ISHBEL'S PROMISE.
"It is no use at all to go against the lass. I hef said so before
now. And there are many lasses in Skye, as good as she, and with,
maybe, a cow or two, or a few pounds to bring with her. There is
Sheila Macdonald--Sheila will hef as much as three hundred pounds!"
"As if I would look at a squinting woman"--and Duncan threw down the
fishing-rod he held, furiously--"I will hef none but Ishbel, and if
she will not hef me, I will do someone an injury!"
His mother went on peeling potatoes, deliberately.
"Rory MacPhee is stronger and bigger than you," she remarked. "And
he has the eye of a hawk, and his fist is like iron. You will never
take Ishbel from him by force. But perhaps, now, there might be a
little plan--chust a little plan."
He picked up the rod. His cunning eyes grew intent. Catriona
resumed, in her high-pitched voice, speaking without a pause in her
occupation: "The best thing would be that they would quarrel. And
I will tell you a way. He does not like to hear that they are all
saying she is a changeling; and he does not like her to talk of the
good folk. When she told him the story of the kelpie that followed
Ross MacRae over the muir, and drowned him at last in the Rowan
Pool, he was angry, and called it all nonsense, and said that she
should not repeat such folly. And Ishbel did not like that. She was
asking me about the Cave of Gold only yesterday, and when it was
that anyone might see the fairies dancing, and if the tide would
suit to go. So I told her it was on Midsummer's Night at twelve
o'clock, and she is just mad to go! Chust as mad! But Rory was
there, too, and I was listening at the door, after, and I heard him
say that it was all just talk and folly, and that he would not have
her go; that it was too late, and that squalls came on, and our boat
was not good at all. She begged and prayed that he would take her,
and he said, 'No'! Chust always, 'No'!"
"Very well, then," Duncan cried impatiently, as she paused, "I
suppose she is so mad with love that she gave it up."
"She is pretty mad with the love," his mother agreed, "and so she
gave in. 'And I am going to Portree, Ishbel,' I heard him say, 'to
see what Mr. Campbell, the agent, is wishing to say to me, and you
will promise not to go when I am away?--for it is not good for a
lass like you to be out so late. And you will promise me?' And she
promised. He said he would bring her a new brooch--like a claymore,
that the man at Oban is making with the Iona pebbles--and they
kissed, and he is gone."
"Very well, what then?" Duncan cried irately. "I hear they are to be
married when he comes back. What else, mother?"
Catriona had dropped her potatoes into the pot, and she swung it
over the open peats, glowing redly in the dark little cottage.
"Well, if I were you, Duncan, I would get out the boat, and I would
offer to take her to the cave. And I will be telling her more
stories to-night, when we are spinning. The lass is a changeling,
sure enough, and she will go. When Rory comes back, he will hear,
and he will be mad with her, and they will quarrel. You can go over
to Uig that day" ("Discretion being the better part of valour,"
evidently, in Catriona's eyes). "They will quarrel, and will break
it off, and she will come to you, in time."
Duncan considered the plan slowly. Yes, it suited him excellently
well. He wanted no noisy quarrel, no measuring of strength. He, too,
remembered Rory's muscles at the Portree games. But this secret
working in the dark, in MacPhee's absence, was quite to his taste.
He made up his mind now that his mother was a woman of much wisdom.
He graciously told her he approved, and she should have a little
present on his next trip to Portree. Her stories to Ishbel of the
cave were to be many and enticing!