It was after the burial of the Red Laird that we returned to the Quay Inn in McKelvie's skiff, and this time we had McKelvie's lass and Ronny McKinnon with us. TheSeagullwas at anchor now over near Donal's Point, for McGilp had much business to attend to. Little skiffs had flitted in the night through the darkness of the bay. The cove was empty, and in the sand ballast of many a smack sailing for the mainland ports, there was that hidden that the smacksmen prized more than their honest cargoes of coal or potatoes. Ronny McKinnon had been aye about the cove, concealed in the daytime and busy in the night, for McGilp trusted him much, and McKelvie's skiff had made a run with only the innkeeper and swart Robin on board, except for a keg or two concealed beneath a sail and a tangled long line. At the Quay Inn Mrs McKelvie made a great work with her lass, and would not be letting her do a hand's turn, but just sit and be resting, and every one was very merry about the place. The two sons were scattering clean sand on the floor, and the fine scent of cooking in the kitchen was wafted to the tap-room and made my very teeth water for a square meal, for the sea had made me hungry. Ronny left us at the inn and made his way homewards, and I would be hearing his cheery cries to the folk he passed, for he would be everybody's fair-headed laddie, and maybe Mirren Stuart would be feeling surer of her man when he would be sitting at home with his old mother, for it seemed to me that the lassies that would be passing had very bright eyes, and that they would be looking back often too.
We sat down to a meal in the kitchen, Dan and me, and he kept them all in crack. For the mistress he promised to gather bog-bean when the time came, and she was in her very element; and there sat Dan McBride with Gude kens what evil in his head, his eyes smiling at the old dame and listening how she cured a young lass of a stomach complaint with the wee round caps of the wilks—"for mind you," says she, "each wee round cap will lift its ain weight o' poison frae the stomach."
"And the coosp,[1] now, mistress; Hamish here will no' be believing me, but there's de'il the halt better for the coosp than"—and so his talk went on, and him not believing one word. And when her mother would be rattling among the plates on the dresser, Dan would be bending over and speaking to the lass, and looking into her eyes, and the gruff old father saying never a word, and the two sons arguing where it was that Dan had jumped the Nourn burn when the bridge was carried away with the big spate. And when we had our fill o' eating, we followed Ronny up the Glen, for Dan would ken how the hogs were doing there now he was this length, and so we tracked through the Glen, leaving Finlay Stuart's house behind us. As we passed I saw a lass in the stable, and I wondered if Ronny had seen his mother yet.
It was just the long weary road to the South End that Dan and me travelled, so the reader can follow Ronny, for he told me his story long after of his coming when we needed him most. And this was the story that he told me:—
"Man," said Ronny, "when I took my leave o' ye at the Quay I just thought yon day would see it settled between Mirren and me, once and for all, and I'll no' be denying a queer happy feeling, for I felt I could be conquering everything that day; but maybe it was because o' the siller I had in my spluchan to be giving to my old mother, for if the want o' it will not be making a lad miserable, the having o' it will aye keep his spirits up.
"I would be thinking, inside of myself, that she would be sitting in the kitchen, my old mother, and shooing the wee white hen away from layin' in the bed, and then I would be coming in so quiet, and be putting my hands over her eyes, and she would be kenning me, and laughing, and greeting, for that I was back. Then I would be making her spread her brat over her knees, and be throwing the siller into her lap and listening to the cries o' her. But whiles among these thoughts I would be making pictures o' a limber long-legged lass that could work horse like a man, and would be on the hill after sheep when her neighbours would be stretching themselves in bed, and rubbing the sleep from their eyes. And I was seeing her standing on the top of the hill, wi' the morning breeze playing with her brown hair, wi' the clear sparkle in her eyes and her lips curled to whistle on the dogs, and aye I would be wondering if I would get a sight o' her when I passed her father's place.
"When I came near, there was the great barking o' dogs, and a black-and-tan collie came at me wi' the burses ridged on his back and his white teeth showing.
"'Chance, ye old fool,' said I, and at that he gave a yelp, and came at me daft to be seeing me, and jumping to be licking my face. I got him to heel, although, mind you, it did my heart good, his welcome, for we were long friends, and there were few, few that Chance would welcome. But I would aye be liking the dog since the first time I put my arm round Mirren, and that was years ago. She would have thrown it from her that time, for she was like a quick-tempered boy, but at her angry movement the old dog girned at me, and the rumble o' his growl made us look, and there he was ready to spring at me, and it makes me laugh yet; for Mirren, my own quick-tempered lass, fondled my hand at her waist to quieten him.
"'Mirren,' said I, and I took my arm away, 'there's just nothing for it but you should put your arm round me, for I can see you will only be tholing mine for the sake o' my skin.'
"'There will be many a blue sea below your feet before Mirren Stuart will be doing that,' said she, and I let her go a step in front of me, maybe to see the fine swing o' her, and her free mountain stride.
"I was thinking o' that time when we came to the gate o' Finlay's place, Chance and me, and the snow had been cleared from before the stable, and when I looked, there was the Uist pony standing at the door and Mirren busy at the grooming o' him, and her hair was tousled a wee and curled at the nape o' her neck, and her sleeves turned back.
"I put my arms on the gate and stood watching her, for many a night I would be thinking of her and me away, and then maybe because she would be feeling an eye on her, she turned round.
"'Will ye aye be my lass yet, Mirren?' and I was proud to see the red flush rise to her cheeks.
"'How many would that be making, Ronny?' she cried, and came half way and stopped.
"'Just the one, Mirren,' said I, and opened the gate and came beside her.
"'Ye will have changed then since last I kent ye.'
"'Indeed, and I think ye're bonnier yoursel', lass, and I would not be believing that possible,' and we walked to the stable door wi' old Chance at our heels.
"'They will have surely been teaching you nice talk, the stranger lassies, Ronny.'
"'Mirren, dear,' said I, and put my hand on her shoulder, 'we will not be talking that way any more, you and me,' and at the stable door o' Finlay Stuart's place I put my arm round the shoulders of his proud lass Mirren, and held her back, and made her look at me.
"'My lass,' said I, 'in a wee while I will be kissing my trysted wife.'
"'Look at the dog, Ronny, first,' said Mirren, but her eyes were laughing.
"'I will be hearing him without looking away from you,' said I.
"And with that I bent my head to kiss her, but her face was turned away from me, and even then I was hearing the growling o' the collie, and wondering where he would be fastening on me. Then with my head quite close to her, I whispered—
"'Will it not have been any good at all, dear, all my love for you?Will you be sending me away from you after all?'
"Then as I waited, she said a queer thing—
"'Chance! Chance!lie down!' and at that the laughing came on me, and my own lass turned her dear face to me glowing, and with a look of mingled pride and shame she looked at me and put her arms round my neck.
"'I will not be a great hand at saying love talk, Ronny,' she whispered. 'I can just be holding you tight, but take me if ye will be having so poor a lass, for I will have been loving you all to myself all the time.'
"And when a wee while was passed and we found ourselves in the stable (for a lass has always an eye for who may be looking), Mirren Stuart gave me a look of great scorn, but playfully.
"'It will be as well that one o' us is farmer enough to mind the beasts,' said she, and went out and took the garron into his stall, for he had been clean forgot, and stood looking longingly into his stable and the wind raising a pook o' hair on his tail."
* * * * * *
"Well, when the lassies, Mirren's sisters, were by wi' teasing us, I sat down to a meal in Finlay's kitchen, and when I rose on my legs to be going, my lass flung a shawl round her, and wondrous bonny she was in that shawl, and we left by the back road to be seeing my mother, and the lassies flung bachles at us 'for luck.' And although Mirren was not out o' my sight in the house, yet I will be quite sure they kent we were for the marrying, for I got a glimpse o' Peggy, a rollicking tomboy o' a lass, rubbing herself against Mirren's shawl and crying, 'It's me that will be going off next.'
"And Anne, a ruddy lass, whispered—
"'Now that you will have the lad you were speaking about through your sleep, Mirren, maybe ye'll be giving me your garters,' and between one and the other o' them, it was a red-faced, brave-looking lass that stood wi' me in my mother's kitchen.
"And my mother, that I had been wearying for a sight o' for three years past, my old mother, kissed the lass first, and then—
"'You will have managed to bring him to his senses at last, Mirren dear,' said she; and then I found that these two had been having the great confabs when I would be away, and my wife has told me since, when she was new-fangled wi' me, and very loving, that she would just be going there to be listening to my mother's stories about me, when I would be a wean; and although I will be telling her that the things I am remembering most are the skelpings I would be getting, she just will be laughing at me.
"'It is not one half of what you would be deserving, my man,' she says.
"So and on, there we sat wi' the red glow of the fire shining on my old mother's face, making her look hearty and well in her white mutch, and glinting on Mirren's eyes when she turned to speak, and lowing in the copper o' her hair, and I would be content to sit and listen to these two, till Mirren had to be going. On the road home she made no complaints when I put my arm round her, for was she not my own lass now. Moreover, it was dark. We were at our first good-night under the rowan-trees beside the byre, for rowans will keep the fairies away, and it is good farming to have them where the beasts will be walking under them every day. We were loath to part, Mirren and me, and she would be lying against my breast, when there came the figure of a man running, and I kent him for Gilchrist the excise-man.
"'Stop a wee, my lad; stop,' says I. 'What will be hurrying ye?'
"'That damned McGilp has escaped us again,' said he, 'and Dan McBride has killed Dol Rob Beag.'
"'Run, Ronny, run,' cried Mirren, and pulled me to the stable. 'Dan will be needing all his friends before the morning,' and she had the bridle on the garron, and I was on his back like a flash, and making for the Quay Inn before she was done speaking."
[1] Coosp=chilblain on the heel.
And now you will be coming to meet Dan and me on the long road back from the South End, and coming on with us like a good comrade, for Dan that day walked like a man that was fey, and I, who would be thinking I kent him, might just as weel have been walking with a stranger. Below the shoulder o' the big black hill, before ye come to the Laird's Turn, he halted.
"Man, Hamish, the hills are just vexed wi' me this day," said he, "andI ken a' their moods, as weel as a bairn kens his mother."
"To me," said I, and I would be searching about in my mind for the right words, like a pedant, for was I not college-bred—"to me," said I, "they aye look just grandly contemptuous," and, mind you, my heart went out to the great strong man at my side because of the soft place in his warm heart for the grim old hills, for I would aye be feared to talk that way to him, for fear of his laughing.
"I ken what ye mean by grandly contemptuous too," said he. "I have felt that way when I would be gathering sheep, and looking up at the crags and the rocks above me, and the head o' the hill would be turned from me in disdain, and I would be feeling like the wee red ant crawling on the beard o' a warrior, asleep on a glorious battlefield. I canna just be putting the right words to it, but, man, I feel it inside o' me.
"There's days in the early summer mornings before the heat-haze has lifted when a man can see the hills lying on their backs wi' their faces to the sun, like giants resting, and he can see the smile on the brow o' them when the sun beats down, and it's fine to be imagining that they're laughing to one another; and on these days the hills are aye friendly to a man, and when he lies down among the heather the spirit o' the hills will be knowing him, and his forebears, since the hills were established; but ah! they will be glooming at me the day.
"There's a frown on the brow o' the Urie, and his face is hidden from me, and listen to the grumbling and flyting o' the burn. They're a' vexed, Hamish, but we're to have company down through the glen, for yonder will be Sandy Nicol driving his stots to the bay."
We made up on the drover, a wild unkempt man with a great red beard wagging on his broad chest, and fierce blue eyes that seldom winked, and it seemed to me that his dogs—for two deep-chested, lean-flanked black collies slunk at his heel—it seemed to me that they kent his mind before he spoke a word, for they worked the wild hill-bred stots like the dogs the old folk will be telling about.
"Ye would be looking to the hogs," said he, as if he had kent us from the hillside and no greeting was needed; and as he spoke I thought of an old door swinging on rust-eaten hinges, for his voice was deep and harsh, as though he opened his mouth seldom to speak; and indeed such was the case, for he lived on his farm among the hills alone with his dogs.
"It's no great day this to be travelling beasts," said Dan, as we walked at the tails o' the little herd.
"Ay, but this is just the day for Sandy. Nae fears o' the evil eye wi' the snaw on the road, for there's something clean aboot snaw, and auld wives are at their firesides, wi' their ill wishes and evil eyes."
"You will ken the Red Laird's deid and buried, Sandy?"
For a wee while after Dan's question we three walked in silence, and then the drover turned his wild face to us.
"We watched the devil coming for him yon night; we watched his coming, ay, away far out on the sea, the black stallions stretched to the gallop like racing hounds, and the hoofs o' them striking white fire frae the water, and the flames o' hell curling and twisting round the wheels o' his chariot. Ay, we watched oor lane, the dogs and me, and his whip was forked lightning, and his voice drooned the roar o' the gale."
I felt a grue slither through me when the man stopped, for his harsh voice intoned his words like some dreadful chant.
"Ye would be late out that night," said Dan, and again we were silent till the drover spoke, and the thought came to me that he arranged all his words in his mind, and then loosed his tongue to them.
"They were round us, that night, evil spirits and evil beasts, and they would be lifting the thatch from the roof; and we went out, the dogs and me, and a' the great rocks on the hillside would be jumbling and jarring thegether, for all the evil ones were loose from the pit, and tumbling the hills, and setting them straight, and the blue lowes were rissling on the hill-tops. But I would be holding my steel in my hand, and we sat and watched, the dogs and me."
"Was it the skein-dubh you would be holding?"
"It would not be the black knife, Dan McBride; it would just be this."
At that Sandy Nicol showed us a small object, which seemed to me to be a twisted horse-shoe nail wrapped round about with wool; but he would not be letting it go from his palm, and when I would have examined it closer he put it past.
"It's not Sandy that would be droving without his steel," he cried.
"Would you aye be carrying that?" said I; for he looked so wild and lawless that it was not in me to be believing that he trusted to aught save his dirk.
"There was a time no, mo bhallach," said Sandy Nicol, "a time when I would be selling back-calvers and stots to the Red Laird for the mainland markets; and it would just be the wee Broon Lass o' Ardbennan that saved the beasts—for, ye see, I did not always stay ma lane, and when my mother would be failin' and her joints stiffening like a' aged beasts, the milking would aye be done and the byre mucked when she got up in the morning. Oh, but she was the wise one, for she would be leaving the best o' the cream in a basin, and maybe a bannock, for the wee Broon Lass, for my mother would be seeing her flitting among the battens. And before she went away she would be telling me: 'Never be offering her boots or claes when the snaw comes, Sandy, for the Broonie o' Lag 'a bheithe[1] left in sore anger for that they pitied her in the snaw.'
"Direach sin, it was a fine day I started to drive the back-calvers and stots, and the sun red wi' a fine-weather haze, and the roads hard and dry, and it was maybe two hours I was on the road and the beasts settled, when there came a woman on the road and a shawl about her head, and I kent her for a devil's black bairn that could be telling her ain folk when the rain would come in the harvest, and when the butter would come on at the kirning.
"A bad unchancy woman; ye'll ken the breed o' them, for they will be sore feart o' clean burn-water, but they'll be coorieing ower a fire a' day, and talking to the black cat, and I had it in my mind to be turning when I saw her, for did she not come into the byre at Dyke-end when the beasts were at their fother, and she stood and she eyed them.
"'So bonny,' says she, 'so bonny and fat and glossy, and the wee bit speckled quey calves they'll be leaving,' and with that she walked up the byre and ran her hand over the tors of the beasts, crooning away to herself; and another month saw the last of the kye pic calved.
"Well, well, I stood when she came to me, and she smirked at me. 'Seven braw beasts, and not a lame yin among them,' says she, and tittered a wee bit laugh that set the dogs girning through their bare teeth; and then she went her way, and her laughing coming back to me, and we would not be far on when the first of the beasts was hirpling; and one after the other the lameness came on them, till I could just have sat down and grat that I had not set the dogs on the witch.
"I would just be turning the beasts on the road for a wee, when there came the wee Broon Lass among the bracken on the hillside, and then I left the road and took the dogs with me, and we hid on the low side, for fear to anger the wee Broon Lass. She went among the beasts, and they would be kenning her, and lowing quietly like calves, and she would be lifting their feet, and then there would be a hole in the clits o' them a'. And the wee Broon Lass, she blew and she blew into the hole, and went on to the next, and in a wee the beasts were walking sound, and taking a bite at the sprits and the scrog on the roadside, and I lay close till I saw the wee one near the rise o' the hill, and started the beasts again, and the lameness came near them not any more, but aye I would be carrying the steel after that."
In the middle of the glen we left Sandy Nicol with his dogs and his travelling beasts, and before we turned the bend where the nut-trees were I looked back, and there he came on slowly with the sunset light on him as he came, and I saw him looking to the great rocks on his left hand as though he waited the coming of something not of this world; and again he would be looking down through the bare trees to the dark glen where the burn was muttering and grumbling coldly, and it was strange to me that these wild men, so terrible in their anger, would be believing all these old stories, until the thought came to me that it would just be the poetry and imaginings of the Celt, alone among the hills that are aye on the very point of speaking to their children; for a man, and a bold man, will be seeing and hearing strange things among the hills, when the mist comes down, when he will have listened to the stories of hate and love and clan feuds of his folks since he could be listening, clapped on his creepie stool close to his mother's skirt, and his head against her knees.
* * * * * *
There was great company gathered at the Quay Inn when we entered, although many of the ships had sailed, but there were sailors too, for the bay was not handy for owners to come at, and the Quay Inn was a favourite, so that it was no uncommon thing for ships to be wind-bound for days, and even weeks, and there would be the great fights between the men from the ships and the lads from the glens. But there was no trouble when we entered at all, for with the snow and the hard frost outside, the great fire was the cheery place to be sitting at, and indeed there must needs be ill blood between men if they will not be agreeing over the best of drink, and fine company to be drinking it with.
But it was as if every one was well pleased and with no worries, for I saw no men whispering, with heads close, but every one happy to recklessness, and already there was the darker red flush on the faces that told of drink taken, and then I saw that many of the men gathered, had been to the cove at the Rhu Ban in their skiffs, and were met here to celebrate the run in their ain way. A great shouting they made when Dan stood among them, his eyes shining, for a ploy of this kind was meat and drink to him, and they made room for us by the fire; while McKelvie brought steaming glasses, and winked and nodded, and would be looking wise as though we might ken something about his wares that he would not be telling everybody, till indeed I could not keep back the laughing to see the grave stern man so far gone with his own liquor.
And as we sat I would be watching a sailor with a knife at his hip, and the lithe swing of the mountaineer in his carriage—a Skye man, I was thinking; but he stood silent against the jamb of the fireplace, and his eyes were dreamy and sad, and in myself I knew he was seeing his own place, and him outward bound. When the night was wearing on it came his turn to sing, and with his song I knew that my thinking was right, for his song was a farewell to Skye. Now I know not the words, but the air will haunt me whiles when the days are shortening, and the pictures he painted will never be leaving my mind.
For I saw the dark sad hills of Coulin, and the sun blood-red on the peaks, and the heavy dark night clouds tinged and burnished with gold, and the sea was all silent, with the wee waves rippling on the shore. And on the shore was a maiden looking away and away to sea, and the nets all unheeded at her feet, and the seagulls not heeding her at all, and the great sorrow was in her eyes, in the very poise of her; and I wondered where was the lithe lad she should be having to love her, for her eyes would aye be looking at the empty sea. . . .
When my mind was wandering on pictures of sadness, of an empty sea and great grim silent hills, the inn door was pushed open, and the cold swirl of frosty night air made the roysterers turn, and in there came a thick-set junk of a man. Always to my mind, Dol Rob Beag, for he it was, had a look of a Joonie doorie, being all run to shoulders, and no neck on him at all. His arms hung well to his knee, giving the man the appearance of a powerful animal. His face was brown as a smack's sail, and his eyes red and shifty as a ferret's.
"What is it ye waant here?" growled McKelvie with a lowerin' look, and there was silence from the others; and the men put their drink down where it would not spill if there should be a scrimmage. Dol Beag put a hand to his beard, and his shifty eyes fixed on the innkeeper.
"Ceevility," says he, "from a man in the public. I'm wantin' that, and I'll be payin' for whatever drink I'll tak. Put a refreshment before me, McKelvie, and go back again to your affairs."
There's no denying the man had a cold-steel bravery in him, and a grim smile flickered on his face as he watched McKelvie, for no Hielan'man born can thole being likened to a menial, and the dark blood of hatred glowed on the innkeeper's face.
"I ken the ceevility I would like to be giving to you, Dol Beag," says he, and put a drink on the table, and lifting the coin tendered in payment he hurled it behind the fire. "I would not be thinking myself clean if I kept your money."
Dol Beag was on him before his words were out.
"The hell take you," he girned through clenched teeth, and his knife left his hip. "Ye'll lick where that lay, McKelvie, ye—ye—maker of meats for sailors," and the sweat rolled off his brow, and his voice was a skirl of rage.
McKelvie grabbed a horse-pistol from among his kegs.
"Ye hound, I'll put a hole in ye that will be hurrying the gaugers tae fill wi' siller," and as quick as light he levelled the pistol and drew the trigger. The room was filled with brimstone smoke that gripped the back of the throat, but Dol Beag was unhurt, and creeping like a powerful beast on his enemy. (The heavy bullet had smashed through the eight-day clock.) McKelvie was retreating warily to his barrels again, and I wondered if he had another pistol, when Dan laid his hand on Dol Beag.
"Stop a minute," said he; "there's some talk due to me before ye killMcKelvie."
"Ay, ay, wan at a time, McBride; I'll be feenishing the stickin' o' this pig before I will start on you, and you can be countin' your bastards again," and with that he whipped round on Dan like an eel with his dirk hand high. But a spring took Dan clear, and before Dol Beag could follow, Dan had him in the air spitting like a cat.
"Ashes to ashes," says he, "dhust to dhust," says he, in a thick blind rage, and hurled Dol smash between the stone jambs to the back of the fire.
I saw Dol Rob Beag's neck take the corner of the jamb, and heard the wrench, and then the singeing smell started, and I pulled him out from the fire and the Skye man flung a stoup of water on him.
"Give him the whisky quick," cried swart Robin McKelvie; "put it down his throat," but Dol Beag lay still.
A young man at the door—the same exciseman, Gilchrist, that trotted at Mirren Stuart's coat-tails—cried in a thin voice, "Christ, he's deid; ye'll swing for this, Dan McBride," and disappeared in the night. With that the sailors made for the door, driven by that fear of the law with the long arm and the ruthless grasp; but Dan stood for a while looking on his handiwork in dour silence.
"He brought it on himself, Hamish," says he; "but, man, I'm sorry for his wife's sake."
"Out, man, out," I cried at him; "there's nae time for sorrow," and there came the clop-clop of a galloping horse on the frozen road, and Ronny McKinnon flung himself among us.
"The back door, damnation, the back door," he cried, and pushed Dan before him. "Will ye wait till that wasp's bink is buzzin' aboot yer lugs?"
We followed McKinnon through the kitchen and into the yard behind the inn, and a great fear came on me, for the yard was overhung with a bush-covered precipice, and the long icicles glittering, and there was only the track round to the main road open.
"We're trapped, Dan; we're trapped."
"Trapped nane. Follow me, ye gomeril; there's a track up the broo," whispered McKinnon, and swung himself among the lowest of the bushes, and we followed.
"I ken the very branches to put my hand on," says he, "and where every stane is, for many's the night I ran the cutter for the auld wives." We were half-way up before Dan spoke.
"I never kilt a man before," says he in a low whisper.
"Ye did weel for a beginner," says that wild young sea-hawk. "Nobody will be blaming ye for botching the work." And as we struggled up he hissed a fierce sea oath at me, when my clumsier boot dislodged an icicle that tinkled like breaking glass in the yard below us.
"On, man, on," he whispered. "Ye'll need a' your start, for the gang will hunt ye doon like a mad dog."
"Fareweel, Hamish," says Dan, and put his hand to mine on the cliff head. "I'll harrow my ain ploughing."
"Go on, man, go on," I cried; "they're coming," for lights were flashing on the road, and loud voices raised. We had gained a bare half-mile on the cliff face, for the road up was "round about," and Ronny was impatient.
"Och, will ye wait for the hangman's rope?" in a fierce whisper below his breath. "There's a hidie-hole I ken, but little good it'll dae ye when the hitch is on your thrapple." And we started the long race to the hills, picking out the patches behind the dykes where the ground was bare.
[1] Lag 'a bheithe=the hollow of the birch.
McKinnon was first in that long race and I next to him, for Dan would not let me out of his sight lest I should lag behind and get rough handling, although indeed, except the gaugers would yelp questions at me which I might not find easy to answer, there was little I had to fear, but it was always in Dan's mind that he had the charge of me. The land was cultivated on a stey[1] face of maybe a half-mile before the hill common started, and over the common (where in the summer the cattle and hens were taken) the heather was patchy with bog hay, and short crisp turf in places. It was this wrought land I feared most, for the snow was not swept in wreaths, leaving darker patches, but lay like a white napkin over the land, and a black object could be seen from a great distance. But there was a belting of beech-trees and Scots firs marching two farms; and coorieing in sheuchs, where the ice crinkled in metallic splinters under our feet, we crawled to the belting, and were able to stand upright again, at which I breathed a sigh of relief, for my back had a pain like a band of hot iron with the long bending. We scrambled among the trees, and lay a moment, for there was a roughness of bushes and briars, and the snow had been blown off the branches, so there was little likelihood of our being seen. We lay breathing hard and peering through the bushes for signs of pursuit (for the exciseman who cried the news at Finlay Stuart's, not knowing his listener, would have roused his pack by this time), and that Rob Beag was in their pay secretly there was now little doubt. It would be short shrift for Dan if he were caught. Maybe two minutes we lay, and I could have counted every beat of my heart, as it rose with a great thud against my chest, and I felt the blood throb in my head like a prisoner dashing against his cell. The noise of a fall of snow from the fir branches seemed loud as thunder, although we must have been quiet enough, for I mind me of the rabbits loping from the burrows daintily, and sitting up very boldly, almost under reach of a shepherd's crook from me.
"They will have taken roun' the road," says Ronny; "they'll be on us before we see them if we lie here."
On we went in single file in the belting. Briars swung back and cut me across the face, branches tore at us in passing all unheeded, and once my leg, to the knee, sunk into a hole and threw me bodily; but I pulled myself out, and was lame for six steps maybe, and forgot about it. When we were half-way to the hill common there came sharp and clear through the night the neigh of a horse.
"The doited fules," cries Ronny. "They've ta'en the horses to ride a man doon among the hills."
"Let me once win the peat bink," says Dan, "and I'll wander the devil himsel'." And from the ring in his voice I kent his dark mood had passed, and waited to see him take the lead; but no, he herded me from behind, but cheerily now. We had crossed a high road, and entered the belting of trees again, and along this road the gangers would come, and our spoor was written plain.
"There will be the collieshangie when they see our marks in the snaw, but they'll founder their horses on the brae and ill-use time tae nae purpose, if just we get ower the common."
From the high ground we could see the road for half a mile and the hunters in full cry, some on horseback and some afoot.
"Horse and foot," says Dan at my ear. "A grim chase, Hamish. I wish ye had left me, lad."
A terrible curse from Ronny made me think our flank was already turned. "The devil blast them. The whuns, I clean forgot the whuns," and he called on the Almighty to blast and destroy every whin-bush that ever grew.
Amidst the torrent of oaths that buzzed around me I remembered hearing of the whin planting. In these days keep for beasts was scarce, and the crofters would be cutting green whins, and pounding them between flat stones and feeding cattle and horse with them. Indeed, to this day you'll see the flat stone yet at many a byre-end, although it is never used now except maybe to set a boyne on on washing days; but the poor cow beasts were terribly fond of the whins, and they'll tell you yet, the old folks, that when they were herding in their young days, when the beasts got scattered, they would take a whin bush and light it to windward, and let the whin smoke drift down the wind, and the beasts would come running, for they liked the charred whins with the sap still in the jags. Here and there they planted whins, for at one time they had to go all the way to the castle for them, and on one side the common was a great dense bank of them, thick as corn, and well grown.
"They'll be round us like collies round a marrow bane," said Ronny, and as he spoke there was a shout from the highroad, and Dan laughed.
"This is where the kirn starts," and looking over my shoulder as I ran I saw the horsemen spread out like a fan (on either side the belting) where we crossed the road, and the men on foot were on our heels.
They knew of the bank of whins we must struggle through, and relied on their horses' speed to take them round the planting and catch us coming out while the men on foot harried our rear. It was 'twixt devil and deep sea, and the smuggler cursed himself for leading us into the clove hitch.
Between us and the whins was a burn with steep earthy banks, and too wide and deep to risk horses over. So the horsemen on our left made for a slap[2] where a rough peat-track crossed the burn, but those on our right kept straight on, like the road to Imachar. At the lower end of the whins the burn was shallower and the banks low.
We flung across the stream, carrying down an avalanche of loose earth and stones after us, and breenged into the maze of prickly bushes, winding through those that the snow had been blown off. But mostly the bushes were dry and bare of snow, and this indeed proved our safety. We were nearly through the clumps when the horsemen on our right crossed the burn with a great floundering and splashing, and those on our left came galloping over the peat-track, and the first horseman galloped past us, so close that I heard the squeak of the saddle leather. We were crouched in a wee burn winding among the bushes; for they grew strongly on either side, and left a little tunnel which one could creep through without much hindrance, and as the riders drove their unwilling beasts among the whins we crawled upwards like cats. While the men on foot beat for us, and the horsemen kept wary eyes for a movement to betray us, we crept from the whins and crawled like adders belly flat up the little stream, over which dry bracken still hung and straggling whin bushes, like soldiers marching away from the main body. We had crawled maybe fifty yards, when McKinnon turned his face to me, and the blood was drying on his cheeks and brow where the whins had marked him.
"Stop," his lips only moved; and I stopped and turned to Dan, for he still had the rear-guard.
The burn had worn out a round hole under our bank, and we crawled in and lay there, and never, never will I forget the cold of that pool and the streak of light above us, for we lay in a brook that a sheep could walk over, and indeed its very narrowness was our safety, for it surely had been watched else. And while we lay in the frozen cold of the pool, the water tinkled and gurgled and laughed, and went plout-plout at my knees, as though it was a hot summer day and we were stooping to drink.
"We must just lie here like rats," whispered the smuggler, and I held my chin to stop the chattering of my teeth, "for this burn gets narrower than a sheep drain. We must just steep in the water and think of the whisky."
We could hear the swishing among the whins, and the shouts of the rabble behind us, and the clatter of horses' hoofs on the shingle of the burn, and the splashing.
"They're in there like rabbits in a patch of corn in the harvest," cried one man.
"By God, if I could only get that Ronny McKinnon under my bonny blue hanger," said Gilchrist, the ganger that had the soft side for Mirren Stuart.
"One good prog wid pay for this night's daftness," growled his leader, and again came Gilchrist's voice—
"Was I tae ken McKinnon was ootside Finlay Stuart's and a dozen o' ye in the kitchen."
"Umph," sniffed Ronny, "it's the great company that gathers at Finlays," and indeed Mirren Stuart saved many's the house at that time, for the gangers and excisemen went after her sisters, while old Finlay smiled grimly, and Mirren got hold of the secrets.
"If a man runnin' like that Gilchrist can blurt oot the news and keep runnin', it's maistly truth, but if he stops and begins to walk, and twist his mouth before he speaks, he's makin' lies," said McKinnon, and turned himself in the water.
The searchers were beginning to tire of beating.
"Roast the devil oot." "Ay, gie McBride a taste o' the fire."
"I'm thanking God for a fool," said Dan, "if the whins will just burn, but whins are dour revengefu' bushes."
"Burn," says Ronny—"burn; they'll hiv a bleeze ye'll see for twenty miles—we're bate, Dan."
"Na, na," says Dan. "Wait you, yonder's a twinkle, anither. Man, they'll mak' a bonny lowe, and waste a heap of good keep."
Men were rushing hither and thither with flaming branches, and already, when the breeze freshened, you could hear the roar and crackle. The great lilac flames leapt ten feet in the air, and the night rained stars. The sparks fell above us like fire-flakes, and some came down and sizzled out in our pool.
When the flames were roaring like a hurricane, Dan spoke softly—
"We'll go now."
"Are ye daft?" said Ronny.
"Ye don't ken the effect o' a fire like that," said Dan. "A man must look at it, and see the lowes ploofin' into the sky, and the sparks fleein'. He canna help himsel'. The horses will be needing a lot o' handling too, and the men on the low side'll just hiv tae run tae winward or lie in the burn, for the heat o' whuns is terrible. They'll a' face the flames waitin' till we run oot like bleezin' deevils, and they're sae sure that we will start every moment, they will not lift their eyes for fear they will be missing the sight o' us."
"We must just risk it," said I, "for I'm like to freeze here."
Dan put his head out of our hole and crawled out, and I followed, and Ronny last. We could feel the air warm, and the night was clear as day, and yet the searchers stood gazing at their fire as Dan had said. We crawled flat like snakes, keeping among dark patches as much as we could, till we came to the turf dyke, and still our pursuers tended the fire. Slowly and softly we crossed into heather, and lay for a minute. Then, looking down across the common, Dan threw back his head and laughed in his silent fashion.
"We're among our ain heather now, Hamish," says he. "In an hour we'll be among the peat hags. I've a mind tae whistle them up."
"I've lain long enough in the water, Dan," said I.
"Aweel," says he, "we'll just make McAllan's Locker for it; eh, Ronny?" And again we started to run, zigzagging to the dark bits till we crossed the first rise, and we stood looking back. The whins were all ablaze and the trees in the belting standing out clear, and the little figures still running with the torches.
[1] Steep.
[2] Opening.
McALLAN'S LOCKER.
Over the first rise of the hills was a long dreary waste—treeless, awesome, desolate. Whiles, as we ran, a curlew would rise, and its long whirling cry rose in the night, filling the ears and leaving an emptiness afterwards in the silence, for things not canny to be filling. Once we startled a herd of red-deer feeding round the mossy lips of a frozen pool, and away they galloped. One lordly stag wheeled with antlers high, gazed at our flight, and vanished, leaving us in that dreadful stillness, and a cold eerie wind whined and sighed over us. We spoke little, having no breath to spare, for the ground was growing more steep and broken towards the second rise, up which we clambered, sliding and falling, grasping frozen heather till we reached the top. The hill was now a riddle of peat hags and binks, like a bee's skep, a place of treachery and slimy death, although the frost would have most of the sinking pools in its iron hand; but we never stopped the long stride that seemed so slow to me at first. Dan bent and twisted through the peat banks like a hound on the trail. Here was a place where folk had wrought, cutting their fuel for generations; and God knows what memories were lurking here from the old days, what ghosts of love and hatred, what spirits of tears and laughter. Would the race never end? My tongue, dry and swollen, stuck raspily against the roof of my mouth. Round my lips was a hot fire, for I had grasped a handful of snow and melted it in my mouth as I ran. We were past the peat hags, and the ground fell away under our feet; the heather got scantier and sprits more common, until we had descended, maybe, five hundred feet into a wide valley with a level plain at its heart, with many clumps of stunted birches and hardy firs. Here was the great grazing for young beasts in the summer, away here in the glen, but now only stillness and desolation. A wide burn rumbled and splashed on its gravelly banks in front of us, and we could hear the deep noise of a waterfall.
"Hold in to the fall," cried McKinnon, and his voice was hoarse as a raven's.
"I ken this like the back o' my hand," said Dan, and led us, with never a break, to an easy crossing.
And now we took the greatest care of our going, for a great hill rose before us steep, as it seemed to me, as the wall of a house, and then all our care was made useless, for the snow began again.
Slowly, blindly we clambered and spelled up the hillside, now numb with cold, now fiery hot, Dan always in the lead, and me groaning at his hurdie.
"Keep a stout heart, Hamish; this is the last o't."
We were now, as it were, on a ladder on the hill face, for there were a succession of great holes like steps, on each of which three men could stand—the giant's steps, the old folks called them.
At the back of the step where we three lay was a grey rock, as though the earth had been worn away, leaving the rock partly bare. As we lay Dan struck it three times with a stone about the size of a putting-ball, and a great low baying sounded, and my blood ran cold, and then the grey rock moved inch by inch, and I heard a great rift of Gaelic, and Dan went crawling like a snake through the hole, and myself and McKinnon at his heels.
"Welcome, hearty welcome; whatever drives ye sae fast. Welcome toMcAllan's Locker."
"It's latish for ceilidhing," said Dan. "I'm hoping me and my friends are not putting ye out in any ways, but just a shakedown o' breckans is all we're asking, and thankful for it."
"Better the bottom o' the locker than the end o' the cable. Sit ye doon and warm yourself."
I was sore done wi' the long running, and lay on the rook floor with my head on my arms, and I felt as a hound feels after a long chase, till the caveman answered Dan. At the first I thought his tongue had been malformed as he stood in the light, for a growling and grumbling came from his throat; and as he growled, from the darkness of the chamber a great brindled dog stalked to his side and stretched his fore-paws, opened a mouth like a red pit, and whined with outstretched curling tongue.
"He would tear down a stag, him," says Dan, nodding at the brute.Again came the growling rumbling from the stranger.
"Hark tae him, Marr; hark tae him—a stag. Ho, ho, ho! He would tear a man's throat oot at his first leap," and man and dog rumbled and growled in devilish mirth. "Sing tae me, dog—sing," and the man threw his head up, and there came the long greeting howl of a dog baying the moon, and dog and man howled in unison, with swaying bodies and heads thrown upwards.
"God, but the open hill's a bonny place," said McKinnon, and a shiver went over him. In this terrible place we lay the night—a great gloomy forbidding place in the belly of the hill. Shiver on shiver went through me as I looked round me. The walls were rock, bare and dry, converging high up in the gloom; for there was just the peat fire and a cruisie alight. Once, as though disturbed in its sleep, I heard a rock-pigeon "rookatihoo coo-a" away above me in some cranny that must open on the hill face. The smoke curled up in a rude dry-stone chimney for about five or six feet against the rock, and the bulk of it still ascended in a column, although the chimney stopped, but a waving pall hung over the cave, swaying and undulating in long waves and streamers, and the air below was cool and fresh. There were great carvings on the walls—warriors and ships, galleys and horses a-rearing, and on a flat stone projecting from the chimney, and serving as the brace or mantelpiece, were models of ships made from the breast-bones of birds, some quite large and others very small, and needing an infinite deal of patience. There were rough stools and a table, all of which must have been made inside the cave, and, indeed, the bark was dry and brittle on the legs. Great bundles of heather, fashioned like narrow beds, lay along the wall in the firelight, and like a dark unwinking eye the light glimmered on a pool. There were square steps cut in the rock down to the pool, which was shaped like a horn spoon with the handle cut off short, and the water entering it from a crack in the rock, noiselessly as oil, trickled silently away in a little sloping gutter to the back of the cavern. Who first discovered the cavern I never knew, but by the fire lay, twisted and blackened, the hilt and half of a sword, and in a corner a black and rust-pitted breastplate. The back part of the cave narrowed, and through a passage the Nameless Man passed to bring us meat and drink. Have you walked on a bare moor road in the pit mirk wi' a drizzle of soft mist in a silence you could hear? Have you felt the fear coming over you, like a cold hand on your heart, when ye knew that a thing gibbered and mouthed at your side? Well, the thought o' that man, the Nameless Man, brings fear to me in a lighted room.
For he was a dead white man, his hair, lank and white, hung round his shoulders, his beard was slimy and soft as a white hare's, face and hands cold, dead white, and his features were frozen.
No trace of any feeling showed on his face. His voice and his laughter rumbled from his throat, leaving his face unchanged, only his pupils waxed and waned like a cat's in the dark. He was covered with a patchwork of skins and tatters of cloth, and as he set meat before us, venison, it came to me that he must hunt his food in the dark, always in the dark. That cold whiteness was not of the good God's sunlight. As we ate, Dan told him some of our story, and the Nameless Man sat, a handful of his beard in his hand, his elbow on the table, and his eyes growing and fading.
"I'm sair feart I left him deid," said Dan. "If they come for us, dog, when we're lying at the still and the good water turnin' to fine whisky—and the good nice water, trickling and dripping through the rocks for a hundred years—if they creep upon us, dog, what will we be doing, you and me, Marr? Ho—ho—ho! killing them, eh? Leaving their bones wi' the white bones away in there—the old, old bones," and dog and man made a howling of laughter. I knew then that this was the watcher of a smugglers' still; for let the gang o' Preventives do their worst, whisky would still be made in the hills.
It came to me then why the folk would be leaving peats for the wee folks, as they said, when they would be taking down the creels from the hills; for the Nameless Man threw more on the fire from some hidden store, likely nearer his worm, when we had finished eating. The great dog lay at the rock by which we entered, and I saw that the stone was swung on a balance; but if there was a way to open from the outside I never knew till long after. McKinnon and Dan lay talking, but I was silent for the most part, thinking of the sword and the armour, and of the people who fashioned the well, and wondering about the old, old bones away through the dark passage into the heart of the hill. The far, far-away stories were in my mind of Finn and his warriors, of his great dogs and his queens. Did Ossian the bard tune his harp to great deeds, and to lovely women of the land of the Ever Young, in the cave of the past? Into my musings—for sleep had nearly come over me—broke the voice of the Nameless Man.
"I gave her to drink of the foamy milk—warm, and the bubbles of froth in it. 'Drink, my lost lass,' said I, 'for ye loved me well once,' and all the time I would be telling her that death was coming with the white milk. And she took up the fine nice milk and drank, because she had loved me well once, she that loved me yet but feared—the coward, the soft, soft, white coward that would lie on another man's heart after I had keeled her for myself. Ay, she took up the milk and drank, and I took my ways, and they came running to Glen Darruach to tell me she had died.
"Oh, oh! the dark, the dark, and never more the sun shining on the bonny blooms of dark Darruach, never mair the white lambs running, and the gleam on the wing of the moorcock.
"Ay, they would be for the killing of me, and I lay among the rafters, under the thatch of my mother's house, and listened to them miscalling me, the black killer—the bloody man that had the black art and the evil eye; and it came over my heart to catch them by the hair, and pull them up to me as they were speaking, and let my black knife kiss their hearts. It was all red, red before me, up there under the thatch, and them down below, and my sisters shaking when they saw me watching down in the dark. It's droll, droll—because a soft white coward died—they would kill me, me that would kill a man when I drew my dirk—ho, ho, ho!
"I lay hid among the rocks above the Herring Slap, alane day and night, and the blue rockdoos left their nestlings and circled above my lair, till I was feart that folk wid see them, and come peering down and get me. But a herrin' skiff took me away from that place in the dark of the night, and I drifted to the warm South Seas and the darkling women and the white glistening houses; but she came with me, she that had died. I would be seeing her rising before the bows o' the ship, rising from the sea, and waving on me to follow, and the weather was worse and worse at her every coming. An' there was a man o' the Western Isles in the crew, and he had the sight, and would be telling o' the woman rising from the sea, and her hair blowing over the yeast o' the waves, and her eyes staring, staring, and the waving of her hand when I was at the tiller; and so bad the weather got, and the sickness among the crew, that the captain swore he would send the woman's man to her, and he lay aft in his cabin, and drank rum till his boy was feart to venture near him; and then he came on deck—a fine wild man, all in his finery o' lace and golden earrings, and he called his sailors aft to make choice of the woman's man. There was many there that would have been making choice of me, but my hand was quick on the dirk, and no man spoke above a whisper, and then I looked over the bows, and I would be seeing her coming, and the man of the Western Isles cried out in his fear—
"'She's wavin', she's wavin', Chrisht's mercy.' He was pointing to the grey seas, and the froth was on his lips.
"And as he was standing gazing I creeped round behind him like a cat, so quiet, and I had my arms round him before his eyes were winking.
"'Go to your wet love,' I cried, and I flung him over the rail by the poop, and the captain was at the laughing.
"'The curse is lifted, my lads,' he roared. 'Crowd the sail on her. Heigh-ho for the North and the gay adventures!' But after that there were two to be watching in the darkness when I took the tiller—ay, and I crawled from the sea at last, and came to the hills again—in the dark.
"Oh, the dark, the dark, and never mair the sun shining on the heather howes of dark Glen Darruach." As we lay on the heather beds the Nameless Man wandered through the cave, and the booming of his voice rumbled in the heart of the hill, as he wandered through unknown galleries in the dark. The day came at last, and I saw a wee shaft of light filter down some way on the cavern walls, but we could only lie still till the dusk would come again, and we might make our way among the hills, for after our sleeping Dan and Ronny and me had a great confab.
"I canna lie here like a rat in a hole a' my days," said Dan.
"Ye'll never sleep sound till there's many a mile o' blue sea between you and Dol Beag's hunters," said I. "If we could pass the word for a skiff. . . ."
"We're daft, we're clean daft," cried Ronny. "McGilp is lying at the north end, standing off and on. If we can just make Loch Ranza, ye're safe."
"Ay," said Dan. "I'm thinking it's the Low Country now for me, Hamish. Whatever money is due me, ye'll leave wi' McGilp, and he'll find a way for sending it on. I'm sair sweirt tae part frae my bonny horses for yon mauk's sake. . . . And there's the bonny spaewife, Hamish; if anything comes wrong tae that lass I'll be relying on you." And then for a long time he sat brooding at the fire.
In the afternoon a change came over the Nameless Man. He crawled on his knees about the cave, whining and howling like a beast. He glared at the black pool, and pointed.
"She's there in the water." And then with a yell to the dog, "Had her, Marr; tear her sinery; rive her sinery, good Marr." And he hissed the hound on to his vision, and the dog, frenzied at his crying, breenged into the pool, and the man whined with joy, and caressed the soaking coat. Later on in the day, after we had had a meal, he sat at the passage-way and eyed us, and the dog girned and showed his teeth.
"They'll no come creepin' into the dim places where the queer things are hidden, no—spying and spying." And when we paid no heed to his ravings, except that we kept the fire bright and had armed ourselves, he lay down and slept across the passage-way, his head on the hound's flank. At every movement of our bodies the growling rumbled to our ears, and the bristles rose on the dog's back. But when it was nearly dark the sleeper wakened, and we left the dreadful place called McAllan's Locker, and took to the hills again.
DAN McBRIDE SAILS FROM LOCH RANZA.
For a while we lay silent on the giant's step of McAllan's Locker, and I felt my spirits lighten to be outside of that place. The hills were silent, but from the cave came a baying and growling of dog and man, at first as from a distance, and growing louder and louder, as though the Nameless Man and his grim hound ranged through the unknown caverns. We three sprauchled upwards, for we had no relish to meet these two, and as we neared the rise of the hill the baying filled the night, and suddenly the great hound bounded down the hillside with great twisting leaps, and at his heels the wild figure of his master followed. In the valley they played like gambolling puppies, rushing at one another and wrestling, with whiles the brute worrying the man playfully, and whiles the man kneeling on the dog; then away they would dash separately, wheeling and leaping and rubbing their flanks in the snow. For a long time the game went on, and then the players slunk closer, the shaggy heads thrust skywards, and the long whining cry rose on the night; then away they ranged, running flank to flank through the peat hags and over the rise of the hill we had crossed the night before.
"He'll be a bold man that shepherds these hills in the lambing," saidDan.
All through this night we held our course a little to the west of the pole-star, though McKinnon and Dan had travelled the way before. We were now in the middle of the great barren range, frowning mountains menaced our path, and burns rumbled in the darkness; and when Dan spoke his voice was thick with anger—
"I lifted a snipe o' a man, and I flung him the back of the fire. What is there in that to be running from?
"If the man has freens, I'll meet them a' wherever they like; but this running sticks in my gizzard. It's just ain brother tae caul' fear," and we marched on in grim silence.
On the mountains my feet were almost without feeling at all with the cold, and my clothes sticking to my shoulders with sweat; and on the last of the hills McKinnon clapped like a startled hare.
"Look at yon," he whispered; "they're to win'ward o' us after a'."
Far below us a little light flickered and blinked on the hillside, and we watched it, hardly breathing, and again I heard my heart begin to pound.
After some wee while of watching, Dan grunted—
"Umph!" says he. "Ye see droll things in the hills when ye're rinnin' for dear life. Yon's just Tchonie Handy Ishable and his lantern."
"I never would be believing that story," said Ronny.
"Man, if I had the time I would get his secret this night," says Dan. "Ye see, Hamish, yon's an old man down yonder, and they'll be saying he pays the Duke's rent in the big money. They've the story of how he found a hoard o' it among the hills; and it's likely enough, for many's the bold stark lad took to the Southern Seas from these glens. Och, an' I ken folk mysel' that found an iron pot o' doubloons in the peat bink; but aul' Tchonie, he just takes what he will be needin', and he takes it at night when the folks are abed. They used to be following him, but he was skilly among the rocks, and they would maybe come on his lantern sitting lighted, and once they found a dagger stuck at the entrance to a cave to keep the wee folk from shuttin' it when a man was inside; but they were never able to get the secret, for Tchonie Handy Ishable would be sittin' over his peat fire when the lads came back in the mornin'."
At the screich o' day we came from Glen Chalmadale into the thatched village of Loch Ranza. At a house some way back from the others McKinnon stopped us.
"The man that lives here is a farmer and a fisherman," said he, "and a very po-lite man in his taalk moreover, for I know him well," and he mimicked the Loch Ranza speech, which, indeed, is very proper speech, and I was very startled at one time to hear the very weans with the polite way of it.
"Ye will be havin' the dogs on us," says Dan in a low voice; "and there's folks here that are unfreens o' mine."
"Alaister Jock has weans enough to do without the dogs," says Ronny, "for dogs are unchancy beasts in the smuggling nights, and Alaister himsel' will be always up wi' the drake's dridd."
In a little time Ronny came back to us, and we made our way into Alastair's house, a place where a grown man could stand broad-soled on the clay floor and touch the rafters of the roof with the flat of his palms. The peat fire was smouldering on the floor, and the reek made its way out at the rigging. Alastair himself, a tall stooped man with a red beard and a thin beak of a nose, brought peats and threw them on the fire.
"There was one came for you in the night yesterday," says he to Dan in his very proper polite way. "I would not be having her in my house at all, for I am a reeleegious man with a family to rear before the Lord. I put her into the byre with the kye, for she is of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; and my wife sprinkled a little meal and a little saut over the rumps of the kye to keep away her spells, for we must meet spell with spell—not that I will be believing in these evil-doers of the Black Art."
"Och, I kent, I kent," cried Dan, long before Alastair had done with his speaking, and disappeared through a door which gave me a glimpse of a cow's head looking over its biss, and it struck me that the byre was the handy place to get at in Loch Ranza. Ronny and Alastair were thrang at the talking, with the farmer laying off with his hands, and wagging his head like a minister in the pulpit, and all in a voice so raised in tone that I believed from hearing him what our folks say, that when two farmers are ploughing at the north end they can talk comfortably across three fields, and they are great at the handling of their skiffs and bold sailors. I heard Dan—
"Och, my lass, my ain lass; it went sair against my heart to be leaving without seein' you at all."
I heard her brave voice with a crooning quiver like a mother's.
"I ran, I ran all the long road, for I kent it all from the first o' it," and in the dimness of the byre I could see these two clinging to each other.
"Is it the sight[1] ye think ye have now, my droll dark lass?" says Dan, looking down at her, one arm holding her away from him and the great love in his eyes.
"There's whiles I come near to hating you when you will be talking like that," said the swarthy girl. "Mirren Stuart brought me word."
"You'll be glad to be rid o' me then. You'll be forgetting me soon," and the man let his arm drop from her shoulders, and the cold intolerant pride of his voice stung like a whip-lash, for he never could thole that the woman he loved could even have a thought different from his own, let alone a love-hatred.
I expected a proud heart-breaking lie from the sombre beauty, but for all his answer she crept close, and clung to him with both hands, and hid her face on his breast; then holding him at the stretch of her arms she raised her head, and looked Dan in his eyes.
"Oh, man," she cried, "I have that that will keep me in mind o' ye, shameless, shameless that I am," and two great tears rose in her eyes, the first tears I ever saw there, but Dan lifted her in his arms like a baby.
"Was ever there such a mother for a bold man's son," I heard him cry in a voice of love and pride and laughter.
In Alastair's kitchen the thought came to me then what will the son of these two be—the father strong as a mountain ash, and with the cruel arrogant pride of a long-bred race behind him, his own will his only law, and the queer twist of tenderness for old stories and old songs and his love for all nature—a stark man, who would reach out and take what he desired; and the mother fiercely tender, wildly, passionately loving her chosen man, all the dark East in her black eyes, all the deadly South in her blazing angers—a graceful, hard, blue steel blade of Damascus, with jewel-encrusted hilt and sheath of velvet. What was the son of these to be?
Alastair slipped out quietly, and Ronny and me sat at the fireside.
"We'll manage," said McKinnon, "for the gomerils have let us slip at their bonfire and lost us. The goodman here is McGilp's man, and his skiff's ready, and theGullwill be close in behind the point at high water. It will just be good-bye to Dan McBride wi' the turn o' the tide."
"But how can this godly man be a smuggler?" said I, more to make talk than anything else.
"Godly men must live like ither folk," said Ronny.
For a while we sat there till Dan and Belle joined us, and the lass could not be letting go of her man, the brave proud lass. I watched her hand quivering in his great brown one, and her eyes following his every change of look, and her face was all sorrow. I came near to hating Dan McBride too.
In the grey of the morning we made our way stealthily to the shore by the point.
Dan and the gipsy stood some way from us, on the cold dark shore head, and I think we had all a lowness of spirits, for that place is more sad and mournful than any place I have ever seen.
"You'll set McCurdy's hut to rights for my dark wife," said Dan to me, "and let it be her own place, and the money that is lying with my uncle, you'll be giving her when she needs it," and there he went on, keeping up her heart with his talk, and his eyes were straining longingly to the loom of hills in the dimness, like a man saying farewell, and I think the gangers and Dol Beag were clean forgot.
There came to our ears the low swish-sch of a boat gliding and slithering over wrack, and the beating of wings in the air as the sea-birds left the beach, and Alastair's boat grated on the gravel of the shore.
"Will ye no' come wi' me, my dear," cried Dan to the lass as she clung to him, and I had a twinge of jealousy that I was all forgot.
"Oh, fain, fain wid I be to travel wi' ye, my man, the cool long roads and the waving green meadows; but oh! ye hivna the nature o' my folk—there will be the great battles calling ye, and I would be trying to keep ye beside me, till ye grew weary o' me. But you will remember always and always in your wanderings you will never be thinking of me, but just that I will be loving you somewhere," and with a great cry, "Have I no' loved ye—can I ever be forgetting ye?"
When Dan would have taken her to his heart, she sprang away, her eyes blazing.
"Do not be petting me," she cries. "I am not a bairn to be quieted. Tell me ye love me—I want my ain fierce lover that wid make me kneel to him because he loved me—the love in his eyes and the strength o' his hands,—oh, I have loved a man." And then the man answered, and she saw the sorrow of parting in his face.
"My ain brave lass" . . . and at his words she came to him—"I will be waiting for you all the long days, for I will be with you again; but oh! it were better for all that ye never set your boot on these shores, for then the storm-clouds will gather, and the lightning will leap in the scarred mountains—my love, my love; but my heart cannot be brave enough to forbid you to come back to me." And for an instant the wild fierce woman clung to her lover, then fled from the shore. Dan stepped into the waiting boat in silence, his head on his breast, and a word from McKinnon or me, I think, would have kept him; but we said our farewells, and Alastair set to the sculling, and we watched the receding boat from the shore head until she drew close to theSeagull, and we saw Dan climb on board, and the skiff returning.
As we walked back to Alastair's, we saw Belle standing on a ridge of high ground, with the morning light behind her—dark against the light, and her eyes straining to the sea; and as we came closer I spoke, thinking to take her away from her sorrow, but her dark eyes remained fixed on the schooner, as though she had never heard me. There was a little mist hanging over the sea.
We sat down to a meal of salted herrings in Alastair's kitchen, the weans round us still sleepy and barefooted, and with tousled red locks, which they flung from their eyes with a gesture very like a spirited Hielan' pony tossing its mane; and when I looked from the door again—which I was glad enough to do, for the reek was a little nippy to my eyes—as I looked from the door I saw Belle returning, and with her no other than Robin McKelvie of the Quay Inn. There was no sign of theSeagull, for a fog had come down on the firth, and even the melancholy pleasure of seeing Dan's ship again was taken from me.