There was the whiteness and stillness of snow over everything, and I mind me how my mind would cling to wee things, like the footprints of rabbits, and the wee bits of grey fur here and there, and the flight of cushies in the trees, to come back with a start to the Gull away out in the Firth, and Dan on board of her.

Silently we ate our bannocks at a little burn under some stunted trees and close to the shore, and wearily trailed on; and just at the darkness I made out the lights of the big house, and came into the kitchen, where Ronald McKinnon had a meal. He took away over the hill for his mother's house then, as he said, but I'm thinking maybe Mirren Stuart would have another way of it, and at his going I went to that grim man, the Laird.

He was with his back to a red fire of peats, and looked dourly at me.

"What new devilry is this?" says he, and bit his lip. "Here are women and men gane gyte wi' the tellin' o' death and murder—and where is Dan McBride?"

"There is nae murder that I ken," said I, "and the hogs are doing finely."

I believe the man had clean forgot about the sheep.

"Hogs," quo' he; "deil tak' the braxy beasts. Sir, where is Dan McBride?" and at that I told him.

"And there's more yet," said I, for I had passed my word. "There's more to tell yet."

"Ay," said he, "there will be. Well, tell on."

And I told him of Belle and the old hut. He was not so very ill-pleased.

"See that the woman has what she will be needing," said he—"a cow and such-like, Hamish, and peats and gear and plenishings. Poor lass, poor lass. Hech, sirs, this will no' make bonny tellin' to the mistress. The mistress will no' be pleased wi' this—she'll be in need o' siller too."

* * * * * *

So it was on the first good day, with the sun red through a frosty haze, and the snow melted for the most part, we yoked the horses to the creels, and took gear and plenishing and peats to McCurdy's hut away in the hills over beyond the peat hags, and it was a weary cow beast that trailed behind, tied to the spars.

When we came over the last rise and stood to breathe the horses, I saw Belle at her door, shading her eyes under her flattened palms from the rays of the sun, and watching for us; and the horses looked in wonder to see a house so far among the hills, and tossed their ropy manes.

Man, they were the great little horses we had these days, with little heads such as I have seen in the paintings of Arab steeds, and an alert eager look to them, broad forehead, and soft neat muzzle. Close coupled they were, with a great girth, broad chest and sloping shoulders, and legs like iron. But it was the pride and the strength of them I never tired of, and it may be there was truth in the talk of the old folk, that the Hielan' horse was come off Spanish or Moorish horses of the Armada. But none could tell me if these Arab horses would be having the silver tail and mane of our little horses. And as I stood looking, I thought me it was a dreary wild place for a lass to be living her lane, with the muirfowl for company and the great geese flying north in the spring, and the bleating of sheep in the mist.

So all that winter I worked by the cottage; on the dry days thatching and building, keeping a little horse to take me over the peat road in the gloaming.

In the mornings I would be at it with mattock and spade delving hard at the founds, and I had the great days sliping stones. Indeed, I became so strong and proud of myself that you will see to this day on that hillside the dents I struck on great boulders, that now I would be sweir to move. I had with me an old man from the Lowlands, very good at the building of dry-stone dykes, a knowledgeable man in many ways, but especially in trees and gardens and such-like. The byre we built was not very big, and very dark, but it was cosy, too, under the crooked joists, and covered with heather scraws and thatch. In the loft I put flat boards across the joists, and made a square hole in the doorway, and brought hens and cocks to be making the place more homelike.

All this was on my uncle's hill land, but I had my way of it, and jaloused maybe that the mistress was putting in her good word, for she had aye a soft side for young Dan. When I told him about breaking in from the moor, he hummed and hawed and gloomed at me. "This will mean the less sheep," says he.

"There's a wean coming," said I, and felt the blood rise in my face to be saying it. "Has he to be put in the heather, and die maybe in a sheuch like a braxy ewe."

"Tut," says he, his colour rising a bit; "these are no words to be in the mouth of a boy," but I kent I had him on the soft side. "A man must be dacent to his ain blood," said he, and that was the last of it.

So we had the great days at the burning of heather, and when I would be running with a kindling here and there, and watching the lowes lick into the dry scrog with a hiss before the breeze, I would be thinking much of Dan and Ronny McKinnon and me in the blazing whins, and the gangers and excisemen and riff-raff of that kidney hallooing round us. Belle loved this burning and the very fierceness of the flames, with the eerie gloaming falling, and she would not be heeding the cries of Old Betty (for Betty was much with her these days for company) to be keeping indoors.

"Hamish," she would say, coming close to me in the ruddy light, and the dark cheeks of her glowing and her eyes flashing—"Hamish, I have that in the heart of me." And as she stood thus pointing to the fires, all lit up and wild and beautiful, I thought there must surely have been away back in her story a priestess who tended fires in some far Eastern land.

Well, well, it's fine to be thinking back on these far-off days, and the work we made at the dyke-building round the first park, and how we gathered the lying stones and rousted out the deeper-set ones; and the dyker made all grist that came to his mill, for he would split up considerable boulders with great exactness and skill, a feat that never came easily to me. Then there were the stone drains to be making, and the great talking about the run of the water, and the lie of the land, and the niceness with which we laid those drains! They were all joys to me. I dreamed green meadows and well-kept dykes and good beasts.

And then the ploughing—a sair job ploughing heather roots—and the furrows I drew would have brought the laughing to Dan McBride; but the soil was not so black, but where the rabbits had burrowed there was good green grass among the red scrapings. The sowing and the harrowing were the easy job after that, and I mind me how I leaned on that dyke and gazed on the first three acres won out of the hill, when the green breard was showing, as a man might gaze on his first-born son. In these night trakings in the hills I learned the shape of every stunted bush and tree, and the place of every rock on either hand, and many's the droll ploy I came into. Ye'll still see the track yet down from the peat hags like a scar on the hillside, but the stories of the road are lost in the swirling mists, and carried away in the winter gales.

There was a burn running over the road down from the little loch with the green rush islands, where the sea-birds build, and the staghorn moss is boot-deep, and in that little plouting burn there was grand water to be making the whisky. And in the gloaming have I seen a lonely man with his dog at heel, hurrying by the burn-side, through the bare birch trees, and disappearing to his night watch in some cunning place on the hillside. And once at the place where there is now a little holly-tree, gnarled and full of years, I met the limber lads with the kegs on their backs, and carrying the worm and all the gear for the whisky-making. And we buried everything in the peat hags below the three hills, for the excisemen were close on us, and there they lie, kegs and stoups, to this day; and would not the whisky be fine to be drinking now, but maybe a little peaty.



CHAPTER XV.

THE STRANGER ON THE MOORS.

It would be well on into May, for the men were thrang with work, and the lassies at the big house haining a bit of bannock to be putting under their pillows for fear of hearing the cuckoo, when first I heard the strange whistling. It is not a very lucky thing to be hearing the cuckoo and you wanting food, and I think this is just a haver of the old folk to be making the young ones rise early on the fine clear mornings; but many's the first bite I ken was taken from below the pillows, and the cuckoo crying like all that.

There was a thick bit of a wood behind the stackyard at the big house, and as I lay listening to the sounds of the early morning there came often of late this clear melody, not loud but sweet and thrilling, as I had heard Ronny McKinnon whistle and Dan too, and the words of that tune are not to be talked about; but when I went quietly to the planting one morning there was only the little moving of birds in the greyness of the morning and the stillness of the wood.

I came back to the kitchen and rummaged the aumary for something to be eating, and made my way to the stable and put a feed before my beast, and watched him hard at it and the other beasts stamping and rattling at their chains in their impatience.

We were on the hill road before the sun, for there was the matter of a calf to be seeing to, and it was fine to be alone in the fresh day with the dew still heavy on the green grass and wetting the horse to the fetlocks; and the sun was coming up in the East, and here and there the curl of blue smoke rising up from far-out clachans. I would maybe be on the other side of the black hill and going finely, and relishing the green of the new growth, when there came to me that sweet whistling again, and cooried by the roadside beside a grey stone I saw a man sitting. He was the droll figure of a man, with outlandish garb and wee gold earrings. His teeth showed white as milk against his swarthy face, and he had many colours about him, at his throat and his waist, and useless tatters and tassels, but withal he had the proud bearing of mountain folk, and level black brows.

Abreast of him we came and he bended low, but with such grace and so much dignity that it were as though he were a king receiving a vassal.

"Have you the Gaelic?" said I in the old tongue.

"Cha nail, cha nail, cha nail," cried he, so quickly and with such gestures of his hands that I was startled.

"Geelp," said he—"Geelp."

"Are you McGilp's man?" said I.

"Man, yass," says he, and all his body would seem to be very glad; and then I questioned him of his whistling, and got his story from him.

By his way of it, he had been a camp-follower or servant to a horse-soldier in the Low Countries, which was maybe true, for I will not be denying these wandering folk have the way of horse, and he made a play of himself to be showing how he was beaten often with the stirrup-leather. Some time in his wanderings in the Low Countries he fell in with "les Ecossais," and he was at the play-acting again with his hands to be describing the Scotch soldiers, and then from some pouch or hidie-hole about his outlandish garb he brought Dan's letter.

At that I sat on the roadside, and the Eastern man, with the rein loose in his hand, crouched on his hunkers before me like an image.

There was much of sadness in that letter, and much of Belle the gipsy lass, and of many wanderings from France to the Low Countries,

"Hamish, man, I'm minding the very stanes in the hill dykes and the track o' the sheep on the hillside." Why he had been kind to the Egyptian he told me. "Ye'll ken fine, Hamish, for what lass's sake,"—and sent him into France with a Scotch soldier he kent, returning there, with directions to wait at the little town on the coast where McGilp would whiles be, and "bring you this word o' me and a wheen things for Belle." He was asking me to see McGilp too. The last of it was like Dan. "I'm thinking, Hamish, if the houris in his paradise kenned the words o' the spring I've been deaving him wi', the Egyptian would be very greatly thought of."

When I was by with the reading of Dan's news, "Ye'll have another letter," said I, making signs at the pagan.

"Yass," and at that he put it in my hands. It was for Belle.

We got on the road again, the pony trotting now and the messenger running easily, one brown hand at the stirrup-leather, and very many times he would be saying "Geelp," till it came on me that McGilp would be wishing to be seeing me at once.

At Belle's cottage door I dismounted, and with the clatter of the horse there came old Betty, with that queer look on her face of disdain and mystery, and just itching to be at the talking.

"The wean's hame," said she, and slammed the door with a last nod of her old head and her lips pursed up; and then there came the snuffling ill-natured greeting of a wean that made me grue as I made my way to the byre, for till then my mind had clean forgot the calf I was to be seeing that day.

In the byre we sat, the heathen and me—for we were but simple men in this affair—and the byre was a dark place to be sitting, and in a while old Betty came, havering at hens and talking to herself. As she came and stood in the doorway and looked closely within, with her back bent and her hand on the lintel, her eyes fell on the messenger, and she let a great cry from her in the Gaelic. To be putting it in English is not so good, but it would be like this, "What dost thou require of me, father of devils?" and she fell on her knees. Well, well, I can laugh at that sight yet. But she "came to" in a little, and took me into the sunlight, and said the gipsy lass would be seeing me for a little time; and I was taken to Belle's sleeping-place, and her arm was round her wean, and she was lying on her back, and her black hair a little damp curling on the pillow.

"You have been very good," said she. "My man, your kinsman, will be owing you thanks." And at that her eyes suffused, and two great tears gathered and glittered, and she smiled up to me, and I gave her the letter and turned away.

In a long while she cried, proud and piteous—

"Bring me the messenger; he will have his father's gift for my son." And the lilt of joy in her voice made me think shame to be a man at all. Silently the messenger came, his eyes on the ground, and kneeled, and at that they were at it in their own Gaelic, and Belle raised the wean a little, and I saw his face wrinkled and red, and his blue staring eyes. And the man laid a long blue blade across the bed, and the little groping fingers of the child fluttered a moment, and then closed on the hilt, and when I lifted the gleaming snake-like sword, from the hilt scroll with a tinkling fell a ring, and it fell on the bosom of the mother—and she lay and smiled.

* * * * * *

But I made a safe place for that sword and scabbard (for the messenger gave that last into my hands), and for many nights in my dreams the little dimpled hand fluttered and closed on the hilt.



CHAPTER XVI.

I HAVE SOME TALK WITH McGILP IN McKINNON'S KITCHEN.

In the gloaming I left the sheiling, and took my way through the hill, as we say, for McKinnon's house by the glen on the road to Birrican, and the first of that road is just plain guessing, but after, maybe, a mile there rises up the Mulloch Mhor, the big peak of the Island, and with that, a little to a man's left hand, the road to the sea is easy. There is a road crossing that way that you'll still see running in through the Planting above the Letter, and through by the Little Clearing, and joining the road to the castle.

To the left of me I could hear the kye at the Bothanairidh, where there was a common grazing, for by this time it was well to have the beasts away from the steadings, because there was no great fencing in these days, and the weans would be put to the herding, out on the hillside. You'll see yet the wee turf byres where the kye were milked, and the founds of the bochans where the old folk had their summer, with the hens and beasts about them. And many's the story I could be telling about these summer quarters when the lassies and old wives would be at the spinning.

All the glen on the right of me was a McBride place, but you will not get that name there any more now, and nothing belonging to them but the trees, old and straggling, that they would be planting long ago, and the furs on the side of the hill where they had rigs about, and lazy-beds.

There were not many houses on the shore in these days, except maybe at a place they would be calling Clamperton, not very far from McKelvie's Inn.

Ronny was the pleased man to welcome me to his house, and Mirren, his wife, was at her best to be showing what a thrifty goodwife she was making, and she was very kind, and spoke good words to me; so, thinks I, Ronny will have been telling her about the talk we had yon day on the Isle.

"They will be saying," says Mirren, "that yon dark lass has her trouble past her."

"I am hoping that," said I, and looked at Ronny's mother sitting very bright and perky by the fire, with a clean white mutch on her head and the strings not tied.

"It is goot," says she, "to have a boy whatever—a boy iss a good thing, no matter which way he will be got," and she ended her little talk with a very brisk demand. "Gif me a dram, Mirren; yes"—and that set us to the laughing, for the young wife was setting the drink before us and not making signs of giving the old one any.

We sat down to a meal of roasted fowl, very tasty, and a very good drop of spirits to it, and I would be laughing inside of myself because of the boldness of McKinnon to be praising his wife's cooking before his ain mother, and Mirren was greatly pleased too; indeed, many's the time I will be thinking that the road to a quiet lass's heart will be to praise her cooking. When we had made an end of the eating I gave McKinnon the story of the stranger that came whistling at uncanny hours, and asked him where I would be like to find McGilp, for it appeared the man wanted speech with me.

"You are on the right tack," says he, "for I am waiting for his hand on the sneck any time this two hours past," and the dishes were hardly cleared away when the smuggler bent his head to be coming in the door, for in these days there were no locks in the Isle of the Peaks.

There came in with the man a kind of waft of the sea as he threw off his great-coat and clattered his cutlass in a corner—a fine figure of a man, towering up to the rafters, and his voice held in as though it would be more comfortable to hurl an order in the teeth of a gale.

"Ha!" says he, looking from McKinnon to his wife; "she has brought you to port finely." But he was mightily complimentary, and gave many good wishes with his glass in his great hand.

"And how are you, Mister Hamish?" says he. "Every plank sailing—in fine trim—and that's good hearing these days."

With that McKinnon got his fiddle, and played us many sprightly airs, for he was a very creditable performer, and the smuggler would be asking for this or that one, and nodding his head with great spirit.

"You would have speech with the Pagan," said he, when the night was wearing on. "An' cold eneuch he was when I picked him up at the mouth o' the Rouen river, for I had an express from a compatriot, Mr Hamish, serving overseas"—this with a very grand air.

"Were you wanting speech with me?" said I, for I could see the drink was going to his head.

"It's a wee thing private," says he; "but tak' up your dram. I canna thole a man that loiters wi' drink till the pith is out of it."

At that we drew our chairs close before the fire.

"Many's the time we would be talking about ye, Mr Hamish," says he, "Dan and myself; yon time we left ye in the haar at Loch Ranza—a senseless job, too, by all accounts, and Alastair rowing to the suthard, and us creeping out to the nor'west; he'll be hard to find now, by Gully—ay, Dan will be hard to find.

"I am hoping you are not close-hauled for time," says he, "for it's hard to come at my tale, Mr Hamish; but ye see, Dan McBride had some notion o' what might occur—I am thinking ye will see with me there.

"I am giving you the man's words, ye see, for he had great faith in ye.

"'Ye'll say to Hamish,' says he, and I'm telling you he was a sober man—'ye'll say, I am not wanting the wean to grow up like a cadger's dog, to be running from kicks and whining for a bone.'

"I am no' great hand at this wean business, Mr Hamish, but McBride was a fine man."

At that I made mention of the wean he had taken to the convent in France.

"I'm with you there," says he. "I was paid good money for that job, and I ken what I ken, and mair—what I've found out. Ye'll no' hiv great mind o' Scaurdale's son? No? Aweel, he was a bog-louper, and wild, wild at that, but he fell in wi' some south-country lady—a cousin o' his ain, that stopped for years at Scaurdale—a young thing that was feart to haud the man, but fond o' him too. I canna mind the name o' her. The long and short of it was jeest this—she married on an Englishman, a landed man and weel bred—Stockdale they ca'ed him—but he turned oot ill after a', and the first wean was a lass instead o' a boy. And I'm jalousin' she would be getting her keel-haulings for that, poor lady. Ye ken weel that young Scaurdale broke his neck, and ye ken where.

"'I'll be in hell or hame,' says he, 'in forty minutes.' At the Quay Inn it was, and his horse lathered and foaming and wild wi' fear. Aweel, Mr Hamish, he's no hame yet.

"Things were going from bad to worse with the lass he lost, and her man aye at the bottle, and sometimes she would be finding him lookin' at the wean and cursing, so what does she do but get word to the old Laird o' Scaurdale, who was fond o' her and a just man. I'll wager ye, he did not hang long in irons. The thing was done circumspectly, mind you—nae high-handedness—but Belle's folk were about Glen Scaur, a droll wandering band, claiming great descent from Eastern folk, and with horses and dogs and spaewife among them; and Belle (as they will be calling her) was the daughter o' the Chief, a very proud man.

"They were a wandering tribe, Mr Hamish, and they wandered into the south country, and I'm thinking ye saw the bonny spaewife coming back her lane, except for a wean, on a morning ye ploughed stubble.

"But here's the droll bit," says he. "Stockdale was kilt an his horse, too, in his ain park, for he scoured the place like a madman after the wean was lost. Weel, weel, that finished the lady, poor body. Ye'll see how things are now, Mr Hamish," says he.

"Yon's an heiress. An' that's a' I'll be saying," says he, for McKinnon came in from his stable, "but the Laird, your uncle, was in the ploy," says he, "or I'm sair mistaken, and the Mistress too."

With that we rose to be going, and had a glass, and the captain's last words were—"Ye'll mind yon: 'I'm not wanting the wean to grow up like a cadger's dog.'"

As I was walking home that night the thought came into my head of the wisdom of Betty at the big house.

I minded her saying to me on the Sunday that Belle took the wean in the tartan shawl to the Mistress—her very words came back to me—

"The wean has the look o' John o' Scaurdale."



PART II.

CHAPTER XVII.

I TURN SCHOOLMASTER.

There were many things to be doing in these days—peats to be cutting and carted home and built into tidy stacks, just as you can see them to-day, and the sprits and bog hay to be saving, for we were not good at growing hay, and then, when the boys grew up, there was the schooling of them. It was the boys we would aye be calling them, Dan's boy and the Laird's son, and they were fine boys.

Bryde McBride, that was the name of Dan's son, and Hugh, with a wheen other names, was the young Laird, who was schooled in Edinburgh and was not long back to us, and there was a lass Margaret, his sister. They would be with me everywhere on the long summer days, and me with the books by me; but mostly in the summer we would hold school at the Wee Hill, for there was a green place as level as the page of a book, and a little turf dyke enclosing it nearly, that we called the Wee Hill. Wae's me, now they have hens scarting about the place, and the greenness is gone from it.

There was the stone of twenty-two snails close by, for that was the number we found on it, a thing I have many times thought about; and great games we had, Bryde with his black hair and swarthy skin and wild blue eyes, with laughter just ready in them, and the speed and grace of a wild cat; and Hugh, ruddy like his folks, and dour too and very loyal; and the lass Margaret, who could turn Bryde with her little finger, and gloried in the doing of it. Ay, they grew up with me, and would be swimming with me in the sea, and every path in the hills we would be riding over, and we were happy together. These were the happiest hours of all, ochone; the sun shone more brightly and the days were longer.

And in his mother's eyes there was none like Bryde. The sun rose and set on him, his every little mannerism was a joy, and I have watched her gazing at him for long without speech, and suddenly rise and press his head against her heart, and her happiness was when he looked up from his task and smiled. I think never was a hand laid on him in anger.

There was something elemental about the lad. He would stand mother naked in the dim morning light below the little fall, and his pony awaiting him, and he kent every horse and dog within twenty miles. Indeed, there was a time when he would have slept with his horses.

"They might be needing me in the night," said he.

In these days we grew hay in a droll fashion. If there was a field namely for good grass, we would be getting green divots from it and putting them in our own parks, and scattering good rich earth round the divots. And when the grass was blown about by the winds, the seeds would fall and strike on the loose scattered earth, so that these divots were the leaven that leavened the whole field. But when he was sixteen and man grown, a fair scholar and expert with the sword, Bryde would be laughing at the notion. And he was strong and tough like the mountain ash.

"Hill land," said he, "will only be growing hill grass," and he set his folk and he went himself and took the seeds from the hill grasses. Guid kens how long it took him, but he sowed his hill grasses with his corn, and the seeds came, as we say, and he cut it and threshed it with the flails; and after that he had hay-stacks in his yard, and his beasts were well done by, so that at the fair he got great prices both for stots and back-calvers. And, indeed, it was at the fair that first I saw the mettle in the boy, although his eyes had always dancing devils in them. There was much drink in these days, and the mainland dealers had not the head for it that the boys from the glens had. The young boys would be holding saddle beasts from the early morning and making the easy money. Aweel, on this fair day, Margaret the maid, the sister of Hugh, had craked and craked to be seeing the beasts and the ferlies, and her mother, the Lady, and her father, the Laird, were sore against it.

"I will be with Bryde, my cousin," said she; "and who will meddle me." (I was clean forgotten.)

"He is not a real cousin, Margaret," said the mother.

"He is a fine lad; you will go, my lass," said the Laird, for blood was more to him than a stroke left-handed across a shield, and that day she rode with Hugh and me—Margaret, the Flower of Nourn. Tall she was and limber like a lance, her eyes like blue forget-me-nots that grow by the burn mhor, fearless and daring, with long black lashes. Her brown hair curled at her white neck, and her white chin was strong like a man's, but very soft and beautiful; her lips red, and her teeth like pearls.

She was silent for the most part on the road that day, though whiles she would be quizzing her brother about the lassies in the college town, for he had two years of the College at St Andrews. He was the great hand with the lassies by all accounts, Hugh, and many's the time his mother would be havering about them, but that man, my uncle, would wink as though he would be amused.

But when we passed McKelvie's Inn and saw old McKelvie there, stout and hearty, but very white about the head, and had a salutation from Ronald McKinnon thrang with the dealers, and Mirren not far off still sonsy—when we passed there I saw that Margaret was all trembling; and when we saw Bryde, tall and swarthy, coming to us, I saw the smiling in her eyes and her face aglow.

"What was that, my dear lass?" said I, looking at her.

"That would be my heart leaping," said she, with a laugh and a blush.

And Bryde lifted her from her little horse, and her hands were never tired to be touching him. She was all tremulous with laughter and eager-eyed, and the red was flaming in her cheeks, and she would be ordering Bryde like a queen, but pleadingly withal.

"You will stable my little horse," said she, and when Bryde, smiling down at her, took the bridle, "But—but I will be coming with you," she cried, "or surely you will be forgetting to halter him, or letting him run off and leave me," and as those two with the proud little horse moved to the inn, I saw her look up at the boy with all her heart in her eyes and her lips smiling a little pitifully.

"Do you think I would be caring, Bryde, if he ran off—if you were left with me?"

Ah, she was brave in her loving, was the Flower of Nourn.

Mirren McKinnon, that was once Mirren Stuart, was dowie that day, and her eyes red with greeting, for her son had gone to the sea, as his father had long ago. "I will be missing his step," she said softly, "when my man is on the hill," but Ronny would not be listening.

"It will make a man of the lad," said he; "there's something clean and fine about the sea."

Bryde had sold his beasts well, and it was his pleasure to be showing Margaret the bonniest foals, rough-haired and tousled as they were, and Hugh and me would be passing judgment. There was a mob of mares and foals and yearlings gathered in one place, and the mainland dealers bargaining with the farmers—always on the point of fighting by their way of it, and laughing to scorn the offered prices, as you will see to this day when folks are dealing in horse.

And as we stood a little way off, a great burly red-faced man—a Lowland dealer, strong as a tree, and a wit in a coarse way—turned his round drink-reddened eyes on us a time or two, and whispered behind his hand to his cronies, and I heard the titter of Dol Beag's laughing as Hugh pointed to a bonny yearling colt, and we stepped away, but not so far that I heard the dealer's words.

"Ou ay," says he, looking at Bryde, "Dan's is he? I've heard tell o' him, but whitna queen is't that's lookin' at him like a motherless foal?"

At that Bryde put Margaret in my hands. His face was like a devil's and his teeth showed as though his mouth were dry. To Hugh he gave one word. "Stop!" said he, and the word was a snarl.

Never another word he spoke, but leapt among the bargainers, and slid through the great flailing arms of the bucolic wit, and his right hand sank into the man's red throat. I see him still, his left hand behind the man's back, the shoulders raised, all the lithe length of him as he stood on his toes, his eyes like blue flame. I saw him shake his enemy as a dog shakes a rabbit. The great red face took a blae colour—the tongue protruded from his mouth and the eyes stared wildly. Men would have dragged Bryde off, but he hissed a "begone" through clenched teeth (it was a word of his mother), and they fell back as from a sword-stroke.

"Go down, go down, ye beast, if ye never come up," he girned, and flung the man from him to the earth, where he lay.

I heard no word, and no look that I saw passed between, but Margaret left us and ran to Bryde.

"Put your foot on that cur, my lady," says he, cold as an icicle, and his head bare. Her two white hands trembled at his sleeve and she turned her face from the groaning man in horror, and then she raised her great blue eyes in one long look, and then her little foot but touched the man's shoulder.

A grim smile came over the face of Bryde McBride, like sunlight in a dark pool. "A brave lass," said he, and I only heard her reply, and saw her colour rise at his praise.

"Take me home," she whispered, "Bryde—Bryde dear."

"Drink," cried the man on the ground, "drink. God, I wis near hand it that time."

On the road home we pretended to be very merry, for nothing would please Margaret but Bryde would ride to her father's house. On the hill road she set spurs to her horse with a challenge to Bryde, and they left us some way behind, Hugh and me.

"Man," said Hugh, and his face was troubled, "this will not do."

"No," said I, and hated myself, "for the boy's as good as you or me."

"Good!" cries Hugh; "he's like the mountains—he's granite, and what are we but dressed sandstone—and the lass kens it," says he. "God help us."



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FIRST MEETING.

When we made our way indoors the dogs were bounding and frolicking round Margaret, and she was all laughter. Her eyes were dancing, and her wind-whipped cheeks glowed darkly; then she turned, one dainty finger at her lips, and we kent that no word of her doings that day was for the ears of her parents.

There was a bustle of women-folk about the house, and the noise of crockery, and booming into the corridors came the voice of John, Laird of Scaurdale.

"Chick or child," says he, "she's all I have—a wee Frenchified, Laird, but she'll learn the wie o' the Scots yet."

And as Margaret entered, a little startled, and us at her heels, "Come ben, my dear," he cries, "I've a new friend for ye," and beside the mistress I saw Helen Stockdale.

I was always the great one for watching faces, and as these two maidens approached, I saw the glowing cheeks of Margaret pale a little, her lips press together, and her chin become a little proud, but her eyes never wavered; but Mistress Helen beats me to be describing. There was an elegance about her and an air of languor, maybe from her sombre dark eyes, yet her every movement was graceful, and her smile a thing to be looking for, and she was slender as the stalk of a bluebell. The Laird of Scaurdale was in great humour, well on to seventy, his teeth still strong and white, and his shoulders with but a horseman's stoop.

"Kiss, my dearies," says he; "was ever such dainty ladies? Hugh, man, where are your manners, and you such a namely man among the Saint Andra lassies. Hoots, man, this blateness does not become ye; ye've slept wi' the lass before. Ha, Saint Bryde o' the Mountains," says he to Bryde, "well done, sir," for Mistress Helen, with a quick flashing upward glance, had rendered her little hand for salutation.

And at his words I saw, like a flash, a look of cold hate leap in the blue eyes of Margaret McBride.

I did much thinking while the others would be talking, and I thought of the day, fresh from the college, when we ploughed the stubble and Belle brought the wean in the tartan shawl,—the wean that grat beside Hugh in the old room when Belle carried her from the wee byre—the wean that was carried to McCurdy's hut with Belle and Dan McBride, and had lain in the crook of the arm of John of Scaurdale that night when McGilp had shown a light away seaward.

And there she was before me, Helen Stockdale, and I minded McGilp's words, "Yon's an heiress."

And sitting there in dour silence, there came on me such a longing for Dan McBride that I could have wept. Eighteen years had I watched the ploughing and the harvesting, the cutting of the peats and the carting of hay, and never a word of Dan since the queer outlandish messenger carried my word to him to come home. The boys were grown men, the Laird and his Lady getting on in years, and the old folk going away with every winter, and never a word.

McGilp and his Seagull were not so often at the cove these last years, and yet McKinnon had a crack with him in Tiree, where he was buying a horse or two.

"Young Dan's deid," said McKinnon, "and Dol Beag will be hirpling aboot and eating his kail broth for many's the day."

There was one that never doubted—Belle, and after eighteen years she was little changed, a weary look sometimes in her eyes, for was she not like a wild thing chained, but more like a sister to Bryde than a mother.

And old Betty, Betty of eighty winters, sat by the fireside and would look at Bryde with her old, old eyes, hardly seeing, and whiles she would be calling the boy "Young Dan," and whiles havering of Miss Janet, his grandmother.

"You will be clever, clever," she would be saying to Belle, "and you will get another man yet. . . ."

And one night as I stood at the door—a clear night, I mind, with a harvest moon—"Hamish," said Belle, and her hand was at her heart, "I could go to him barefoot, for is he not always with me in the night?"

As I sat dreaming and listening in a kind of a way to the talk round me, it came on me that Margaret kept near to her mother, and once only did I see her look at Bryde, a hurried puzzled look,—but Hugh was ardent already, his face flushed and his laugh merry, and Mistress Helen was happy too.

There was the great struggling with our language, and she had a droll taking way of it that Hugh would be correcting in his college manner; but Bryde sat back, listening mostly, his face proud and swarthy in the shadows, and sometimes smiling to Mistress Helen, for her eyes would come back to him often.

When the moon was up, Bryde rose.

"With your leave," said he, "I will be on the road."

Margaret came over beside me and put her hand into mine.

"You're early, sir, you're early," cried Scaurdale; "it's asourying wi' the lasses ye will be at."

The mistress looked not so ill-pleased at that, but it seemed to me Margaret's hand tightened in mine with a little tremble.

"I'm thinking, Scaurdale, we will be getting a pair of colours for Bryde," said my uncle. "Would he not make a slashing light dragoon?"

At that Mistress Helen clapped her hands. "I think yes," said she, "but yes, certainly."

"I would be going to the sea," said Bryde, "like Angus McKinnon—the tall ships and the strange countries, the white sails in the moonlight, and the black cannon and the cutlasses," said he, and then with a sort of shame, "and all that," but his eyes were full of longing and his cheek flushed.

"Ah oui," cried Helen, "I am seeing all that, M'sieu."

And Hugh McBride looked glumly at Bryde as he left.

"I am forgetting," said Margaret, "I am wanting Bryde. Take me, Hamish," and her hand was pressing mine. But I thought to be teaching her a lesson, and sat still a little.

"What is it you will have been forgetting, Margaret?" said I.

"Oh—oh," says she, her face all suffused, "it will just be about a pup he was to be bringing me. . . ."

At that I took her with me. "Pup," said I; "pup, Margaret. What tale is this?"

"Cat or dog, or—or anything," she cried. "I am wanting him."

Bryde was at his horse's girths, and old Tam with a lanthorn.

"Bryde," cried the lass, "I am wanting you."

He had the horse out by this time, and I went away a little, but I heard her say—

"You never kissed my hand, sir—no, not in all your life."

"No, Mistress Margaret," said the boy.

"But why, why, why?" said she, and I laughed to see her stamp.

"Ye see," said he, and mounted, then bending over his saddle, "Ye see, my dear, I was loving your hand all that time," and the clatter of his horse's feet on the cobbles brought me to my senses.

"Pup," said I.

"But, Hamish," whispered the lass, "I am wanting him."

"For what now?"

"I am wanting him to keep," said she, and put her head against my arm—the brave lass.



CHAPTER XIX.

THE RIDERS ON THE MOOR.

I would be seeing very little of Bryde for many a day after that, for there was aye work to be doing at his hill farm, and hard work will be bringing sound sleep.

But Hugh was become the great gallant, with old Tam rubbing his stirrups with sand from the sand-brae, that and wet divots, till the irons shone like silver.

"Hoch-a-soch," he would say, "the young Laird is ta'en wi' the weemen. I will be at the polishing o' his horse's shoes next, and it iss the fine smells he will be haffin' on his claes—fine smells for the leddies, yess."

"Tush, man," said the Laird, "ye smell o' my Lady's bower. Your forebears had the reek o' peats about them, or a waft o' ships. . . ."

But the road to Scaurdale would be drawing Hugh.

"It is Mistress Helen that will be having the dainty lad, Hugh, my dear," his sister would be flashing; "your folk would not be hanging so long at a lassie's coat-tails, if old stories will be true."

But he had an answer for her.

"What tails will Bryde be hanging at, my lass?"

"His plough-tail, my dainty lad," said Margaret, and laughed to be provoking him.

"Maybe ay, Meg," says he, "and maybe no."

It was not long after that when Margaret would be wheedling me to be on the hill.

"See, Hamish, my little brown horse is wearying for the air o' the hills and the spring water," and she would smile with her brows raised a little and her lips pouting.

When we were on the brow of the black hill—

"I am thinking we will ride to the peat hags," said Margaret, "and we'll maybe be seeing Bryde," and she laughed in my face, and, indeed, after that she was always at the laughing.

"What would his father be like, Hamish—Bryde's father?"

"A fine man he was, Margaret, but a little wild."

"Ay," said she, "he would be spoiled with the lasses."

And for a while she was thoughtful. Bryde was at his plough-tail on an outlying bit, but his horses were standing at the head-rig, and Bryde was laughing and talking to a lady, and when I saw the serving-man holding a pair of Scaurdale's horse, I kent the lass.

"I am wondering," said I, "where is Hugh, and Mistress Helen so far from hame; but ye were in the right of it, Margaret, for Bryde is at his plough-tail."

"He will have good company even there, it seems," said the lass.

But in a little Helen and she were at the talking.

"And where would you be leaving all your cavaliers, Helen," said Margaret, for Hugh had been telling us of the young sparks at Scaurdale.

"Cavaliers, Margaret!" with a very dainty moving of the shoulders. "Of these I am weary this day, and so I inflict myself on the dragoon," and here she bowed very low and gracefully to the ploughman, and there was a little devilry in her black eyes.

Bryde was at his furrow again when Hugh joined us with his very braw clothes, and he was a little dour-looking.

"We're all on the moor these days," says he, "and keeping a man from his work seemingly."

"But now you have come we will ride to Scaurdale," said Helen, but Margaret would not be heeding.

"I am to see my cousin's wife," says she, "in the house yonder, with Hamish here; but here is Hugh on edge to be on the Scaurdale road, and Bryde eager to be ploughing." So Margaret and I made our way to the house, and it was hard to be knowing where the shepherd's hut was among the outbuildings of the steading, and as we turned into the stackyard and watched Hugh and Mistress Helen ride on, Margaret turned to me.

"Is it not droll," said she, "that a man o' my folk, my own brother, cannot be putting a ring on the finger of an easy lass like that?"

"Are you thinking she is easy?" said I.

"I am thinking she is a merry lass and wants a bold man—she will be loving a bold man."

"I think that too."

"Who is it?" said Margaret, like a flash.

"Oh, just Hugh."

"Hamish," said the lass, "ye never lied to me before."

A halflin lad took the horses and we came to the house, and there was Belle to meet us, smiling to Margaret, and her eyes wandering to where her son was at the ploughing.

Now it was a droll thing to me to watch these two, for Margaret McBride had the pride of her mother, and there were many times when she would be very haughty, and yet in this moorland farmhouse she would be all softness and the quiet laughter of gladness, and talking very wisely to Belle about homely things. And I would often be laughing at Margaret and her talk of milk, and fowls, and calves, and lambs, but she would be very serious.

"A woman should be knowing these things, Hamish," she would say.

But Belle was the slave of Margaret since the days when Hugh and Bryde and the little wild lass would be playing in the heather, and climbing for jackdaw's eggs or young rock-pigeons in Dun Dubh. But that day Margaret was beside old Betty, and making her comfortable in the chair by the fire of red peats.

"Will you be very wise, old Betty?" said she, looking down on the old one.

"Yess, yess, Betty has the wisdom, and Betty kens the secrets o' the hill folks, but ye will not be needing to ken the secrets, for will you not be keeping the lads away from ye with a stick. Na, na, ye will not be needing the love secret."

"My motherless lass!" cried Margaret, with a droll laugh, "and is there a secret way of it?"

"Yess, yess, a very goot way, mo leanabh; you will chust be scraping a little from the white of your nail and putting it in his dram, yess, and he will be yours through all the worlds. . . ."

"But what," said I, "if he'll not be taking a dram?"

"I could always be wheedling him, Hamish," she laughed. At that I looked at her.

"I am thinking of Hugh," says she, "Hugh and Mistress Helen," but she had the grace to be shamed a little.

"Indeed," said Belle, "they are a bonny pair, the young Laird and the young lady. She will be riding here many times, for the Laird of Scaurdale will have been telling her old tales of the place."

"Will they be making a match of it?" said I.

"I am hoping that, Hamish," said Belle—"and, indeed, she is liking the hills and the folk, and fond of the horses too, and will be keen to be seeing Bryde breaking the young beasts, and watching him for long. She will whiles be putting the old tartan shawl round her."

At that Margaret went out of the house, and in a while I saw her with Bryde, walking step for step with him on the lea he was breaking, and her hand would sometimes be beside his on the stilt of the plough.

On the home road that day I would be showing her the road we had travelled that night of the whin-burning, and where in the hills was McAllan's Locker, and wondering what had come to the Killer, the dead white man. And I would be minding a story of a dog that howled in the night and slunk by in the darkness of Lag 'a bheithe, and I wondered if the Nameless Man had gone to his love that beckoned in the pool, or if the ravens had got him at the last of it, and if the pigeons built still away in the cranny of the Locker, and there was a sadness in me.

She had not been speaking, the lass beside me, and her merriness was all gone, for she was aye merry with Bryde, and at last—

"Hamish," said she, "there is something will happen."

And on top of my own mood I was startled, and the words did not come to me.

"Am I not the daft lassie?" said she, and started to the singing of merry airs; but before we saw the rowan-tree that grows on the face of the black hill, her songs were sad again.

"He will be lonesome away there, Bryde," said she, looking back.

"He will be looking for a lass one of these nights," said I, a little angry, "and there are bonny lasses here and there, between here and Scaurdale."

"I am wishing, Hamish, I could be at the herding and the kelp-burning with the other lasses," said she, looking at me, and there was a little smile at her lips, and a kind of eagerness I did not understand.

"Do you think Bryde will be looking at these wenches," said I in great scorn (for I feared he did).

"No, Hamish, no," she cried amidst her laughter, and I understood then.

"Mistress Margaret," said I, "I am not a match for you in wit, it seems, but since we are agreed he canna just be suited with these lassies, there will just be two left by your way of it."

"Between here and Scaurdale, Hamish," said she, "it is your own words I am giving you."

"Bryde is a fine lad," said I, "but he's like to be spoiled, and," said I, "your mother will have told you he has not even a name." At that the dull anger I had been choking down most of that day broke over me. "Damn the whole affair," said I, and dismounted.

When I lifted her from her horse, she was laughing and blinking tears from her lashes, and she put her arms very tightly about my neck.

"Oh, Hamish, Hamish," said she, "I will have been doing that this while."



CHAPTER XX.

"THE LOVE SECRET."

Lassies are droll creatures, and will tell many things the one to the other in the way of a ploy, and Margaret McBride made great work with old Betty's love potion, and that to Helen alone.

"I will be trying it on Hugh," said she, "when I have you sleeping, for I will get scraping the white of your nail then."

And now this is the droll thing that came about. We had a day after the otters at the Bennan, a wet cold day, with little that was laughable in it, except that a man of the Macdonalds took an otter home over his shoulders, and the beast dead, as we thought; but coming in at his own door it gripped him by the back of his hip, and at the start he got he let a great cry to his wife in the Gaelic.

"Fell the beast, fell the beast," and the wife, with a beetle in her hand, and in a flurry of excitement to be felling the beast, came a dour on her man's head that felled him, poor man, and we left them then, the otter killed at last, and the man and wife demented with the suddenness of the happenings, and came to the house of Scaurdale.

Now the lassies, Margaret and Helen, were in the mood for a ploy, and Margaret it was who scraped the little white powder from Helen's polished nail. "A wee tashte," she laughed, "old Betty would be saying, 'chust a wee tashte.'" And when the boys came in red-faced and with sparkling eyes (for I was watching the prank), "Now," said Margaret, "I will be giving poor Hugh his dram, and then everything will do finely."

"But," said Helen, "I will be my own cup-bearer, or maybe the charm will be a useless thing." And she took the old glass—a rummer it was—and she carried it very daintily to the boys and bowed.

"Here is refreshment, my tired hunter," said she, and gave the glass into Bryde's hand, and that swarthy hillman raised the glass to the cup-bearer and drained it.

"I will not be very clever, it seems, Hamish," said Margaret.

But I had admiration for Helen, for she came back, laughing very softly. "Now we shall prove your charm, Mistress Margaret," said she; "for truly M'sieu Hugh did not require it, but Bryde—he is cold and hard like his own hills with me."

And that very night it was as though old Betty's havers were potent spells, for Bryde was the fair-haired laddie with the Laird of Scaurdale always, and as the evening wore on he grew a little flushed with wine, so that all his silence left him, and he was very shyly bold and very gallant; but Margaret was stately and proud like her mother, and smiled but little. And Hugh gloomed and laughed by turns, and had an air of patronage to his cousin that was hurtful for me to be seeing in him.

Hugh and Margaret were stopping at Scaurdale, but when the moon was well up Bryde was for the road. At that there was an outcry, for he was the soul of the place. The Laird of Scaurdale would have hindered his going, and Helen made much ado, but his horse was brought, and we came to the door to be seeing him off.

There was a brave moon, and the hillside very plain, and the noise of the burn rumbling—a fine night to be out.

"I could be riding home too," said Margaret.

Bryde slipped his boot from the stirrup.

"Jump," said he, "and in two hours you'll be home, if Hamish and Hugh will be allowing it."

I think she would have liked to go, for I saw the flash in her eyes, and her quick smile, but then—

"No," said she; "it is a little cold here," and turned to go in.

Helen was at the Laird's side.

"But I have never ridden so," said she. "Would Monsieur take me to the bridge—a little way and back," but before the Laird had given his assent she was in the saddle and off with a wave of her arm; and I thought of the night when she had ridden that way once before, with the father of Bryde on the big roadster, and the Laird was thinking the same thing.

They were back in a little; indeed, the hoof-beats were very plain all the time, but Helen was white as she dismounted, and her good-bye was very low, and she listened to the klop-to-klop of the hoofs for a long time before she came in.

That night she came into Margaret's room (for the lass told me everything), and sat down wearily by the bedside.

"Your spell works, Mistress Margaret," said she.

I think Margaret would raise herself on her pillows.

"Ah," said she, "have you brought Bryde to heel, Helen?"

"The spell works," said Helen, "but I think backwards. Margaret, ma belle, he brings me to heel, it seem."

"They all have that knack, my men-folk," said Margaret—"mostly."



CHAPTER XXI.

DOL BEAG LAUGHS.

To town-bred folk the country in the winter time is an arid waste. There is no throng of folk, no lighted ways, nor much amusement by their way of it; but to the countryman the winter is the time—the long dark nights for ceilidhing, the days after the rabbits and hares, and the cosiness about a steading, with the beasts at their straw and turnips, and the lassies to be coming home with, and the old stories that will make the hair rise on a man's head. Och, these are the nights to be enjoying.

I would whiles take a stick and the dogs and over the hill for it to McKinnon's for a crack with Ronald and Mirren, and then we would go to the Quay Inn and listen to the singing, or talk to McGilp—for McGilp had left the sea and settled at McKelvie's, where he was very much respected as a moneyed man, having sold the Seagull to McNeilage, his mate. He was much exercised by the morals of the place, and very religious, except when in drink, which would be mostly every night.

On such a night, with Ronald and myself at the table and McGilp opposite, the door opened, and in came Bryde and Hugh with a cold swirl of sleet, and sat down beside us, and Robin McKelvie brought their drink, and old McKelvie came ben to be doing the honours. We were close by the fire, for McGilp liked to be hearing the sough of the wind in the lum, and him snug and warm. On the other side of the fire was Dol Beag, a man well over fifty, very silent, and I could not thole the look of his crooked back. But there was with him one of his own kidney, and he began to let his tongue wag.

"We had many's the ploy in the old days," says he, "and wild nights too. It will chust be twenty years off an' on since I was swundged behin' that fire like a sheep's heid—yes.

"I will haf forgotten what ploy that was—I was aalways fighting."

"Dol Beag, can ye no' be quate before dacent folk?" said Ronald.

"Ou ay, Ronald, I was chust thinking of the old ploys—I see you have strangers with you."

Then he turned to Bryde—

"You will be a stronger man than your father, and he wass a fine man, but you would kill a man too. Yes, but we will not be talking of killing when it's the lassies you will be thinking about, and I'm hearing the southern leddy is very chief with you," and he sniggered and went out.

"God's blood," said Hugh in a white rage, "do you let any drunken rogue blackguard a lady?"

"I am not to be touching that man," said Bryde, and his face was dark red.

"Have I to live to see one of my name a coward—a bastard and a coward?"

"By the living God, you lie, Hugh McBride," said Bryde through his teeth, and struck Hugh on the mouth with the back of his hand.

"That will be all that is needful," says Hugh with a bow; "there's a yard outside, and maybe McKelvie will be giving us a couple of lanthorns."

Never a word said Bryde, but the breath whistled through his nostrils, and we made our way through the kitchen, for it was easier to stop the big burn in spate than these two. There were cutlasses on the wall crossed like the sign of a battle on a map, and Hugh had them down.

"I think they are marrows," says he, trying to be calm, but his very voice shook with rage.

"Outside," said Bryde.

There was a puddly yard, squelched with the feet of cow beasts. The scad of light from the door and the two lanterns lit up the yellow trampled glaur, and both the boys stripped in silence and stood on guard, and then started.

McGilp and McKinnon and the McKelvies were there only, and if these had not been my own boys I could have enjoyed the business, for they were matched to a hair, and tireless as tigers.

The blue blades sprang from cut to parry like live things, and in the light I saw the same cruel smile, line for line, in both faces. The snow was falling in big wet flakes, and the fight went on, neither giving an inch, and then from behind came a thin voice—

"The McBrides are at it, hammer and tongs—the Laird and the bastard, te-he," cried Dol Beag from the dark.

At that word Bryde's blade seemed to waver an instant, and Hugh's bit into his thigh, but like a flash I saw Bryde recover, and a lightning stroke and Hugh's cutlass was clattering on the cobbles, and then I saw Bryde whirl his sword round his head, and raise himself uplifted for a dreadful blow that would have cleft his cousin to the chest, and the cruel smile was still on both faces, and then Bryde stopped.

"It's no' true, Hughie," said he, and lowered his hand and walked back to the kitchen, swayed a minute, and thrust his arms out blindly, and fell on the flagstones.

"Have I killed him, Hamish?" cried Hugh—"have I killed Bryde? God, what will Margaret say to this?"

"I do not know what you have done," said I. "It would be maybe better if he is dead, for I think you will have killed his spirit."

We would have had him to bed in the inn, but he came to himself.

"Hamish," said he, "take me home to my"—and in a brave voice—"to my mother."

And Hugh went out of the room, and I knew he would never be a boy again.

McKelvie's wife was at the doctoring of the wound with her concoctions, and I made what job I could of it, and then we put Bryde in a peat creel, with straw and blankets, and took him to his mother.

"It was just a daft prank," said he to Belle, who leant over him like some wild fierce creature. "It was just a mad ploy, mother."



CHAPTER XXII.

THE SHAMELESS LASS.

I left Bryde sleeping at last and restless, with Belle wide-eyed by his bedside, and traked down to the big house very bitter at heart against Hugh, for the quarrel had been of his seeking; and when I came under the rowan-trees and past the moss-covered stone horse-trough, the grey day was coming in. And at the little window of Margaret's room I saw a white face peering, and there in a bare stone-flagged lobby she came to me, a stricken white thing, and dumb. She had no words at all, but stood gazing at my face, her hands twisting and twisting, and a strange moving in her white throat.

"Come, my lass," said I, and took her up and carried her to my room, where there was still a glow of red in the wide fireplace, and I kicked the charred wood together, and threw dry spills on that and made a blaze, and set her in my chair in the glow of it, for she was stiff with cold, being but half clothed or maybe less. Then I brought from an aumery some French spirit, and she took a little, shivering and making faces, but it lifted the cold from her heart. Yet in her eyes was a dreadful look, as of one who had gazed all night over bottomless chasms of nameless fear.

"And now, Mistress Margaret McBride," said I in as blithe a voice as I could be mustering, "why am I to be finding you in cold lobbies, and carrying you to my chamber like the ogre?"

At that came the saddest little smile over her face, and all her body seemed to relax.

"Tell me," said she, "there would not be laughing in your voice and him—away," and even then I was thinking she would be afraid to say that grim word.

"Bryde will have a sned from a hanger," said I, making light of it. "You will have seen deeper in a turnip, and I left him sleeping."

"The dear," said she—"the dear," and then looking at me, "Oh, Hamish, Hamish, be good to me; I will not can help it."

"Where is Hugh?" said I.

"He came into us," said the lass, "like a wraith."

"'I have provoked my cousin,' he said, 'and wounded and maybe killed him, and I am owing him my life forbye,' and I ran to be waiting for you, and locked my door on all of them, even my mother."

She had a droll coaxing way with her, Margaret—a way of saying, "Will you tell me?" and then of repeating it, and she started now.

"Hamish," said she, "will you tell me one thing? Will you tell me?"

I nodded.

"Would it be—will you tell me—truly?" and she waited for my assent.

"Would it be Helen the boys were fighting over?"

"It would not," said I, and she said nothing more after that; but as I took her to the door she pulled my head down.

"I am thinking often, Hamish," said she, "you are the best one of us all."

* * * * * *

Now I will say this—that Bryde was like a wean in bed, fretful and ill-natured and restless, and his mother had to be beside him when folk came in, and I think in his new knowledge he feared she might suffer some indignity.

And he lashed his pride with a new-found humbleness, and railed at himself. I can hear his words on that day I brought Margaret to be seeing him, and she had many dainty dishes to be describing.

"It is very kind of you indeed," said he, "to be minding a poor body like me, and kind of your people to be allowing you to visit my mother and myself."

And at the sound of these words the poor lass was red and white time about, and at last fell all aback like a little ship in the wind's eye.

"Oh, Bryde," cried she, "what is this talk of my people? Are not my people your own people also?"

"I have my mother's word for it," said he, with his arm over his eyes, and the dark blood surging upwards over throat and cheeks.

The lass was on her knees by his bedside at that.

"Do you think," she cried—"do you think that would weigh with me; I have kent that long syne."

"It was news to me," said he, turning his face away; "bonny news to me."

"This will be news to me also," said she, her face hidden, "for I would be thinking in the night-time—in the dark—I would be thinking it would maybe be me you differed over.

"You, Mistress Margaret," cried he. "What could I ever be to such as you—but a servant?"

"Bryde McBride, do you ken what there is in my heart to be doing to you," and her eyes were all alight, and her breath coming fast—her face close to his and her arms round him: "I could be kissing your hurt till it was healed. I am wanting your head here, here at my heart, for I am yours—I will be yours—I will be yours."

"Some day," said Bryde in a soft whisper, with amazement in his tones—"some day you will find a man worthy of that great love. . . ."

But she was at her wheedling now.

"Will you tell me, Bryde—will you tell me truly?" and she put her lips to his ear. "I love you, Bryde—did ye not know? Am I not a shameless lass?"

"There never was maiden like you before, Margaret," said he. "I am always loving you, always. . . ."

"But tell me," she cried—"tell me," and she put her ear close to his mouth, and her eyes were closed and a smiling gladness on her face.

"Love you," he cried in a great voice. "The good God will maybe be knowing the love in my heart for you," and his face was grey with pain, but at his words she pressed her face to his gently.

"Now," she said, "I will be happy again."

And when I came into the room there was the lass standing very proud with her hand on his brow.

"Is he not a restless boy, our Bryde?" said she, and there was pride and love and tears and laughter in her tones, and she left us together.

"Hamish," said he, "you will not be bringing her here again ever—I will not be strong enough lying here . . ." and then in a lower voice, "My mother has a ring," said he. "I could not be asking her, my mother, and who is there to turn to but you," and I told him of the messenger who came from the Low Countries with Dan's letters and his mother's ring.

"And your baby fist closed on the sword," said I.

"The sword," said he. "Where is my father's gift?"

At that I went to the old byre where the heathen had sat that day, and I digged the cobbles from a corner of a biss close to the trough, and there, wrapped in a sheep's skin in a box, was the sword as I had buried it long ago, and I brought it to Dan's son.

He took it with a kind of joy, and his eyes all lit up.

"My father would be knowing," said he, and drew the blade. "This will clear the tangles."

There were flowers very beautifully let into the blade in thin gold. "Is she not a maiden richly dowered?" said Bryde—"a slim grey maiden, a faithful maiden, who will be lying at my side, and fierce to be defending me?"

Belle hated that sword from the first day, but Bryde had it by him at his bedside always.

There were many folk coming and going these days, and Ronny McKinnon and McGilp would be sitting with Bryde, and they would have the great tales of ships and the sea, and whiles Ronny would have his fiddle and play, and whiles it would be the old stories they would be telling.

There was a day too when Hugh McBride and Helen came a-riding on the moors, and the thought came to me that both were a little sobered, and the lass had not the same gaiety about her; but I was thinking maybe she would be anxious about the Laird of Scaurdale, for there was word that he would not be keeping so very well of late.

There was a sternness about Hugh as of a man that would be carrying a grim load, but Bryde made very much of him always, and I am thinking that was not the least of his troubles, for there were some words between us after the fight.

"Yon was a dirty business," said Hugh. "I am not fit to stand in the same park with my cousin, and I will have told him that," for his mother would aye be warning Bryde never to lay hands on Dol Beag all his days.



CHAPTER XXIII.

HELEN AND BRYDE McBRIDE REST AT THE FOOT OF THE URIE.

There was a long time that Bryde was lame and weak, for he had lost much blood, but his strength came back to him, and it is droll to think that he had grown in his bed. When he was out he could not be having enough of the hills, and the fields and the sun. He would be talking to the very beasts about the place in his gladness, and Hugh would be giving him an arm, and they would often be at the laughing like brothers; but for long was Margaret, his sister, cold to Hugh.

And in the month of May, Bryde came down to the big house, and the Laird and his Lady welcomed him at the door, and Margaret behind them very sedate by her way of it.

And the Laird gave Bryde a good word that day in my hearing.

"You will not be minding that tale, my lad," said he, with his hand on Bryde's shoulder. "We will whiles be a little careless in the marrying, our folk," said he, "but the blood is strong enough, and we hold together."

But for all that I kent that there would be something strange about Dan's son since he rose from his bed, and I think that Margaret kent it too, for I would be seeing a wistful look in her eyes when no one would be near her.

And then there was a day when Hugh brought Helen to the house, and she was closeted a long time with Margaret.

"Your cousin Bryde will be leaving us ver' soon," said she.

I will never be the one to deny that Mistress Helen came fast to the bit.

"Will Hugh have been telling you that?" said Margaret in a certain tone.

"Hugh—no. I meet Bryde ver' often. He is good to be meeting—there is a fire and dash about him," and at that she spread out her white hands with a fine gesture, and took a turn to the window, her riding-switch at her teeth.

Now there was an intolerance about Margaret which you will find often with a proud spirit, and that Bryde should be happy away from her hurt her like a lash. The women maybe will have a name for it, for there was a smile in Helen's eyes as Margaret spoke—

"I am glad," said she, "he will have so good a friend as you. Maybe he will be staying if you were to ask him."

"And you, Margaret?"

"I do not come of folk who ask," said Margaret, with great unconcern; then for no reason seemingly (but maybe thinking of a certain time when she all but asked) her neck and face and forehead grew dark with mantling blood.

"Is he then not of your people who are slow to ask—favours?" said Helen. "I think so, yes. Do you remember I ride with him a little way from Scaurdale? There is a moon, and the hills ver' clear and we gallop."

"I am minding," said Margaret.

"'It is Romance,' I say to him, and he will be carrying me away off to the hills, and he is laughing.

"'An unwilling captive,' he says.

"'Not ver' unwilling,' I say, for he looked ver' gallant.

"'But a willing captive, she would kiss me,' said Bryde, your cousin, and then I make no movement of my head, but my eyes are looking at his laughing down at me—asking favours, ma belle, and still I not move, and he throw back his head (comme ca), and say—

"'I do not beg—even kisses,' very proudly he looks, ma belle, and his blue eyes laughing. . . ."

"I am remembering that the charm was working, Helen," said Margaret, in a voice like the north wind for coldness.

"Ah oui," cried Helen, "backwards it work—I kiss him la la," and she laughed like silver bells a-tinkle.

Now that was a daftlike tale to be telling, but Margaret was for ever cleaving me with Helen after that. "She is beautiful," she would tell me, "and merry and a great lady, and I think any man will be loving her," but there were many nights when Margaret lay wide-eyed, for all that she drove Bryde from her with jest and laughter. But I think it was well that she never kent of the meeting of Bryde and Helen Stockdale at the ford in the burn yonder at the foot of the Urie.

On a summer morning that was, with the heat-haze hardly lifted and long slender threads of spider webs clinging to the leaves of the birches by the burnside, and the bracken green and strong, with the white cuckoo spittals on them that will leave a mark like froth on the knees of a horse. To the pebbly ford above the "Waulk Mill" came Bryde, riding loosely with slack rein, for he was thinking much these days. In the burn his horse halted to drink, and then rested a little from the water—his head high and his ears forward—Bryde looking to his path for the South End, for he was on some errand of grazing beasts. Then there came that fine sound, the distant neigh of a horse, and the horse in the burn answered gallantly, and came splashing on, passaging and side-stepping a little, with curved crest. And there by the burnside they met, Bryde and Helen.

Their words at the meeting were formal enough, for there were houses at a little distance from the crossing; but you will only be seeing the founds of them now, and the plum-trees gone to wood, and the straggling hawthorns and the heather growing to the very burnside by the Lagavile.[1] But at the meeting there was a rich glowing colour in the face of the maid, and her lips were parted in a little smile, and her great eyes, sombre often, but now alight with love a-laughing in them, rested on the man like a caress.

"Ha, well met, my swarthy dragoon," said she, "or are we sailors this merry morning?"

"There's aye the night for dreams, Mistress Helen, but in the daytime I will be but a plain farming body, concerned about bestial. . . ."

"Bestial," quo' she, as they rode in the old track by the burnside that you'll see yet from the other road, "my horse is a-lathered, and I too am concerned about bestial. We will let us down," said she, "in the shade yonder, and rest the horses, and be good farmers together—yes?"

Bryde slacked the girths and tied the horses, and then joined the lass on a little mound of green like a couch.

"And now," cried Helen Stockdale—"now, sir, here are we in the green wood with neither page nor groom—squire and dame—and I am loving it," said she, and her little brown capable hand took one of his great hard ones.



[1] Laga vile=hollow of the tree.

"You have fine hands, M'sieu Bryde," said she, her fingers over his to be comparing them, "great and strong and well-tried."

And there fell a silence between them, and as both strove to break that silence their eyes met, and there came a quick changing of colour on the face of Helen, and Bryde's hand closed over hers. And as she sat by his side her eyes lowered, and the curling lashes sweeping her cheek, it came to the man how very beautiful she was, her pride all forgotten. He felt her hand trembling in his, and then she raised her head with a questioning little sound at her lips, and looked at him, and smiled, pouting.

"And must I beg," she whispered.

"I think," said Bryde, "that the horses are rested."

The light left her eyes, as the sea darkens when a cloud comes over the sun. Red surged the blood over throat and face and brow. She sprang to her feet, twisting her whip in her brown hands. By the horses she turned—

"Am I lame, or blind, or ugly?" she cried. "Oh, man, I could kill you . . . but some day, Monsieur, some day I shall laugh when that proud Mistress Margaret flouts your love . . ." She laughed, mocking.

"'It will be no concern of mine whether Bryde McBride goes or stays,' says the Lady Margaret. 'I do not beg—and what is he to me.'"

"You are a droll lass," said Bryde, with a frown on his face—"a droll lass, and very beautiful—so Mistress Margaret . . ." but Helen broke into his talk.

"Am I beautiful to you, M'sieu? I am honoured," but her eyes were soft—"but what would the proud Margaret say to that?"

"We will forget her, Mistress Helen—what have I to be doing except to be a loyal kinsman to her?" and here the drollest laughing came over Helen.

"I am sure she will be loving that," said she, "a loyal kinsman."

And although her breath was still flurried with her swift rage, her eyes were laughing at the man.

"I can never be in anger with you, Bryde," said she. "I wish it were not so."

"Are you wishing to be angry with me now?" said he in a deep voice, with one great arm round her shoulder, and his face bent to her. And as she looked at him a sort of fierceness came over Helen. She flung her arms round the man, and stood on tiptoe to be reaching up to him.

"Some day I will be forgetting my convent teaching," said she, "and then I will make you love me, and you will be mine altogether."

"There will be something in that," said Bryde, and laughed a loud ringing laugh, as the drollness of the business came on him. And when he looked down, there was the lass all humbled, and tears standing in her eyes, and a pitiful little mouth on her.

"You are laughing at me, Bryde," said she in a little voice, shakily.

"No, dear, no," said he, "I would be thinking of the Laird of Scaurdale if he kent, and me with a name to be making. Do not be greetin'," said he, "there will be nothing at all to be greeting for," and he set her on her horse gently, and they rode on by the burnside, and watched the brown trout flash in below the boulders, and darting across the amber pools, just as they do to-day.



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE HALFLIN'S MESSAGE.

I mind that there was a good back-end that year, as we say, with plenty of keep for the beasts, and the stacks under thatch of sprits by the end of September, and I would be standing in the stackyard as a man will, just pleased to be seeing things as they were, and swithering if I should be taking a step to the Quay Inn, when the halflin lad from Bryde's place came up to me.

"He is not yonder," said he, in a daft-like way. "He will not be in his own place any more."

And then I got at him with the questions.

"The mother will be sitting all day and not greeting terrible," says he, "and Betty will be oching and seching like a daith in the house; and I came to be telling you—and he will have the thin sword with him."

And the lad lisped and boggled at the English, till I shook the Gaelic into him—and there was the story.

It would be two nights ago that Bryde McBride came into the loft where the halflin was sleeping, and bade him dress.

"He would be all in his good claes," said the lad, "and the sword on him," and he told me how the two of them had carried a kist through the hill and down behind the Big House—"there would still be a light in the young leddy's chamber," for Bryde McBride had stood looking at it, and talking in the Gaelic. "And," said the lad, looking over his shoulder half fearfully, "he said, 'If ever there is a word comes out of your mouth about this, Homish, I will be ramming three feet o' blue steel through your gizzard,' and we would be carrying the kist down to the herrin' slap (Bealach an agadan) and to the shore. There was a skiff lying there all quiet and three men waiting, and when we would be among them they took the kist, and wan of the sailors wass saying they would be in Fowey soon, but the master turned on me, and he had money for me.

"'You will be minding the place until I come back to you,' he said, 'or I'll reive the skin from you for a bridle,' and he made me go away from the rocks and to be going back, but I lay among the trees, and I would be seeing the men put the kist on board, and then they rowed away with the master sitting at the stern and looking back, for I would be seeing his face white in the moon," and at that the poor lad was so near the greetin' that I took him to the kitchen for a meal of meat, and it all came plain to me as I sat there among the serving bodies and the dogs.

I minded the way the boy had taken the sword from me, as he lay in his bed. "This will be clearing the way," he had said, and now he would be started to the clearing, and then there was Margaret.

"You will not be bringing her here again, for I am not strong enough lying here."

That would be at the time he would be lying with Hugh's sword-stroke in his thigh, and calling himself a misbegot, and not fit to be speaking to decent folk. And I minded the pride of him, and kent the very feelings that had sent him away, but I was wishing he could have stayed for all that, for his mother's sake.

At that time I had no word of what had happened at the ford of the burn at Lagavile, or that Mistress Helen in her rage had turned Margaret's words to her own purpose, but that I got later from Margaret herself.

Well, I went into the house and told them, and there was the tiravee; and Margaret like to go out at the rigging, for indeed she was a little spoiled. And Hugh it was that got the rough edge of her tongue, until "I will go and fetch him back," said he.

"You!" says she, "you! As well might the hoodie-craw bring back the kestrel," and at that the mother bridled.

"What kind of talk is this in my house?" said she, "and to your brother. Mend your manners, mistress. What is this fly-by-night (to say nothing worse) to you?"

"He will be all the man ever I will have," said Margaret, standing up, and her eyes flashing, and at that her father, roused by her bravery, laughed aloud.

"Capital," he cried, "capital,"—and then, "Hoot, my wee lass," said he, "you're young yet. Come away wi' me," and she went out with him, leaving us sitting mumchance.

"The best thing that could have happened," said the mistress, and made her way to the kitchen, for if things were not right she must have some work on her hands.

The very next day I made my way to the stable and found Margaret's horse gone.

"She is away like the devil spinning heather," said old Tam. "She'll be at Bothanairidh by noo," and so it was, for when I came to the farm on the moor there was Margaret, thrang at the talking to the halflin, and looking blither than I had thought to see her; and thinks I to myself, he will have been telling her about Bryde and the lighted window—and that I was right I know, although Margaret would never be telling me what it was that Bryde said that night; and the halflin I would not be asking, but I would be telling the lass about the three feet of blue steel in the lad's gizzard, and at that she would laugh at me.

"I will be giving him a golden guinea for every foot o' blue steel," said she, "and when I will have Bryde back he will be giving him the double of it, for telling me these good words," and I believe the daft lassie did just that.

But Belle would be fit for nothing but sitting and mourning. "Oh, why did I leave my own folk and the tents and the horses, the laughter o' the little ones, and the winding roads, to be left desolate on this weary moor—desolate, desolate, and mourning like the Israelitish women—the father is not, and now is the son gone from me."

And when Margaret would have comforted her, "Are not you of the same folk, maiden?" she cried, turning her eyes bright and hard and dry on the lass, "the same cruel proud breed"; and then again, "He was a good son—there never was woman blessed with such a son, kind and brave and loving, the very beasts would come to his whistle."

"But this will not be the finish," said I; "the dogs are not howling," and at that old Betty brisked herself.

"Yess, yess, the dogs will not be greeting Belle, woman, and that is a sure sign," said she, wonderfully cheered. "Bryde will be coming back a great man, and bringing old Betty a silk dress and good whisky—yess."

"Where is Fowey, Hamish?" said Margaret.

"On the coast of England, a place the smugglers frequent," said I.

"Bryde will be with the smuggling laads," cried Betty, clapping her hands. "Is he not the brisk lad, and he will be bringing the whisky sure—maybe it will be brandy moreover."

And we left them a little cheered that day, and Margaret still looked happy with her thoughts.

It was in October, the fair day, that Mistress Helen came to visit Margaret, and Hugh had carried her the news of Bryde's going.

"Your cousin has gone to his tall ships," said she to Margaret, "the tall ships and the black cannon and the cutlasses, you remember, ma belle."

"Bryde has gone away truly," said Margaret, and then the two retired to their confidences. But the next day it was that Margaret told me of the meeting by the ford.

"I am hating that woman, Hamish," said she, "with her bravery and her beauty, and her charms that will be working backwards. . . ."

"Who was it that started these same spells?" says I. "Was it not in your mind to be trying these havers on Bryde yourself?"

"It was not in my mind that Helen Stockdale should be trying them on him," said she, "at any rate."

And at my laughing she left me in a pet, but not long after she would be telling me—

"There is something fine and brave about that woman, too, Hamish," she would say, "for she would be telling lies to Bryde McBride of what I had said about his going, and yet she told me all these lies. I could not be doing that," said Margaret. "No, I could not be owning to a thing like that—myself."



CHAPTER XXV.

I RIDE AGAIN TO McALLAN'S LOCKER.

There came a weariness of the spirit over me that long dreary winter, and all nature was there to be seconding my dismal thoughts. For months never did I awake but my first thought would be, "What is there not right?" and then I would be remembering that Bryde was not any more on the moorlands.

It seemed to me that always there was a drizzle of soft rain and a blanket of cold mist, that would be half hiding the friendly places, that the very hills were become the abode of strange uncanny beasts instead of decent ewes and fat wethers, and that the mists would be hiding the revels of the folk a man does not care to be speaking of. The trees would be dreary and sad—the sea always grey and gurly and ochone, the very roads had the look of bareness and emptiness, as though all a man's friends had marched over them, never to return.

Margaret, the Flower of Nourn, had taken to walking alone in the rain, under the trees by the burnside, or maybe I would be seeing her on the shore, and looking to the sea, and her songs were sad—ay, when she tried to be at her gayest. And once I am minding, when she was with me on the shore-head watching the men at the wrack-carting—

"I am wondering," said she, dipping her hands in the little waves, "I am wondering if these little waves will maybe once have swirled under the forefoot of his ship," and I had not the heart to be giving her a lesson on physics, and a little understanding of the laws that will be governing the waves.

And Hugh that was the gallant would be interesting himself in all the matters of farming, and seldom riding out with his clean stirrups and polished leathers, and there were times when I was sore put to it to be keeping my hands off him, because he would be so douce and agreeable.

I would be trying the drink often, and took my glass with the Laird, my uncle, but it would not be bettering me any, and a man that drink will not be making merrier company of is in no good way.

At the farm in the hills the halflin would be doing finely—a little lavish with the feeding, as a body will be when the keep is not his own, but the beasts would be looking well, and the steading clean and tidy. Belle, it seemed to me, was a little dazed for many a long day, and whiles I would be finding her with some wee childish garb of Bryde's, and greeting and laughing at it in her hands, and old Betty yammering by the fireside, mixing her stories of bawkins and wee folk, and the ploys she would be having in her young days at the peats.

There was a moon at the New Year, I mind, and me standing in front of Belle's house, and Belle herself at the open door, with the light behind her, when there came to my ears the sound of a shod beast walking, and, thinks I to myself, this will be a horse broke loose. Then I saw the beast, and after a little wheedling and coaxing I was able to get my hand on his bridle. He was a great horse, bigger than any of ours, and a weight-carrier; but it was the gear on him that I could not be understanding, for there was on him a heavy saddle with a high pommel and cantle, and his bridle would have strange contrivances on it, but especially a spare curb chain strapped to the headpiece, and the bit was altogether new to me, resembling the bit with the long curving bars that the old crusaders would be using long ago.

He was thin and drawn up at the belly, but his eye was full and fiery, and I kent this was no serving-man's beast, but I took him to the stable and gave him a stall, with dry bracken for a bedding, and a measure of corn and peas, and the halflin came from the loft and got at the rubbing of him down, gabbling all the time about pasterns and withers, and Belle watched me, saying no word.

"There will be word for him in the morning," said I; "this will surely be a beast from the Castle," and at that Belle went into the house, and I left the halflin still watching the strange horse and made my way on foot across the hill. The peewits were circling over me with eerie cries, and now and then on the moor-side the curlews would be crying into the night—lonely as I was lonely; and in every heather tussock I would be seeing shapes, and dreading the thought of the Nameless Man and his brindled hunter, till my hair was like to rise on my head, and I would feel it in my legs to be running, but that I kent my folk, dead and gone, would be laughing at me, in their own place, for our past folk are not so much dead as just away, and maybe watching; and maybe I would be comforting myself with the thought that the Killer would be dead long syne in the course of nature—he and his great dog—but for all that I had a twig of rowan in my hand, for the night was not canny. And there came a kind of lifting of my spirit when I got the glint of the lights of the Big House, and kent there would be folks to be talking to and dogs to give a man heart.

When I was come to the stable door, there was old Tam, thrang with his bottles of straw for the horses' last bite (a thing to bring a man to himself it is to listen to horse beasts riving at straw and crunching into turnips), but Tam laid down his bundle and came close to me.

"There was a man here," says he, "in the gloaming after you would be leaving for your ceilidhing, and he would be giving me a festner," says he, with a toothless grin and his old eyes gleaming; "ay, a noble festner," says he, "from the bottle. He would be wanting speech with you."

"Whatna man was he?" said I.

"A red-faced man and very clean," says he, "and his face shining like a wean's. Och, he might be wan of the Elect but for the glint in the eyes o' him and free wi' the bottle—a great performer with the bottle."

"Would he be leaving any word?" said I, for I would be wearying to come at the man's business.

"He kind o' let on tae some knowledge o' a place McEilin's Locker or that," says Tam. "Ye would be expected there the night. I am minding he would be calling himself McNeilage—the mother o' him was Sassenach."

"Would he be speaking o' the Gull?" said I.

"No, man, but a party told me," said the old rascal, "a party told me that the skiffs were below Bealach an sgadan before the moon was up, and Tam is thinking that there will be some fine, fine water on the mainland side before the morning—afore the more-nin," says he.

There was a strange thumping at my ribs when I had the garron at the door, and would be tramping the long yellow straw from his forefeet, and I led him out of the yard and we were on the shoulder of the black hill when the moon was beginning to go down. And now there were no thoughts of ghosts or bawkins in my head, and I would be laughing when the moor-birds would be rising with a quick whirring of wings under the horse's feet in the heather. At a long loping canter we crossed the peat hags, and slithered into the valley on the other side and made the burn. I mind I stood the horse in the burn to his knees, and he cooled a little, and then started to be pawing at the water, and snoring at it glinting past his legs, and tinkling and laughing down the glen. The heather was dark and withered, and at the banks of the stream I am seeing yet the long tufts of white grass, like an old man's beard, shaking with a dry rustle, and there was the sparkle of the last of the moon making a granite boulder gleam into jewel points, and then we made our way to the Locker. I was not very sure of the place, but I made the three long whistles on my fingers that the boys will be using when there is help needed. From the hillside I got the answer, clear and piercing like a shepherd's, and then all would be silent except for the swishing of the heather and the thumping at the ribs of me, for I would be sure now that Bryde was in the Locker on some mad ploy. When I was come near the entrance I dismounted and left the beast loose, for I kent he would make his way home to his stable. As I was clambering up the last of it, a voice came to me.

"Oh man, Hamish, hurry," and it was not the voice of Bryde, but I kent the voice, and the eagerness of it and the gladness.

"Dan," I cried, "och, Dan," and after that I am not remembering. How I came to be sitting in the Locker with Dan beside me, and the smoke eddying up, and the droll-shaped pond and the queer carving all there, as it would be yon daft night twenty years ago, I am not remembering.

But there was Dan McBride with a sabre slash from his ear to the point of his chin, and a proud set to his head, and a way of bending from his hips like a man reared in the saddle. A great martial moustache curled at the corners of his mouth. Dan McBride that was away for twenty years, and mair. He was arrayed in some outlandish soldier rig, with great boots and prodigious spurs.

"The lass," says he at the first go-off, "what came o' the lass that will be my wife?" says he, with a great breath. "Is all things right with Belle?"

"Finely," says I; "you will be seeing her with the daylight."

"Man, I will have been needing that word," says he.

"What am I to be calling ye, man?"

"Hooch," says he, and his words were sharper and fiercer than of yore. "My father's rank will be good enough for me, but ye will call me Dan McBride and naething else. Major I was in the Low Countries, and the warrant's in my saddle-bags," says he. "Wae's me, for I've lost that, horse and all."

But I had a word to say to that.

"The horse will be sleeping in the stable," said I, "and I will be the man that's put him there," and told him about the strange horse.

"Yon crater, Dol Beag, didna just dee," says he after a while.

"Nor a drop out of his lug," says I, "if ye will be overlooking a crooked back. I sent ye that word with the heathen."

"The heathen—the skemp—yon was the last o' the heathen—hilt or hair o' him that I saw, and me mixed up wi' daftlike wars—it was a packet that reached me—in Dantzig," says he, "after lying a year, frae some sensible wench calling hersel' Helen Stockdale. . . ."

I was dumb at that, but I was remembering the lass asking of the Scot that took the Pagan to the mouth of the Rouen river. "Ay, a priest gave the packet to a Scots friend o' mine in Rouen, and then it came to me at a tavern in Dantzig. I didna bide long there. I was landed wi' the smugglers at Fowey," says he, "and McNeilage put me ashore last night at the Point and was to leave word for ye. It was a thought gruesome here," says he, "wi' McAllan and the dog among the bones ben there—deid? Ay, deid twenty years, Hamish, by the look o' things. Tell me about Belle," said he, "Belle and the boy, Hamish. The lass that wrote had a great word o' the boy, and she wanted me hame. I am not sure why—weemen are such droll . . . Is she religious?" says he.

"Ye'll be seeing," says I.

And then again, "I had to have a crack wi' ye, Hamish, before I could be doing anything; it's no' canny coming in on folk after a matter o' twenty years."

All that night we sat before a fire with no other light, and many a time I would be thinking of the Killer dying in there in the dark, and the dog beside him; the Nameless Man was not in Dan's mind, but the length of the night.

"Belle and the boy—'a likely lad,' ye say. Hoch, he'll come hame, Hamish, never fear—the lasses will be taking him hame at his age."

And when we were stretched before the red glow of the fire he would still be at the talking, and the last I am minding was his voice.

"I will have lain beside the fire on the battlefield and seen the eyes o' the wolves glowering through the lowes, Hamish; but, man, it was a king to this weary waiting, a king to this."



CHAPTER XXVI.

A WEDDING ON THE DOORSTEP.

It was at the drakes' dridd that Dan roused me, and we left McAllan's Locker behind us with its gruesome keepers, and came down the hillside to the burn. I mind that there was a raven above us in the morning air, and his vindictive croak-croak was the only living sound that came to us as we marched.

At the burn I saw the track of the garron where he had crossed in the night, and at the burnside Dan stopped.

"Many a time have I wearied for the sight o' a burn, Hamish, cold and sweet and clean, when we would be drinking water that was stinking," and he made preparations to splash his face; and it was droll to see the bronze of his face stop at the throat, and the skin below like a leek for whiteness.

There were many things to be telling the wanderer—that he had got some notion of from McNeilage of the Seagull, but for the most part it was hard to talk to a man walking fast.

We came up over the last of the three lonely hills, with bare moorlands and peat hags fornent us, and away below the sea, and I held on for the house on the moor that once was McCurdy's hut. The first beast we saw was a raddy, a droll sheep with four daft-like horns, and there came a great crying of curlews; and then, when we came near to the house without yet seeing it, there was a look of wonder in Dan's face.

"There was nae grass here when I left hame," says he; "this will be your work, Hamish. Ye were aye a great hand for grass."

As he spoke, it seemed to me that the voice was the same voice that I kent when I was a boy, but I was at the walking now and hurried him on.