_MORAG'S HOME._
ON the rocky ledge of a hill overlooking the Glen, there was perched a
little hut, which seemed as if it had huddled itself against the rugged,
grey crags for protection, and stood on its morsel of grassy turf
trembling at the wild scene around. The mountains, which from the valley
looked serene and blue, reared themselves above the tiny white shieling
in dark towering masses, and the river seemed like a silver thread as it
took its winding way through the strath.
On the same Christmas Eve as Blanche Clifford was born in her sheltered
English home, another little girl had come into the world in that rocky
eyrie among the mountains; and Morag Dingwall, too, was left motherless
from the hour of her birth. Her father was gamekeeper at Glen Eagle; the
hut had been built by his grandfather, who, in his day, ruled over the
realms of deer and grouse in the glen; and it had once been a
better-cared-for home than it was in these later days. Careful fingers
had striven to repair the ravages of the wind and rain, for the little
shieling was mercilessly exposed to both; the shelter the great gray
rocks offered being a treacherous one, and its foundation damp. There
had once been an attempt made to delve a _kailyard_ out of the
unfruitful soil, and the turf in front of the cottage was kept smooth
and trim. But the present possessor of the hut did not seem to care to
make the most of his barren, rocky home; he merely grumbled about it
from time to time to the land-agent, the only representative whom he
ever saw of the Highland lord who owned the Glen. But the factor thought
that such a great strong fellow as Dingwall might mend his own roof,
while the keeper thought that such a great rich fellow as the laird
might give him a new roof, and a new house too; so year after year the
rain had come drip, drip, through the porous roof on the earthen floor,
ever since Morag could remember, till she had got quite used to it, and
to a great many things besides.
The keeper was a strange man, and had led a strange life in his early
days, the people of the Glen said. When a lad he had suddenly left Glen
Eagle one winter, and he appeared only to have returned to take his
father's place, when the old man was laid in the little grave-yard on
the hillside. And a better gamekeeper could not have been found. He knew
every foot of the Glen by heart. He was the best angler in the country
side. There was no keener eye and no steadier hand in all Stratheagle;
he could spy the game at incredible distances, and knew every winding
path, each short cut, all deceptive bogs. People said that the little
Morag was the only human being whom Alaster Dingwall ever really loved.
He had reared his baby-daughter with his own hands, the kennels had been
her nursery, the dogs her playmates. As soon as she was able to toddle,
he had taken her to the moors, often strapped on his back, fast asleep.
Before Morag was seven years old she had become almost as hardy a
mountaineer as her father, going with him to the hills, carrying his
game-bag, trotting by his side, with her little bare feet among the
heather. She could handle an oar and cast a rod as well as most people;
it was her little deft fingers that _busked_ the hooks for the loch, and
did a great many useful things besides. Long ago the keeper had
entrusted the cares of housekeeping, such as they were, to Morag. It was
she who cooked, washed, mended, and kept things going in a kind of way.
Occasionally the father and daughter would start on an expedition to the
village, which was miles away, to make purchases at the merchant's shop,
and lay in a store of provisions before the period of snowing-up came
round. These were always red-letter days in little Morag's calendar.
Sometimes, though very rarely, there was an attempt made to replace the
little tattered tartan frock by a new garment, bought at the general
store. If you had happened to look into the hut on a winter evening, you
might have seen the father and daughter bending in perplexity over a
wooden table, on which were strewn the rough materials for Morag's new
frock. Great and many seemed the difficulties in the way, but at last
Dingwall would boldly put in the scissors, a big and rusty weapon used
for general purposes, and then the various stages of dress-making would
be gone through, clumsily enough to be sure; but in process of time,
Morag would stand in her finished garment, a more proud and happy little
girl than Blanche Clifford, in the latest novelty of her London
_modiste_.
They were a very silent pair, this father and daughter. Often they would
wander whole days among the heather together without exchanging words,
or sit in the _ingle neuk_ by the fire of peat and pine in dumb silence,
while they cleaned guns or busked hooks, during the long winter
evenings. But notwithstanding his grim silence, and whatever he might
appear to the outer world, to his little daughter Dingwall he was always
kind, and she loved him with all the intensity of her still, Celtic
nature, and thought that he was the very best father in all the world.
During her short, solitary life she had never known anybody else, and
had hardly exchanged words with a living soul, old or young. Poor little
Morag had grown up utterly untaught. Like the pointers, her playmates,
she had grown very clever in some things--in mountain knowledge, in
dexterity of fingers and agility of limb. But there were wants in her
nature utterly unsupplied, chambers in her heart and soul into which
light had never penetrated. Made in the image of God, she had never
heard His name; redeemed by Jesus Christ, she knew not that such a One
had lived and died for men. Though she had grown in the midst of God's
glorious works, she did not guess that He who made the "high hills as a
refuge for the wild goats," who "sent the springs into the valleys which
flow among the hills," was the loving, pitying Father who had watched
her lonely wanderings, and would bring this blind child by a way that
she knew not, and make "darkness light before her!"
Most of the children of Scotland learn at least to read and write at the
parish school, so Morag Dingwall's case was therefore an exceptional
one, and arose partly from her peculiar circumstances. She was an hourly
necessity to her father, who, besides, held in scorn other training than
that which loch and mountain afforded. The few books which the hut
contained led quite a fossil existence; they were stowed away by the
careful little Morag in the bottom of a great wooden box, her mother's
_kist_, in the depths of which all the valuables were buried to save
them from the inroads of the weather, when the pelting rain beat through
the broken roof, as it often did. Still, these buried musty books had a
great fascination for Morag; often she would peer curiously into them,
and long to know what they contained. She often wondered whether her
father understood their contents; she thought not; but so great was her
under-current of shyness that she had never ventured to ask him. Often
on a quiet afternoon, when her work was done, she would slip one of the
old books from its hiding-place, and lying down on the soft turf, would
ponder over its unknown characters, with an intense longing to
understand them. She felt sure that those closely-printed pages must
contain much that it would be delightful to know; but they were not for
her. With a sigh she would close the book, and gaze up at the fathomless
blue sky and the everlasting hills around her; and sitting at the feet
of the great, wonderful mother Nature, she learnt from her many things
that books could not have taught her.
Morag had a true eye for beauty. It is sometimes said that mountaineers
do not appreciate the scenery amid which their lot is cast; and perhaps
it is so far true, that when the stern hard necessities of life
multiply, they may dull the sense of the wonder and glory of nature in
minds which were originally sensitive to it. With our little Morag,
however, this deadening process had not begun. She revelled in all the
beauties of her mountain home; with a poet's love she gave voices to the
brooks and woods, and peopled in her imagination the solemn pine forest,
the gloomy ravine, and the breezy mountain top.
The Glen was many miles from the nearest parish, with its church and
school. There were dwellers in Glen Eagle who went to both, but the
keeper Dingwall was not one of them; and so it happened, strange as it
may seem, that little Morag had never been within a church, never heard
a sweet psalm sung, nor joined in a prayer to God.
On the still Sunday mornings she would sometimes watch the straggling
dwellers in the valley wending their way along the white hilly road to
meet in the little village kirk. Morag often glanced wistfully towards
it, when she went with her father to make their purchases at the
merchant's shop, but then it was always closed and silent. How much she
wished that she could see it on the day when the people all gathered
there! She had a vague idea that the little company went to worship a
God who lived far, far away in the blue sky, where her mother had gone,
somebody told her once, long ago; and since then she had not cared quite
so much to go to the grave under the shadow of the hill, but loved more
than ever to gaze into the blue sky, and to watch the sunset glories
before the amber clouds closed upon the many-colored brightness of the
evening sky.
Somehow Morag always felt more lonely on Sunday than on any other day.
In the long still afternoon, when her father went for a walk with the
dogs, she would wander down from the rocky shieling into the pine
forest, which was a great haunt of hers--the _fir-wood_, she always
called it. Sometimes she took one of the old books with her, and lying
down among the brown fir-needles, she would gaze longingly at the
unknown characters. She noticed that most of the church-goers carried
books with them, which she discovered to be identical with one of the
musty collection in the old _kist_: so a halo of mystery grew up round
this book, which seemed to belong to everybody; and Morag longed that
she could find the key to it as she looked up from the yellow pages of
her mother's Bible, and gazed dreamily through the dark aisles of pine
at the blue sky.
Happy are we that this Book of Life is an open page to us! But if it is,
though an open, a dull listless page, if our hearts do not burn within
us as we read its words, then more unhappy are we than this lonely
untaught maiden, this seeker after God; for of such He has said, "They
that seek me early shall find me!"
Morag had her code of right and wrong, which she held to with much more
firmness than some who have the knowledge of a living, present Helper,
along with the voice of conscience. She did many things every day that
were not always pleasant, because something within said, "I ought," and
avoided some things because that same voice whispered, "I ought not."
In the cold, dark winter mornings, the "I ought" said, "Get up, Morag,
and light the fire, and make breakfast ready for the kennels; if you lie
in bed longer, you won't have time to do it before making ready your
father's breakfast, and you know that the dogs depend on you;" and the
little girl would jump out of bed, with her first footsteps on the
half-frozen rain that often lay on the earthen floor, and set cheerily
about her morning's work.
The shooting season was generally the dullest time of the year for
Morag; her father being absent at the moors with the sportsmen all day
long, the little shieling was more than usually solitary during those
long autumn days. The shooting-party generally lived in the village inn,
so it was a great piece of news for the keeper and his daughter when
they heard that the new folks were to live in the castle of Glen Eagle.
It had been uninhabited ever since Morag could remember; she delighted
to wander round its grey walls, and to peep in at the narrow windows,
and had spun many a fancy in her little brain concerning its ancient
uses, and former inhabitants. She watched from afar, with great
interest, the preparations for the arrival of the new shooting-party;
and on the morning of the "Twelfth" she stood looking wistfully after
her father, as he set out for the castle, with the hired keepers and a
host of dogs, to meet the gentlemen on their start for the moors.
The shieling seemed very lonely that day to Morag, when her work was
done, and she sat watching the shooting-party on the distant hill, where
her keen eye could still distinguish them, like dark, moving specks
among the heather. At last it occurred to her that she might go to the
old castle, and see what transformations the newcomers had wrought. She
felt quite safe from the fear of seeing anybody, while the gentlemen
were absent: it never struck her that they would not leave their home,
as she left her hut, silent and tenantless: so she sauntered down the
hill, and wandered among the feathery birch-trees which skirted the road
to the castle. She felt rather disappointed to find that everything
looked exactly the same, to all appearance, as it used to do; for it
would have been difficult to change the exterior of such a grim old
keep.
After she had made an exploring tour round, she sat down on a grassy
knoll to rest, and then she noticed that the window opposite was opened
up, and the sash raised. A feeling of curiosity took possession of her,
and she thought surely there could be no harm of peeping in, when all
the people were so far away on the hills. She approached cautiously, and
looking in, she saw the loveliest little damsel that her eyes had ever
beheld, seated amid, what appeared to Morag, a perfect fairyland of
delight. Was there not a beautiful table covered with books in bright
gay bindings?--and this happy creature was bending over one of them,
with her golden curls falling around. For we know that Blanche Clifford
was at that moment in the thick of the Battle of Tewkesbury, in a very
disconsolate frame of mind. Morag saw that she had been unobserved, and
lingered about the grassy knoll, thinking that she might venture to take
another glimpse of this wonderful interior; but this time the golden
head had been suddenly raised, and a pair of blue, dreamy eyes surveyed
her with astonishment. Morag gave a terrified glance round her, and then
turned and fled, with a beating heart, never slackening her pace till
she got beyond the castle grounds.
By the time she had reached the shieling, Morag began to doubt her own
eyes, when the vision of the fair English maiden, with her wondering,
blue eyes, rose before her. She waited impatiently for her father's
return from the moors, in the hope that he might throw some light on the
matter; though when he did come she was much too shy to make any
inquiries. Supper was over, and Dingwall had taken his seat at the
_ingle neuk_ to smoke his pipe, while Morag sat cleaning a gun with her
tiny, but strong little fingers, as she silently pondered over the
castle scene, and at last came to the conclusion that the bonnie wee
leddy must have been one of the ghosts which were said to haunt the old
keep. Her father at last broke the silence by saying, between one of the
whiffs of his pipe--
"I'm thinkin' we've gotten the richt kin' o' folk this year, Morag. The
master's the best-like gentleman I've seen i' the Glen this mony a day.
It would be tellin' you and me, lass, gin he were the laird himsel';"
and Dingwall glanced grimly at one of the many standing grievances, the
porous roof of the hut. Morag's heart went pit-a-pat, for surely it
could not be a dream, and what she wanted might be coming soon; but
whiff, whiff went the pipe, and silence reigned for another quarter of
an hour, as Dingwall speculated whether Mr. Clifford might not even
bring his many suits before "the laird himsel'," and get redress for
some of his grievances.
At last he said, as he laid down his pipe, "Eh, Morag! but I havena been
tellin' ye aboot the winsome bit leddy he's brocht wi' him. She cam
runnin' up til him, and he brocht her to tak' a look o' the birds, and
said, 'This is my daughter, Dingwall. She would give me no rest till I
brought her to Glen Eagle,'" narrated the keeper, repeating Mr.
Clifford's introduction, which had evidently gratified him. "She had
been wantin' to go til the moors," he continued, "but the sicht o' the
deid birds seemed no to her likin', and she ran off some frichtened
like. Ye're no sae saft, lass, I'm thinkin';" and Dingwall smiled his
grim smile, and relapsed into silence again.
But Morag had heard all that she wanted. It was no vision, then, after
all, but a real, live, lovely maiden, of whom possibly she might catch
another glimpse if she had only the courage to approach the castle
again. She did not venture to tell her father that she, too, had seen
the winsome little leddy. Her extreme shyness and reserve always made it
an effort to tell anything that required many words, and she put all
her thoughts and reveries into the steel of Mr. Clifford's
double-barrelled gun.