II

The foreheads of the hills were bathed in light. Sheer above all rose

the aureoled peaks of Ben Iolair and Tornideon. The lyric rapture of the

morning made a sound of rejoicing. The bleating of the sheep was more

rapid and less plaintive; and when the harsh screams of the great eagle,

that had its eyrie far above where the mountain-shoulders almost touch,

came echoing down the slopes, they were so mellowed at last as to fall

through the leagues of sunsea in sharp cadences.

Mists veiled all the slopes, and hid the strath. The mountains seemed

thus to be raimented in white and crowned with living gold. On the

heights these mists moved with furtive undulations, with an upward wave

which ever and again lifted a great mass of vapour columnarly toward the

summits.

Beneath, they lay like suspended snow, or hung as palls: vast draperies

of unrevealed day.

Even though the sunflood broke into these cohorts, and here seemed to

suck with thirsty flaming tongues, here to plunge in golden billows

among shallows of fading shadow, or here with a giant hand withdrew,

rent, swept away, dissipated the ever dissolving, ever reforming

battalions of rising mist--yet, as the morning advanced, the highland

was still swathed.

Sometimes a boulder, at a vast height, would stand disclosed. The wet

upon it, from granite boss and yellow lichen, shimmered as though the

fairy-folk who weave the rainbows were there at work. A space below

would give way to the sudden leap of the hill-wind; and with a rush the

sunlight would stream forward. Pine after pine would rear a green

banner, from which mist-veils would float, or rise and sway like flags

of a marching army. Then the ranks would close in again. Flying columns

would converge from right and left; the pine-banners would vanish, as

though in the smoke of battle: a mighty swaying mass would sweep upward,

absorb the sunbeams and splinter their gleaming lances, till boulder

after boulder would be captured and the bastioned heights themselves be

environed in the assault.

From the narrow loch at the end of the ravine, in the Pass of the

Eagles, came the clamour of wildfowl. Now here, now there, as though a

voice swam disembodied in that white sea, the double note of the cuckoo

resounded. In a thick sob, the echo of the Linn o' Mairg came heavily at

intervals. The muffled noise of Mairg Water crawled through the caverns

of the mist.

Though the two mountain-buttresses at the head of the pass are so close

that the legend of a stag having taken the intervening space at a bound

is not wholly incredible, it was impossible for one hid in the mist on

Maol-Gorm of Iolair to see any one or anything on Maol-dubh of

Tornideon. But through the mist, here suffused with a pale golden light,

was audible on both spurs the bleating of travelling sheep and the

barking of a dog, with, now and again, the lowing of cows.

Suddenly a voice rang out, strong, clear, and blithe:

"_Mo rùn geal, dìleas,

Dìleas, dìleas,

Mo rùn geal, dìleas

Nach till thunall!_"

Upon the spring of the last word came back from Iolair a voice as blithe

and more sweet, the voice of a woman, with the lilt of a bird in it and

all the joy of the sunshine:

"_I go where the sheep go,

With the sheep are my feet:

I go where the kye go,

Their breath is so sweet:

O lover who loves me,

Art thou half so fleet?

Where the sheep climb, the kye go,

There shall we meet!_"

There was something so penetratingly sweet and joyous in the song that

it stirred every bird on the hillside. The larks rose through the mist

till they swam into the sunflood; the linties and shilfas and

yellow-yites sent thrilling notes from gorse-bush to gorse-bush and from

rowan to rowan. In the birk-shaws, the cries of the merles sounded like

shrill flutes.

To and fro went the sweet voices. Now the man's on Tornideon would ring

blithely, now the woman's on Iolair respond.

At last, as the cattle moved up the slopes, with the spreading sheep in

advance, the shepherding voices fell further apart. Instinct led the kye

to the sunlight, for all living things have their joy through the eyes.

"_Sorcha, Sorcha, Sorcha!_" came ringing through the mist:

"_Sorcha-mo-ciatach-nio-nag!_"

"_Tha, Ailean-a-ghaolach!_" came back, with a ripple of laughter, the

laughter of joy.[3]

[3] "Sorcha, my bonnie lassie," "Yes, Alan, my darling."

"Ah mo cailin geal, mo nighean donn, duit ciat mhor!"

"Duit cíat, no runach!"[4]

[4] "Ah, my fair one, my dark-haired lass, joy be on you!"--"And

joy on you, my loved-in-secret."

_Infra_: Domnuill-dubh instead of Donncha-dubh: _i.e._ "should be

called Black Donald instead of Black Duncan." It is a play upon

words: for "Black Donald" is the Highland colloquialism for Satan.

"The sheep and the kye don't know love, Sorcha, or they would stay here

till the mists go, and then we would see each other."

"Let us cry _deasiul_, and turn thrice sunways!"

"Ay; and meanwhile the beasts won't stand still! That evil beast of a

bull, Donncha-dhu, who ought to be called Domnuill-dhu, is leading the

way over the shoulder of Maol-Gorm. I must go, Sorcha-mo-ghraidh, or

never a sheep will I find again; and as for the kye, they'll go smelling

the four winds. _Sorcha! Sorcha!_ Can you hear?"

_Hear_ came back in a sweet falling echo, the more remote and aerial

because of the mist.

"Come down to-night after the milking, and meet me at the Linn....

Sorcha! I'm going to see Mr. Morrison again!"

"'Tis no use, Alan. But I'll meet you at the Linn in the late gloaming."

"_Sorcha!_"

"_Alan!_"

Then, fainter and fainter, _Sorcha!_... _Alan!_ And at last no response

came when Alan Gilchrist cried, with a prolonged echoing call, the name

of his _ghaolaiche_, his heart's joy.

Soon thereafter the mists began to disperse.

* * * * *

Alan Gilchrist was at the pool, below the Linn o' Mairg, long before

Sorcha Cameron came down from Màm-Gorm, the hill-farm on Iolair, by the

circuitous but secluded way through the pine-glades.

For an hour or more he had lain there, dreaming. The first green breath

of May was sweet upon the land: already a warmth as of midsummer was in

the air. Pleasant it was to lie and dream by the running water.

When he had first reached the Mairg Water, after his fruitless journey

to Inverglas, the village of Strath Iolair, he had thrown himself down

among the fern, in the shadow of a boulder overlooking the Kelpie's

Pool. Angry thoughts were in his mind, because of the minister's refusal

to marry Sorcha and himself. It was a bitter thing, he thought, and

unjust.

For that noontide, after he had driven the sheep on to the upper

pastures upon Tornideon, and had got little Davie Niven, of

Clachan-nan-Creag, to herd the sheep for him till moonrise, he had gone

down by his home at Ardoch-Beag, itself high on the

mountain-side--though he was little there during the summer-pasturing on

the hills--to the strath, and so by the road to Inverglas. As he went

through the village, there were many who looked at him with glad eyes:

for wherever he went Alan found a smile of welcome for him, partly

because of the beauty of his tall person and curly yellow hair, which

made the strath women call him _Alan-aluinn_, Alan-fair-to-see, but more

perhaps of his own smile that was so sweet out of his blue eyes, and for

the grave yet winning way of him. His rival, Duncan Robertson, spoke of

him contemptuously as "the man for women and children"; but, as others

besides Duncan Robertson knew well, the women's-man and the

children's-man could also be the best man's-man in the strath when

occasion required.

This early afternoon, however, he had no wish to speak with any, and so

hurried on, with a visit only to old Morag Niven, Davie the

herd-laddie's grandmother. The small, douce, wizened old woman blessed

him for what he brought her, and insisted on telling his fortune again

by the lines in his hands. Laughingly he assured her she had told it to

him so often that he was beginning not to believe in her predictions at

all.

"That may be," she exclaimed, half-pettishly: "but it's this I'm telling

you, Alan Mac Fergus, and what's more, it's not only the 'vision' of the

love that's coming to you, but I've had the 'sight' on the lover too!"

The young man flushed, but answered carelessly:

"Good for you, Mùimé: but sure 'tis a risky thing to be seeing too

much."

The old woman stared keenly at him for a moment, and then smiled.

"Well, and will this, then, be like what you have seen in your dreams,

if ever a great _oganach_ like you dreams at all:

"_First_: She is beautiful as this May day.

"_Second_: She is tall and graceful as a young pine, and moves like a

hind upon the hills, an' no flower sways in the wind more dainty-sweet

than she.

"_Third_: She is fair of face, with all the soft skin of her like new

milk. But her hair is dark, like the woods at dusk, and fragrant as

they.

"_Fourth_: She lives at a mountain-farm, and all her heart is in a man's

keeping, and all her beauty is his to love, and she is the tallest, and

strongest, and sweetest lass in all the strath or in the big world

beyond, and as beautiful as Roscrana that was wife to Fingal of old and

mother of Ossian the blind bard--ay, good as Morna, which is the name of

a woman that is beloved by all, and fair-to-see as Fiona, which is the

name given of old to a bonnie maid, and lovely as Alona, than whom not

woman could be lovelier.

"_Fifth_: And the man she loves is a poor misguidit wastrel who lives on

a hill opposite to her, and I'm thinkin' his name will be Alan too, Alan

this or Alan that.

"_Sixth_: 'Tis Himself only, praise be to Him, who knows who this

Morna-Fiona-Alona may be: but in a dream I had, I'm thinkin' her name is

Sorcha.

"_And Seventh_" (_this in a relapse from Gaellic into the Lowland

tongue_): "I may be a silly auld wife, Alan my man, but I'm na sae

blind as ta fail ta see through a split poke, for a' yer havers and

blethers!"

With a shamefaced laugh Alan told her she was an old witch, and was

sheer doited at that! Then, suddenly stooping and kissing her grey hair,

he bade her good-bye, and went on his way.

But it was an ill-faring. Mr. Morrison, the tall, dark-faced minister,

gray and lank as an old fox, though a godly man, would have nothing to

say to the granting of his request.

"No, no, Alan Gilchrist," he added in parting, and in a not unkindly

tone, "'tis no ill-will I am bearing you, my lad. But neither I nor any

true minister of God will wed you and Sorcha Cameron, because of the

feud between Torcall her father and Anabal your mother, and of the ban

laid by him on her, and by her on you."

"So be it, Mr. Morrison; but as for me, I will be putting up with no

banning from man or woman--no, not I, nor Sorcha either!"

"That is a wicked thing for you to say. But Sorcha is a good lass if

you're not a good lad, and ... and ... the long and short of it is, I

can't and won't wed you and her ... no, not though your mother and

Sorcha's father were to die, and that I avow here solemnly, to the

stones be it said."

And so it was that the young man went away wrathful and indignant. Yet,

with every mile of his homeward journey he cared less and less. After

all, what did it matter to him or Sorcha? Living remote upon the

solitary hills, and rarely seeing the people of the strath, what did it

avail whether or no he and she were "blessed" by Mr. Morrison? Well, he

had done what he could.

He knew, of course, of the heavy weight of a parental ban; how, with

some, it was a command as sacred and inviolable as those of God. But he

did not know all that Mr. Morrison knew or surmised: wherein, indeed,

was the deeper reason of the refusal.

"The child Oona, the child Oona," muttered the minister as he returned

to his house; "why was she sent by Anabal, as soon as might be after

birth, to Torcall Cameron? And why was he stricken blind, he there alone

on Màm-Gorm, with Marsail, his wife, long dead, and only his daughter,

Sorcha, sweet lass, beside him: stricken of God, blind and desolate for

all his days thereafter? Alas, too, what of the doom of Fergus, her

husband!"

But, lying by the running water of Mairg, Alan, at last oblivious of

what had angered him and left in his mind a vague distress, pondered

other and dearer things than these.

His heart was full of Sorcha. Already, as indeed for more than a month

past, there was upon him that trance of love of which the old Celtic

poets speak. Even now he went daily in a dream. Malveen, the

widow-mother of Davie the herd-laddie, saw him often as he passed to and

fro upon the hillside, as one in a vision, rapt, with shining eyes. At

times, too, unknown of either, she caught a glimpse of Alan and Sorcha

as they kept tryst in the gloamings. She mothered them with the longing

woman's joy in love that had never been hers; they were her dear ones,

though rare it was that she had word of either. The youth of youths, the

maid of maids: to her at last something more than real and familiar,

remote as they were in the glamour that was about them as the Mountain

Lovers.

It was in the late gloaming, as she had promised, that Sorcha stole

soundlessly from the forest, and was in Alan's arms almost before he

knew that the tryst was kept.