their chains in their impatience.

We were on the hill road before the sun, for there was the matter of a

calf to be seeing to, and it was fine to be alone in the fresh day with

the dew still heavy on the green grass and wetting the horse to the

fetlocks; and the sun was coming up in the East, and here and there the

curl of blue smoke rising up from far-out clachans. I would maybe be

on the other side of the black hill and going finely, and relishing the

green of the new growth, when there came to me that sweet whistling

again, and cooried by the roadside beside a grey stone I saw a man

sitting. He was the droll figure of a man, with outlandish garb and

wee gold earrings. His teeth showed white as milk against his swarthy

face, and he had many colours about him, at his throat and his waist,

and useless tatters and tassels, but withal he had the proud bearing of

mountain folk, and level black brows.

Abreast of him we came and he bended low, but with such grace and so

much dignity that it were as though he were a king receiving a vassal.

"Have you the Gaelic?" said I in the old tongue.

"Cha nail, cha nail, cha nail," cried he, so quickly and with such

gestures of his hands that I was startled.

"Geelp," said he--"Geelp."

"Are you McGilp's man?" said I.

"Man, yass," says he, and all his body would seem to be very glad; and

then I questioned him of his whistling, and got his story from him.

By his way of it, he had been a camp-follower or servant to a

horse-soldier in the Low Countries, which was maybe true, for I will

not be denying these wandering folk have the way of horse, and he made

a play of himself to be showing how he was beaten often with the

stirrup-leather. Some time in his wanderings in the Low Countries he

fell in with "les Ecossais," and he was at the play-acting again with

his hands to be describing the Scotch soldiers, and then from some

pouch or hidie-hole about his outlandish garb he brought Dan's letter.

At that I sat on the roadside, and the Eastern man, with the rein loose

in his hand, crouched on his hunkers before me like an image.

There was much of sadness in that letter, and much of Belle the gipsy

lass, and of many wanderings from France to the Low Countries,

"Hamish, man, I'm minding the very stanes in the hill dykes and the

track o' the sheep on the hillside." Why he had been kind to the

Egyptian he told me. "Ye'll ken fine, Hamish, for what lass's

sake,"--and sent him into France with a Scotch soldier he kent,

returning there, with directions to wait at the little town on the

coast where McGilp would whiles be, and "bring you this word o' me and

a wheen things for Belle." He was asking me to see McGilp too. The

last of it was like Dan. "I'm thinking, Hamish, if the houris in his

paradise kenned the words o' the spring I've been deaving him wi', the

Egyptian would be very greatly thought of."

When I was by with the reading of Dan's news, "Ye'll have another

letter," said I, making signs at the pagan.

"Yass," and at that he put it in my hands. It was for Belle.

We got on the road again, the pony trotting now and the messenger

running easily, one brown hand at the stirrup-leather, and very many

times he would be saying "Geelp," till it came on me that McGilp would

be wishing to be seeing me at once.

At Belle's cottage door I dismounted, and with the clatter of the horse

there came old Betty, with that queer look on her face of disdain and

mystery, and just itching to be at the talking.

"_The wean's hame_," said she, and slammed the door with a last nod of

her old head and her lips pursed up; and then there came the snuffling

ill-natured greeting of a wean that made me grue as I made my way to

the byre, for till then my mind had clean forgot the calf I was to be

seeing that day.

In the byre we sat, the heathen and me--for we were but simple men in

this affair--and the byre was a dark place to be sitting, and in a

while old Betty came, havering at hens and talking to herself. As she

came and stood in the doorway and looked closely within, with her back

bent and her hand on the lintel, her eyes fell on the messenger, and

she let a great cry from her in the Gaelic. To be putting it in

English is not so good, but it would be like this, "What dost thou

require of me, father of devils?" and she fell on her knees. Well,

well, I can laugh at that sight yet. But she "came to" in a little,

and took me into the sunlight, and said the gipsy lass would be seeing

me for a little time; and I was taken to Belle's sleeping-place, and

her arm was round her wean, and she was lying on her back, and her

black hair a little damp curling on the pillow.

"You have been very good," said she. "My man, your kinsman, will be

owing you thanks." And at that her eyes suffused, and two great tears

gathered and glittered, and she smiled up to me, and I gave her the

letter and turned away.

In a long while she cried, proud and piteous--

"Bring me the messenger; he will have his father's gift for my son."

And the lilt of joy in her voice made me think shame to be a man at

all. Silently the messenger came, his eyes on the ground, and kneeled,

and at that they were at it in their own Gaelic, and Belle raised the

wean a little, and I saw his face wrinkled and red, and his blue

staring eyes. And the man laid a long blue blade across the bed, and

the little groping fingers of the child fluttered a moment, and then

closed on the hilt, and when I lifted the gleaming snake-like sword,

from the hilt scroll with a tinkling fell a ring, and it fell on the

bosom of the mother--and she lay and smiled.

* * * * * *

But I made a safe place for that sword and scabbard (for the messenger

gave that last into my hands), and for many nights in my dreams the

little dimpled hand fluttered and closed on the hilt.

CHAPTER XVI.

I HAVE SOME TALK WITH McGILP IN McKINNON'S KITCHEN.

In the gloaming I left the sheiling, and took my way through the hill,

as we say, for McKinnon's house by the glen on the road to Birrican,

and the first of that road is just plain guessing, but after, maybe, a

mile there rises up the Mulloch Mhor, the big peak of the Island, and

with that, a little to a man's left hand, the road to the sea is easy.

There is a road crossing that way that you'll still see running in

through the Planting above the Letter, and through by the Little

Clearing, and joining the road to the castle.

To the left of me I could hear the kye at the Bothanairidh, where there

was a common grazing, for by this time it was well to have the beasts

away from the steadings, because there was no great fencing in these

days, and the weans would be put to the herding, out on the hillside.

You'll see yet the wee turf byres where the kye were milked, and the

founds of the bochans where the old folk had their summer, with the

hens and beasts about them. And many's the story I could be telling

about these summer quarters when the lassies and old wives would be at

the spinning.

All the glen on the right of me was a McBride place, but you will not

get that name there any more now, and nothing belonging to them but the

trees, old and straggling, that they would be planting long ago, and

the furs on the side of the hill where they had rigs about, and

lazy-beds.

There were not many houses on the shore in these days, except maybe at

a place they would be calling Clamperton, not very far from McKelvie's

Inn.

Ronny was the pleased man to welcome me to his house, and Mirren, his

wife, was at her best to be showing what a thrifty goodwife she was

making, and she was very kind, and spoke good words to me; so, thinks

I, Ronny will have been telling her about the talk we had yon day on

the Isle.

"They will be saying," says Mirren, "that yon dark lass has her trouble

past her."

"I am hoping that," said I, and looked at Ronny's mother sitting very

bright and perky by the fire, with a clean white mutch on her head and

the strings not tied.

"It is goot," says she, "to have a boy whatever--a boy iss a good

thing, no matter which way he will be got," and she ended her little

talk with a very brisk demand. "Gif me a dram, Mirren; yes"--and that

set us to the laughing, for the young wife was setting the drink before

us and not making signs of giving the old one any.

We sat down to a meal of roasted fowl, very tasty, and a very good drop

of spirits to it, and I would be laughing inside of myself because of

the boldness of McKinnon to be praising his wife's cooking before his

ain mother, and Mirren was greatly pleased too; indeed, many's the time

I will be thinking that the road to a quiet lass's heart will be to

praise her cooking. When we had made an end of the eating I gave

McKinnon the story of the stranger that came whistling at uncanny

hours, and asked him where I would be like to find McGilp, for it

appeared the man wanted speech with me.

"You are on the right tack," says he, "for I am waiting for his hand on

the sneck any time this two hours past," and the dishes were hardly

cleared away when the smuggler bent his head to be coming in the door,

for in these days there were no locks in the Isle of the Peaks.

There came in with the man a kind of waft of the sea as he threw off

his great-coat and clattered his cutlass in a corner--a fine figure of

a man, towering up to the rafters, and his voice held in as though it

would be more comfortable to hurl an order in the teeth of a gale.

"Ha!" says he, looking from McKinnon to his wife; "she has brought you

to port finely." But he was mightily complimentary, and gave many good

wishes with his glass in his great hand.

"And how are you, Mister Hamish?" says he. "Every plank sailing--in

fine trim--and that's good hearing these days."

With that McKinnon got his fiddle, and played us many sprightly airs,

for he was a very creditable performer, and the smuggler would be

asking for this or that one, and nodding his head with great spirit.

"You would have speech with the Pagan," said he, when the night was

wearing on. "An' cold eneuch he was when I picked him up at the mouth

o' the Rouen river, for I had an express from a compatriot, Mr Hamish,

serving overseas"--this with a very grand air.

"Were you wanting speech with me?" said I, for I could see the drink

was going to his head.

"It's a wee thing private," says he; "but tak' up your dram. I canna

thole a man that loiters wi' drink till the pith is out of it."

At that we drew our chairs close before the fire.

"Many's the time we would be talking about ye, Mr Hamish," says he,

"Dan and myself; yon time we left ye in the haar at Loch Ranza--a

senseless job, too, by all accounts, and Alastair rowing to the

suthard, and us creeping out to the nor'west; he'll be hard to find

now, by Gully--ay, Dan will be hard to find.

"I am hoping you are not close-hauled for time," says he, "for it's

hard to come at my tale, Mr Hamish; but ye see, Dan McBride had some

notion o' what might occur--I am thinking ye will see with me there.

"I am giving you the man's words, ye see, for he had great faith in ye.

"'Ye'll say to Hamish,' says he, and I'm telling you he was a sober

man--'ye'll say, I am not wanting the wean to grow up like a cadger's

dog, to be running from kicks and whining for a bone.'

"I am no' great hand at this wean business, Mr Hamish, but McBride was

a fine man."

At that I made mention of the wean he had taken to the convent in

France.

"I'm with you there," says he. "I was paid good money for that job,

and I ken what I ken, and mair--what I've found out. Ye'll no' hiv

great mind o' Scaurdale's son? No? Aweel, he was a bog-louper, and

wild, wild at that, but he fell in wi' some south-country lady--a

cousin o' his ain, that stopped for years at Scaurdale--a young thing

that was feart to haud the man, but fond o' him too. I canna mind the

name o' her. The long and short of it was jeest this--she married on

an Englishman, a landed man and weel bred--Stockdale they ca'ed

him--but he turned oot ill after a', and the first wean was a lass

instead o' a boy. And I'm jalousin' she would be getting her

keel-haulings for that, poor lady. Ye ken weel that young Scaurdale

broke his neck, and ye ken where.

"'I'll be in hell or hame,' says he, 'in forty minutes.' At the Quay

Inn it was, and his horse lathered and foaming and wild wi' fear.

Aweel, Mr Hamish, he's no _hame_ yet.

"Things were going from bad to worse with the lass he lost, and her man

aye at the bottle, and sometimes she would be finding him lookin' at

the wean and cursing, so what does she do but get word to the old Laird

o' Scaurdale, who was fond o' her and a just man. I'll wager ye, he

did not hang long in irons. The thing was done circumspectly, mind

you--nae high-handedness--but Belle's folk were about Glen Scaur, a

droll wandering band, claiming great descent from Eastern folk, and

with horses and dogs and spaewife among them; and Belle (as they will

be calling her) was the daughter o' the Chief, a very proud man.

"They were a wandering tribe, Mr Hamish, and they wandered into the

south country, and I'm thinking ye saw the bonny spaewife coming back

her lane, except for a wean, on a morning ye ploughed stubble.

"But here's the droll bit," says he. "Stockdale was kilt an his horse,

too, in his ain park, for he scoured the place like a madman after the

wean was lost. Weel, weel, that finished the lady, poor body. Ye'll

see how things are now, Mr Hamish," says he.

"Yon's an heiress. An' that's a' I'll be saying," says he, for

McKinnon came in from his stable, "but the Laird, your uncle, was in

the ploy," says he, "or I'm sair mistaken, and the Mistress too."

With that we rose to be going, and had a glass, and the captain's last

words were--"Ye'll mind yon: 'I'm not wanting the wean to grow up like

a cadger's dog.'"

As I was walking home that night the thought came into my head of the

wisdom of Betty at the big house.

I minded her saying to me on the Sunday that Belle took the wean in the

tartan shawl to the Mistress--her very words came back to me--

"The wean has the look o' John o' Scaurdale."

PART II.