FROM Knapdale to Lorn three wandering clans share the country between them, and of the three the oldest and the greatest are the swart Macdonalds, children of the Old Boboon.
You will come on them on Wade's roads,—jaunty fellows, a bit dour in the look, and braggart; or girls with sloe-eyes, tall and supple, not with a flat slouching foot on the soil, but high in the instep, bounding and stag-sure. At their head will be a long lean old man on crutches—John Fine Macdonald—
Old Boboon, the father and head of the noblest of wandering tribes.
“Sir,” will Boboon say to you, “I am the fellow you read of in books as the teller of Fingalian tales; wilt hear one of them for a poor Saxon shilling, or wilt buy my lures for the fish? Or perhaps a display of scholarly piping by my daughter's son—the gallant scamp!—who has carried arms for his king?”
If one must have the truth, the piping is bad piping, but the fish-lures and the tales are the best in the world. You will find some of the tales in the writings of Iain Og of Isla—such as “The Brown Bear of the Green Glen”; but the best are to hear as Boboon minds them when he sits with you on the roadside or on the heather beside the evening fire, when the brown fluffy eagles bark at the mist on Braevallach. Listen well to them, for this person has the gift. He had it from his father, who had it fromhisfather, who had it from a mother, who, in deep trouble and disease, lay awake through long nights gathering thoughts as healthy folks gather nuts—a sweet thing enough from a sour husk.
And if time were your property (as it should be the portion of every wiselike man), you might hear many tales from Old Boboon, but never the tale of his own three chances.
It happened once upon a time that the captain in the town took a notion to make Boboon into a tame house-man instead of a creature of the woods and highways. He took him first by himself and clapped him into a kilt of his own tartan eight yards round the buttocks, full pleated, with hose of fine worsted, and a coat with silver buttons. He put a pickle money in his sporran, and gave him a place a little way down his table. The feeding was high and the work was to a wanderer's fancy; for it was but whistling to a dog now and then, chanting a stave, or telling a story, or roaming through the garden behind the house.
“Ho, ho!” said Boboon, “am not I the sturdy fellow come to his own?” and about the place he would go with a piper's swagger, switching the grass and shrubs with a withie as he went, in the way gentlemen use riding-sticks.
But when Inneraora town lay in the dark of the winter night, and the captain's household slept, Boboon would hear his clan calling on him outside the wall.
“Boboon! oh, Boboon! old hero! come and collogue with your children.”
He would go to the wall, which was lower on the inside than the out (and is, indeed, the wall of old Quinten, where a corps of Campbells, slaughtered by Inverlochy dogs, lie under a Latin stone), and he would look down at his friends running about like pole-cats in the darkness, in their ragged kilts and trews, their stringy hair tossing in the wind. The women themselves would be there, with the bairns whining on their backs.
“Ay! ay! this is you, my hearty folk!” he would say; “glad am I to see you and smell the wood-fire reek off you. How is it on the road?”
“From here we have not moved since you left us, John Fine. We are camped in the Blue Quarry, and you never came near your children and friends.”
“God! and here's the one that's sorry for that same. But over the walls they will not let me. 'If gentleman you would be,' says the captain, 'you must keep out of woods and off the highway.'”
“And you like it, Boboon?”
“Like it, heroes! But for the honour and ease of it, give me a fir-root fire in Glen Croe and a dinner offuarag. It is not the day so much as the night. Lying in-by there on a posted-bed, I choke for the want of air, though the windows and doors are open wide.”
“Come away with us, Boboon; we have little lack with the fish, and few are our stories since you took to the town.”
“No, no, dears. Conan's curse, and I tell you no! In this place there is comfort, and every day its own bellyful.”
“But the freedom outbye, John, old hero! Last night we had the bravest of fires; the sparks flew like birds among the Duke's birches, the ground was snug and dry, and-”
“Begone! I tell ye no!”
“Listen! To-day we were among the white hares beyond the Beannan, thwacking the big fat fellows with our clubs. Such sport was not in all Albainn!”
“White hares!”
“White hares, old John! And Alasdair Beag has some new tunes since you left us—apiobaireachdhe picked up from a Mull man.”
“Would it be 'Failte an Roich '?”
“Better than that by far; a masterly tune! Come out and hear him.”
But Old Boboon leaned with his arms on the wall and made no move to be off with his children.
“Come and stravaig,” said the girls, and his daughter Betty put a foot in a cranny and pulled herself up beside him to put coaxing arms round his neck.
“Calf of my heart!” said Boboon, stroking her hair, soft handed.
“We have the fine feeding,” said the girl in his ear. “Yesterday it was plotted trout in the morning and tunnag's eggs; dinner was a collop off a fat hind.”
“A grailoched hind?”
“No, nor grailoched! That is a fool's fashion and the spoiling of good meat. But come with us, father. Think of the burns bubbling, and the stars through the branches, and the fresh airs of the morning!”
“Down, down, you bitch! Would ye tempt me?” cried Boboon, pushing the girl from the wall and hurrying back with shaking knees to the Latin stone. The night was deep black, and for all he could tell by eyesight, he might have been in the middle of breezy Moor Rannoch, but the town gables crowded 'thick and solid round his heart. He missed the free flowing winds; there was a smell of peat and coal from dead house-fires, and he spat the dust of lime from his throat.
Over the wall the clan scraped and skurried as weasels do. They dared make no noise for fear the town should waken, but in hoarse voices they called all together—
“Boboon, Boboon, oh! come home to the wood, Boboon!”
“Am not I the poor caged one?” said Boboon to himself, and he ran in that he might hear no more.
It was the same the next night and the next, and it looked like going on without end. Ever the wanderers coming at night to the wall and craving their head to come out. And one night they threw over a winged black-cock, that fell with beating feathers at Boboon's feet as he stood in the dark listening to the swart Macdonalds whining outbye.
He picked up the bird and ran kind fingers through its feathers. The heat coursed in its breast and burned to a fever in its wounded oxter. Its little heart beat on Boboon's thumb like a drumstick.
“Poor bird!” said he; “well I ken where ye came from, and the merry times ye had. Ye hatched in the braes of Ben Bhuidhe, and clucked on the reedy places round about the side of that tall hill. Before your keen eyes in the morning was the Dubh Loch, and the Shira—winding like a silver belt. Sure am I ye took wing for it with the day, and over Stuc Scardan to Aora Glen to make merry among your mates in the heather and the fern. Oh!choillich-dhuibh, choillich-dhuibh, hard's our fate with broken wings and the heart still strong!”
He thrawed the bird's neck, and then went over the wall to join his clan.
His second chance ended no better. He was back in a new kilt and jacket a twelvemonth later, and this time the captain tried the trick of a dog's freedom—oat on the road as he liked by day, but kennel at night.
One day Boboon was on his master's errand round Stron. It was the spring of the year. The shore, at the half-ebb, was clean and sweet, and the tide lapped at the edge as soft as a cat at milk.
Going round Stron on the hard yellow road, he got to think of the sea's good fortune,—of the many bays it wandered into by night or day; of its friendship with far-out forelands, and its brisk quarrels with the black rocks. Here was no dyke at any time, but all freedom, the restlessness and the roaming, sleep or song as the mood had it, and the ploys with galleys and gabberts; the cheery halloo of the winds and the waving of branches on foreign isles to welcome one.
The road opened before him in short swatches—the sort of road a wanderer likes, with not too much of it to be seen at one look. In the hazel-wood by the way the bark of the young trees glistened like brass; thin new switches shot out straight as shelisters.
John Fine, with the sun heating his back, started at the singing of Donnacha Ban's “Coire Cheathaich”:—
“O 'twas gladsome to go a-huntingOut in the dew of the sunny mom!For the great red stag was never wanting,Nor the fawn, nor the doe with never a horn.My beauteous corri, my misty corri!What light feet trod thee in joy and pride!What strong hand gathered thy precious treasures,What great hearts leaped on thy craggy side!”
Rounding Dundarave, the road lay straight before him till it thinned in the distance to a needle-point pricking the trees, and at the end of it was a cloud of dust.
“What have I here?” said Boboon to himself, stretching out with long steps, the kilt flapping against the back of his knees.
The cloud came close, and lo! here was his own clan on the march, draggled and stoury, rambling, scattered like crows, along the road.
“Boboon! Boboon!” they cried, and they hung about him, fingering his fine clothes.
He looked at their brown flesh, he saw the yellow soil in the crannies of their brogues, the men loose and blackguardly, the women red-cheeked, ripe, and big-breasted, with bold eyes, and all had enchantment for him! A stir set up in his heart that he could not put down.
“Where were you yesterday?” he asked.
“On the side of the Rest in Glen Croe, with dry beds of white hay and no hurry.”
“Where are you for?”
“Have you forgotten the wanderer's ways, Boboon? Where does this road go to?”
“Well ye ken, my heroes! It goes to the end of a man's will. If the man' says, 'I bide here,' it's the end of the road; but if he has the notion, it will take him to the end of days. That, by my soul! is the charm of all roads that are not in towns; and now that I think of it, let the captain whistle on his errand, for I'm Boboon and sick of the causey stones.”
So night found Boboon and his clan far in at the back of Auchnabreac, town-muir and bonny place, where some we ken would sooner be than wandering o'er the world.
And the days passed, and at Martinmas the captain was at Kilmichael Market, and he came on Boboon with his people on the edge of the market-place. Boboon in those days was as straight as a young saugh-wand, sharp and thin, all thong at the joints, and as supple as a wild cat. He was giving a display with thesgian-dubh, stabbing it on the ground at the back of his left heel and twisting his right arm round the leg to get the blade out of the ground without bending the knee. It was a trick to take the eye, but neither bardic nor soldierly, yet there was a throng of drovers about him. Along with him was his daughter Betty, who took after him for looks, but had her dead mother's dainty tongue, and from her mother a little book-schooling John Fine had never the need of.
The eye of the captain fell on the two of them as they stood there, with their forty clan-folk going about the market, and he was gripped by a new notion to give Boboon the third and the last chance.
“Boboon!” he said, “come back to the town this once, and I'll put you and your daughter up together in a house of your own.”
Before a week was out the thing was as he wanted. Boboon and Betty got a room in Macvicar's Land, with a wooden floor, and a fire on the side of the wall with a built-in chimney, and other gentilities beside. They stayed for months, and they stayed for years, and the clan craved them in vain to come home. Betty was put to the books and the arts of ladydom by the captain's mother and sister, and she took to them like a Ridir's daughter. She lost the twang of the road-folk; she put her errant hair in leash; she grew to the habit of snodding and redding, until for grace and good looks she was the match of them that taught her.
One day the captain, walking in his garden in deep cogitation, fell in the way of the girl as she roamed among the bushes. He got for the first time the true glance of her (for one may look at a person for years and not see the reality till a scale falls from the eyes), and behold! here was a woman who set his heart drumming.
It was that very night Boboon put an end to his last chance.
The strong sun of the day left the night hot and clammy, and a haze hung on the country such as one sees in these parts in keenest frost. Macvicar's Land was full of smells—of sweating flesh and dirty water, of fish and the rotting airs of sunless holes—and the dainty nose of Macdonald took a disgust. He flung open door and window, and leaned out at the window with his neck bared and his mouth stretched wide gasping to the air. The bairns in the back-land looked up and laughed.
“Look at Boboon, Boboon, Boboon, the father of Lady Betty!” they cried, and John Fine shook his fist and cursed their families.
But there was no ease from the trouble in this fashion, so he got up and went behind the town, and threw himself under the large trees with an ear to the ground. Beside him the cattle crunched the sappy grass in so sweet and hearty mouthfuls that he could well wish he had the taste of nature himself, and they breathed great breaths of content. His keen ears could catch the hopping of beasts on the grass and the scratching of claws in the wood, he could hear the patter of little feet, and the birds above him scraping on the bark when they turned in their sleep. A townman would think the world slept, so great was the booming of quietness; but Boboon heard the song of the night, the bustle of the half world that thrives in shade and starshine.
Leaning now on an elbow, he let his eyes rove among the beeches, into the bossy tops, solemn and sedate, and the deep recesses that might be full of the little folk of fairy-land at their cantrips. And then farther back and above all was Dunchuach the stately, lifting its face, wood-bearded, to the stars!
“If a wind was here it was all I wanted,” said Boboon, and when he said it the wind came—a salty air from the sea. The whole country-side cooled and gave out fresh scents of grass and earth.
“O God! O God!” cried the wanderer, “here we are out-by, the beasts and the birds and the best of Boboon together! Here is the place for ease and the full heart.”
He up and ran into the town, and up to the captain's gate and in.
“Master,” he cried, 'it's the old story,—I must be taking the road for it; here's no rest for John Fine Macdonald!”
“But you'll leave the girl,” said the captain, who saw the old fever in the man's eyes; “I have taken a notion of her, and—”
“So be it! let her bide.”
“I'll marry her before the morn's out.”
“Marry!” cried Boboon, putting back his hair from his face with a nervous hand. “You would marry a wanderer's child?”
“Well, they'll talk, no doubt; but she has gifts to make them forget, and she's good enough to make a king's woman.”
“Sir,” said Boboon, “I have but one thing to say, and that's our own Gaelic old-word, 'There are few lapdogs in a fox's litter.'” The captain's face got as red as his vest, and he had a ready hand up for an answer to Boboon, but he had mind the man was the girl's father.
“I'll risk it,” he said, “and you can go your wandering ways, for Betty is willing.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” said Boboon, and he went. In the hollow of the night he was hooting back like a boy at the hoolets on the slopes of Coillevraid, and at the mouth of day, in a silver wet light, he was standing on the edge of the hills that look on two lochs, his head high like a scenting deer's. He turned him round about to all airts with his eyes from Cruachan to Cowal, and as far between Knapdale and Lorn as a wanderer has vision, and yonder, down at Kames, was the camp of his clan!
Betty his daughter left Macvicar's Land in the morning and went to be captain's wife, with a seat in the kirk and callers from the castle itself.
“Wait, wait,” said old Craignure, when the tale reached him, “you'll see the fox come out on her ere long.”
But the fox was not there; it was skipping a day, as the fox will do sometimes when the day before has been good hunting. All went well with the woman till the worst that might have been the best happened, and she died with her first child. It was the year of the stunted oats, that brought poverty to Inneraora and black bread to the captain's board; but black bread and brochan would have been the blithest of meat for him if Betty was left to share it. He took to the bottle, and left the boy to women who had no skill of wild youth.
And the child grew like a fir-tree, straight and tall, full of hot blood, swung about by whim and the moment's fancy. For him it was ever the horse and gun, a snatched dinner and hearty, and off to the wood or hill. He got to know the inner ways of the beasts that hide in the coarse grasses and the whin; at a whistle he could coax flapping birds to come to heel. A loose vest and a naked neck for ever were marring his gentility, and his closest friends were countrymen with hard hands and the loud ready laugh.
One day it came to the captain's mind that something must be made of this young blade, and he sent for him.
“Boy,” said he, “are you at your books?”
“No, but—but I ken a short way with the badgers,” the lad made answer.
“Did you have a lesson this morning?”
“Never a lesson,” said the lad; “I was too busy living.”
“Living, said ye?”
“Living. I was at the swimming at the Creags, and beaking in the sun on the braes above the Garron beside the march wall where the hedgehogs creep, and I am new from the shinty,” and he shook the shinty-stick in his hand.
The captain took to pondering, his chin on his hand and his elbows on the table, where a bottle and glass lay beside him.
After a bit he said, “Look ye, my son, what are ye meaning to be?”
“I'm for the sword-work,” the lad said, in a flash, his face twitching.
“I would sooner see you in hell first!” cried the captain, thumping the board till the glass rang. He had seen foreign wars himself and had a hack on the groin.
That was the first of the feud between them. They fought it dour and they fought it hard, the father for the crafts of peace and the lad for his own way, and at last one day the captain said—
“To the door, brat, and your lair with the Boboons you belong to! Faith, and your grandfather was right when he said there was never a lapdog in a fox's litter.”
Who he came of, the lad had no notion, for the swart Macdonalds never came near the town after Boboon left it for the last time; but he put on his bonnet, and went out of the house and on to the highroad.
It was well on to winter, a brawling day, with the leaves of the Duke's trees swishing thick and high over the thatch and through the streets of the Duke's town. Snug stood the gables, friendly and warm, and the window-lozens winked with the light of big peat-fires within. Over the breast the seabirds yelped and crows craked without a stop, stirring about in the branches behind Macvicar's Land. And the salt wind! It blew in from the low bay at one end of the town and through it to the other, and before it went a lad into the wide world that starts at the factor's corner.
“By the shore-side to the low country, or by the woods to the hills?” the lad asked himself. He had thecamanstill in his hand, and he tossed it in the air. “Bas for the highway,casfor the low,” said he. The shinty fellbos, and our hero took to it for the highway to the north. He swithered at the Arches, and looked back on the front of the town and the quay with the oil-lights on it. He was half in the humour to bide, but he put the notion behind him and stretched to the brae, whistling a piper's march. At the head of the brae the town houses were lost to him, and this so soon he could not put up with, so he went down on a way to the right a little and stood on the grass of the Winterton field.
Fast and dark the night was falling, a heavy smirr of rain was drooking the grass, and the trees on every hand shook the water in blobs from the branches. Through them the lights of the finest town in the world shone damp and woe-begone.
“There are good folk in't, and bad folk in't,” said the lad to himself; “but somehow 'twas never the place for me!”
He turned and went into the road through the wood, savage at heart, without a thought of where his sleep would be. When he came to Kennachregan, there was the scad of a fire above the trees beside the roaring river, and he went down and looked over a march dyke at a band of wanderers under the trees. Young and old, men and women, they lay steaming on soft beds of springy spruce-branches with their toes to the crackling logs, snoring as snore sound sleepers, sheltered from the rain by the thick branches, the side of the hill, and here and there a canvas covering. There was but one of them up—a long old man with lank jaws and black eyes—John Fine Macdonald. He was stirring up the logs with the shod of a crutch and humming a Perth song, and before the hottest of the fire a plucked bird was roasting.
The smell of the meat and the wood-fire rose to the dykeside where the lad stood shivering in his wet clothes, and the comfort of the camp was something he could not pass by.
He took a jump over the dyke and went out in the light of the fire, wondering what would be his welcome. Old Boboon looked up with his hand over his eyes, then rose on his crutches and put a hand on the young fellow's shoulder.
“You're from Inneraora town?” said he.
“I am,” said the lad; “but it's Inneraora no more for me.”
“Ho! ho!” laughed the old wanderer. “Sit ye down, ye scamp, and take your fingers to a pick of your grandfather's hen. Boboon's children may be slow and far, but home's aye home to them!”
IT is ill enough to have to die in Glenaora at any season, but to get the word for travelling from it on yon trip in the spring of the year is hard indeed. The gug-gug will halloo in your ears to bid you bide a wee and see the red of the heather creep on Tom-an-dearc; the soft and sap-scented winds will come in at the open door, and you will mind, maybe, of a day long-off and lost when you pulled the copper leaves of the bursting oak and tossed them among a girl's hair. Oh! the long days and the strong days! They will come back to you like the curious bit in a tune that is vexatious and sweet, and not for words or a set thought. You will think of the lambs on the slopes, of the birds tearing through the thousand ways in the woods, of the magic hollows in below the thick-sown pines, of the burns, deep at the bottom ofeasand corri, spilling like gold on a stair. And then, it may be, Solomon Carrier's cart goes by to the town, the first time since the drifts went off the high road; you hear the clatter of the iron shoes, and your mind will go with him to the throng street where the folks are so kind and so free.
But to turn your back for the last at that time on Lecknamban must come sorest of all. For Lecknamban has seven sheilings hidden in its hills, where the grass is long and juicy, and five burns that are aye on the giggle like girls at a wedding, and the Aora daunders down in front of the knowe, full of fish for the Duke alone, but bonny for earl or caird.
It was in this same glen, in this same Lecknamban, in the spring of a year, a woman was at her end. She was a woman up in years but not old, a black Bana-Mhuileach who had seen pleasant things and trials like all who come to this queer market-place; but now when the time was come to take the long road with no convoy, only the good times were in her recollection. And though Glenaora was not her calf-country (for she came but a year ago to bide with a friend), she was swear't to turn heel on a place so cosy.
She sat propped up in a box-bed, on pillows, with her face to the open door, and the friendly airs of the country-side came in to stir her hair. With them came scents of the red earth and the grass, birch-tree and myrtle, from the moor. But more than all they brought her who was at her end a keen craving for one more summer of the grand world. Strong in her make and dour at the giving-in, she kept talking of the world's affairs and foolishness to the folk about her who were waiting the Almighty's will and the coming of the stretching-board. Her fingers picked without a stop at the woolly bits of the blankets, and her eyes were on as much of the knowe below the house as she could see out at the open door. It was yellow at the foot with flowers, and here and there was a spot of blue from the cuckoo-brogue.
“Women, women,” she said with short breaths, “I'm thinking aye, when I see the flowers, of a man that came from these parts to Duart. He sang 'Mo Nighean Dubh' in a style was never heard before in our place, and he once brought me the scented cuckoo-brogues from Aora.”
Said the goodwife, “Aoirig, poor woman, it is not the hour for ancient oldsgeuls; be thinking of a canny going.”
“Going! it was aye going with me,” said the woman in the bed. “And it was aye going when things were at their best and I was the keener for them.”
“It's the way of God, my dear,ochanie!” said one of the two Tullich sisters, putting a little salt in a plate for-the coming business.
“O God! it's the hard way, indeed. And I'm not so old as you by two or three clippings.”
“Peace, Aoirig, heart; you had your own merry times, and that's as much as most of us have claim to.”
“Merry times! merry times!” said Aoirig, humped among the bedding, her mind wandering.
Curls of the peat-reek coiled from the floor among thecabarsor through the hole in the roof; a lamb ran by the door bleating for its mother, and the whistling of anuiseaghigh over the grass where his nest lay ran out to a thin thread of song. The sound of it troubled the dying woman, and she asked her friends to shut the door. Now and again Maisie would put a wet cloth to her lips and dry the death-sweat from her face. The goodwife was throng among chests and presses looking for sheets, shrouds, and dead-caps.
“It's a pity,” said she, “you brought no grave-clothes with you from Mull, my dear.”
“Are you grudging me yours?” asked Aoirig, coming round from wandering.
“No, nor grudging; fine ye ken it, cousin. But I know ye have them, and it's a pity you should be dressed in another's spinning than your own.”
“Ay, they're yonder sure enough: clean and ready. And there's more than that beside them. The linen I should have brought to a man's home.”
“You and your man's home! Is it Duart, my dear, among your own folk, or down to Inishail, you would have us take you?” Aoirig coughed till the red froth was at her lips.
“Duart is homely and Inishail is holy, sure enough, but I would have it Kilmalieu. They tell me it's a fine kirkyard; but I never had the luck to see it.”
“It's well enough, I'll not deny, and it would not be so far to take you. Our folk have a space of their own among the MacVicars, below the parson.”
The woman in the bed signed for a sip of water, and they had it fast at her lips.
“Could you be putting me near the Macnicols?” she asked in a weakening voice. “The one I speak of was a Macnicol.”
“Ay, ay,” said the goodwife; “they were aye gallant among the girls.”
“Gallant he was,” said the one among the blankets. “I see him now. The best man ever I saw. It was at a wedding——”
The woman's breast racked and the spume spattered over the home-spun blankets.
Maisie was heating a death-shift at the peat-fire, turning it over in her hands, letting the dry airs into every seam and corner.
Looking at her preparation, the dying woman caught back her breath to ask why such trouble with a dead-shift.
“Ye would not have it on damp and cold,” said Maisie, settling the business. “I doubt it'll be long in the sleeves, woman, for the goodwife has a lengthy reach.”
“It was at a marriage in Glenurchy,” said Aoirig in a haver, the pillows slipping down behind her back. “Yonder he is. A slim straight lad. Ronnal, O Ronnal my hero! What a dancer! not his match in Mull. Aye so——”
A foot could be heard on the road, and one of the two sisters ran out, for she knew whom it would be. They had sent word to the town by Solomon in the morning for Macnicol the wright to come up with the stretching-board, thinking there was but an hour more for poor Macnicol's were the footsteps, and there he was with the stretching-board under his arm—a good piece of larch rubbed smooth by sheet and shroud, and a little hollow worn at the head. He was a fat man, rolling a bit to one side on a short leg, gross and flabby at the jowl, and thick-lipped; but he might have been a swanky lad in his day, and there was a bit of good-humour in the corner of his eye, where you will never see it when one has been born with the uneasy mind. He was humming to himself as he came up the brae a Badenoch ditty they have in these parts on the winter nights, gossiping round the fire. Whom he was going to stretch he had no notion, except that it was a woman and a stranger to the glen.
The sister took him round to the corner of the house and in at the byre door, and told him to wait. “It'll not be long now,” she said.
“Then she's still to the fore,” said the wright. “I might have waited on the paymaster's dram at Three Bridges if I had ken't. Women are aye thrawn about dying. They'll put it off to the last, when a man would be glad to be taking the road. Who is she, poor woman?”
“A cousin-german of Nanny's,” said the sister, putting a bottle before him, and whipping out for some bannock and cheese. He sat down on a shearing-stool, facing the door, half open, between the byre he was in and the kitchen where Aoirig was at the dying. The stretching-board leaned against the wall outside.
“Aye so gentle, so kind,” the woman in the bed was saying in her last dover. “He kissed me first on a day like this. And the blue flowers from Aora?”
In the byre the wright was preeing the drink and paying little heed to food. It was the good warm stuff they brew on the side of Lochow, the heart of the very heart of the barley-fields, with the taste of gall and peat, and he mellowed with every quaich, and took to the soft lilting of Niall Ban's song:—
“'I am the Sergeant fell but kind(Ho! ho! heroes, agus ho-e-ro! );I only lift but the deaf and blind,The wearied-out and the rest-inclined.Many a booty I drive before,Through the glens, through the glens.'said the Sergeant Mor.”
Ben the house the goodwife was saying the prayers for the dying woman the woman should have said for herself while she had the wind for it, but Aoirig harped on her love-tale. She was going fast, and the sisters, putting their hands to her feet, could feel that they were cold as the rocks. Maisie's arms were round her, and she seemed to have the notion that here was the grip of death, for she pushed her back.
“I am not so old—so old. There is Seana, my neighbour at Duart—long past the fourscore and still spinning—I am not so old—God of grace—so old—and the flowers——”
A grey shiver went over her face; her breast heaved and fell in; her voice stopped with a gluck in the throat.
The women stirred round fast in the kitchen. Out on the clay floor the two sisters pushed the table and laid a sheet on it, the goodwife put aside the pillows and let Aoirig's head fall back on the bed. Maisie put her hand to the clock and stopped it.
“Open the door, open the door!” cried the goodwife, turning round in a hurry and seeing the door still shut.
One of the sisters put a finger below the sneck and did as she was told, to let out the dead one's ghost.
Outside, taking the air, to get the stir of the strong waters out of his head, was the wright.
He knew what the opening of the door meant, and he lifted his board and went in with it under his arm. A wafting of the spring smells came in at his back, and he stood with his bonnet in his hand.
“So this is the end o't?” he said in a soft way, stamping out the fire on the floor.
He had but said it when Eurig sat up with a start in the bed, and the women cried out. She opened her eyes and looked at the man, with his fat face, his round back, and ill-made clothes, and the death-deal under his oxter, and then she fell back on the bed with her face stiffening.
“Here's the board for ye,” said the wright, his face spotted white and his eyes staring. “I'll go out a bit and take a look about me. I once knew a woman who was terribly like you, and she came from Mull.”
“Mas breug uam e is breug thugam e.”—Gaelic Proverb.
BLACK MURDO'S wife was heavy, and 'twas the time the little brown nats were pattering in Stronbuie wood. Stronbuie spreads out its greenness to the sun from the slope of Cladich. It is, in its season, full of the piping of birds and the hurry of wings, and the winds of it have the smell of a fat soil. The Diarmaids were the cunning folk to steal it; for if Stronshira is good, Stronbuie is better; and though the loops of Aora tangle themselves in the gardens of the Red Duke, Lochow has enchantment for the galley of a king. Fraoch Eilean, Innis Chonell, and Innis Chonain—they cluster on the bend of it like the gems on a brooch, Inishail of the Monks makes it holy, and Cruachan-ben, who lords it over Lorn, keeps the cold north wind from the shore. They may talk of Glenaora, but Stronbuie comes close, close to the heart!
For all that, 'twas on a time a poor enough place for a woman in yon plight; for the rest of the clan crowded down on Innistiynich, all fighters and coarse men of the sword, and a skilly woman or a stretching-board was no nearer than a day's tramp over the hill and down Aora glen to the walls of Inneraora. If one died on Cladich-side then—and 'twas a dying time, for the Athol dogs were for ever at the harrying—it was but a rough burying, with no corranach and no mort-cloth; if a child came, it found but cold water and a cold world, whatever hearts might be. But for seven years no child came for Black Murdo.
They say, in the Gaelic old-word, that a stolen bitch will never throw clean pups nor a home-sick woman giants. Murdo recked nothing of that when he went wooing in a time of truce to Croit-bhile, the honey-croft that makes a red patch on the edge of Creag Dubh. He brought Silis home to the dull place at Stronbuie, and she baked his bannocks and ploughed his bit of soil, but her heart never left salt Finne-side. In the morning she would go to the hill to look through the blurred glen, and she would have made bargains with the ugliest crow that could flap on feathers for a day's use of his wings. She could have walked it right often and gaily to her people's place, but Black Murdo was of Clan Artair, and Artairich had not yet come under thebratachof Diarmaid, and bloody knives made a march-dyke between the two tartans.
Seven years and seven days went by, and Black Murdo, coming in on an evening after a hard day at the deer, found Silis making the curious wee clothes. He looked at her keen, questioning, and she bleached to the lips.
“So!” said he.
“Just so,” said she, breaking a thread with her teeth, and bending till the peat-flame dyed her neck like wine.
“God, and I'm the stout fellow!” said he, and out he went, down all the way to Portinsherrich, and lusty he was with the ale among the pretty men there.
Weeks chased each other like sheep in a fank, and Silis grew sick at the heart. There's a time for a woman when the word of a woman is sweeter than a harp; but there were only foolish girls at Innistrynich, and coarse men of the sword. So Murdo stayed in from the roes when the time crept close. To see him do the heavy work of the house and carrying in the peats was a sorry sight.
Silis kept dreaming of Finne-side, where she had heard the long wave in the spring of the year when she had gone home on a password to a woman's wedding with Long Coll. The same Long Coll had brothers, and one had put a man's foolish sayings in her ears before ever she met Murdo, she a thin girl like a saugh-wand and not eighteen till Beltane. They called him—no matter—and he had the way with the women. Faith, it's the strange art! It is not looks, nor dancing, nor the good heart, nor wit, but some soft fire of the eye and maybe a song to the bargain. Whatever it was, it had Silis, for all that her goodman Murdo had a man's qualities and honesty extra.
They say, “Cnuic is sluic is Alpeinich, ach cuin a thàinig Artharaich?”(1) in the by-word; but Artharaich had age enough for ataibhsearwhatever, for Black Murdo had the Sight.
1 The hills and hollows and Clan Alpine came together, butwhen arose Clan Artair?
It's the curious thing to say of a man with all his parts that he should betaibhsearand see visions; for ataibhsear, by all the laws, should be an old fellow with little use for swords or shinny-sticks. But Murdo missed being a full taibhsear by an ell, so the fit had him seldom. He was the seventh son of a mother who died with the brand of a cross on her brow, and she was kin to the Glenurchy Woman. And something crept over him with the days, that put a mist in his eyes when he looked at Silis; but “I'm no realtaibhsear,” he said to himself, “and I swear by the black stones it is no cloth. A man with all the Gift might call it a shroud high on her breast, but——”
“Silis,a bhean!shall it be the Skilly Dame of Inneraora?”
A light leaped to the woman's eyes, for the very thing was in her mind.
“If it could be,” she said, slowly; “but it's not easy to get her, for black's your name on Aoraside.”
“Black or white, Murdo stands in his own shoes. He has been at the gate of Inneraora when Strong Colin the warder had little thought of it.”
“Then, oh heart! it must be soon—tomorrow—but——”
The mouth of day found Silis worse, and Murdo on his way to Inneraora.
He stepped it down Glenaora like Coll Mor in the story, or the man with the fairy shoes. A cloud was over Tullich and a wet wind whistled on Kennachregan. The man's target played dunt on his back, so hasty was he, for all that the outposts of Big Colin had hawk's eyes on the pass. He had got the length of Alt Shelechan when a Diarmaid came out on him from the bracken with a curse on his mouth. He was a big Diarmaid, high-breasted and stark, for there's no denying there was breed in the pigs.
“Ho, ho, lad!” said he, crousely, “it's risking it you are this day!”
Black Murdo's hands went to his sides, where a ready man's should ready be; but he had sight of Silis. He could see her in Stronbuie in the bothy, on the wee creepy-stool beside the peats, and he knew she was saying the Wise Woman's Wish that Diarmaid mothers have so often need of. Length is length, and it's a far cry to Lochow sure enough; but even half ataibhseartakes no count of miles and time.
He spoke softly. “I go to Inneraora for the Skilly Woman. My wife is a daughter of your folks, and she'll have none but the dame who brought herself home.”
“Death or life?” asked the Diarmaid, a freckled hand still on the basket-hilt. He put the question roughly, for nobody likes to lose a ploy.
“Life it is, my lad. It's not to dress corpses but to wash weans she's wanted.”
“Ho-chutt!” went the blade back against the brass of the scabbard (for he wasduin-uasalwho carried it), and the man's face changed.
“Pass!” he said. “I would not stand in a bairn's way to life. Had it been shrouds instead of sweelers, we could have had it out, for a corpse is in no great hurry. But troth it's yourself is the tight one, and I would have liked a bit of the old game.”
“No more than Murdo, red fellow!”
“Murdo! So be't; yet Murdo will give me his dirk for gate-pay, or they'll be saying farther down that Calum, as good a man, kept out of his way.”
Thebiodagwent flying into the grass at Calum's feet, and Murdo went leaping down the glen. It was like stalking deer for the Diarmaids. Here and there he had to go into the river or among the hazel-switches, or crawl on his stomach among the gall.
From Kilmune to Uchdan-barracaldine the red fellows were passing, or playing with theclachneartor thecabar,or watching their women toiling in the little fields.
“Thorns in their sides!” he said to himself, furious at last, when another keen-eyed Diarmaid caught sight of his tartan and his black beard among some whins. It was a stripling with only a dirk, but he could gather fifty men on the crook of his finger.
“Stand!” cried the Diarmaid, flashing the dirk out. “What want ye so far over this way?”
Murdo, even in the rage, saw Silis, a limp creature, sweating in her pains, her black eyes (like the sloe) keen on the door. So close, so sure, so sorrowful! He could have touched her on the shoulder and whispered in her ear.
“I am Black Murdo,” he told the lad. “I am for Inneraora for the Skilly Woman for my wife, child of your own clan.”
“Death or life?”
“Life.”
“'Tis a bonny targe ye have, man; it might be doing for toll.”
The lad got it, and Murdo went on his way. He found the Skilly Woman, who put before him sour milk and brose. But he would not have drink or sup, so back through the Diarmaids they went without question (for the woman's trade was as good as the chief's convoy), till they came to Tom-an-dearc. Out upon them there a fellow red and pretty.
“Hold!” he said, as if it had been dogs. “What's the name of ye, black fellow?” Murdo cursed in his beard. “My name's honest man, but I have not time to prove it.”
“Troth that's a pity. But seeing there's thecaüleachwith you, you must e'en go your way. There's aye some of you folk on the stretching-board. Ye want heart, and ye die with a flaff of wind. Lend me your sword,'ille!''
“Squint-mouth!” cried Murdo, “your greedy clan took too much off me this day already for me to part with the sweetest blade Gow-an-aora ever beat on iron. I took it from one of your cowards at Carnus, and if it's back it goes, it's not with my will.”
“Then it's the better man must have it,” said the red fellow, and, Lord, he was the neat-built one! They took off their coats, and for lack of bucklers rolled them round their arms, both calm and canny. The Diarmaid was first ready with his brand out, and Murdo put to his point. For a little the two men stood, spread out, hard-drawn behind the knees, with the cords of the neck like thongs, then at it with a clatter of steel.
The Skilly Woman, with the plaid pulled tight over her grey hair, sat with sunk eyes on a stone and waited without wonder. She had sons who had died in brawls at Kilmichael market, or in the long foray far in Kintail; and her man, foster-brother to a chief, got death in the strange foreign wars, where the pay was not hide and horn but round gold.
A smoky soft smirr of rain filled all the gap between the hills, though Sithean Sluaidhe and Dunchuach had tips of brass from a sun dropping behind the Salachary hills. The grass and the gall lost their glitter and became grey and dull; the hill of Lecknamban, where five burns are born, coaxed the mist down on its breast like a lover. It was wet, wet, but never a drop made a rush bend or a leaf fall. Below the foot the ground was greasy, as it is in a fold at the dippingtime; but the two men pulled themselves up with a leap on it as if it might be dry sand, and the brogues made no error on the soil.
First the Diarmaid pressed, for he had it over the other man in youth, and youth is but tame when it's slow or slack. Murdo waited, all eyes that never blinked, with the basket well up, and kept on his toes. “Splank, sp-ll-ank, sp-ll-ank—siod e!” said the blades, and the Diarmaid's for a time made the most of the music, but he never got inside the black fellow's guard. Then Murdo took up the story with a snap of the teeth, skelping hard at the red one till the hands dirled in the basket like a bag of pins. The smirr gathered thicker, and went to rain that fell solid, the brogues grew like steeped bladders on the feet, a scatter of crows made a noisy homing to the trees at Tullich, and Aora gobbled like swine in a baron's trough.
“Haste ye, heroes,” said the old woman, cowering on the wet stone; “haste ye, dears; it's mighty long ye are about it.”
The Diarmaid turned the edge twice on the coated arm, and Murdo wasted his wind to curse. Then he gave the stroke that's worth fifty head of kyloes (fine they know that same all below Cladichl), and a red seam jumped to the Diarmaid's face. All his heart went to stiffen his slacking heavy arm, and he poured on Murdo till Murdo felt it like a rain of spears. One hot wandering stroke he got on the bonnet, and for want of the bowl of brose at Inneraora, the wind that should go to help him went inside, and turned his stomach. Sweat, hot and salt, stung his eyes, his ears filled with a great booming, he fell in a weary dream of a far-off fight on a witched shore, with the waves rolling, and some one else at the fencing, and caring nought, but holding guard with the best blade Gow-an-aora ever took from flame. Back stepped the Diarmaid, sudden, and sweep went his steel at the shaking knees.
A bairn's cry struck Murdo's ear through the booming and sent him full awake. He drew back the stretched foot fast, and round the red one's sword hissed through air. “Foil! foil!” said Murdo, and he slashed him on the groin.
“That'll do, man; no more,” said the Skilly Woman, quickly,
“I may as well finish him; it's lame he'll be all his days any way, and little use is a man with a halt in a healthy clan.”
“Halt or no halt, let him be; he's my second cousin's son.”
Murdo looked for a bit at the bloody thing before him, but the woman craved again with bony fingers on his wrist; so he spat on the dirty green tartan and went. The smoke rose from him and hung about with a smell of wearied flesh, the grey of the mist was black at Carnus. When the pair came over against Lochow, where one can see the holy isle when it is day, the night was deep and cold; but the woman bent at the cross with a “Mhoire Mhathair,” and so did the man, picking the clotted blood from his ear. They dropped down the brae on the house at last.
For a little Black Murdo's finger hung on the sneck, and when he heard a sound he pushed in the door.
All about the house the peat-reek swung like mist on the mountain. Wind and rain fought it out on Cladich brae, and when it was not the wind that came bold through the smoke-hole in the roof, 'twas the rain, a beady slant that hissed on the peats like roasting herrings. The woman lay slack on the bed, her eyes glossed over with the glass that folks see the great sights through, and her fingers making love over the face and breast of a new-born boy that cried thinly at her knees. A lighted cruisie spluttered with heavy smell at the end of a string on a rafter.
“O Skilly Woman, Skilly Woman, it's late we are,” said Black Murdo.
“Late enough, as ye say, just man. Had ye bartered an old sword for twenty minutes on the Tom-an-dearc, I was here before danger.”
Then the Skilly Woman set him on the wet windy side of the door, and went about with busy hands.
The man, with the ragged edge of his kilt scraping his knees and the rain bubbling in his brogues, leaned against the wattled door and smeared the blood from his brow. A cold wind gulped down from Glenurchy and ghosts were over Inishail. The blast whirled about and whirled about, and swung the rowan like a fern, and whistled in the gall, and tore the thatch, all to drown a child's cry. The blackness crowded close round like a wall, and flapped above like a plaid—Stronbuie was in a tent and out of the world. Murdo strained to hear a voice, but the wind had the better of him. He went round to the gable, thinking to listen at the window, but the board on the inside shut the wind and him out. The strange emptiness of grief was in his belly.
Inside, the Skilly One went like a witch, beak-nosed and half-blind. There was clatter of pans and the dash of water, the greeting of the child and the moan of the mother. What else is no man's business. For all she was skilly the old dame had no thought of the woman sinking.
“You'll have blithe-meat in the morning,” she said, cheerily, from the fireside.
Silis made worse moan than before.
“Such a boy, white love! And hair like the copper! His hide is mottled like a trout's back; calf of my heart!”
Silis, on her side, put out white craving arms. “Give it to me, wife; give it to me.”
“Wheesht! rest ye, dear, rest ye,” said the Skilly Dame.
But she put the bairn in its mother's arms. Silis, when she had it on her breast, sobbed till the bed shook.
“Is not he the hero, darling?” said the Skilly Woman. “It's easy seen he's off Clan Diarmaid on one side, for all that yoar hair is black as the sloe. Look at the colour of him!”
Fright was in the mother's face. “Come close, come close till I tell you,” she said, her long hair damp on her milky shoulders.
The Skilly Woman put down her head and listened with wonder.
“Me-the-day! Was I not the blind one to miss it? His name, white love? No one shall ken it from me, not even Murdo.”
A man's name took up the last breath of Silis; she gave a little shiver, and choked with a sound that the old crone had heard too often not to know.
She looked, helpless, for a little at the bed, then felt the mother's feet. They were as cold as stone.
A cry caught Murdo's ear against the wattles, and he drove in the door with his shoulder, heeding no sneck nor bar.
“Am not I the blind fool?” said the crone.
“There's your wife gone, cheap enough at the price of a yard of steel.”
They stood and looked at the bed together, the bairn crying without notice.
“I knew it,” said the man, heaving; “taibhsearhalf or whole, I could see the shroud on her neck!”
The grey light was drifting in from Cladich. The fir-trees put stretched fingers up against the day, and Murdo was placing a platter of salt on a bosom as cold and as white as the snow.
“You're feeding him on the wrong cloth,” said he, seeing the crone give suck to the child from a rag of Diarmaid tartan dipped in goat's milk.
The boy grew like a tree in a dream, that is seed, sapling, and giant in one turn on the side. Stronbuie's wattled bothy, old and ugly, quivered with his laughing, and the young heather crept closer round the door. The Spotted Death filled Inishail with the well-fed and the warm-happed; but the little one, wild on the brae, forgotten, sucking the whey from rags and robbing the bush of its berries, gathered sap and sinew like the child of kings. It is the shrewd way of God! There was bloody enough work forby, for never a sheiling passed but the brosey folks came pouring down Glenstrae, scythe, sword, and spear, and went back with the cattle before them, and redness and smoke behind. But no raider put hand on Black Murdo, for now he wastaibhsearindeed, and thetaibhsearhas magic against dub or steel. How he becametaibhsearwho can be telling? When he buried Silis out on the isle, his heart grew heavy, gloom seized him, the cut of the Diarmaid's sword gave a quirk to his brain that spoiled him for the world's use. He took to the hills no more in sport, he carried Gow-an-aora's sword no more in battle, for all that it cost him so dear. A poor man's rig was his at the harvest because of his Gift, and the cailzie cock or the salmon never refused his lure.
Skill of the daymore, the seven cuts, and yon ready slash worth fifty head of kyloes, he gave to the boy, and then the quick cunning parry, and the use of the foot and knee that makes half a swordsman.
But never a spot of crimson would he have on Rory's steel.
“First dip in the blood of the man with the halt, and then farewell to ye!” he said, wearying for the day when the boy should avenge his mother.
Folks—far-wandered ones—brought him news of the man with the halt that was his giving, the Diarmaid whose bargain for a sword on Tom-an-dearc cost Silis her life. He passed it on to the boy, and he filled him with old men's tales. He weaved the cunning stories of the pigs of Inneraora, for all that the boy's mother came from their loins, and he made them—what there may well be doubts of—cowards and weak.
“They killed your mother, Rory: her with the eyes like the sloe and the neck like snow. Swear by the Holy Iron that the man with the halt we ken of gets his pay for it.”
Rory swore on the iron. It is an easy thing for one when the blood is strong and thebiodagstill untried. He lay awake at night, thinking of his mother's murderer till the sweat poured. He would have been on the track of him before ever he had won his man's bonnet by lifting theclach-cuid-fear, but Murdo said, “Let us be sure. You are young yet, and I have one other trick of fencing worth while biding for.”
At last, upon a time, Murdo found the boy could match himself, and he said, “Now let us to this affair.”
He took the boy, as it were, by the hand, and they ran up the hills and down the hills, and through the wet glens, to wherever a Diarmaid might be; and where were they not where strokes were going? The hoodie-crow was no surer on the scent of war. Blar-na-leine took them over the six valleys and the six mountains; Cowal saw them on the day the Lamonts got their bellyful; a knock came on them on the night when the Stewarts took their best from Appin and flung themselves on Inneraora, and they went out without a word and marched with that high race.
But luck was with the man with the halt they sought for. At muster for raid, or at market, he was there, swank man and pretty but for the lameness he had found on an ill day on Tom-an-dearc. He sang songs round the ale with the sweetness of the bird, and his stories came ready enough off the tongue. Black Murdo and the boy were often close enough on his heel, but he was off and away like the corp-candle before they were any nigher. If he had magic, it could have happened no stranger.
Once, a caird who went round the world with the jingle of cans on his back and a sheaf of withies in his oxter, told them that a lame Diarmaid was bragging at Kilmichael fair that he would play single-stick for three days against the country-side. They sped down to Ford, and over the way; but nothing came of it, for the second day had found no one to come to the challenge, and the man with the halt was home again.
Black Murdo grew sick of the chase, and the cub too tired of it. For his father's fancy he was losing the good times—many a fine exploit among the Atholmen and the brosey folks of Glenstrae; and when he went down to Innistrynich to see the lads go out with belt and plaid, he would give gold to be with them.
One day, “I have dreamed a dream,” said Murdo, “Our time is come: what we want will be on the edge of the sea, and it will be the third man after dawn. Come, son, let us make for Inneraora.”
Inneraora lies now between the bays, sleeping day and night, for the old times are forgot and the nettle's on Dunchuach. Before the plaid of MacCailein Mor was spread from Cowal to Cruachan, it was the stirring place; high and dry on the bank of Slochd-a-chubair, and the dogs themselves fed on buck-flesh from the mountains, so rowth the times! One we ken of has a right to this place or that place yonder that shall not be named, and should hold his head as high on Aora as any chief of the boar's snout; butmo thruaigh! mo thruaigh!the black bed of Macartair is in the Castle itself, and Macartair is without soil or shield. How Diarmaid got the old place is a sennachie's tale. “As much of the land as a heifer's hide will cover,” said the foolish writing, and MacCailein had the guile to make the place his own. He cut the hide of a long-backed heifer into thin thongs, and stretched it round Stronbuie. There is day about to be seen with his race for that! Over to Inneraora then went Murdo, and Rory clad for fighting, bearing with him the keen old sword. 'Twas a different time going down the glen then from what it was on the misty day Murdo fetched the Skilly Dame; for the Diarmaids he met by the way said, “'Tis the Lochowtaibhsearand his tail,” and let them by without a word, or maybe with a salute. They went to the Skilly Dame's house, and she gave them the Gael's welcome, with bannocks and crowdie,marag-dkubhand ale. But she asked them not their business, for that is the way of the churl. She made them soft-scented beds of white hay in a dirty black corner, where they slept till cockcrow with sweet weariness in their bones.
The morning was a grey day with frost and snow. Jumping John's bay below the house was asleep with a soft smoke like a blanket over it. Lean deer from behind the wood came down trotting along the shore, sniffing the saltness, and wondering where the meat was. With luck and a goodsgian-dubha quick lad could do some gralloching. The tide was far out from Ard Rannoch to the Gallows-tree, and first there was the brown wrack, and then there was the dun sand, and on the edge of the sand a bird went stalking. The old man and the young one stood at the gable and looked at it all.
It was a short cut from below the castle to the point of Ard Rannoch, if the tide was out, to go over the sand. “What we wait on,” said Murdo, softly, “goes across there. There will be two men, and them ye shall not heed, but the third is him ye ken of. Ye'll trap him between the whin-bush and the sea, and there can be no escaping unless he takes to the swimming for it.”
Rory plucked his belts tight, took out the good blade wondrous quiet, breathing fast and heavy. The rich blood raced up his back, and tingled hot against his ruddy neck.
“What seest thou, my son?” said Murdo at last.
“A man with a quick step and no limp,” quoth the lad.
“Let him pass.”
Then again said the old man, “What seest thou?”
“Abodachfrail and bent, with a net on his shoulder,” said Rory.
“Let him pass.”
The sun went high over Ben Ime, and struck the snow till the eyes were blinded. Rory rubbed the sweat from his drenched palm on the pleat of his kilt, and caught the basket-hand tighter. Over Aora mouth reek went up from a fishing-skiff, and a black spot stood out against the snow.
“What seest thou now, lad?” asked Murdo.
“The man with the halt,” answered the lad.
“Then your time has come, child. The stroke worth the fifty head, and pith on your arm!”
Rory left the old man's side, and went down through a patch of shelisters, his mouth dry as a peat and his heart leaping. He was across the wrack and below the pools before the coming man had noticed him. But the coming man thought nothing wrong, and if he did, it was but one man at any rate, and one man could use but one sword, if swords were going. Rory stepped on the edge of the sand, and tagged the bonnet down on his brow, while the man limped on between him and the sea. Then he stepped out briskly and said, “Stop, pig!” He said it strangely soft, and with, as it were, no heart in the business; for though the lame man was strong, deepbreasted, supple, and all sound above the belt, there was a look about him that made the young fellow have little keenness for the work.
“Pig?” said the Diarmaid, putting back his shoulders and looking under his heavy brows. “You are the Lochow lad who has been seeking for me?”
“Ho, ho! red fellow; ye kent of it, then?”
“Red fellow! It's red enough you are yourself, I'm thinking. I have no great heed to draw steel on a lad of your colour, so I'll just go my way.” And the man looked with queer wistful eyes over his shoulder at the lad, who, with blade-point on the sand, would have let him pass.
But up-by at the house thetaibhsearwatched the meeting. The quiet turn it took was beyond his reading, for he had thought it would be but the rush, and the fast fall-to, and no waste of time, for the tide was coming in.
“White love, give him it!” he cried out, making for the shore. “He looks lame, but the pig's worth a man's first fencing.”
Up went the boy's steel against the grey cloud, and he was at the throat of the Diarmaid like a beast. “Malison on your black heart, murderer!” he roared, still gripping his broadsword. The Diarmaid flung him off like a child, and put up his guard against the whisking of his blade.
“Oh, foolish boy!” he panted wofully as the lad pressed, and the grey light spread over sea and over shore. The quiet tide crawled in about their feet; birds wheeled on white feathers with mocking screams; the old man leaned on his staff and cheered the boy. The Diarmaid had all the coolness and more of art, and he could have ended the play as he wanted. But he only fended, and at last the slash worth fifty head found his neck. He fell on his side, with a queer twisted laugh on his face, saying, “Little hero, ye fence—ye fence——”
“Haste ye, son! finish the thing!” said thetaibhsear,all shaking, and the lad did as he was told, hocking at the spurt the blood made. He was pushing his dirk in the sand to clean it, when his eye fell on the Skilly Woman hirpling nimbly down to the shore. She was making a loud cry.
“God I God! it's the great pity about this,” said she, looking at Murdo cutting the silver buttons off the corpse's jacket. “Ken ye the man that's there dripping?”
“The man's no more,” said Rory, cool enough. “He has gone travelling, and we forgot to ask his name.”
“Then if happy you would be, go home to Lochow, and ask it not, nor aught about him, if you wouldn't rue long. You sucked your first from a Diarmaid rag, and it was not for nothing.”
Murdo drew back with a clumsy start from the dead man's side and looked down on his face, then at the boy's, queerly. “I am for off,” said he at last with a sudden hurry. “You can follow if you like, red young one.” And he tossed the dead man's buttons in Rory's face!