.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 43444
   :PG.Title: White Heather (Volume I of 3)
   :PG.Released: 2013-08-11
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: William Black
   :DC.Title: White Heather (Volume I of 3)
              A Novel
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1885
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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WHITE HEATHER (VOL. I)
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      WHITE HEATHER

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      A Novel

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      BY

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      WILLIAM BLACK

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      AUTHOR OF 'MACLEOD OF DARE,'
      'JUDITH SHAKESPEARE,' ETC.

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      *IN THREE VOLUMES*

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      VOL. \I.

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      London
      MACMILLAN AND CO.
      1885

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      *The right of translation is reserved.*

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      Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.

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   CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

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   CHAPTER I.

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   `A JOURNEY NORTHWARD`_

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   CHAPTER II.

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   `MEENIE`_

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   CHAPTER III.

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   `ON THE LOCH`_

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   CHAPTER IV.

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   `A LETTER`_

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   CHAPTER V.

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   `BEGINNINGS`_

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   CHAPTER VI.

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   `A PROGRAMME`_

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   CHAPTER VII.

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   `AN EYRIE`_

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   CHAPTER VIII.

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   `THE NEW YEAR'S FEAST`_

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   CHAPTER IX.

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   `ENTICEMENTS`_

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   CHAPTER X.

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   `HIGH FESTIVAL`_

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   CHAPTER XI.

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   `A REVELATION`_

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   CHAPTER XII.

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   `'WHEN SHADOWS FALL'`_

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   CHAPTER XIII.

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   `A NEW ARRIVAL`_

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   CHAPTER XIV.

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   `'ABOUT ILLINOIS'`_

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   CHAPTER XV.

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   `WILD TIMES`_

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   CHAPTER XVI.

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   `DREAMS AND VISIONS`_

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.. _`A JOURNEY NORTHWARD`:

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   WHITE HEATHER.

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CHAPTER I.

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A JOURNEY NORTHWARD.

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On a certain cold evening in January, and just as the
Scotch night-mail was about to start for the north, a stranger
drove up to Euston and alighted, and was glad enough to
escape from the chill draughts of the echoing station into
the glow and warmth and comfort of a sleeping-car.  He
was a man of means apparently; for one half of this
carriage, containing four berths, and forming a room apart,
as it were, had been reserved for himself alone; while his
travelling impedimenta—fur-lined coats and hoods and rugs
and what not—were of an elaborate and sumptuous description.
On the other hand, there was nothing of ostentation
about either his dress or appearance or demeanour.  He
was a tall, thin, quiet-looking man, with an aquiline nose,
sallow complexion, and keen but not unkindly gray eyes.
His short-cropped hair was grizzled, and there were deep
lines in the worn and ascetic face; but this may have been
the result of an exhausting climate rather than of any mental
care, for there was certainly no touch of melancholy in his
expression.  His costume was somewhat prim and precise;
there was a kind of schoolmasterish look about the stiff
white collar and small black tie; his gloves were new and
neat.  For the rest, he seemed used to travelling; he began
to make himself at home at once, and scarcely looked up
from this setting of things to rights when the conductor
made his appearance.

'Mr. Hodson, sir?' the latter said, with an inquiring
glance.

'That's about what they call me,' he answered slowly,
as he opened a capacious dressing-bag covered with
crocodile-hide.

'Do you expect any friends to join you farther along, sir?'

'Not that I know of,' was the answer—and a pair of
dark-blue velvet slippers, with initials worked in gold, were
fished out and thrown upon the seat beside him.

But when the conductor had got one of the lower
sleeping-berths made ready and the traveller had completed
his leisurely arrangements for passing the night in comfort,
a somewhat one-sided conversation ensued.  This gaunt,
slow-speaking, reserved man proved to be quite talkative—in
a curious, measured, dry, and staccato fashion; and if
his conversation consisted chiefly of questions, these showed
that he had a very honest and simple concern in the welfare
of this other human being whom chance had thrown in his
way, and that he could express his friendly interest without
any touch of patronage or condescension.  He asked first
about the railway-line; how the company's servants were
paid; what were their hours on duty; whether they had
formed any associations for relief in case of sickness; what
this particular man got for his work; whether he could
look forward to any bettering of his lot, and so forth.  And
then, fixing his eyes more scrutinisingly on his companion,
he began to ask about his family affairs—where he lived;
what children he had; how often he saw them; and the
like; and these questions were so obviously prompted by
no idle curiosity, but by an honest sympathy, and by the
apparent desire of one human being to get to understand
fully and clearly the position and surroundings and prospects
of this other fellow-creature, that it was impossible for
any one to take offence.

'And how old is your little girl?'

'Eight, sir: she will be nine in May next.'

'What do you call her?'

'Caroline, sir.'

'Why, you don't say!' he exclaimed, with his eyes—which
were usually calm and observant—lighting up with
some surprise.  'That is the name of my girl too—though
I can't call her little any more.  Well now,' he added, as
he took out his purse and selected a sovereign from the
mass of coins, 'I think this is about what you ought to do.
When you get back to Camden Town, you start an account
in the Post Office Savings Bank, in your little girl's name,
and you put in this sovereign as a first deposit.  Then,
whenever you have an odd sixpence or shilling to give
her—a birthday present, or that—you keep adding on and on;
and there will be a nice little sum for her in after years.
And if ever she asks, you can tell her it was the father of
an American Caroline who made her this little present;
and if she grows up to be as good a girl as the American
Carry, she'll do very well, I think.'

The conductor scarcely knew how to express his thanks,
but the American cut him short, saying coolly—

'I don't give the sovereign to you at all.  It is in trust
for your daughter.  And you don't look to me the kind of
man who would go and drink it.'

He took out an evening newspaper, and, at the hint,
the conductor went away to get ready the berths in the
other end of the car.  When he came back again to see if
the gentleman wanted anything further for the night, they
had thundered along the line until they were nearing
Rugby.

'Why, yes,' Mr. Hodson said, in answer to the question,
'you might get me a bottle of soda-water when we get to
the station.'

'I have soda-water in the car, sir.'

'Bring me a bottle, then, please.'

'And shall I get anything else for you, sir, at Rugby?'

'No, I thank you.'

When the man returned with the soda-water, the traveller
had taken from his dressing-bag a bottle labelled 'Bromide
of Potassium' and he was just about to mix his customary
sleeping-draught when it occurred to him that perhaps this
conductor could tell him something of the new and far
country into which he was about to adventure for the first
time.  And in making these inquiries he showed that he
was just as frank-spoken about his own plans and
circumstances as he expected other people to be about theirs.
When the conductor confessed that he knew next to nothing
about the north of Scotland, never having been farther than
Perth, and even then his knowledge of the country being
confined to the railway-line and the stations, Mr. Hodson
went on to say—in that methodical way of his, with little
rising inflexions here and there—

'Well, it's bound to be different from London, anyway.
It can't be like London; and that's the main thing for me.
Why, that London fog, never moving, same in the morning,
same at night, it's just too dismal for anything; the inside
of a jail is a fool to it.  'Pears to me that a London
afternoon is just about as melancholy as they make it; if there's
anything more melancholy than that anywhere, I don't know
it.  Well, now, it can't be like that at Cape Wrath.'

'I should think not, sir.'

'I daresay if I lived in the town, and had my club, and
knew people, it might be different; and my daughter seems
to get through the time well enough; but young folks are
easily amused.  Say, now, about this salmon fishing in the
north: you don't know when it begins?'

'No, sir.'

'You haven't seen anybody going yet with a bundle of
rods?'

'No, sir, not this year yet.'

'Hope they haven't been playing it on me—I was told
I could begin on the eleventh.  But it don't signify much
so long's I get out of that infernal cut-throat atmosphere of
London.'

At this point the train began to slow into Rugby
station, and the conductor left to attend to his duties; and
by the time they were moving out again and on their way
to the far north, Mr. Hodson had mixed and drunk his
nightly potion, and, partially undressed, was wrapped up in
the thick and warm coverings of the sleeping-berth, where,
whether owing to the bromide of potassium, or the jog-trot
rattle of the wheels, he was soon plunged in a profound
slumber.

Well, if part of his design in thus venturing upon a
journey to the north in mid-winter was to get away from
the monotonous mists of London, the next morning showed
him that so far he had been abundantly successful.  The
day breaking caused him to open his eyes; and instinctively
he turned to the window.  There before him was a strange,
and unusual, and welcome sight.  No more dismal grays,
and the gathering down of a hopeless dusk; but the clear,
glad light of the morning—a band of flashing gold all
along the eastern horizon, behind the jet-black stems and
branches of the leafless trees; and over that the heavens
were all of a pale and luminous lilac, with clouds hanging
here and there—clouds that were dark and almost thunderous
in their purple look, but that really meant nothing but
beauty, as they lay there soft and motionless in the glowing
and mystical dawn.  Quickly he got up.  The windows
were thrown open.  And this air that rushed in—so fresh,
so sweet, so full of all kinds of mellow and fragrant messages
from the hills, and the pine-woods, and the wide-lying
straths—did it not bring a strange kind of joy and surprise
with it?

'A beautiful morning, sir; we are getting near to Perth
now,' the conductor said, when he made his appearance.

'Are we in time?'

'Yes, in very good time.'

'And no hurry about breakfast?'

'No, sir; you don't start again till nine o'clock.'

Even this big hollow station, with its wide stone
platforms and resounding arch: was it the white light that
filled it, or the fresh air that blew through it, that made it
quite a cheerful place?  He was charmed with the accent
of the timid handmaiden who brought him his breakfast in
the refreshment room, and who waited on him in such a
friendly, half-anxious, shy fashion; and he wondered whether
he would dare to offer so pretty and well-mannered a young
lady anything over the customary charge in token of his
gratitude to her for her gentle ways.  Perth itself: well,
there had been rain in the night, and the streets near the
station were full of mud; but then the cart ruts in the mud
were gleaming lines of gold; and the beautiful sky hung
over the slowly rising smoke of the houses; and the air was
everywhere so sweet and welcome.  He had got into a new
world altogether; the weight of the London atmosphere
was lifted from him; he whistled 'Auld Lang Syne'—which
was the only Scotch air he knew—and the lugubrious tune
sounded quite pleasant on so joyous a morning.

Moreover, these were but first and commonplace experiences.
For by and by, when he had again taken his seat
to prosecute his journey—and he found himself the sole
occupant of the carriage—the sunrise had widened into the
full splendour of a sunlit day; and as the train sped away
to the north, he, sitting at the window there, and having
nothing to do but examine the new country he was entering,
was wholly amazed at the intensity and brilliancy of the
colouring around, and at the extraordinary vividness of the
light.  The wide stretches of the Tay shone like burnished
silver; there were yellow straths and fields; and
beech hedges of a rich russet-red; and fir-woods of a deep
fresh green; and still farther away low-lying hills of a soft
and ruddy purple, touched sharp here and there with
patches of snow; and over all these a blue sky as of
summer.  The moist, warm air that blew in at the window
seemed laden with pine odours; the country women at the
small stations had a fresh pink colour in their cheeks;
everywhere a new and glad and wholesome life seemed to
be abroad, and cheerfulness, and rich hues, and sunlight.

'This is good enough,' he said to himself.  'This is
something like what I shipped for.'

And so they sped on: through the soft, wide-stretching
woods of Murthly, and Birnam, and Dunkeld; through the
shadow and sudden gleams of Killiecrankie Pass; on by
Blair Athol and the banks of the Garry; until, with slow
and labouring breath, the train began to force its way up
the heights of the Grampians, in the lone neighbourhood
of the Drumouchter Forest.  The air was keener here; the
patches of snow were nearer at hand; indeed, in some
places the line had evidently been cleared, and large snow
banks heaped up on each side.  But by and by the motion
of the train seemed to become easier; and soon it was
apparent that the descent had begun; presently they were
rattling away down into the wide and shining valley of
Strathspey; and far over there on the west and north, and
keeping guard over the plain, as it were, rose the giant
masses of the Cairngorm Hills, the snow sparkling here
and there on their shoulders and peaks.

It was not until half-past four in the afternoon that the
long railway journey came to an end; and during that time
he had come upon many a scene of historical interest and
pictorial beauty.  He had been within a short distance
of the mournful 'haughs of Cromdale;' he had crossed
Culloden Moor.  Nearing Forres, he had come within
sight of the Northern Sea; and thereafter had skirted the
blue ruffled waters of the Moray, and Cromarty, and Dornoch
Firths.  But even when he had got to Lairg, a little
hamlet at the foot of Loch Shin, his travelling for the day
was not nearly over; there still remained a drive of
four-and-twenty miles; and although it was now dusk and the
weather threatened a change, he preferred to push on that
night.  Travelling did not seem to tire him much; no
doubt he was familiar with immeasurably greater distances
in his own country.  Moreover, he had learned that there
was nothing particular to look at in the stretch of wild
moorland that lay between him and his destination; and
then again, if it was dark now, there would be moonlight
later on.  So he ate his dinner leisurely and in content,
until a waggonette with two stout horses was brought
round; then he got in; and presently they were away from
the little hamlet and out in a strange land of darkness
and silence, scarcely anything visible around them, the
only sound the jog-trot clatter of the horses' feet.

It was a desperately lonely drive.  The road appeared
to go over interminable miles of flat or scarcely undulating
moorland; and even when the moonlight began to make
the darkness faintly visible, that only increased the sense
of solitude, for there was not even a single tree to break the
monotony of the sombre horizon line.  It had begun to rain
also: not actual rain, but a kind of thin drizzle, that seemed
to mix itself up with the ineffectual moonlight, and throw
a wan haze over these far-reaching and desolate wastes.
Tramp, tramp went the horses' feet through this ghostly
world; the wet mist grew thicker and thicker and clung
around the traveller's hair; it was a chilling mist, moreover,
and seemed to search for weak places about the throat.
The only sharply defined objects that the eye could rest on
were the heads and upthrown ears of the horses, that shone
in the light sent forward by the lamps: all else was a
formless wilderness of gloom, shadows following shadows, and
ever the desolate landscape stretching on and on, and
losing itself in the night.

The American stood up in the waggonette, perhaps to
shake off for a second the clammy sensation of the wet.

'Say, young man,' he observed—but in an absent kind
of way, for he was regarding, as far as that was possible, the
dusky undulations of the mournful landscape—'don't you
think now, that for a good wholesome dose of God-forsakenness,
this'll about take the cake?'

'Ah beg your paurdon, sir,' said the driver, who was
apparently a Lowlander.

The stranger, however, did not seem inclined to continue
the conversation; he sank into his seat again; gathered
his rugs round him; and contented himself as heretofore
by idly watching the lamplight touching here and
there on the harness and lighting up the horses' heads and
ears.

Mile after mile, hour after hour, went by in this
monotonous fashion; and to the stranger it seemed as if he were
piercing farther and farther into some unknown land
unpeopled by any human creatures.  Not a ray of light
from any hut or farmhouse was visible anywhere.  But as
the time went on, there was at least some little improvement
in the weather.  Either the moonlight was growing stronger,
or the thin drizzle clearing off; at all events he could now
make out ahead of him—and beyond the flat moorland—the
dusky masses of some mountains, with one great peak
overtopping them all.  He asked the name.

'That is Ben Clebrig, sir.'

And then through the mist and the moonlight a dull
sheet of silver began to disclose itself dimly.

'Is that a lake down there?'

'Loch Naver, sir.'

'Then we are not far from Inver-Mudal?'

'No far noo; just a mile or two, sir,' was the consoling
answer.

And indeed when he got to the end of his journey, and
reached the little hostelry set far amid these moorland and
mountain wilds, his welcome there made ample amends.
He was ushered into a plain, substantially furnished, and
spacious sitting-room, brightly lit up by the lamp that stood
on the white cloth of the table, and also by the blazing glare
from the peats in the mighty fireplace; and when his eyes
had got accustomed to this bewilderment of warmth and
light, he found, awaiting his orders, and standing shyly at
the door, a pretty, tall, fair-haired girl, who, with the
softest accent in the world, asked him what she should bring
him for supper.  And when he said he did not care to have
anything, she seemed quite surprised and even concerned.
It was a long, long drive, she said, in her shy and pretty
way; and would not the gentleman have some hare-soup—that
they had kept hot for him? and so forth.  But her
coaxing was of no avail.

'By the way, what is your name, my girl?' he said.

'Nelly, sir.'

'Well, then, Nelly, do you happen to know whether
Lord Ailine's keeper is anywhere in the neighbourhood?'

'He is in the unn, sir, waiting for you.'

'Oh, indeed.  Well, tell him I should like to see him.
And say, what is his name?'

'Ronald, sir.'

'Ronald?'

'That is his first name,' she explained.

'His "first name"?  I thought that was one of our
Americanisms.'

She did not seem to understand this.

'Ronald Strang is his name, sir; but we jist call him
Ronald.'

'Very well, Nelly; you go and tell him I want to see him.'

'Ferry well, sir,' she said; and away she went.

But little indeed did this indefatigable student of nature
and human nature—who had been but half interested by his
observations and experiences through that long day's
travel—know what was yet in store for him.  The door opened;
a slim-built and yet muscular young man of eight-and-twenty
or so appeared there, clad in a smart deer-stalking costume
of brownish green; he held his cap in his hand; and round
his shoulder was the strap from which hung behind the brown
leather case of his telescope.  This Mr. Hodson saw at a
glance; and also something more.  He prided himself on
his judgment of character.  And when his quick look had
taken in the keen, sun-tanned face of this young fellow, the
square, intellectual forehead, the firm eyebrows, the finely
cut and intelligent mouth, and a certain proud set of the
head, he said to himself, 'This is a *man*: there's something
here worth knowing.'

'Good evening, sir,' the keeper said, to break the
momentary silence.

'Good evening,' said Mr. Hodson (who had been rather
startled out of his manners).  'Come and sit down by the
fire; and let's have a talk now about the shooting and the
salmon-fishing.  I have brought the letters from the Duke's
agent with me.'

'Yes, sir,' said Strang; and he moved a bit farther into
the room; but remained standing, cap in hand.

'Pull in a chair,' said Mr. Hodson, who was searching
for the letters.

'Thank ye, sir; thank ye,' said the keeper; but he
remained standing nevertheless.

Mr. Hodson returned to the table.

'Sit down, man, sit down,' said he, and he himself
pulled in a chair.  'I don't know what your customs are over
here, but anyhow I'm an American citizen; I'm not a lord.'

Somewhat reluctantly the keeper obeyed this injunction,
and for a minute or two seemed to be rather uncomfortable;
but when he began to answer the questions concisely
put to him with regard to the business before them, his
shyness wholly wore away, for he was the master of this
subject, not the stranger who was seeking for information.
Into the details of these matters it is needless to enter
here; and, indeed, so struck was the American with the
talk and bearing of this new acquaintance that the
conversation went far afield.  And the farther afield it went,
the more and more was he impressed with the extraordinary
information and intelligence of the man, the independence
of his views, the shrewdness and sometimes sarcasm of his
judgments.  Always he was very respectful; but in his
eyes—which seemed singularly dark and lustrous here
indoors, but which, out of doors and when he was after
the wary stag, or the still more wary hinds, on the far
slopes of Clebrig, contracted and became of a keen brownish
gray—there was a kind of veiled fire of humour which, as the
stranger guessed, might in other circumstances blaze forth
wildly enough.  Mr. Hodson, of Chicago, was entirely
puzzled.  A gamekeeper?  He had thought (from his
reading of English books) that a gamekeeper was a
velveteen-coated person whose ideas ranged from the ale-house
to the pheasant-coverts, and thence and quickly back again.
But this man seemed to have a wide and competent knowledge
of public affairs; and, when it came to a matter of
argument (they had a keen little squabble about the
protection tariffs of America) he could reason hard, and was
not over-compliant.

'God bless me,' Mr. Hodson was driven to exclaim at
last, 'what is a man of your ability doing in a place like
this?  Why don't you go away to one of the big cities—or
over to America—where a young fellow with his wits
about him can push himself forward?'

'I would rather be "where the dun deer lie,"' said he,
with a kind of bashful laugh.

'You read Kingsley?' the other said, still more astonished.

'My brother lends me his books from time to time,'
Ronald said modestly.  'He's a Free Church minister in
Glasgow.'

'A Free Church minister?  He went through college, then?'

'Yes, sir; he took his degree at Aberdeen.'

'But—but—' said the newcomer, who had come upon
a state of affairs he could not understand at all—'who
was your father, then?  He sent your brother to college,
I presume?'

'Oh no, sir.  My father is a small farmer down the
Lammermuir way; and he just gave my brother Andrew
his wages like the rest, and Andrew saved up for the
classes.'

'You are not a Highlander, then?'

'But half-and-half, like my name, sir,' he said (and all
the shyness was gone now: he spoke to this stranger
frankly and simply as he would have spoken to a shepherd
on the hillside).  'My mother was Highland.  She was a
Macdonald; and so she would have me called Ronald;
it's a common name wi' them.'

Mr. Hodson stared at him for a second or two in silence.

'Well,' said he, slowly, 'I don't know.  Different men
have different ways of looking at things.  I think if I were
of your age, and had your intelligence, I would try for
something better than being a gamekeeper.'

'I am very well content, sir,' said the other placidly;
'and I couldna be more than that anywhere else.  It's a
healthy life; and a healthy life is the best of anything—at
least that is my way of thinking.  I wadna like to try
the toun; I doubt it wouldn't agree wi' me.'  And then he
rose to his feet.  'I beg your pardon, sir; I've been
keeping ye late.'

Well, Mr. Hodson was nothing loth to let him go; for
although he had arrived at the conviction that here was a
valuable human life, of exceptional quality and distinction,
being absolutely thrown away and wasted, still he had not
formed the arguments by which he might try to save it
for the general good, and for the particular good of the
young man himself.  He wanted time to think over this
matter—and in cool blood; for there is no doubt that he
had been surprised and fascinated by the intellectual
boldness and incisiveness of the younger man's opinions and
by the chance sarcasms that had escaped him.

'I could get him a good opening in Chicago soon
enough,' he was thinking to himself, when the keeper had
left, 'but upon my soul I don't know the man who is fit
to become that man's master.  Why, I'd start a newspaper
for him myself, and make him editor—and if he can't
write, he has got mother-wit enough to guide them who
can—but he and I would be quarrelling in a week.  That
fellow is not to be driven by anybody.'

He now rang the bell for a candle; and the slim and
yellow-haired Nelly showed him upstairs to his room, which
he found to be comfortably warm, for there was a blazing
peat fire in the grate, scenting all the air with its delicious
odour.  He bade her good-night, and turned to open his
dressing-bag; but at the same moment he heard voices
without, and, being of an inquiring turn of mind, he went
to the window.  The first thing he saw was that outside a
beautiful clear moon was now shining; the leafless
elm-trees and the heavy-foliaged pines throwing sharp black
shadows across the white road.  And this laughing and
jesting at the door of the inn?—surely he heard Ronald's
voice there—the gayest of any—among the jibes that
seemed to form their farewells for the night?  Then there
was the shutting of a door; and in the silence that ensued he
saw the solitary, straight-limbed, clean-made figure of a man
stride up the white road, a little dog trotting behind him.

'Come along, Harry, my lad,' the man said to his small
companion—and that, sure enough, was the keeper's voice.

And then, in the stillness of the moonlight night, this
watcher and listener was startled to hear a clear and powerful
tenor voice suddenly begin to sing—in a careless fashion,
it is true, as if it were but to cheer the homeward going—

.. class:: italics

   |  'Come all ye jolly shepherds,
   |    That whistle through the glen,
   |  I'll tell ye of a secret
   |    That courtiers dinna ken.
   |  What is the greatest bliss
   |    That the tongue o' man can name?—
   |  'Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
   |    When the kye come hame.'
   |

'Great heavens!' said Mr. Hodson to himself, 'such a
voice—and all Europe waiting for a new tenor!  But at
seven or eight and twenty I suppose he is beyond training.'

The refrain became more and more distant:

.. class:: italics

   |  'When the kye come hame,
   |    When the kye come hame,
   |  'Twixt the gloamin' and the mirk,
   |    When the kye come hame.'
   |

Both the keeper and the little trotting terrier had
disappeared now, having turned a corner of the road where
there was a clump of trees.  The traveller who had
wandered into these remote wilds sate down for a minute
or two to sum up his investigations of the evening, and
they were these:

'Accounts of the deer seem shaky; but there may have
been bad shooting this last year, as he says.  The
salmon-fishing sounds more likely; and then Carry could come
with us in the boat—which would make it less dull for
her.  Anyhow, I have discovered the most remarkable
man I have met with as yet in the old country; and to
think of his being thrown away like that!'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MEENIE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II.


.. class:: center medium bold

   MEENIE.

.. vspace:: 2

We may now follow Ronald Strang as he walks along to
his cottage, which, with its kennels and its shed for hanging
up the slain deer, stands on a little plateau by the roadside,
a short distance from the inn.  The moonlight night is
white and beautiful, but far from silent; for the golden
plover are whistling and calling down by the lochside, and
the snipe are sending their curious harsh note across the
moorland wastes.  Moreover, he himself seems to be in a
gay mood (perhaps glad to be over the embarrassment of
a first meeting with the stranger), and he is conversing
amicably with his little terrier.  The subject is rats.
Whether the wise little Harry knows all that is said need
not be determined; but he looks up from time to time
and wags his stump of a tail as he trots placidly along.
And so they get up to the cottage and enter, for the outer
door is on the latch, thieves being unheard of in this
remote neighbourhood; though here Harry hesitates, for
he is uncertain whether he is to be invited into the
parlour or not.  But the next moment all consideration of
this four-footed friend is driven out of his master's head.
Ronald had expected to find the parlour empty, and his
little sister, at present his sole housekeeper, retired to rest.
But the moment he opens the door, he finds that not only
is she there, sitting by the table near to the solitary lamp,
but that she has a companion with her.  And well he
knows who that must be.

'Dear me, Miss Douglas,' he exclaimed, 'have I kept
you so late!'

The young lady, who now rose, with something of a
flush over her features—for she had been startled by his
sudden entrance—was certainly an extraordinarily pretty
creature: not so much handsome, or distinguished, or
striking, as altogether pretty and winning and gentle-looking.
She was obviously of a pure Highland type: the figure
slender and graceful, the head small and beautifully formed;
the forehead rather square for a woman, but getting its
proper curve from the soft and pretty hair; the features
refined and intelligent; the mouth sensitive; the expression
a curious sort of seeking to please, as it were, and ready to
form itself into an abundant gratitude for the smallest act
of kindness.  Of course, much of this look was owing to her
eyes, which were the true Highland eyes; of a blue gray
these were, with somewhat dark lashes; wide apart, and shy,
and apprehensive, they reminded one of the startled eyes of
some wild animal; but they were, entirely human in their
quick sympathy, in their gentleness, in their appeal to all
the world, as it were, for a favouring word.  As for her
voice—well, if she used but few of the ordinary Highland
phrases, she had undoubtedly a considerable trace of
Highland accent; for, although her father was an Edinburgh man,
her mother (as the elderly lady very soon let her neighbours
know) was one of the Stuarts of Glengask and Orosay;
and then again Meenie had lived nearly all her life in the
Highlands, her father never having risen above the position
of a parish doctor, and welcoming even such local
removals as served to improve his position in however slight
a way.

'Maggie,' said Miss Douglas (and the beautiful wide-apart
eyes were full of a shy apology), 'was feeling a little
lonely, and I did not like to leave her.'

'But if I had known,' said he, 'I would not have stayed
so late.  The gentleman that is come about the shooting
is a curious man; it's no the salmon and the grouse and
the deer he wants to know about only; it's everything in
the country.  Now, Maggie, lass, get ye to bed.  And I
will see you down the road, Miss Douglas.'

'Indeed there is no need for that,' said Meenie, with
downcast eyes.

'Would ye have a bogle run away with ye?' he said
good-naturedly.

And so she bade good-night to the little Maggie, and
took up some books and drawings she had brought to
beguile the time withal; and then she went out into the
clear night, followed by the young gamekeeper.

And what a night it was—or rather, might have been—for
two lovers!  The wide waters of the loch lay still and
smooth, with a broad pathway of silver stretching away into
the dusk of the eastern hills; not a breath of wind stirred
bush or tree; and if Ben Clebrig in the south was mostly
a bulk of shadow, far away before them in the northern
skies rose the great shoulders of Ben Loyal, pallid in the
moonlight, the patches of snow showing white up near the
stars.  They had left behind them the little hamlet—which
merely consisted of a few cottages and the inn; they were
alone in this pale silent world.  And down there, beneath
the little bridge, ran the placid Mudal Water: and if they
had a Bible with them?—and would stand each on one
side of the stream?—and clasp hands across?  It was a
night for lovers' vows.

'Maggie is getting on well with her lessons,' the pretty
young lady said, in that gentle voice of hers.  'She is very
diligent.'

'I'm sure I'm much obliged to ye, Miss Douglas,' was
the respectful answer, 'for the trouble ye take with her.
It's an awkward thing to be sae far from a school.  I'm
thinking I'll have to send her to my brother in Glasgow,
and get her put to school there.'

'Oh, indeed, indeed,' said she, 'that will be a change now.
And who will look after the cottage for you, Ronald?'

She addressed him thus quite naturally, and without
shyness; for no one ever dreamed of calling him anything
else.

'Well, I suppose Mrs. MacGregor will give the place a
redd[#] up from time to time.  But a keeper has but half
learned his business that canna shift for himself; there's
some of the up-country lodges with ne'er a woman-body
within a dozen miles o' them.'

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent small

[#] 'Redd,' a setting to rights.

.. vspace:: 1

'It is your brother the minister that Maggie will be
going to?' she said.

'Oh yes; he is married, and has a family of his own;
she will be comfortable there.'

'Well, it is strange,' said she, 'that you should have a
brother in Glasgow, and I a sister, and that your mother
should be Highland and mine too.'

But this was putting himself and her on much too
common a footing; and he was always on his guard against
that, however far her gentleness and good-nature might
lead her.

'When is your father coming back, Miss Douglas?'
said he.

'Well, I really do not know,' she said.  'I do not think
he has ever had so wide a district to attend to, and we are
never sure of his being at home.'

'It must be very lonely for a young lady brought up
like you,' he ventured to say, 'that ye should have no
companions.  And for your mother, too; I wonder she
can stand it.'

'Oh no,' she said, 'for the people are so friendly
with us.  And I do not know of any place that I like
better.'

By this time they were come to the little wooden gate
of the garden, and he opened that for her.  Before them
was the cottage, with its windows, despite the moonlight on
the panes, showing the neat red blinds within.  She gave
him her hand for a second.

'Good night, Ronald,' said she pleasantly.

'Good night, Miss Douglas,' said he; 'Maggie must not
keep you up so late again.'

And therewith he walked away back again along the
white road, and only now perceived that by some accident
his faithful companion Harry had been shut in when they
left.  He also discovered, when he got home, that his sister
Maggie had been so intent puzzling over some arithmetical
mysteries which Meenie had been explaining to her, that
she had still further delayed her going to bed.

'What, what?' said he, good-humouredly.  'Not in bed
yet, lass?'

The little red-headed, freckled-faced lassie obediently
gathered up her belongings, but at the door she lingered
for a moment.

'Ronald,' said she, timidly, 'why do ye call Meenie
"Miss Douglas?" It's not friendly.'

'When ye're a bit older, lass, ye'll understand,' he said,
with a laugh.

Little Maggie was distressed in a vague way, for she had
formed a warm affection for Meenie Douglas, and it seemed
hard and strange that her own brother should show himself
so distant in manner.

'Do you think she's proud? for she's not that,' the little
girl made bold to say.

'Have ye never heard o' the Stuarts of Glengask?' said
he; and he added grimly, 'My certes, if ye were two or
three years older, I'm thinking Mrs. Douglas would have
told ye ere now how Sir Alexander used to call on them in
Edinburgh every time he came north.  Most folk have
heard that story.  But however, when Meenie, as ye like
to call her, goes to live in Edinburgh or Glasgow, or some
o' the big towns, of course she'll be Miss Douglas to every
one, as she ought to be here, only that she's taken a fancy
to you, and, my lass, fairly spoils ye with her kindness.
Now, off with ye, and dinna fash your head about what I
or any one else calls her; if she's content to be Meenie to
you, ye should be proud enough.'

As soon as she was gone he stirred up the peats, lit his
pipe, and drew in a chair to the small table near the fire.
It was his first pipe that evening, and he wished to have it
in comfort.  And then, to pass the time, he unlocked and
opened a drawer in the table, and began to rummage
through the papers collected there—all kinds of shreds and
fragments they were, scored over mostly in pencil, and
many of them bearing marks as if the writing had been
done outside in the rain.

The fact was, that in idle times, when there was no
trapping to be done, or shooting of hoodie-crows, or
breaking-in of young dogs, he would while away many an hour
on the hillside or along the shores of the loch by stringing
verses together.  They were done for amusement's sake.
Sometimes he jotted them down, sometimes he did not.
If occasionally, when he had to write a letter to a friend of
his at Tongue, or make some request of his brother in
Glasgow, he put these epistles into jingling rhyme, that was
about all the publication his poetical efforts ever achieved;
and he was most particular to conceal from the 'gentry'
who came down to the shooting any knowledge that he
scribbled at all.  He knew it would be against him.  He
had no wish to figure as one of those local poets (and
alas! they have been and are too numerous in Scotland) who,
finding within them some small portion of the afflatus of a
Burns, or a Motherwell, or a Tannahill, are seduced away
from their lawful employment, gain a fleeting popularity in
their native village, perhaps attain to the dignity of a notice
in a Glasgow or Edinburgh newspaper, and subsequently and
almost inevitably die of drink, in the most abject misery of
disappointment.  No; if he had any ambition it was not
in that direction; it was rather that he should be known as
the smartest deerstalker and the best trainer of dogs in
Sutherlandshire.  He knew where his strength lay, and
where he found content.  And then there was another
reason why he could not court newspaper applause with
these idle rhymes of his.  They were nearly all about
Meenie Douglas.  Meenie-olatry was written all across
those scribbled sheets.  And of course that was a dark
secret known only to himself; and indeed it amused him,
as he turned over the loose leaves, to think that all the
Stuarts of Glengask and Orosay (and that most severe and
terrible of them all, Mrs. Douglas) could not in the least
prevent his saying to Meenie just whatever he pleased—within
the wooden confines of this drawer.  And what had
he not said?  Sometimes it was but a bit of careless
singing—

.. class:: italics

   |  Roses white, roses red,
   |    Roses in the lane,
   |  Tell me, roses red and white,
   |    Where is Meenie gane?
   |
   |  O is she on Loch Loyal's side?
   |    Or up by Mudal Water?
   |  In vain the wild doves in the woods
   |    Everywhere have sought her.
   |
   |  Roses white, roses red,
   |    Roses in the lane,
   |  Tell me, roses red and white,
   |    Where is Meenie gane?
   |

Well, now, supposing you are far away up on Ben
Clebrig's slopes, a gun over your shoulder, and idly looking
out for a white hare or a ptarmigan, if you take to humming
these careless rhymes to some such tune as 'Cherry Ripe,'
who is to hinder?  The strongest of all the south winds
cannot carry the tidings to Glengask nor yet to Orosay's
shores.  And so the whole country-side—every hill and
stream and wood and rock—came to be associated with
Meenie, and saturated with the praise and glory of her.
Why, he made the very mountains fight about her!

.. class:: italics

   |  Ben Loyal spake to Ben Clebrig,
   |    And they thundered their note of war:
   |  'You look down on your sheep and your sheepfolds;
   |    I see the ocean afar.
   |
   |  'You look down on the huts and the hamlets,
   |    And the trivial tasks of men;
   |  I see the great ships sailing
   |    Along the northern main.'
   |
   |  Ben Clebrig laughed, and the laughter
   |    Shook heaven and earth and sea:
   |  'There is something in that small hamlet
   |    That is fair enough for me—
   |
   |  'Ay, fairer than all your sailing ships
   |    Struck with the morning flame:
   |  A fresh young flower from the hand of God—
   |    Rose Meenie is her name!'
   |

But at this moment, as he turned over this mass of
scraps and fragments, there was one, much more audacious
than the rest, that he was in search of, and when he found
it a whimsical fancy got into his head.  If he were to make
out a fair copy of the roughly scrawled lines, and fold that
up, and address it to Meenie, just to see how it looked?
He took out his blotting-pad, and selected the best sheet
of note-paper he could find; and then he wrote (with a
touch of amusement, and perhaps of something else, too,
in his mind the while) thus—

.. class:: italics

   |  O wilt thou be my dear love?
   |    (Meenie and Meenie),
   |  O wilt thou be my ain love?
   |    (My sweet Meenie),
   |  Were you wi' me upon the hill,
   |  It's I would gar the dogs be still,
   |  We'd lie our lane and kiss our fill,
   |    (My love Meenie).
   |
   |  Aboon the burn a wild bush grows
   |    (Meenie and Meenie),
   |  And on the lush there blooms a rose
   |    (My sweet Meenie);
   |  And wad ye tak the rose frae me,
   |  And wear it where it fain would be,
   |  It's to your arms that I would flee,
   |    (Rose-sweet Meenie!)
   |

He carefully folded the paper and addressed it outside—so:

.. class:: noindent italics white-space-pre-line

   Miss Wilhelmina Stuart Douglas,
     Care of James Douglas, Esq., M.D.,
       Inver-Mudal,
         Sutherlandshire.

And then he held it out at arm's length, and regarded it,
and laughed, in a contemptuous kind of way, at his own
folly.

'Well,' he was thinking to himself, 'if it were not for
Stuart of Glengask, I suppose the day might come when I
could send her a letter like that; but as it is, if they were
to hear of any such madness, Glengask and all his kith and
kin would be for setting the heather on fire.'

He tossed the letter back on the blotting-pad, and rose
and went and stood opposite the blazing peats.  This
movement aroused the attention of the little terrier, who
immediately jumped up from his snooze and began to
whimper his expectation.  Strang's heart smote him.

'God bless us!' he said aloud.  'When a lass gets
into a man's head, there's room for nothing else; he'll
forget his best friends.  Here, Harry, come along, and I'll
get ye your supper, my man.'

He folded up the blotting-pad and locked it in the drawer,
blew out the candles, called Harry to follow him into the
kitchen, where the small terrier was duly provided for and
left on guard.  Then he sought out his own small room.
He was whistling as he went; and, if he dreamt of
anything that night, be sure it was not of the might and
majesty of Sir Alexander Stuart of Glengask and Orosay.
These verses to Meenie were but playthings and
fancies—for idle hours.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ON THE LOCH`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III.


.. class:: center medium bold

   ON THE LOCH.

.. vspace:: 2

A considerable wind arose during the night; Mr. Hodson
did not sleep very well; and, lying awake towards morning,
he came to the conclusion that he had been befooled, or
rather that he had befooled himself, with regard to that
prodigy of a gamekeeper.  He argued with himself that
his mental faculties must have been dulled by the long
day's travel; he had come into the inn jaded and tired;
and then finding himself face to face with an ordinarily
alert and intrepid intellect, he had no doubt exaggerated
the young man's abilities, and made a wonder of him where
no wonder was needed.  That he was a person of considerable
information and showed common sense was likely
enough.  Mr. Hodson, in his studies of men and things,
had heard something of the intelligence and education to
be found among the working classes in Scotland.  He had
heard of the handloom weavers who were learned botanists;
of the stone-masons who were great geologists; of the village
poets who, if most of their efforts were but imitations of
Ferguson and Burns and Tannahill, would here and there,
in some chance moment of inspiration, sing out some true
and pathetic song, to be taken to the hearts of their
countrymen, and added to a treasure-store of rustic
minstrelsy such as no other nation in the world has ever
produced.  At the same time he was rather anxious to meet
Strang again, the better to get the measure of him.  And
as he was also curious to see what this neighbourhood into
which he had penetrated looked like, he rose betimes in
the morning—indeed, before the day was fully declared.

The wind still moaned about the house, but outside
there was no sign of any storm; on the contrary, everything
was strangely calm.  The lake lay a dark lurid purple
in the hollow of the encircling hills; and these, along the
eastern heavens, were of the deepest and softest olive
green; just over them was a line of gleaming salmon-red,
keen and resplendent as if molten from a furnace; and
over that again soft saffron-dusky clouds, deepening in tone
the higher they hung in the clear pale steel hues of the
overhead sky.  There was no sign of life anywhere—nothing
but the birch woods sloping down to the shore;
the moorland wastes of the lower hills; and above these
the giant bulk and solemn shadows of Ben Clebrig,[#] dark
against the dawn.  It was a lovely sight; he began to
think he had never before in his life felt himself so much
alone.  But whence came the sound of the wind that
seemed to go moaning down the strath towards the purple
lake?

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent small

[#] That is, the Hill of the Playing Trout.

.. vspace:: 1

Well, he made no doubt that it was up towards the
north and west that the storm was brewing; and he
remembered that a window in the sitting-room below looked
in that direction; there he would be able to ascertain
whether any fishing was practicable.  He finished his
dressing and went down.  The breakfast table was laid; a
mighty mass of peats was blazing cheerfully in the spacious
fireplace.  And the storm?  Why, all the wide strath on
this northern side of the house was one glow of yellow
light in the now spreading sunrise; and still farther away
in the north the great shoulders of Ben Loyal[#] had caught
a faint roseate tinge; and the same pale and beautiful
colour seemed to transfuse a large and fleecy cloud that
clung around the snow-scarred peak.  So he came to
the conclusion that in this corner of the glen the wind
said more than it meant; and that they might adventure
on the loch without risk of being swamped or blown
ashore.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent small

[#] More properly Ben Laoghal, the Hill of the Calves.

.. vspace:: 1

The slim tall Highland lass made her appearance with
further plenishings for the table, and 'Good moarning!'
she said, in her pretty way, in answer to his greeting.

'Say, now, has that man come down from Tongue yet?'

'No, sir,' said Nelly, 'he wass no come down yet.'  And
then she looked up with a demure smile.  'They
would be keeping the New Year at Tongue last night.'

'Keeping the New Year on the 14th of January?'

'It's the twelfth is the usual day, sir,' she explained,
'but that was Saturday, and they do not like a Saturday
night, for they have to stop at twelve o'clock, and so most
of them were for keeping it last night.'

'Oh, indeed.  Then the festive gentleman won't show
up to-day?'

'But it is of no matter whateffer whether he comes or
no; for I am sure that Ronald will be willing to lend a
hand.  Oh, I am sure of it.  I will ask him myself.'

'*You* will ask him?' was Mr. Hodson's internal soliloquy.
'It is to *you* he will grant the favour.  Indeed!'

He fixed his eyes on her,

'He is a good-looking young fellow, that Ronald.'

She did not answer that; she was putting the marmalade,
and the honey, and the cream on the table.

'He is not married?'

'No, sir.'

'Well, now, when he thinks about getting married, I
suppose he'll pretty well have his choice about here?'

'Indeed there iss others besides him,' said Nelly rather
proudly, but her face was red as she opened the door.

Well, whether it was owing to the intervention of Nelly
or not, as soon as Mr. Hodson was ready to start he found
Ronald waiting for him without; and not only that, but he
had already assumed command of the expedition, having
sent the one gillie who had arrived down to bale the boat.
And then he would overhaul Mr. Hodson's fishing-gear—examining
the rods, testing the lines and traces, and rejecting
all the spoon baits, angels, sand-eels, and what not, that
had been supplied by the London tackle-maker, for two or
three of the familiar phantom minnows.  Mr. Hodson
could scarcely believe that this was the same man who last
night had been discussing the disestablishment of state
churches and the policy of protecting native industries.
He had not a word for anything but the business before
him; and the bold fashion in which he handled those
minnows, all bristling with hooks, or drew the catgut traces
through his fingers (Mr. Hodson shivered, and seemed to
feel his own fingers being cut to the bone), showed that he was
as familiar with the loch as with the hillside or the kennel.

'I'm not much on salmon-fishing myself,' the American
remarked modestly.

'It's rather early in the season, sir, I'm afraid,' was the
answer.  'But we might get a fish after all; and if we do
it'll be the first caught in Scotland this year, I warrant.'

They set out and walked down to the shore of the loch,
and there Mr. Hodson seated himself on the gunwale of
the flat-bottomed coble, and watched the two men putting
the rods together and fixing the traces.  The day had now
declared itself; wild and stormy in appearance, but fair on
the whole; great floods of sunshine falling suddenly on the
yellow slopes and the russet birch woods; and shadows
coming as rapidly across the far heights of Clebrig, steeping
the mountains in gloom.  As for the gillie who had been
proof against the seductions of keeping the New Year, and
who was now down on one knee, biting catgut with his
teeth, he was a man as tall and as sallow as Mr. Hodson
himself, but with an added expression of intense melancholy
and hopelessness.  Or was that but temporary?

'Duncan doesna like that boat,' Ronald said, glancing
at Mr. Hodson.

The melancholy man did not speak, but shook his head
gloomily.

'Why?'

As the gillie did not answer, Ronald said—

'He thinks there is no luck with that boat.'

'That boat?' the gillie said, with an angry look towards
the hapless coble.  'She has the worst luck of any boat in
Sutherland—*tam her*,' he added, under his breath.

'In my country,' the American said, in his slow way,
'we don't mind luck much; we find perseverance about as
good a horse to win with in the end.'

He was soon to have his perseverance tried.  Everything
being ready they pushed off from the shore, Ronald
taking stroke oar, the gillie at the bow; Mr. Hodson left
to pay out the lines of the two rods, and fix these in the
stern, when about five-and-thirty yards had gone forth.  At
first, it is true, he waited and watched with a trifle of anxiety.
He wanted to catch a salmon; it would be something to
write about to his daughter; it would be a new experience
for himself.  But when time passed and the boat was slowly
rowed along the loch at a measured distance from the shore,
without any touch of anything coming to make the point
of either rod tremble, he rather gave up his hope in that
direction, and took to talking with Ronald.  After all, it
was not salmon-fishing alone that had brought him into
these wilds.

'I suppose it is really too early in the season,' he
observed, without much chagrin.

'Rayther,' said Ronald.

'Rawther,' said the melancholy gillie.

But at that instant something happened that startled
every one of them out of their apathy.  The top of one of
the rods was violently pulled at, and then there was a long
shrill yell of the reel.

'There he is, sir! there he is, sir!' Ronald called.

Mr. Hodson made a grab blindly—for he had been
looking at the scenery around—at one of the rods.  It was
the wrong one.  But before he knew where he was, Ronald
had got hold of the other and raised the top so as to keep
a strain on the fish.  The exchange of the rods was effected
in a moment.  Then when Ronald had wound in the other
line and put the rod at the bow, he took to his oar again,
leaving Mr. Hodson to fight his unknown enemy as best
he might, but giving him a few words of direction from
time to time, quietly, as if it were all a matter of course.

'Reel in, sir, reel in—keep an even strain on him—let
him go—let him go if he wants——'

Well, the fish was not a fierce fighter; after the first
long rush he scarcely did anything; he kept boring
downwards, with a dull, heavy weight.  It seemed easy work;
and Mr. Hodson—triumphant in the hope of catching his
first salmon—was tempted to call aloud to the melancholy
gillie—

'Well, Duncan, how about luck now?'

'I think it's a kelt,' the man answered morosely.

But the sinister meaning of this reply was not understood.

'I don't know what you call him,' said Mr. Hodson,
holding on with both hands to the long, lithe grilse-rod
that was bent almost double.  'Celt or Saxon, I don't
know; but I seem to have got a good grip of him.'

'Then he heard Ronald say, in an undertone, to the
gillie—

'A kelt?  No fears.  The first rush was too heavy for
that.'

And the gillie responded sullenly—

'He's following the boat like a cow.'

'What is a kelt, anyway?' the American called out.
'Something that swims, I suppose?  It ain't a man?'

'I hope it's no a kelt, sir,' said Ronald—but doubtfully.

'But what is a kelt, then, when he's at home?'

'A salmon, sir, that hasna been down to the sea; we'll
have to put him back if he is.'

Whirr! went the reel again; the fish, kelt or clean
salmon, had struck deep down.  But the melancholy
creature at the bow was taking no further interest in the
fight.  He was sure it was a kelt.  Most likely the minnow
would be destroyed.  Maybe he would break the trace.
But a kelt it was.  He knew the luck of this 'tammed'
boat.

The struggle was a tedious one.  The beast kept boring
down with the mere force of its weight, but following the
coble steadily; and even Ronald, who had been combating
his own doubts, at length gave in: he was afraid it was a
kelt.  Presently the last suspicion of hope was banished.
With a tight strain on him, the now exhausted animal
began to show near the surface of the water—his long
eel-like shape and black back revealing too obviously what
manner of creature he was.  But this revelation had no
effect on the amateur fisherman, who at last beheld the
enemy he had been fighting with so long.  He grew quite
excited.  A kelt?—he was a beautiful fine fish!  If he
could not be eaten he could be stuffed!  Twenty pounds
he was, if an ounce!—would he throw back such a trophy
into the loch?

Ronald was crouching in the stern of the boat, the big
landing-net in his hand, watching the slow circling of the
kelt as it was being hauled nearer and nearer.  His
sentiments were of a different kind.

'Ah, you ugly brute!—ah, you rascal!—ah—ah!'—and
then there was a deep scoop of the landing-net; and the
next minute the huge eel-like beast was in the bottom of
the boat, Duncan holding on to its tail, and Ronald gripping
it by the gills, while he set to work to get the minnow out
of its jaws.  And then without further ado—and without
stopping to discuss the question of stuffing—the creature
was heaved into the water again, with a parting benediction
of 'Bah, you brute!'  It took its leave rapidly.

'Well, it's a pity, sir,' Ronald said; 'that would have been
a twenty-four-pound salmon if he had been down to the sea.'

'It's the luck of this tammed boat,' Duncan said gloomily.

But Mr. Hodson could not confess to any such keen
sense of disappointment.  He had never played so big a
fish before, and was rather proud that so slight a grilse-rod
and so slender a line should (of course, with some discretion
and careful nursing on his part) have overmastered so big
a beast.  Then he did not eat salmon; there was no loss
in that direction.  And as he had not injured the kelt in
any way, he reflected that he had enjoyed half-an-hour's
excitement without doing harm to anything or anybody,
and he was well content.  So he paid out the two lines
again, and set the rods, and began to renew his talk with
Ronald touching the customs connected with the keeping
of the New Year.

After all, it was a picturesque kind of occupation, kelts
or no kelts.  Look at the scene around them—the lapping
waters of the loch, a vivid and brilliant blue when the skies
were shining fair, or black and stormy again when the clouds
were heavy in the heavens; and always the permanent
features of the landscape—the soft yellows of the lower
straths, where the withered grass was mixed with the orange
bracken; the soft russet of the leafless birch woods fringing
the shores of the lake; the deep violet shadows of Ben
Clebrig stretching up into the long swathes of mist; and
then the far amphitheatre of hills—Ben Hee, and Ben
Hope, and Ben Loyal—with sunlight and shade inter-mingling
their ethereal tints, but leaving the snow-streaks
always sparkling and clear.  He got used to the monotony
of the slow circling of the upper waters of the lake.  He
forgot to watch the points of the rods.  He was asking all
kinds of questions about the stags and the hinds, about
ptarmigan, and white hares, and roe, about the price of
sheep, the rents of crofts, the comparative wages of gillies,
and shepherds, and foresters, and keepers, and stalkers, and
the habits and customs of land-agents and factors.  And at
length, when it came to lunch-time, and when they landed,
and found for him a sheltered place under the lee of a big
rock, and when Ronald pointed out to him a grassy bank,
and said rather ruefully—

'I dinna like to see that place empty, sir.  That's where
the gentlemen have the salmon laid out, that they may look
at them at lunch-time—'

Mr. Hodson, as he opened the little basket that had
been provided for him, answered cheerfully enough—

'My good friend, don't you imagine that I feel like
giving it up yet.  I'm not finished with this lake, and I'll
back perseverance against luck any day.  Seems to me
we've done very well so far; I'm con-tent.'

By and by they went back into the coble again, and
resumed their patient pursuit; and there is little doubt that
by this time Ronald had come to the conclusion that this
stranger who had come amongst them was a singularly odd
and whimsical person.  It was remarkable enough that he
should have undertaken this long and solitary journey in
order to fish for salmon, and then show himself quite
indifferent as to whether he got any or not; and it was
scarcely human for any one to betray no disappointment
whatever when the first fish caught proved to be a kelt;
but it was still stranger that a man rich enough to talk
about renting a deer-forest should busy himself with the
petty affairs of the very poorest people around.  Why, he
wanted to know how much Nelly the housemaid could
possibly save on her year's wages; whether she was supposed
to lay by something as against her wedding-day; or whether
any of the lads about would marry her for her pretty face
alone.  And when he discovered that Mr. Murray, the
innkeeper, was about to give a New Year supper and dance
to the lads and lasses of the neighbourhood, he made no
scruple about hinting plainly that he would be glad of an
invitation to join that festive party.

'Not if I'm going to be anything of a wet blanket,' he
said candidly.  'My dancing days are over, and I'm not
much in the way of singing; but I'll tell them an American
story; or I'll present them with a barrel of whisky—if that
will keep the fun going.'

'I'm sure they'll be very glad, sir,' Ronald said, 'if ye
just come and look on.  When there's gentlemen at the
Lodge, they generally come down to hear the pipes, and
the young gentlemen have a dance too.'

'What night did you say?'

'Monday next, sir.'

Well, he had only intended remaining here for a day or
two, to see what the place was like; but this temptation
was too great.  Here was a famous opportunity for the
pursuit of his favourite study—the study of life and manners.
This, had Ronald but known it, was the constant and
engrossing occupation that enabled this contented traveller
to accept with equanimity the ill-luck of kelt-catching; it
was a hobby he could carry about with him everywhere;
it gave a continuous interest to every hour of his life.  He
cared little for the analyses of science; he cared less for
philosophical systems; metaphysics he laughed at; but
men and women—the problems of their lives and surroundings,
their diverse fortunes and aspirations and dealings
with each other—that was the one and constant subject
that engrossed his interest.  No doubt there was a little
more than this; it was not merely as an abstract study
that he was so fond of getting to know how people lived.
The fact was that, even after having made ample provision
for his family, he still remained possessed of a large fortune;
his own expenditure was moderate; and he liked to go
about with the consciousness that here or there, as occasion
served, he could play the part of a little Providence.  It
was a harmless vanity; moreover, he was a shrewd man,
not likely to be deceived by spurious appeals for charity.
Many was the young artist whom he had introduced to
buyers; many the young clerk whom he had helped to a
better situation; more than one young woman in the
humblest of circumstances had suddenly found herself
enabled to purchase her wedding outfit (with a trifle over,
towards the giving her greater value in her lover's eyes),
through the mysterious benevolence of some unknown
benefactor.  This man had been brought up in a country
where every one is restlessly pushing forward; and being
possessed of abundant means, and a friendly disposition,
it seemed the most natural thing in the world that here or
there, at a fitting opportunity, he should lend a helping
hand.  And there was always this possibility present to
him—this sense of power—as he made those minute
inquiries of his into the conditions of the lives of those
amongst whom he chanced to be living.

The short winter day was drawing to a close; the
brilliant steely blue of the driven water had given place
to a livid gray; and the faint gleams of saffron-yellow
were dying out in the western skies.

'Suppose we'd better be going home now,' Mr. Hodson
remarked at a venture, and with no great disappointment in
his tone.

'I'm afraid, sir, there's no much chance now,' Ronald said.

'We must call again; they're not at home to-day,' the
other remarked, and began with much complacency to reel
in one of the lines.

He was doing so slowly, and the men were as slowly
pulling in for the shore in the gathering dusk, when *whirr!*
went the other reel.  The loud and sudden shriek in this
silence was a startling thing; and no less so was the
springing into the air—at apparently an immense distance
away—of some creature, kelt or salmon, that fell into the water
again with a mighty splash.  Instinctively Mr. Hodson had
gripped this rod, and passed the other one he had been
reeling in to Strang.  It was an anxious moment.  *Whirr!*
went another dozen yards of line; and again the fish sprang
into the air—this time plainly visible.

'A clean fish, sir! a clean fish!' was the welcome cry.

But there was no time to hazard doubts or ask questions;
this sudden visitor at the end of the line had not at all
made up his mind to be easily captured.  First of all he
came sailing in quietly towards the boat, giving the
fisherman all he could do to reel in and keep a strain on him;
then he whirled out the line so suddenly that the rod was
nearly bent double; and then, in deep water, he kept
persistently sulking and boring, refusing to yield an inch.
This was a temporary respite.

'Well, now, is this one all right?' Mr. Hodson called
out—but he was rather bewildered, for he knew not what
this violent beast might not be after next, and the gathering
darkness looked strange, the shadows of Clebrig overhead
seeming to blot out the sky.

'A clean fish, sir,' was the confident answer.

'No doubt o' that, sir,' even the melancholy Duncan
admitted; for he foresaw a dram now, if not a tip in
actual money.

Then slowly and slowly the salmon began to yield to
the strain on him—which was considerable, for this was the
heavier of the two rods—and quickly the line was got in,
the pliant curve of the rod remaining always the same;
while Mr. Hodson flattered himself that he was doing very
well now, and that he was surely becoming the master of
the situation.  But the next instant something happened
that his mind was not rapid enough to comprehend:
something dreadful and horrible and sudden: there was a
whirring out of the reel so rapid that he had to lower the
point of the rod almost to the water; then the fish made
one flashing spring along the surface—and this time he saw
the creature, a gleam of silver in the dusk—and then, to
his unspeakable dismay and mortification, he felt the line
quite slack.  He did utter a little monosyllable.

'He's off, sir,' the melancholy gillie said in a tone of
sad resignation.

'Not a bit, sir, not a bit!  Reel in, quick!' Ronald
called to him: and the fisherman had sense enough to
throw the rod as far back as he could to see if there was
yet some strain on it.  Undoubtedly the fish was still
there.  Moreover, this last cantrip seemed to have taken
the spirit out of him.  By and by, with a strong, steady
strain on him, he suffered himself to be guided more
and more towards the boat, until, now and again, they
could see a faint gleam in the dark water; and now
Ronald had relinquished his oar, and was crouching down
in the stern—this time not with the landing-net in his
hand, but with the bright steel clip just resting on the
gunwale.

'He's showing the white feather now, sir; give him a
little more of the butt.'

However, he had not quite given in yet: each time he
came in sight of the boat he would make another ineffectual
rush, but rarely getting down deeper than three or four
yards.  And then, with a short line and the butt well
towards him, he began to make slow semicircles this way
and that; and always he was being steadily hauled nearer
the coble; until with one quick dip and powerful upward
pull Ronald had got him transfixed on the gaff and
landed—the huge, gleaming, beautiful silver creature!—in the
bottom of the boat.

'Well done, sir!—a clean fish!—a beauty—the first
caught in Scotland this year, I know!'—these were the
exclamations he heard now; but he scarcely knew how it
had all happened, for he had been more excited than he
was aware of.  He felt a vague and general sense of
satisfaction; wanted to give the men a glass of whisky, and had
none to give them; thought that the capture of a salmon
was a noble thing; would have liked his daughter Carry
to hear the tidings at once; and had a kind of general
purpose to devote the rest of that year to salmon-fishing in
the Highlands.  From this entrancement he was awakened
by a dispute between the two men as to the size of the fish.

'He's twelve pounds, and no more,' the melancholy
Duncan said, eyeing him all over.

'Look at his shoulders, man,' Ronald rejoined.  'Fourteen
pounds if he's an ounce.  Duncan, lad, ye've been
put off your guessing by the sight of the kelt.'

'He's a good fish whateffer,' Duncan was constrained
to admit—for he still foresaw that prospect of a dram when
they returned to the inn, with perhaps a more substantial
handselling of good luck.

Of course, they could do no more fishing that afternoon,
for it was nearly dark; but it was wonderful how the
capture of this single salmon seemed to raise the spirits of
the little party as they got ashore and walked home.  There
was a kind of excitement in the evening air.  They talked
in a rapid and eager way—about what the fish had done;
what were the chances of such and such a rush; the
probable length of time it had been up from the sea; the
beauty of its shape; the smallness of its head; the
freshness of its colour, and so forth—and there was a kind of
jubilation abroad.  The first fish caught in Scotland that
year!—of course, it must be packed forthwith and sent
south to his daughter Carry and her friends.  And Mr. Hodson
was quite facetious with the pretty Nelly when she
came in to lay the table for dinner; and would have her
say whether she had not yet fixed her mind on one or other
of these young fellows around.  As for the small hamlet of
Inver-Mudal, it was about as solitary and forlorn a
habitation as any to be found in the wilds of northern Scotland;
and he was there all by himself; but with the blazing
peat-fire, and the brilliant white cloth on the dinner-table, and
the consciousness that the firm, stout-shouldered, clean-run
fourteen-pounder was lying in the dairy on a slab of cold
stone, he considered that Inver-Mudal was a most enjoyable
and sociable and comfortable place, and that he had not
felt himself so snug and so much at home for many and
many a day.





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   CHAPTER IV.


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   A LETTER.

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After dinner he found himself with a pretty long evening
before him, and thought he could not do better than
devote the major part of it to writing to his daughter.  He
would not confess to himself that he wanted her to know
at once that he had caught his first salmon; that was but
a trivial incident in the life of a philosopher and student
of mankind; still she would be glad to hear of his
adventures; and it was not an unpleasant way of passing the
time.  So he wrote as follows:—

'MY DARLING CARRY—You will be rejoiced to learn that
I have discovered a harbour of refuge for you, where that
minute organ you call your mind may lay aside its heaviest
load of trouble.  Here, at last, is one corner of Europe where
you need have no fear of anybody mistaking you for one
of the Boston girls of fiction; indeed you might go about
all day talking your beloved Texas with impunity; although,
my dear young lady, that is a habit you would do well to
drop, for sooner or later it will get you into trouble when
you are least expecting it.  But short of scalping children
or using a bowie-knife for a fork, I think you might do
or say anything you pleased here; it is the most out-of-the-world
sort of place; a community of fifteen or twenty, I
should guess, hidden away in a hole of a valley, and
separated from the rest of the universe by great ranges of
mountains and interminable miles of moorland.  The people
seem very friendly, but shy; and I don't quite catch on to
them yet, for their speech bothers me—scarcely any two
of them seem to have the same accent; but I hope to get
to know something more about them next Monday, when
they have a New Year celebration, which I am invited to
the same.  Would you like to join in?  By all means come
if you care to; the station is Lairg; wire, and I will meet
you there.  You will miss the wild excitement of paying
afternoon calls and drinking tea; but you will get sunlight
and fresh air into your lungs.  The talk about the fierce
weather is all nonsense.  There is a sprinkling of snow on
the higher hills, but the temperature is quite agreeable.
In any case I expect you to come here with me in March,
when the salmon-fishing will begin in earnest; and I have
no doubt you will have made the acquaintance of the
whole of the people in a couple of days, shy as they are.
There is another point I have not forgotten.  As you seem
determined to set yourself up for your lifetime with
reminiscences of your travels in Europe, I have had to consider
what you could carry away from here.  I am afraid that
Inver-Mudal jewellery wouldn't make much of a show;
and I haven't seen any shell necklaces or silk scarves or
blue pots about.  But what about a Highland maid?  I
suppose the N.Y. Customs officers wouldn't charge much
for that article of *vertu*.  Now the maid who waits on me
here is very pretty and gentle in manner; and I suppose
she could be induced to go—for a proper consideration;
and you could begin the training of her now, and have her
quite accomplished by the time we got home.  Sounds
rather like slavery, don't it?—but she would be going to
the land of the free, and the banner would wave over her.
She gets eighty dollars a year and her board; I'd go better
than that, if you took a fancy to her.

'But the most remarkable person here—perhaps it is
the contrast between his personal abilities and his position
that is the striking thing—is a deerstalker and gamekeeper
whom they familiarly call Ronald; and I confess that,
with all I had heard of the intelligence of the Scotch
peasantry, this fellow, before I had been talking with him
ten minutes, rather made me open my eyes.  And yet,
looking back over the different subjects we fell upon, I
don't know that he said anything so very remarkable on
any one of them.  I think it is rather the personal character
of the man that is impressive—the manliness and independence
of his judgment, and yet his readiness to consider
the other side if you can convince him; his frank (and, I
should say, foolish) recognition of the differences of social
position; and then a kind of curious self-respect he has
which refuses to allow him to become quite friendly, though
you may be willing enough to forget that you are talking
of taking a shooting on which he is one of the *employés*,
and anxious only to converse with him as man to man.
I'm afraid this is rather mixed, but you would have to see
him to understand quite well what manner of person he is—a
good-looking fellow too, well knit together, with a
keen, hard face, full of life and a half-concealed force of
humour.  I should judge he would make a pretty fair king
of good company in the unrestrained intercourse of a few
boon companions; and I imagine he has a hard head if
there should be any drinking going on.  What to do with
him I don't know.  It is absurd he should be where he is.
His brother has been to college, taken his degree, and is
now in the Scotch Church somewhere.  But this fellow
seems quite content to trap foxes and shoot gray crows,
and, in the autumn, look after the grouse-shooting and
deerstalking of other people.  A man of his brains would
not be in that position for a fortnight in our country.
Here everything is fixed.  He thinks it is *natural* for him
to be in a subservient position.  And yet there is a curious
independence about the fellow; I don't know what inducement
I could put before him to get him out of it.  Suppose
we said, "Come you with us to America, and we'll run
you for President;" I'm afraid he'd quote Kingsley in our
face, and be off to "where the dun deer lie."  In fact his
reverence for the star-spangled banner appears to be of a
mitigated description.  I found he knew more than I
expected about our wire-pulling gentry at home; but then,
on the other hand, I discovered that he knew nothing
about the necessity of protecting the industries of a young
country beyond what he had read in the English papers,
and you know what high old Mother Hubbardism that is.
Now I want to do something for this fellow, and don't know
how.  He's too good a man to be thrown away—a kind
of upper servant, as it were, of his lordship.  He has
plenty of ability and he has plenty of knowledge in a dozen
different directions, if they could only be *applied*.  But
then he is a dogged kind of a creature—he is not pliant;
if you can show him sufficient reason for changing he
might change, otherwise not one inch will he budge.  What
is the inducement to be?  It is useless offering him an
allotment of land in Nebraska; here he has miles and
miles of the most picturesque territory conceivable, of
which, save for a month or two in the autumn, he is the
absolute master.  He enjoys an ownership over these hills
and moors and lochs more obvious than that of the Duke
himself; he would not exchange that for the possession of a
bit of table-land on the Platte Valley, unless he were a fool,
and that he is far from being.  The Presidentship?  Well, I
waved your beloved banner over him, but he didn't enthuse
worth a cent.  However, I must cast about and see what is
to be done with him, for I am really interested in the man.'

At this moment there was a tapping at the door, and
Nelly appeared with a huge armful of peats, which she
began to build up dexterously in the fireplace, always
leaving a central funnel open.

'Say, my girl, when will this letter go south?' Mr. Hodson
asked.

'To-morrow moarning,' was the answer.

'And the fish, too?'

'Yes, sir, by the mail cart.'

'Has Duncan packed it in the rushes yet?'

'Oh no, sir, Ronald will do that; he can do it better
as any of them; he would not let any one else do it, for
they're saying it iss the first fish of the year, and he's very
proud of your getting the fish, sir.'

'*Ich auch!*' observed Mr. Hodson to himself; and he
would probably have continued the conversation, but that
suddenly a strange noise was heard, coming from some
distant part of the inn—a harsh, high, note, all in monotone.

'What's that now, Nelly?'

'It will be Ronald tuning his pipes,' said she, as she
was going to the door.

'Oh, he can play the pipes too?'

'Indeed, yes, sir; and better as any in Sutherland, I
hef heard them say,' she added.

Just as she opened the door the drones and chanter
broke away into a shrill and lively march that seemed to
flood the house with its penetrating tones.

'I think it's "Dornoch Links" he's playing,' Nelly said,
with a quiet smile, 'for there's some of the fisher-lads come
through on their way to Tongue.'

She left then; but the solitary occupant of the sitting-room
thought he could not do better than go to the door
and listen for a while to this strange sort of music, which
he had never heard played properly before.  And while he
could scarcely tell one tune from another except by the
time—the slow, wailing, melancholy Lament, for example,
was easily enough distinguished from the bright and lively
Strathspey—here and there occurred an air—the '79th's
Farewell,' or the 'Barren Rocks of Aden,' or the 'Pibroch
of Donald Dhu,' had he but known the names of them—which
had a stately and martial ring about it; he guessed
that it was meant to lead the tramp of soldiers.  And he
said to himself—

'Here, now, is this fellow, who might be piper to a
Highland regiment, and I daresay all the use he makes of
his skill is to walk up and down outside the dining-room
window of the Lodge and play to a lot of white-kneed
Englishmen when they come down for the autumn shooting.'

He returned to his letter.

'I have the honour to inform you that the first salmon
caught on any Scotch loch this year was caught by me this
afternoon, and to-morrow will be on its way to you.  If
you don't believe the story, look at the salmon itself for
evidence.  And as regards this loch-fishing, it appears to
me you might have a turn at it when we come up in March—taking
one of the two rods; a little practice with Indian
clubs meanwhile would enable you to make a better fight
of it when you have to keep a continuous strain on a
fourteen-pound fish for twenty minutes or half an hour.
You must have some amusement or occupation; for there
is no society—except, by the way, the doctor's daughter,
who might be a companion for you.  I have not seen her
yet; but the handmaiden I have mentioned above informs
me that she is "a ferry pretty young lady, and ferry much
thought of, and of a ferry great family too."  I should not
imagine, however, that her Highland pride of blood would
bar the way against your making her acquaintance; her
father is merely the parish doctor—or rather, the district
doctor, for he has either two or three parishes to look
after—and I don't suppose his emoluments are colossal.  They
have a pretty cottage; it is the swell feature of the village,
if you can call the few small and widely scattered houses a
village.  You could practise Texas talk on her all day
long; I daresay she wouldn't know.

'Good-night; it's rather sleepy work being out in that
boat in the cold.  Good-night, good-night; and a kiss from
the Herr Papa.'

Well, by this time the fisher-lads had left the inn and
were off on the way to Tongue—and glad enough to have
a moonlight night for the weary trudge.  Ronald remained
behind for a while, drinking a glass of ale with the
inn-keeper; and generally having to keep his wits about him,
for there was a good deal of banter going on.  Old John
Murray was a facetious person, and would have it that Nelly
was setting her cap at Ronald; while the blushing Nelly,
for her part, declared that Ronald was nothing but a poor
south-country body; while he in fair warfare had to retort
that she was 'as Hielan's a Mull-drover.'  The quarrel
was not a deadly one; and when Ronald took up his pipes
in order to go home, he called out to her in parting—

'Nelly, lass, see you get the lads to clean out the barn
ere Monday next; and put on your best ribbons, lassie;
I'm thinking they'll be for having a spring o' Tullochgorum.'

The pipes were over his shoulder as he walked away
along the moonlit road; but he did not tune up; he had
had enough playing for that evening.  And be sure that in
his mind there was no discontent because he had no
allotment of land on the Platte Valley, nor yet a place in a
Chicago bank, nor the glory of being pipe-major to a
Highland regiment.  He was perfectly content as he was; and
knew naught of these things.  If there was any matter
troubling him—on this still and moonlight night, as he
walked blithely along, inhaling the keen sweet air, and
conscious of the companionship of the faithful Harry—it
was that the jog-trot kind of tune he had invented for
certain verses did not seem to have sufficient definiteness
about it.  But then the verses themselves—as they kept
time to his tramp on the road—were careless and
light-hearted enough:

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   |  The blossom was white on the blackthorn tree,
   |    And the mavis was singing rarely;
   |  When Meenie, Love Meenie, walked out wi' me,
   |    All in the springtime early.
   |
   |  'Meenie, Love Meenie, your face let me see,
   |    Meenie, come answer me fairly;
   |  Meenie, Love Meenie, will you wed me,
   |    All in the springtime early?'
   |
   |  Meenie but laughed; and kentna the pain
   |    That shot through my heart fu' sairly:
   |  'Kind sir, it's a maid that I would remain,
   |    All in the springtime early.'
   |

And 'Hey, Harry, lad,' he was saying, as he entered
the cottage and went into the little parlour, where a candle
had been left burning, 'we'll have our supper together
now; for between you and me I'm just as hungry as a gled.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BEGINNINGS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V.


.. class:: center medium bold

   BEGINNINGS.

.. vspace:: 2

Next day promised to give them sharper work on the loch.
The weather had changed towards the morning; showers
of hail had fallen; and now all the hills around—Ben
Hee and Ben Hope and Ben Loyal—had their far peaks
and shoulders powdered over, while the higher slopes
and summit of the giant Clebrig were one solid mass of
white.  It was much colder, too; and the gusts of wind that
came hurling along Strath Terry[#] struck down on the loch,
spreading out like black fans, and driving the darkened
water into curling crisp foam.  It was a wild, changeable,
blowy morning; sunlight and gloom intermingled; and
ever the wind howled and moaned around the house, and
the leafless trees outside bent and shivered before the
wintry blast.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent small

[#] No doubt corrupted from *Strath Tairibh*,
the Strath of the Bull.

.. vspace:: 1

When the tall Highland lass brought in breakfast it
appeared that the recusant gillie had not yet come down
from Tongue; but it was no matter, she said; she would
call Ronald.  Now this exactly suited Mr. Hodson, who
wanted to have some further speech with the young man—in
view of certain far-reaching designs he had formed;
and what better opportunity for talk than the placid trolling
for salmon on the lake there?  But courtesy demanded
some small protest.

'I am afraid I cannot ask him a second day,' he
remarked.

'Oh,' said she (for she did not wish the gentleman to
imagine that she thought over much of the smart young
keeper), 'he ought to be ferry glad if he can be of use
to any one.  He is jist amusing himself with the other
lads.'

Which was strictly true at this moment.  On the little
plateau outside Ronald's cottage two or three of them were
standing together.  They had got a heavy iron ball, to
which was attached about a yard and a half of rope, and
one after another was trying who could launch this ball the
farthest, after swinging it three or four times round his
head.  It came to Ronald's turn.  He was not the most
thick-set of those young fellows; but he was wiry and
muscular.  He caught the rope with both hands, swung
the heavy weight round his head some four or five times—his
teeth getting ever and ever more firmly clenched the
while—and then away went the iron ball through the air,
not only far outstripping all previous efforts, but unluckily
landing in a wheelbarrow and smashing sadly a jacket
which one of the lads had thrown there when he entered
upon this competition.  When he somewhat ruefully took
up the rent garment, there was much ironical laughing;
perhaps that was the reason that none of them heard Nelly
calling.

'Ronald!'

The tall, slim Highland maid was pretty angry by this
time.  She had come out of the house without any
head-gear on; and the cold wind was blowing her yellow hair
about her eyes; and she was indignant that she had to
walk so far before attracting the attention of those idle lads.

'Ronald, do you hear!' she called; and she would not
move another yard towards them.

And then he happened to notice her.

'Well, lass, what is't ye want?'

'Come away at once!' she called, in not the most
friendly way.  'The gentleman wants you to go down to
the loch.'

But he was the most good-natured of all these young
fellows; the lasses about ordered him this way or that just
as they pleased.

'What!' he called to her, 'hasna Fraser come down
from Tongue yet?'

'No, he has not.'

'Bless us; the whisky must have been strong,' said he,
as he picked up his jacket.  'I'll be there in a minute,
Nelly.'

And so it was that when Mr. Hodson went into the
little front hall, he found everything in trim readiness for
getting down to the loch—the proper minnows selected;
traces tried; luncheon packed; and his heavy waterproof
coat slung over Ronald's arm.

'Seems you think I can't carry my own coat?' Mr. Hodson
said; for he did not like to see this man do anything
in the shape of servant work; whereas Ronald performed
these little offices quite naturally and as a matter of
course.

'I'll take it, sir,' said he; 'and if you're ready now we'll
be off.  Come along, Duncan.'

And he was striding away with his long deerstalker step,
when Mr. Hodson stopped him.

'Wait a bit, man; I will walk down to the loch with you.'

So Duncan went on, and the American and Ronald
followed.

'Sharp this morning.'

'Rayther sharp.'

'But this must be a very healthy life of yours—out in
the fresh air always—plenty of exercise—and so forth.'

'Just the healthiest possible, sir.'

'But monotonous a little?'

''Deed no, sir.  A keeper need never be idle if he
minds his business; there's always something new on hand.'

'Then we'll say it is a very enjoyable life, so long as
your health lasts, and you are fit for the work?'

This was apparently a question.

'Well, sir, the head stalker on the Rothie-Mount forest
is seventy-two years of age; and there is not one of the
young lads smarter on the hill than he is.'

'An exception, doubtless.  The betting is all against
your matching that record.  Well, take your own case:
what have you to look forward to as the result of all your
years of labour?  I agree with you that in the meantime it
is all very fine; I can understand the fascination of it, even,
and the interest you have in becoming acquainted with the
habits of the various creatures, and so forth.  Oh yes, I
admit that—the healthiness of the life, and the interest of
it; and I daresay you get more enjoyment out of the
shooting and stalking than Lord Ailine, who pays such a
preposterous price for it.  But say we give you a fairly long
lease of health and strength sufficient for the work: we'll
take you at sixty; what then?  Something happens—rheumatism,
a broken leg, anything—that cripples you.  You
are superseded; you are out of the running; what is to
become of you?'

'Well, sir,' said Ronald instantly, 'I'm thinking his
lordship wouldna think twice about giving a pension to a
man that had worked for him as long as that.'

It was a luckless answer.  For Mr. Hodson, whose first
article of belief was that all men are born equal, had come
to Europe with a positive resentment against the very
existence of lords, and a detestation of any social system
that awarded them position and prestige merely on account
of the accident of their birth.  And what did he find now?
Here was a young fellow of strong natural character, of
marked ability, and fairly independent spirit, so corrupted
by this pernicious system that he looked forward quite
naturally to being helped in his old age by his lordship—by
one of those creatures who still wore the tags and rags
of an obsolete feudalism, and were supposed to 'protect'
their vassals.  The House of Peers had a pretty bad time
of it during the next few minutes; if the tall, sallow-faced,
gray-eyed man talked with little vehemence, his slow,
staccato sentences had a good deal of keen irony in them.
Ronald listened respectfully.  And perhaps the lecture was
all the more severe that the lecturer had but little opportunity
of delivering it in his own domestic circle.  Truly it
was hard that his pet grievance won for him nothing but a
sarcastic sympathy there; and that it was his own daughter
who flouted him with jibes and jeers.

'Why, you know, pappa dear,' she would say as she
stood at the window of their hotel in Piccadilly, and
watched the carriages passing to and fro beneath her,
'lords may be bad enough, but you know they're not half
as bad as the mosquitoes are at home.  They don't worry
one half as much; seems to me you might live in this
country a considerable time and never be worried by one
of them.  Why, that's the worst of it.  When I left home,
I thought the earls and marquises would just be crowding
us; and they don't seem to come along at all.  I confess
they are a mean lot.  Don't they know well enough that
the first thing ['the fooist thing,' she said, of course; but
her accent sounded quite quaint and pretty if you happened
to be looking at the pretty, soft, opaque, dark eyes] the
first thing an American girl has to do when she gets to
Europe is to have a lord propose to her, and to reject him?
But how can I?  They won't come along!  It's just too
horrid for anything; for of course when I go back home
they'll say—"It's because you're not a Boston girl.
London's full of lords; but it's only Boston girls they run
after; and, poor things, they and their coronets are always
being rejected.  The noble pride of a Republican country;
wave the banner!"'

But here Mr. Hodson met with no such ill-timed and
flippant opposition.  Ronald the keeper listened
respectfully, and only spoke when spoken to; perhaps the
abstract question did not interest him.  But when it came
to the downright inquiry as to whether he, Strang,
considered his master, Lord Ailine, to be in any way whatever
a better man than himself, his answer was prompt.

'Yes, sir, he is,' he said, as they walked leisurely along
the road.  'He is a better man than me by two inches
round the chest, as I should guess.  Why, sir, the time
that I hurt my kneecap, one night we were coming down
Ben Strua, our two selves, nothing would hinder his
lordship but he must carry me on his back all the way
down the hill and across the burn till we reached the
shepherd's bothy.  Ay, and the burn in spate; and the
night as dark as pitch; one wrong step on the swing-bridge,
and both of us were gone.  There's Peter McEachran at
Tongue, that some of them think's the strongest man in
these parts; and I offered to bet him five shillings he
wouldna carry me across that bridge—let alone down the
hill—on a dark night.  But would he try?  Not a bit, sir.'

'I should think Peter Mac—what's his name?—was a
wiser man than to risk his neck for five shillings,'
Mr. Hodson said drily.  'And you—you would risk
yours—for what?'

'Oh, they were saying things about his lordship,' Ronald
said carelessly.

'Then he is not worshipped as a divinity by everybody?'
the American said shrewdly.

But the keeper answered, with much nonchalance—

'I suppose he has his ill-wishers and his well-wishers,
like most other folk; and I suppose, like most other folk,
he doesna pay ower great attention to what people say of
him.'

They did not pursue the subject further at this moment,
for a turn of the road brought them suddenly within sight
of a stranger, and the appearance of a stranger in these
parts was an event demanding silence and a concentration
of interest.  Of course, to Ronald Strang Miss Meenie
Douglas was no stranger; but she was obviously a source
of some embarrassment: the instant he caught sight of her
his face reddened, and as she approached he kept his eyes
fixed on the ground.  It was not that he was ashamed she
should see him acting the part of a gillie; for that he did
not care in the least, it was as much a part of his work as
anything else; what vexed him was lest some sign of
recognition should show the stranger gentleman that Miss
Douglas had formed the acquaintance of the person who
was at the moment carrying his waterproof and his
fishing-rods.  And he hoped that Meenie would have the sense to
go by without taking any notice of him; and he kept his
eyes on the road, and walked forward in silence.

'Who is she?' Mr. Hodson asked, in an undertone,
and with some astonishment, for he had no idea there
was any such neatly-dressed and pretty young lady in the
neighbourhood.

Ronald did not answer, and they drew nearer.  Indeed,
Meenie was looking quite beautiful this morning; for the
cold air had brightened up the colour in her cheeks; and
the wide-apart blue-gray eyes were clear and full of light;
and her brown hair, if it was tightly braided and bound
behind, had in front been blown about a little by the wind,
and here and there a stray curl appeared on the fair white
forehead.  And then again her winter clothing seemed to
suit the slight and graceful figure; she looked altogether
warm, and furry, and nice, and comfortable; and there
was a sensible air about her dress—the blue serge skirt,
the tight-fitting sealskin coat (but this was a present from
the laird of Glengask and Orosay) and the little brown
velvet hat with its wing of ptarmigan plumage (this was a
present not from Glengask, and probably was not of the
value of three halfpence, but she wore it, nevertheless,
when she was at her smartest).  And if Ronald thought
she was going to pass him by without a word, he was
mistaken.  It was not her way.  As she met them, one
swift glance of her Highland eyes was all she bestowed on
the stranger; then she said, pleasantly, as she passed—

'Good morning, Ronald.'

He was forced to look up.

'Good morning, Miss Douglas,' said he, with studied
respect; and they went on.

'Miss Douglas?' Mr. Hodson repeated, as soon as
they were beyond hearing.  'The doctor's daughter, I
presume?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But—but—I had no idea—why, she is a most uncommonly
pretty young lady—one of the most interesting
faces I have seen for many a day.  You did not say there
was such a charming young person in the place; why, she
adds a new interest altogether; I fancy my daughter won't
be long in making her acquaintance when she comes here.'

Indeed, as they got down to the boat, and the two men
set about getting the rods ready, all his talk was about the
pretty young lady he had seen; and he scarcely noticed
that Ronald, in answering these questions, showed a very
marked reserve.  He could not be got to speak of her
except in curt answers; perhaps he did not like to have
the melancholy Duncan listening; at all events, he showed
a quite absorbing interest in the phantom minnows, and
traces, and what not.  Moreover, when they got into the
boat, there was but little opportunity for conversation.
The day had become more and more squally; there was a
considerable sea on; it was all the two men could do to
keep sufficient way on the coble so that the phantoms
should spin properly.  Then every few minutes a rain-cloud
would come drifting across—at first mysterious and awful,
as if the whole world were sinking into darkness; then a
few big drops would patter about; then down came the
sharp clattering shower, only to be followed by a marvellous
clearing up again, and a burst of watery sunshine along the
Clebrig slopes.  But these changes kept Mr. Hodson
employed in sheltering himself from the rain while it lasted,
and then getting off his waterproof again lest perchance
there might come a salmon at one of the lines.  That event
did actually occur; and when they least expected it.  In
one of the heaviest of the squalls they had such a fight to
get the boat along that the minnows, sinking somewhat,
caught the bottom.  Of course the rowers had to back
down—or rather to drift down—to get the lines released;
and altogether the prospect of affairs seemed so unpromising—the
heavens darkening with further rain, the wind blowing
in sharper and sharper gusts, and the water coming heavily
over the bows—that Mr. Hodson called out that, as soon
as he had got the minnows free, they might as well run the
coble on to the land, and wait for calmer weather.  But
this was a lee shore.  The men were willing to give up for
a time—but not until they had got to the sheltered side;
so he was counselled to put out the lines again, slowly,
and they began anew their fight against the gale.  Well,
he was actually paying out the first of the lines with his
hand, when suddenly—and without any of the preliminary
warnings that usually tell of a salmon being after a
minnow—the line was snatched from his fingers, and out went the
reel with that sharp long shriek that sends the whole boat's
crew into an excitement of expectation.  But there was
no spring into the air away along there in the darkened
and plunging waters; as he rapidly got in his line, he
knew only of a dull and heavy strain; and the men had
to keep on with their hard pulling against the wind, for
the fish seemed following the boat in this sulky and heavy
fashion.

'What do you think?' Mr. Hodson said, half turning
round, and not giving plainer voice to his anxieties.

'I'm afraid it's a kelt, sir,' the dismal gillie answered.

'Looks like it, don't it?' the fisherman said rather
dolefully; for the fish showed no sign of life whatever.

'We'll see by and by,' was Ronald's prudent answer;
but even he was doubtful; the only good feature being
that, if the fish showed no fight, at least he kept a heavy
strain on the rod.

But it seemed as if everything was conspiring against
them.  The black heavens above them burst into a torrent
of rain; and with that came a squall that tore the water
white, and blew them down on the fish in spite of their
hardest efforts.  Shorter and shorter grew the line as it was
rapidly got in, and still the fish did not show; it was now
so near to the boat that any sudden movement on its part
was almost certain to produce a catastrophe.  Nor could
they drive the boat ashore; the beach was here a mass of
sharp stones and rocks; in three minutes the coble would
have been stove in.  With faces set hard the two men
pulled and pulled against the storm of wind and rain; and
Mr. Hodson—seated now, for he dared not attempt to stand
up, the boat was being thrown about so by the heavy
waves—could only get in a little more line when he had the
chance, and look helplessly on, and wait.

Then, all of a sudden, there was a long shrill shriek—heard
loud above the din of wind and water—continued
and continued, and in vain he tried to arrest this wild rush;
and then, some seventy or eighty yards away, there was a
great white splash among the rushing black waves—and
another—and another—and then a further whirling out of
some fifteen yards of line, until he glanced with alarm at
the slender quantity left on the reel.  But presently he
began to get some in again; the men were glad to let the
boat drift down slowly; harder and harder he worked at
the big reel, and at last he came to fighting terms with the
animal—kelt or salmon, as it might be—with some five-and-twenty
yards out, and the squall moderating a little, so that
the men could keep the boat as they wanted.  Nay, he
ventured to stand up now, wedging his legs and feet so that
he should not be suddenly thrown overboard; and it was
quite evident, from the serious purpose of his face, that all
possibility of this being a kelt had now been thrown aside.

'No kelt is he, Ronald?' he called aloud.

'Not a bit, sir!  There's no kelt about that one.  But
give him time; he's a good big fish, or I'm sore mistaken.'

They were far from the end yet, however.  The long rush
and the splashing had exhausted him for a while; and the
fisherman, with a firm application of the butt, thought he
could make the fish show himself; but still he kept boring
steadily down, sometimes making little angry rushes of a
dozen yards or so.  And then all of a sudden began some
wild cantrips.  There was another rush of ten or a dozen
yards; and a clear leap into the air—a beautiful, great,
silvery creature he looked amid all this hurrying gloom;
and then another downward rush; and then he came to the
surface again, and shook and tugged and struck with his tail
until the water was foaming white about him.  These were
a few terribly anxious seconds, but all went happily by,
and then it was felt that the worst of the fighting was over.
After that there was but the sullen refusal to come near
the boat—the short sheering off whenever he saw it or one
of the oars; but now, in the slow curves through the water,
he was beginning to show the gleam of his side; and
Ronald was crouching down in the stern, gaff in hand.

'Steady, sir, steady,' he was saying, with his eye on
those slow circles; 'give him time, he's no done yet; a
heavy fish, sir—a good fish that—twenty pounds, I'm
thinking—come along, my beauty, come along—*the butt
now, sir!*'  And then, as the great gleaming fish, head up,
came sheering along on its side, there was a quick dive of
the steel clip, and the next second the splendid creature
was in the bottom of the coble.

Mr. Hodson sank down on to his seat; it had been a long
fight—over half an hour; he was exhausted with the strain
of keeping himself balanced; and he was also (what he had
not perceived in this long spell of excitement) wet to the
skin.  He pulled out a spirit-flask from the pocket of his
waterproof—as ill-luck would have it, that useful garment
happened to be lying in the bottom of the boat when the
fight began—and gave the two men a liberal dram; he
then took a sip himself; and when there had been a general
quarrel over the size of the fish—nineteen the lowest,
twenty-two the highest guess—they began to consider what
they ought to do next.  The weather looked very ugly.  It
was resolved to get up to the head of the loch anyhow,
and there decide; and so the men took to their oars again,
and began to force their way through the heavy and
white-crested waves.

But long ere they had reached the head of the loch
Mr. Hodson had become aware of a cold feeling about his
shoulders and back, and quickly enough he came to the conclusion
that sitting in an open boat, with clothes wet through,
on a January day, did not promise sufficient happiness.  He
said they might put him ashore as soon as possible.

'Indeed, sir, it's no much use going on in this weather,'
Ronald said, 'unless maybe you were to try the fly.'

'I thought you said it was rather early for the fly.'

'Rayther early,' Ronald admitted.

'Rawther,' said Duncan.

'Anyhow,' observed Mr. Hodson, 'I don't feel like sitting
in this boat any longer in wet clothes.  I'm going back to
the inn right now; maybe the afternoon will clear up—and
then we might have another try.'

They got ashore at last, and Mr. Hodson at once started
off for the inn; and when the two men had got the rods
taken down, and the fish tied head and tail for the better
carrying of it, they set out too.  But Ronald seemed
unusually depressed and silent.  Where was the careless
joke—the verse of an idle song—with which he was wont to
brave the discomforts of wind and weather?  The two men
strode along without a word; and it was not likely that
Duncan the dismal should be the first to break the silence.
Nay, when they got to the inn, Ronald would not go in for
a minute or two, as was his custom, to see the fish weighed
and have a chat.  He went on to his own cottage; got the
key of the kennel; and presently he and the dogs were
leaving the little scattered hamlet, taking the lonely
moorland road that led away up the Mudal valley.

He knew not why he was so ill at ease; but something
had gone wrong.  Had his mind been disturbed and disquieted
by the American gentleman's plainly hinting to him
that he was living in a fool's paradise; and that old age, and
illness, and the possible ingratitude of his master were things
to be looked forward to?  Or was it that the sudden
meeting with Meenie, with this stranger looking on, seemed
to have revealed to him all at once how far away she was
from him?  If she and he had met, as every day they did,
and passed with the usual friendly greeting, it would all
have been quite simple and ordinary enough; but with this
stranger looking on,—and she appearing so beautiful and
refined and neatly dressed, and wearing moreover the
present given her by Glengask and Orosay—while he, on
the other hand, was carrying the gentleman's waterproof
and a bundle of rods—well, that was all different somehow.
And why had she said 'Good-morning!' with such a pointed
friendliness?  He did not wish this stranger to imagine that
Miss Douglas and he were even acquaintances.  And then
he thought that that very night he would burn all those
stupid verses he had written about her; that secret and
half-regretful joy of his—of imagining himself in a position
that would entitle him to address her so—was all too daring
and presuming.  It is true, she wore the ptarmigan's wing
she had begged him to get for her (and never in all the
years had he so gladly sped up the Clebrig slopes as when
she sent him on that errand), but that was a trifle; any
young lady, if she wanted such a thing, would naturally
ask the nearest gamekeeper.  And then the other young
lady—the American young lady—when she came, and
made Meenie's acquaintance: would not they be much
together?  Meenie would be still farther and farther away
then.  He would himself have to keep studiously aloof, if
in the generosity of her heart she wished to be as friendly
as ever.

Well, these were not very bitter or tragic thoughts; and
yet—and yet—there was something wrong.  He scarcely
knew what it was, but only that the little hamlet—as he
returned to it after a long and solitary wandering—did not
seem to be the simple and natural and happy place that it
used to be.  But one thing he was glad of.  The second
gillie had now arrived from Tongue.  Consequently his
services would no longer be needed in the coble; he would
return to his own ways; and be his own master.  And as
for companions?—well, Clebrig and he had long been
friends.





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.. _`A PROGRAMME`:

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   CHAPTER VI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A PROGRAMME.

.. vspace:: 2

That same evening little Maggie, having made herself as
smart and neat as possible, went along the dark road to the
doctor's house, was admitted, and forthwith passed upstairs
to Miss Douglas's own room.  It was an exceedingly small
apartment; but on this cold winter night it looked remarkably
warm and snug and bright, what with the red peats in
the fireplace, and the brilliant little lamp on the table; and
it was prettily decorated too, with evidences of feminine
care and industry everywhere about.  And Meenie herself
was there—in her gown of plain blue serge; and apparently
she had been busy, for the table was littered with patterns
and designs and knitting-needles and what not, while a large
mass of blue worsted was round the back of a chair, waiting
for the winding.

'Help me to clear the table, Maggie,' she said good-naturedly,
when her visitor entered, 'and then we will get
tea over: I declare I have so many things to think of that
I am just driven daft.'

And then she said—with some touch of anger—

'Do you know that I saw your brother—on a cold, wet
day like this—and he was walking along the road, with his
jacket open, and paying no heed at all to the weather?
Maggie, why do you not make him take some care of
himself?  In January—and he goes about as if it were
June!  How would you like it if he were to catch a bad
cold and have to take to his bed?  Why do you not make
him take care of himself?'

'He would only laugh at me,' the little Maggie said
ruefully.  'He doesna mind anything.  I do my best to
get his clothes dried when he comes in wet; but he doesna
like to be bothered—especially if he's writing or reading;
he says that a pipe keeps the harm away.  I'm sure if you
would speak to him, Meenie, he would take a great deal
more care.'

'What, me!' the girl said—and there was a touch of
colour in the pretty refined face; and then she added, with
a good-humoured smile, 'No, he would not mind what I
said, I know.  But it is little matter; for with such a
wilful man you can do nothing except by cunning.  Do you
see the wool there, Maggie?'

She laughed; but the little, red-haired, freckled girl
looked rather frightened.

'Oh no, Meenie, I dare not take it,' she said.  'He
would know I had not the money to buy all that wool; and
then he would ask; and I should be scolded—

'Nonsense, nonsense!' the other cried, in her friendly
way.  'Do you think a man would ask any such questions?
It would never occur to him at all!  When the jersey is all
knitted and complete, you will just say to him, "Ronald,
here is a jersey that I have knitted for you all by myself;
and you are to put it on whenever there is a cold morning;"
and you will see he will think your knitting it yourself
explains everything.  Ask about the wool?—he will never
think of such a thing.  If you hang the jersey on the nail
of his bedroom door, it will be all a matter of course; I
should not wonder, now, if he forgot to say "Thank you."'

'And then there is another thing,' Maggie said, rather
timidly and wistfully.  'How am I to tell him that I knitted
the jersey when you know that you will do the most of it?
For it is always that; you did nearly all the socks that we
gave to Ronald; and he thinks it was me.'

But here the good humour left Meenie Douglas's face—that
was suddenly grown red and embarrassed.

'How can you talk such foolishness?' she said, rather
sharply.  'If I show you here or there how you are to go
on, is that doing the knitting for you?  I wonder you have
no more sense, Maggie.  Of course, I will have to begin
the jersey for you; and if I cast on the stitches for the
width of the neck, what is that?  It is what any one would
do for you—Mrs. Murray, or one of the girls at the inn.
And I hope you are not going away with that idea in your
head; or sooner or later you will be telling somebody that
I am knitting a jersey for your brother—that would be a
fine thing!'

A timid appealing hand was put on her arm.

'I am sure that Ronald would rather never see or hear
of any jersey than have anything make you angry, Meenie.'

The trouble was over in a moment: the girl was
essentially quick and generous and kind-hearted; and this
small lassie was about her only companion.  Moreover, tea
was brought in at this moment by the maidservant; and so
the question of the proportion of work contributed by either
of them to Ronald's woollen gear was put aside.

'And what do you think of this now, Maggie?' the elder
said, with some eagerness in her face and eyes.  'You know
the great preparations they are making for Monday
night—the long barn is to be cleared; and they are going to have
a chimney made and a fireplace; and long tables all the
way down, and wooden forms to sit on; and some of the
lads, they say, are talking of a chandelier to be made out of
hoops, and candles stuck all the way round.  And all that
trouble for the grown-up folk!  Is it fair?  Oh, it is quite
absurd to have such a deal of trouble; and all for the
grown-up people.  Now, if Ronald would help me—and
you know he is such a favourite he always has his own way
with everybody—would it not be a fine thing to ask Mr. Murray
to leave all those preparations as they are for a day
or two—perhaps till Wednesday—and by that time we
could have messages sent to the farms round about, and all
the children brought in for a soirée?  Why should the
grown-up people have everything?  And there would be
nobody but ourselves,—that's Ronald and you and I,
Maggie,—for the children would have more freedom and amusement
that way—you see my father is not likely to be back
by then, or we might ask him—and then, with nearly a
week, we could send to Tongue for a great many
things—and—and—have a splendid children's party just as fine as
fine could be.'

She was quite excited over this matter.

'Look,' she said, going and fetching a sheet of paper
which was written over in a bold, large hand (her own
handwriting was small and neat enough, but this had been
assumed for so important a public purpose); 'look at the
programme—it is all guess work as yet, of course, for I
have not asked Ronald; but I am sure he will help us;
and if he says it is to be done, then everything will go
right—they will keep the barn for us; and the people will send
the children; and those of them who can't go back will stay
the night at the inn.  I have saved my pocket-money for
months for it; but who could have expected such a chance—the
barn all fitted up, and the fire to keep it warm, and
the chandelier?  There now, Maggie, what do you think?'

The little Maggie took up the big sheet of paper, wondering;
for all this was a wild and startling project amid
the monotony of their life in this remote and small hamlet.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

   CHILDREN'S SOIREE.

.. class:: center

   *Inver-Mudal, Wednesday, January 23.*

.. class:: center

   MR. RONALD STRANG in the Chair.

.. class:: center

   PROGRAMME.

.. class:: noindent

   *Psalm* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . *Old Hundredth*.

.. class:: center

   *Service of Tea and Cake.*

.. class:: noindent

   *Address* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHAIRMAN.

.. class:: center

   *Service of Raisins.*

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   *Song*  . . . 'My love she's but a lassie yet.' . . MR. RONALD STRANG.
   *Reading* . . 'The Cameronian's Dream.' . . . . . . Miss M. DOUGLAS.
   *Song*  . . . 'O dinna cross the burn, Willie.' . . MR. RONALD STRANG.
   *Pipe-Music*  'Lord Breadalbane's March.' . . . . . MR. RONALD STRANG.

.. class:: center

   *Service of Oranges.*

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   *Hymn*  . . . 'Whither, pilgrims, are you going?' . . CHILDREN.
   *Duet*  . . . 'Huntingtower.' . . . . . . . . . . . . { Miss M. DOUGLAS
   \                                                      { & Miss M. STRANG.

.. vspace:: 2

But at this point Maggie broke into pure affright.

'Oh, Meenie!' she cried—'how can I?—-before them all!'

'But only before children!' was the quick remonstrance.
'Would you have Ronald do everything?  Why, look—an
address—a song—a song—a march on the pipes—is he
to have no rest at all?'

'But you, Meenie—you can sing so well and without
trouble—I know I will spoil everything——'

'No, no, you will spoil nothing; and we will get through
very well.'

'Ferry well,' she said, in spite of her Edinburgh birth;
and she was evidently vastly proud of her skill in drawing
up so brilliant and varied a programme.  Maggie continued
her reading—but now in some alarm:

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   *Song* . . . . 'The Laird o' Cockpen.' . . . . . MR. RONALD STRANG.
   *Reading*  . . 'Jeanie Morrison.'  . . . . . . . Miss M. DOUGLAS.

.. class:: center

   *Service of Shortbread.*

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   *Song* . . . . 'Gloomy Winter's now awa'.' . . . MR. RONALD STRANG.
   *Song* . . . . 'Auld Lang Syne.' . . . . . . . . THE COMPANY.
   *Vote of thanks to the Chairman* . . . . . . . . Miss M. DOUGLAS.

.. class:: center

   *Finale.*

.. class:: noindent

   *Pipe-Music, 'Caidil gu lo'* (Sleep on till day) MR. RONALD STRANG.

.. vspace:: 2

Meenie looked and laughed with pleasure; she was quite
proud of her skill of arrangement.

'But, Meenie,' her companion said, 'why have ye not
put down a duet between you and Ronald?  He can sing
so well; and you; and that would be prettier far than
anything.  Do ye no mind the time we were a' away fishing
at Loch Loyal; and we were walking back; and Ronald
was telling us of what he saw in a theatre in Edinburgh?
And when he told us about the young lady's sweetheart
coming in a boat at night, and singing to her below the
window, you knew what it was well enough—and you tried
it together—oh! that was so fine!  Will ye no ask him to
sing that with ye?'

Meenie's face flushed somewhat; and she would have
evaded the question with a little laugh but that it was
repeated.  Whereupon she said—

'Why, now, Maggie, you have such a memory!  And I
have no doubt there was nonsense going on as we were
walking back from Loch Loyal—for a beautiful night it
was, in the middle of summer, when there is no darkness
at all in the skies all the night long.  Oh yes, I remember
it too; and very well; but it was amongst ourselves; we
are not going to have any such nonsense before other
people.  And if we were to sing "O hush thee, my baby,"
would not the children be thinking it was a hint for them
to go away to bed?  And besides, surely I have asked
Ronald to do enough for us; do you not think he will be
surprised, and perhaps angry, when he sees how often his
name comes there?'

'Indeed no, I'm sure,' Maggie said promptly.  'There's
just nothing that he wouldna do for you, Meenie.'

'But I will wait till I see him in a good humour,' said
her friend, laughing, 'before I ask him for so much.'

'Mich,' she said; unawares she had caught up a good
many of the local touches.

'And do ye think ye could ever find him in an ill-humour
wi' you?' Maggie said, almost reproachfully.

There was no answer to the question; the programme
was put aside.

'Very well, then,' Meenie said, 'we will suppose that is
settled.  And what is next?  Why, Maggie, if I had not
the brain of a prime minister, I could never get through so
many schemes.  Oh, this is it: of course we shall be very
much obliged to them if they lend us the barn and all its
fittings and we should do something for them in return.
And I am sure the lads will be thinking of nothing but the
carpentering; and the lasses at the inn will be thinking
only of the cooking of the supper, and their own ribbons
and frocks.  Now, Maggie, suppose you and I were to do
something to make the barn look pretty; I am sure Ronald
would cut us a lot of fir-branches, for there's nothing else
just now; and we could fix them up all round the barn;
and then—look here.'

She had got a lot of large printed designs; and a heap
of stiff paper of various colours.

'We will have to make paper flowers for them, because
there's none growing just now; and very well they will look
among the fir-branches.  Oh yes, very well indeed.  Red
and white roses do not grow on fir-branches—it does not
need the old man of Ross to tell us that; but they will
look very well whatever; and then large orange lilies, and
anything to make a bold show in so big a place.  And if
the lads are making a chandelier out of the hoops of a
barrel, we will ask them to let us put red worsted round
the hoops; that will look very well too.  For we must
do something to thank them, Maggie; and then, indeed,
when it comes to our turn, we will have the chance too
of looking at the decorations when we have the children's
soirée.'

Maggie looked up quickly.

'But, Meenie, you are coming to the party on Monday
night too?'

There was no embarrassment on the beautiful, fine,
gentle face.  She only said—

'Well, no one has asked me.'

And the little Maggie flushed with shame and vexation.

'Indeed, now!  Did Ronald not speak to you about it?'

'Oh, I have known about it for a long time,' she said
lightly, 'and I was very glad to hear of it, for I thought it
was a great chance for me to get the loan of the barn.'

'But you—you, Meenie—that they did not ask you first
of all!' the younger girl cried.  'But it can only be that
every one is expected to come—every one except the small
children who canna sit up late.  And I'm sure I did not
expect to go; but Mr. Murray, he was joking and saying
that I would have to dance the first dance wi' him; and
Ronald said I might be there for a while.  But—but—I'm
no going if you're no going, Meenie.'

'But that is nonsense, Maggie,' the other said
good-naturedly.  'Of course you must go.  And I should like
well enough——'

'I am sure Mr. Murray would put you at the head of
the table—by his own side—and proud, too!' Maggie
exclaimed warmly.

'And I am sure I should not wish anything like that,'
Meenie said, laughing.  'I would far rather go with you.
I would like to see some of the dancing.'

'Oh, Meenie,' her companion said, with eyes full of
earnestness, 'did you ever see Ronald dance the sword-dance?'

'No, I have not, Maggie.'

'They say there is none can do it like him.  And if he
would only go to the Highland meetings, he could win prizes
and medals—and for the pipe-playing too, and the tossing
the caber.  There is not one of the lads can come near
him; but it is not often that he tries; for he is not proud.'

'I am glad that he does not go to the Highland meetings,'
Meenie said, rather quietly, and with her eyes cast down.

'No, he is not proud,' said Maggie, continuing (for she
had but the one hero in all the world), 'although there is
nothing he canna do better than any of them.  There was
one of the gentlemen said to him last year—the gentleman
hadna been shooting very well the day before—he said,
"Ronald, let one of the gillies look after the dogs to-day,
and go you and bring your gun, and make up for my
mistakes;" and when he came home in the evening, he
said, "It was a clean day's shooting the day; we did not
leave one wounded bird or hare behind us."  And another
gentleman was saying, "Ronald, if ye could sell your
eye-sight, I would give ye five hundred pounds for't."  And
Duncan was saying that this gentleman that's come for the
fishing, he doesna talk to Ronald about the salmon and the
loch, but about everything in the country, and Ronald
knows as well as him about such things.  And his lordship,
too, he writes to Ronald, "Dear Ronald," and quite
friendly; and when he was going away he gave Ronald his
own pipe, that has got a silver band on it, and his
tobacco-pouch, with the letters of his name worked in silk.  And
there's not one can say that Ronald's proud.'

Well, this was very idle talk; and moreover it was continued,
for the red-haired and freckled little sister was never
weary of relating the exploits of her handsome brother—the
adventures he had had with wild-cats, and stags, and seals,
and eagles, and the like; and, strangely enough, Miss
Douglas showed no sign of impatience whatever.  Nay, she
listened with an interest that scarcely allowed her to
interrupt with a word; and with satisfaction and approval, to
judge by her expression; and all that she would say from
time to time—and absently—was:

'But he is so careless, Maggie!  Why don't you speak to
him?  You really must make him more heedful of himself.'

However, the night was going by; and Maggie's praises
and recitals had come to an end.  Meenie went down to
the door to see her friend comfortably wrapped up; but
there was no need of escort; the stars were shining clear,
though the wind still howled blusteringly.  And so they
said good-bye; and Maggie went on through the dark to
the cottage, thinking that Meenie Douglas was the most
beautiful and sweet and warm-hearted companion she was
ever likely to meet with through all her life, and wondering
how it came about that Ronald and Mr. Murray and the rest
of them had been so disgracefully neglectful in not inviting
her to the New Year's festivities on the forthcoming
Monday.  Ronald, at least, should hear of his remissness,
and that at once.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AN EYRIE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   AN EYRIE.

.. vspace:: 2

'Come along, Harry, my lad,' the young keeper cried next
morning to his faithful terrier, 'and we'll go and have a
look up the hill.'

He slipped a cartridge or two into his pocket, more by
custom than design as it were; put his gun over his
shoulder; and went out into the cold clear air, the little
terrier trotting at his heels.  The vague unrest of the
previous evening was altogether gone now; he was his
natural self again; as he strode along the road he was
lightly singing—but also under his breath, lest any
herd-laddie should overhear—

.. class:: italics

   |  Roses red, roses white,
   |    Roses in the lane,
   |  Tell me, roses white and red,
   |    Where is Meenie gane!

And when he got as far as the inn he found that the
mail-cart had just arrived, so he turned aside to have a little
gossip with the small group of shepherds and others who
had come to see whether there were any newspapers or
letters for them.  He was a great favourite with these;
perhaps also an object of envy to the younger of the lads;
for he lived the life of a gentleman, one might say, and was
his own master; moreover, where was there any one who
looked so smart and dressed so neatly—his Glengarry cap,
his deerstalking jacket, his knickerbockers, his hand-knitted
socks, and white spats, and shoes, being all so trim and
well cared for, even in this wild winter weather?  There
was some laughing and joking about the forthcoming
supper-party; and more than one of them would have had
him go inside with them to have 'a glass,' but he was proof
against that temptation; while the yellow-haired Nelly,
who was at work within, happening to turn her eyes to the
window, and catching sight of him standing there, and being
jealous of his popularity with all those shepherd-lads and
gillies, suddenly said to her mistress—

'There's Ronald outside, mem, and I think he might go
away and shoot something for the gentleman's dinner.'

'Very well,' said Mrs. Murray; 'go and say that I
would be very much obliged to him indeed if he would
bring me a hare or two the first time he is going up the
hill, but at his own convenience, to be sure.'

But that was not the message that Nelly went to deliver.
She wanted to show her authority before all these half-critical
idlers, and also, as a good-looking lass, her independence
and her mastery over men-folk.

'Ronald,' said she, at the door of the inn, 'I think you
might just as well be going up the hill and bringing us
down a hare or two, instead of standing about here doing
nothing.'

'Is that Highland manners, lass?' he said, but with
perfect good humour.  'I'm thinking ye might say "if ye
please."  But I'll get ye a hare or two, sure enough, and
ye'll keep the first dance for me on Monday night.'

'Indeed I am not sure that I will be at the dancing at
all,' retorted the pretty Nelly; but this was merely to cover
her retreat—she did not wish to have any further conversation
before that lot of idle half-grinning fellows.

As for Ronald, he bade them good-morning, and went
lightly on his way again.  He was going up the hill
anyway; and he might as well bring down a brace of hares for
Mrs. Murray; so, after walking along the road for a mile or
so, he struck off across some rough and partly marshy
ground, and presently began to climb the lower slopes of
Clebrig, getting ever a wider and wider view as he ascended,
and always when he turned finding beneath him the
wind-stirred waters of the loch, where a tiny dark object,
slow-moving near the shores, told him where the salmon fishers
were patiently pursuing their sport.

No, there were no more unsettling notions in his brain;
here he was master and monarch of all he surveyed; and
if he was profoundly unconscious of the ease with which he
breasted this steep hillside, at least he rejoiced in the
ever-widening prospect—as lochs and hills and stretches of
undulating moorland seemed to stretch ever and ever
outward until, afar in the north, he could make out the Kyle
of Tongue and the faint line of the sea.  It was a wild and
changeable day; now filled with gloom, again bursting
forth into a blaze of yellow sunshine; while ever and anon
some flying tag of cloud would come sweeping across the
hillside and engulf him, so that all he could then discern
was the rough hard heather and bits of rock around his
feet.  It was just as one of these transient clouds was
clearing off that he was suddenly startled by a loud
noise—as of iron rattling on stones; and so bewildering was this
unusual noise in the intense silence reigning there that
instinctively he wheeled round and lowered his gun.  And
then again, the next second, what he saw was about as
bewildering as what he had heard—a great creature, quite
close by, and yet only half visible in the clearing mist, with
huge outspread wings, dragging something after it across
the broken rocks.  The truth flashed upon him in an
instant; it was an eagle caught in a fox-trap; the strange
noise was the trap striking here and there on a stone.  At
once he put down his gun on an exposed knoll and gave
chase, with the greatest difficulty subduing the eager desire
of the yelping Harry to rush forward and attack the huge
bird by himself.  It was a rough and ludicrous pursuit
but it ended in capture—though here, again, circumspection
was necessary, for the eagle, with all his neck-feathers
bristling, struck at him again and again with the talons that
were free, only one foot having been caught in the trap.
But the poor beast was quite exhausted; an examination of
the trap showed Ronald that he must have flown with this
weight attached to his leg all the way from Ben Ruach, some
half dozen miles away; and now, though there was yet an
occasional automatic motion of the beak or the claws, as
though he would still strike for liberty, he submitted to be
firmly seized while the iron teeth of the trap were being
opened.  And then Ronald looked at his prize (but still with
a careful grip).  He was a splendid specimen of the golden
eagle—a bird that is only found here and there in
Sutherlandshire, though the keepers are no longer allowed to kill
them—and, despite himself, looking at the noble creature,
he began to ask himself casuistical questions.  Would not
this make a handsome gift for Meenie?—he could send the
bird to Macleay at Inverness, and have it stuffed and
returned without anybody knowing.  Moreover, the keepers
were only charged to abstain from shooting such golden
eagles as they might find on their own ground; and he knew
from the make of the trap that this one must have come
from a different shooting altogether; it was not a Clebrig
eagle at all.  But he looked at the fierce eye of the beast,
and its undaunted mien; he knew that, if it could, it would
fight to the death; and he felt a kind of pride in the
creature, and admiration for it, and even a sort of sympathy
and fellow-feeling.

'My good chap,' said he, 'I'm not going to kill you in
cold blood—not me.  Go back to your wife and weans,
wherever they are.  Off!'

And he tried to throw the big beast into the air.  But
this was not like flinging up a released pigeon.  The eagle
fell forward, and stumbled twice ere it could get its great
wings into play; and then, instead of trying to soar
upward, it went flapping away down wind—increasing in
speed, until he could see it, now rising somewhat, cross
the lower windings of Loch Naver, and make away for the
northern skies.

'It's a God's mercy,' he was saying to himself, as he
went back to get his gun, 'that I met the creature in the
daytime; had it been at night, I would hae thought it was
the devil.'

Some two or three hundred feet still farther up the
hillside he came to his own eyrie—a great mass of rock,
affording shelter from either southerly or easterly winds,
and surrounded with some smaller stones; and here he
sate contentedly down to look around him—Harry crouched
at his feet, his nose between his paws, but his eyes
watchful.  And this wide stretch of country between Clebrig
and the northern sea would have formed a striking prospect
in any kind of weather—the strange and savage loneliness
of the moorlands; the solitary lakes with never a sign of
habitation along their shores; the great ranges of mountains
whose silent recesses are known only to the stag and the
hind; but on such a morning as this it was all as unstable
and unreal as it was wildly beautiful and picturesque;—for
the hurrying weather made a kind of phantasmagoria of
the solid land; bursts of sunlight that struck on the yellow
straths were followed by swift gray cloud-wreaths blotting
out the world; and again and again the white snow-peaks
of the hills would melt away and become invisible only to
reappear again shining and glorious in a sky of brilliant
blue; until, indeed, it seemed as if the earth had no
substance and fixed foundation at all, but was a mere dream,
an aerial vision, changed and moved and controlled by
some unseen and capricious hand.

And then again, on the dark and wind-driven lake far
below him, that small object was still to be made out—like
some minute, black, crawling water insect.  He took
out his glass from its leather case, adjusted it, and placed
it to his eye.  What was this?  In the world suddenly
brought near—and yet dimly near, as though a film
interposed—he could see that some one was standing up in the
stern of the boat, and another crouching down, by his side.
Was that a clip or the handle of the landing-net; in other
words, was it a salmon or a kelt that was fighting them
there?  He swept the dull waters of the loch with his
glass; but could make out no splashing or springing
anywhere near them.  And then he could see by the curve of
the rod that the fish was close at hand; there was a minute
or two longer of anxiety; then a sudden movement on the
part of the crouching person—and behold a silver-white
object gleams for a moment in the air and then disappears!

'Good!' he says to himself—with a kind of sigh of
satisfaction as if he had himself taken part in the struggle
and capture.

How peaceful looks the little hamlet of Inver-Mudal!
The wild storm-clouds, and the bursts of sunlight, and the
howling winds seem to sail over it unheeded; down in the
hollow there surely all is quiet and still.  And is Meenie
singing at her work, by the window; or perhaps
superintending Maggie's lessons; or gone away on one of the
lonely walks that she is fond of—up by the banks of the
Mudal Water?  It is a bleak and a bare stream; there is
scarce a bush on its banks; and yet he knows of no other
river—however hung with foliage and flowers—that is so
sweet and sacred and beautiful.  What was it he wrote in
the bygone year—one summer day when he had seen her
go by—and he, too, was near the water, and could hear
the soft murmuring over the pebbles?  He called the
idle verses

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   MUDAL IN JUNE.

.. class:: italics

   |  Mudal, that comes from the lonely mere,
   |    Silent or whispering, vanishing ever,
   |  Know you of aught that concerns us here?—
   |    You, youngest of all God's creatures, a river.
   |
   |  Born of a yesterday's summer shower,
   |    And hurrying on with your restless motion,
   |  Silent or whispering, every hour,
   |    To lose yourself in the great lone ocean.
   |
   |  Your banks remain; but you go by,
   |    Through day and through darkness swiftly sailing:
   |  Say, do you hear the curlew cry,
   |    And the snipe in the night-time hoarsely wailing?
   |
   |  Do you watch the wandering hinds in the morn;
   |    Do you hear the grouse-cock crow in the heather;
   |  Do you see the lark spring up from the corn,
   |    All in the radiant summer weather?
   |
   |  O Mudal stream, how little you know
   |    That Meenie has loved you, and loves you ever;
   |  And while to your ocean home you flow,
   |    She says good-bye to her well-loved river!—
   |
   |  O see you her now—she is coming anigh—
   |    And the flower in her hand her aim discloses:
   |  Laugh, Mudal, your thanks as you're hurrying by—
   |    For she flings you a rose, in the month of roses!

Well, that was written as long ago as last midsummer; and
was Meenie still as far away from him as then, and as
ignorant as ever of his mute worship of her, and of these
verses that he had written about her?  But he indulged
in no day-dreams.  Meenie was as near to him as he had
any right to expect—giving him of an assured and constant
friendship; and as for these passing rhymes—well, he tried
to make them as worthy of her as he could, though he
knew she should never see them; polishing them, in so
far as they might be said to have any polish at all, in
honour of her; and, what is more to the point, at once
cutting out and destroying any of them that seemed to
savour either of affectation or of echo.  No: the rude
rhymes should at least be honest and of his own invention
and method; imitations he could not, even in fancy, lay
at Meenie's feet.  And sometimes, it is true, a wild
imagination would get hold of him—a whimsical thing, that he
laughed at: supposing that life—the actual real life here
at Inver-Mudal—were suddenly to become a play, a poem,
a romantic tale; and that Meenie was to fall in love with
him; and he to grow rich all at once; and the Stuarts of
Glengask to be quite complaisant: why, then, would it not
be a fine thing to bring all this collection of verses to
Meenie, and say 'There, now, it is not much; but it shows
you that I have been thinking of you all through these
years?'  Yes, it would be a very fine thing, in a romance.
But, as has been said, he was one not given to day-dreams;
and he accepted the facts of life with much equanimity;
and when he had written some lines about Meenie that he
regarded with a little affection—as suggesting, let us say,
something of the glamour of her clear Highland eyes, and
the rose-sweetness of her nature, and the kindness of her
heart—and when it seemed rather a pity that she should
never see them—if only as a tribute to her gentleness
offered by a perfectly unbiassed spectator—he quickly
reminded himself that it was not his business to write verses
but to trap foxes and train dogs and shoot hoodie-crows.
He was not vain of his rhymes—except where Meenie's
name came in.  Besides, he was a very busy person at
most seasons of the year; and men, women, and children
alike showed a considerable fondness for him, so that his
life was full of sympathies and interests; and altogether
he cannot be regarded, nor did he regard himself, as a
broken-hearted or blighted being.  His temperament was
essentially joyous and healthy; the passing moment was
enough; nothing pleased him so much as to have a grouse,
or a hare, or a ptarmigan, or a startled hind appear within
sure and easy range, and to say 'Well, go on.  Take your
life with you.  Rather a pleasant day this: why shouldn't
you enjoy it as well as I?'

However, on this blustering and brilliant morning he
had not come all the way up hither merely to get a brace of
hares for Mrs. Murray, nor yet to be a distant spectator of
the salmon-fishing going on far below.  Under this big
rock there was a considerable cavity, and right at the back
of that he had wedged in a wooden box lined with tin, and
fitted with a lid and a lock.  It was useful in the autumn;
he generally kept in it a bottle of whisky and a few bottles
of soda-water, lest any of the gentlemen should find
themselves thirsty on the way home from the stalking.  But on
this occasion, when he got out the key and unlocked the
little chest, it was not any refreshment of that kind he was
after.  He took out a copy-book—a cheap paper-covered
thing such as is used in juvenile schools in Scotland—and
turned to the first page, which was scrawled over with
pencilled lines that had apparently been written in time of
rain, for there were plenty of smudges there.  It had
become a habit of his that, when in these lonely rambles
among the hills, he found some further rhymes about
Meenie come into his head, he would jot them down in
this copy-book, deposit it in the little chest, and probably
not see them again for weeks and weeks, when, as on the
present occasion, he would come with fresh eyes to see it
there were any worth or value in them.  Not that he took
such trouble with anything else.  His rhyming epistles to
his friends, his praises of his terrier Harry, his songs for
the Inver-Mudal lasses to sing—these things were thrown
off anyhow, and had to take their chance.  But his solitary
intercommunings away amid these alpine wastes were of a
more serious cast; insensibly they gathered dignity and
repose from the very silence and awfulness of the solitudes
around; there was no idle and pastoral singing here about
roses in the lane.  He regarded the blurred lines, striving
to think of them as having been written by somebody else:

.. class:: italics

   |  Through the long sad centuries Clebrig slept,
   |    Nor a sound the silence broke,
   |  Till a morning in Spring a strange new thing
   |    Betrayed him and he awoke;
   |
   |  And he laughed, and his joyous laugh was heard
   |    From Erribol far to Tongue;
   |  And his granite veins deep down were stirred,
   |    And the great old mountain grew young.
   |
   |  'Twas Love Meenie he saw, and she walked by the shore,
   |    And she sang so sweet and so clear,
   |  That the sound of her voice made him see again
   |    The dawn of the world appear;
   |
   |  And at night he spake to the listening stars
   |    And charged them a guard to keep
   |  On the hamlet of Inver-Mudal there
   |    And the maid in her innocent sleep,
   |
   |  Till the years should go by; and they should see
   |    Love Meenie take her stand
   |  'Mong the maidens around the footstool of God—
   |    She gentlest of all the band!
   |

He tore the leaf out, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

'Another one for the little bookie that's never to be
seen,' said he, with a kind of laugh; for indeed he treated
himself to a good deal of satire, and would rather have
blown his brains out than that the neighbourhood should
have known he was writing these verses about Meenie
Douglas.

'And hey, Harry, lad!' he called, as he locked the
little cupboard again, 'I'm thinking we must be picking up
a hare now, if it's for soup for the gentleman's dinner the
night.  So ye were bauld enough to face an eagle?  I
doubt, if both his feet had been free, but ye might have
had a lift in the air, and seen the heavens and the earth
spread out below ye.'

He shouldered his gun and set out again—making his
way towards some rockier ground, where he very soon
bagged the brace of hares he wanted.  He tied their legs
together, slung them over his shoulder, and began to
descend the mountain again—usually keeping his eye on
the minute black speck on the loch, lest there might be
occasion again for his telescope.

He took the two hares—they looked remarkably like
cats, by the way, for they were almost entirely white—into
the inn, and threw them on to the chair in the passage.

'There you are, Nelly, lass,' said he, as the fair-haired
Highland maid happened to go by.

'All right,' said she, which was no great thanks.

But Mr. Murray, in the parlour, had heard the keeper's
voice.

'Ronald,' he cried, 'come in for a minute, will ye?'

Mr. Murray was a little, wiry, gray-haired, good-natured
looking man, who, when Ronald entered the parlour, was
seated at the table, and evidently puzzling his brains over
a blank sheet of paper that lay before him.

'Your sister Maggie wass here this morning,' the inn-keeper
said—still with his eyes fixed upon the paper—'and
she wass saying that maybe Meenie—Miss Douglas—would
like to come with the others on Monday night—ay, and
maybe Mrs. Douglas herself too as well—but they would hef
to be asked.  And Kott pless me, it is not an easy thing, if
you hef to write a letter, and that is more polite than
asking—it is not an easy thing, I am sure.  Ronald,' he said,
raising his eyes and turning round, 'would you tek a
message?'

'Where?' said Ronald—but he knew well enough, and
was only seeking time to make an excuse.

'To Mrs. Douglas and the young lass; and tell them
we will be glad if they will come with the others on Monday
night—for the doctor is away from home, and why should
they be left by themselves?  Will you tek the message,
Ronald?'

'How could I do that?' Ronald said.  'It's you that's
giving the party, Mr. Murray.'

'But they know you so ferry well—and—and there will
be no harm if they come and see the young lads and lasses
having a reel together—ay, and a song too.  And if
Mrs. Douglas could not be bothered, it's you that could bring
the young lady—oh yes, I know ferry well—if you will
ask her, she will come.'

'I am sure no,' Ronald said hastily, and with an
embarrassment he sought in vain to conceal.  'If Miss
Douglas cares to come at all, it will be when you ask her.
And why should ye write, man?  Go down the road and
ask her yourself—I mean, ask Mrs. Douglas; it's as simple
as simple.  What for should ye write a letter?  Would ye
send it through the post too?  That's ceremony for
next-door neighbours!'

'But Ronald, lad, if ye should see the young lass
herself——'

'No, no; take your own message, Mr. Murray; they
can but give you a civil answer.'

Mr. Murray was left doubting.  It was clear that the
awful shadow of Glengask and Orosay still dwelt over the
doctor's household; and that the innkeeper was not at all
sure as to what Mrs. Douglas would say to an invitation
that she and her daughter Meenie—or Williamina, as the
mother called her—should be present at a merry-meeting
of farm lads, keepers, gillies, and kitchen wenches.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE NEW YEAR'S FEAST`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE NEW YEAR'S FEAST.

.. vspace:: 2

Loud and shrill in the empty barn arose the strains of the
*Athole March*, warning the young lasses to hasten with the
adjustment of their ribbons, and summoning the young
lads about to look sharp and escort them.  The long and
narrow table was prettily laid out; two candelabra instead
of one shed a flood of light on the white cover; the walls
were decorated with evergreens and with Meenie's
resplendent paper blossoms; the peats in the improvised
fireplace burned merrily.  And when the company began
to arrive, in twos and threes, some bashful and hesitating,
others merry and jocular, there was a little embarrassment
about the taking of places until Ronald laid down his pipes
and set to work to arrange them.  The American gentleman
had brought in Mrs. Murray in state, and they were
at the head of the table; while Ronald himself took the
foot, in order, as he said, to keep order—if he were
able—among the lasses who had mostly congregated there.  Then
the general excitement and talking was hushed for a minute,
while the innkeeper said grace; and then the girls—farm
wenches, some of them, and Nelly, the pretty parlour-maid,
and Finnuala, the cook's youngest sister, who was but lately
come from Uist and talked the quaintest English, and
Mr. Murray's two nieces from Tongue, and the other young
lasses about the inn—all of them became demure and
proper in their manner, for they were about to enjoy the
unusual sensation of being waited upon.

This, of course, was Ronald's doing.  There had been
a question as to which of the maids were to bring in supper
for so large a number; so he addressed himself to the
young fellows who were standing about.

'You lazy laddies,' he said, 'what are ye thinking o'?
Here's a chance for ye, if there's a pennyworth o' spunk
among the lot o' ye.  They lasses there wait on ye the
whole year long, and make the beds for ye, and redd the
house; I'm thinking ye might do worse than wait on them
for one night, and bring in the supper when they sit down.
They canna do both things; and the fun o' the night
belongs to them or to nobody at all.'

At first there was a little shamefaced reluctance—it was
'lasses' work,' they said—until a great huge Highland tyke—a
Ross-shire drover who happened to be here on a visit—a
man of about six feet four, with a red beard big enough
for a raven to build in, declared that he would lend a hand,
if no one else did; and forthwith brought his huge fist
down on the bar-room table to give emphasis to his words.
There was some suspicion that this unwonted gallantry was
due to the fact that he had a covetous eye on Jeannie,
Donald Macrae's lass, who was a very superior
dairy-mistress, and was also heir-presumptive to her father's
farmstead and about a score of well-favoured cattle; but
that was neither here nor there; he was as good as his
word; he organised the brigade, and led it; and if he
swallowed a stiff glass of whisky before setting out from
the kitchen for the barn, with a steaming plate of soup in
each hand, that was merely to steady his nerves and
enable him to face the merriment of the whole gang of those
girls.  And then when this red-bearded giant of a Ganymede
and his attendants had served every one, they fetched
in their own plates, and sat down; and time was allowed
them; for the evening was young yet, and no one in a hurry.

Now if Mr. Hodson had been rather doubtful lest his
presence might produce some little restraint, he was speedily
reassured, to his own great satisfaction, for he was really a
most good-natured person and anxious to be friendly with
everybody.  In the general fun and jollity he was not even
noticed; he could ask Mrs. Murray any questions he chose
without suspicion of being observant; the young lady next
him—who was Jeannie Macrae herself, and to whom he
strove to be as gallant as might be—was very winsome and
gentle and shy, and spoke in a more Highland fashion than
he had heard yet; while otherwise he did not fare at all
badly at this rustic feast, for there were boiled fowls and
roast hares after the soup, and there was plenty of ale
passed round, and tea for those who wished it.  Nay, on
the contrary, he had rather to push himself forward and
assert himself ere he could get his proper share of the work
that was going on.  He insisted upon carving for at least
half a dozen neighbours; he was most attentive to the
pretty Highland girl next him; and laughed heartily at
Mrs. Murray's Scotch stories, which he did not quite
understand; and altogether entered into the spirit of the
evening.  But there was no doubt it was at the other end
of the table that the fun was getting fast and furious; and
just as little doubt that Ronald the keeper was suffering
considerably at the hands of those ungrateful lasses for
whom he had done so much.  Like a prudent man, he
held his tongue and waited his opportunity; taking their
teasing with much good humour; and paying no heed to
the other young fellows who were urging him to face and
silence the saucy creatures.  And his opportunity came in
the most unexpected way.  One of the girls, out of pure
mischief, and without the least notion that she would be
overheard, rapped lightly on the table, and said:
'Mr. Ronald Strang will now favour us with a song.'  To her
amazement and horror there was an almost instant silence;
for an impression had travelled up the table that some
announcement was about to be made.

'What is it now?  What are you about down there?'
their host called to them—and the silence, to her who had
unwittingly caused it, was terrible.

But another of the girls, still bent on mischief, was bold
enough to say.

'Oh, it's Ronald that's going to sing us a song.'

'Sing ye a song, ye limmer, ere ye're through with your
supper?' Ronald said sharply.  'I'd make ye sing
yourself—with a leather strap—if I had my will o' ye.'

But this was not heard up the table.

'Very well, then, Ronald,' the innkeeper cried, graciously.
'Come away with it now.  There is no one at all can
touch you at that.'

'Oh, do not ask him,' the pretty Nelly said—apparently
addressing the company, but keeping her cruel eyes on him.
'Do not ask Ronald to sing.  Ronald is such a shy lad.'

He glanced at her; and then he seemed to make up
his mind.

'Very well, then,' said he, 'I'll sing ye a song—and
let's have a chorus, lads.'

Now in Sutherlandshire, as in many other parts of the
Highlands, the chief object of singing in company is to
establish a chorus; and the audience, no matter whether
they have heard the air or not, so soon as it begins, proceed
to beat time with hand and heel, forming a kind of accompanying
tramp, as it were; so that by the time the end of
the first verse is reached, if they have not quite caught the
tune, at least they can make some kind of rhythmic noise
with the refrain.  And on this occasion, if the words were
new—and Ronald, on evil intent, took care to pronounce
them clearly—the air was sufficiently like 'Jenny dang the
Weaver' for the general chorus to come in, in not more
than half a dozen keys.  This was what Ronald sang—and
he sang it in that resonant tenor of his, and in a rollicking
fashion—just as if it were an impromptu, and not a weapon
that he had carefully forged long ago, and hidden away to
serve some such chance as the present:

.. class:: italics

   |  O lasses, lasses, gang your ways,
   |  And dust the house, or wash the claes,
   |  Ye put me in a kind o' blaze—
   |      Ye'll break my heart among ye!
   |

The girls rather hung their heads—the imputation that
they were all setting their caps at a modest youth who
wanted to have nothing to do with them was scarcely what
they expected.  But the lads had struck the tune somehow;
and there was a roaring chorus, twice repeated, with heavy
boots marking the time—

.. class:: italics

   |  Ye'll break my heart among ye!

And then the singer proceeded—gravely—

.. class:: italics

   |  At kirk or market, morn or e'en,
   |  The like o' them was never seen,
   |  For each is kind, and each a queen;—
   |      Ye'll break my heart among ye!

And again came the roaring chorus from the delighted lads—

.. class:: italics

   |  Ye'll break my heart among ye!

There was but one more verse—

.. class:: italics

   |  There's that one dark, and that one fair,
   |  And yon has wealth o' yellow hair;
   |  Gang hame, gang hame—I can nae mair—
   |      Ye'll break my heart among ye!
   |

Yellow hair?  The allusion was so obvious that the
pretty Nelly blushed scarlet—all the more visibly because
of her fair complexion; and when the thunder of the
thrice-repeated refrain had ceased, she leant forward and
said to him in a low voice, but with much terrible meaning—

'My lad, when I get you by yourself, I'll give it to you!'

They had nearly finished supper by this time; but ere
they had the decks cleared for action, there was a formal
ceremony to be gone through.  The host produced his
*quaich*—a small cup of horn, with a handle on each side;
and likewise a bottle of whisky; and as one guest after
another took hold of the quaich with the thumb and forefinger
of each hand, the innkeeper filled the small cup with
whisky, which had then to be drank to some more or less
appropriate toast.  These were in Gaelic for the most
part—'*To the goodman of the inn*'; '*To the young girls that are
kind, and old wives that keep a clean house*'; '*Good health;
and good luck in finding things washed ashore*,' and so
forth—and when it came to Mr. Hodson's turn, he would have
a try at the Gaelic too.

'I think I can wrestle with it, if you give me an easy one,'
he remarked, as he took the quaich between his fingers and
held it till it was filled.

'Oh no, sir, do not trouble about the Gaelic,' said his
pretty neighbour Jeannie—blushing very much, for there
was comparative silence at the time.

'But I want to have my turn.  If it's anything a white
man can do, I can do it.'

'Say *air do shlàinte*—that is, your good health,' said
Jeannie, blushing more furiously than ever.

He carefully balanced the cup in his hands, gravely
turned towards his hostess, bowed to her, repeated the
magic words with a very fair accent indeed, and drained off
the whisky—amid the general applause; though none of
them suspected that the swallowing of the whisky was to
him a much more severe task than the pronunciation
of the Gaelic.  And then it came to Ronald's turn.

'Oh no, Mr. Murray,' said the slim-waisted Nelly, who
had recovered from her confusion, and whose eyes were
now as full of mischief as ever, 'do not ask Ronald to say
anything in the Gaelic; he is ashamed to hear himself speak.
It is six years and more he has been trying to say "a young
calf," and he cannot do it yet.'

'And besides, he's thinking of the lass he left behind in
the Lothians,' said her neighbour.

'And they're all black-haired girls there,' continued the
fair-haired Nelly.  'Ronald, drink "*mo nighean dubh*."'

He fixed his eyes on her steadily, and said: '*Tir nam
beann, nan gleann, s'nan gaisgeach;*\[#] and may all the saucy
jades in Sutherland find a husband to keep them in order
ere the year be out.'

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent small

[#] The land of hills and glens and heroes.

.. vspace:: 1

And now two or three of the lasses rose to clear the
table; for the red-bearded drover and his brigade had not
the skill to do that; and the men lit their pipes; and there
was a good deal of joyous *schwärmerei*.  In the midst of it
all there was a rapping of spoons and knuckles at the upper
end of the table; and it was clear, from the importance of
his look, that Mr. Murray himself was about to favour the
company—so that a general silence ensued.  And very well
indeed did the host of the evening sing—in a shrill, high-pitched
voice, it is true, but still with such a multitude of
small flourishes and quavers and grace notes as showed
he had once been proud enough of his voice in the days
gone by.  'Scotland yet' he sang; and there was a
universal rush at the chorus—

.. class:: italics

   |  'And trow ye as I sing, my lads,
   |    The burden o't shall be,
   |  Auld Scotland's howes, and Scotland's knowes,
   |    And Scotland's hills for me,
   |  I'll drink a cup to Scotland yet,
   |    Wi' a' the honours three.'

And was their American friend to be excluded?—not if he
knew it.  He could make a noise as well as any; and he
waved the quaich—which had wandered back to him—round
his head; and strident enough was his voice with

.. class:: italics

   |  I'll drink a cup to Scotland yet,
   |    Wi' a' the honours three.'
   |

'I feel half a Scotchman already,' said he gaily to his
hostess.

'Indeed, sir, I wish you were altogether one,' she said
in her gentle way.  'I am sure I think you would look a
little better in health if you lived in this country.'

'But I don't look so ill, do I?' said he—rather
disappointed; for he had been striving to be hilarious, and
had twice drank the contents of the quaich, out of pure
friendliness.

'Well, no, sir,' said Mrs. Murray politely, 'not more
than most of them I hef seen from your country; but
surely it cannot be so healthy as other places; the young
ladies are so thin and delicate-looking whatever; many a
one I would like to hef kept here for a while—for more
friendly young ladies I never met with anywhere—just to see
what the mountain air and the sweet milk would do for her.'

'Well, then, Mrs. Murray, you will have the chance of
trying your doctoring on my daughter when she comes up
here a few weeks hence; but I think you won't find much
of the invalid about her—it's my belief she could give
twenty pounds to any girl I know of in a go-as-you-please
race across the stiffest ground anywhere.  There's not much
the matter with my Carry, if she'd only not spend the whole
day in those stores in Regent Street.  Well, that will be
over when she come here; I should think it'll make her
stare some, if she wants to buy a veil or a pair of gloves.'

But the girls at the foot of the table had been teasing
Ronald to sing something; silence was forthwith procured;
and presently—for he was very good natured, and sang
whenever he was asked—the clear and penetrating tenor
voice was ringing along the rafters:

.. class:: italics

   |  'The news frae Moidart cam' yestreen,
   |    Will soon gar many ferlie,[#]
   |  For ships o' war hae just come in
   |    And landed royal Charlie.'

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent small

[#] 'Ferlie,' wonder.

.. vspace:: 1

It was a well-known song, with a resounding chorus:

.. class:: italics

   |  'Come through the heather, around him gather,
   |    Ye're a' the welcomer early;
   |  Around him cling wi' a' your kin,
   |    For wha'll be king but Charlie?'

Nay, was not this the right popular kind of song—to have
two choruses instead of one?—

.. class:: italics

   |  'Come through the heather, around him gather,
   |    Come Ronald, and Donald, come a'thegither
   |  And claim your rightfu' lawfu' king,
   |    For who'll be king but Charlie?'
   |

This song gave great satisfaction; for they had all taken
part in the chorus; and they were pleased with the melodious
result.  And then the lasses were at him again:

'Ronald, sing "Doon the burn, Davie lad."'

'Ronald, will you not give us "Logan Water" now?'

'Ronald, "Auld Joe Nicholson's Bonnie Nannie" or
"My Peggy is a young thing" whichever you like best
yourself.'

'No, no,' said the pretty Nelly, 'ask him to sing, "When
the kye come hame," and he will be thinking of the
black-haired lass he left in the Lothians.'

'Gae wa', gae wa',' said he, rising and shaking himself
free from them.  'I ken what'll put other things into your
heads—or into your heels, rather.'

He picked up his pipes, which had been left in a corner,
threw the drones over his shoulder, and marched to the
upper end of the barn; then there was a preliminary groan
or two, and presently the chanter broke away into a lively
reel tune.  The effect of this signal, as it might be called,
was magical; every one at once divined what was needed;
and the next moment they were all helping to get the long
table separated into its component parts and carried out
into the dark.  There was a cross table left at the upper
end, by the peat-fire, for the elderly people and the
spectators to sit at, if they chose; the younger folk had
wooden forms at the lower end; but the truth is that they
were so eager not to have any of the inspiriting music
thrown away that several sets were immediately formed, and
off they went to the brisk strains of *Miss Jenny Gordon's
Favourite*—intertwisting deftly, setting to partners again,
fingers and thumbs snapped in the air, every lad amongst
them showing off his best steps, and ringing whoops sent
up to the rafters as the reel broke off again into a quick
strathspey.  It was wild and barbaric, no doubt; but
there was a kind of rhythmic poetry in it too; Ronald
grew prouder and prouder of the fire that he could infuse
into this tempestuous and yet methodical crowd; the
whoops became yells; and if the red-bearded drover,
dancing opposite the slim-figured Nelly, would challenge
her to do her best, and could himself perform some
remarkable steps and shakes, well, Nelly was not ashamed to
raise her gown an inch or two just to show him that he was
not dancing with a flat-footed creature, but that she had
swift toes and graceful ankles to compare with any.  And
then again they would trip off into the figure 8, swinging
round with arms interlocked; and again roof and rafter
would 'dirl' with the triumphant shouts of the men.  Then
came the long wailing monition from the pipes; the sounds
died down; panting and laughing and rosy-cheeked the
lasses were led to the benches by their partners; and a
general halt was called.

Little Maggie stole up to her brother.

'I'm going home now, Ronald,' she said.

'Very well,' he said.  'Mind you go to bed as soon as
ye get in.  Good-night, lass.'

'Good-night, Ronald.'

She was going away, when he said to her—

'Maggie, do ye think that Miss Douglas is not coming
along to see the dancing?  I thought she would do that if
she would rather no come to the supper.'

In truth he had had his eye on the door all the time he
was playing *Miss Jenny Gordon's Favourite*.

'I am sure if she stays away,' the little Maggie said, 'it
is not her own doing.  Meenie wanted to come.  It is
very hard that everybody should be at the party and not
Meenie.'

'Well, well, good-night, lass,' said he; for the young folk
were choosing their partners again, and the pipes were
wanted.  Soon there was another reel going on, as fast and
furious as before.

At the end of this reel—Meenie had not appeared, by the
way, and Ronald concluded that she was not to be allowed
to look on at the dancing—the yellow-haired Nelly came
up to the top of the room, and addressed Mrs. Murray in
the Gaelic; but as she finished up with the word *quadrille*,
and as she directed one modest little glance towards
Mr. Hodson, that amiable but astute onlooker naturally inferred
that he was somehow concerned in this speech.  Mrs. Murray
laughed.

'Well, sir, the girls are asking if you would not like to
have a dance too; and they could have a quadrille.'

'I've no cause to brag about my dancing,' he said
good-humouredly, 'but if Miss Nelly will see me through, I dare
say we'll manage somehow.  Will you excuse my ignorance?'

Now the tall and slender Highland maid had not in any
way bargained for this—it was merely friendliness that had
prompted her proposal; but she could not well refuse; and
soon one or two sets were formed; and a young lad called
Munro, from Lairg, who had brought his fiddle with him for
this great occasion, proceeded to tune up.  The quadrille,
when it came off, was performed with more of vigour than
science; there was no ignominious shirking of steps—no
idle and languid walking—but a thorough and resolute
flinging about, as the somewhat bewildered Mr. Hodson
speedily discovered.  However, he did his part gallantly,
and was now grown so gay that when, at the end of the
dance, he inquired of the fair Nelly whether she would like
to have any little refreshment, and when she mildly
suggested a little water, and offered to go for it herself, he
would hear of no such thing.  No, no; he went and got
some soda-water, and declared that it was much more
wholesome with a little whisky in it; and had some himself
also.  Gay and gallant?—why, certainly.  He threw off
thirty years of his life; he forgot that this was the young
person who would be waiting at table after his daughter
Carry came hither: he would have danced another quadrille
with her; and felt almost jealous when a young fellow
came up to claim her for the *Highland Schottische*—thus
sending him back to the society of Mrs. Murray.  And it
was not until he had sate down that he remembered he had
suggested to his daughter the training of this pretty
Highland girl for the position of maid and travelling companion.
But what of that?  If all men were born equal, so were
women; and he declared to himself that any day he would
rather converse with Nelly the pretty parlour-maid than
(supposing him to have the chance) with Her Illustrious
Highness the Princess of Pfalzgrafweiler-Gunzenhausen.

In the meantime Ronald, his pipes not being then
needed, had wandered out into the cold night-air.  There
were some stars visible, but they shed no great light; the
world lay black enough all around.  He went idly and
dreamily along the road—the sounds in the barn growing
fainter and fainter—until he reached the plateau where
his own cottage stood.  There was no light in it anywhere;
doubtless Maggie had at once gone to bed, as she had
been bid.  And then he wandered on again—walking a
little more quietly—until he reached the doctor's house.
Here all the lights were out but one; there was a red glow
in that solitary window; and he knew that that was
Meenie's room.  Surely she could not be sitting up and
listening?—even the skirl of the pipes could scarcely be
heard so far; and her window was closed.  Reading,
perhaps?  He knew so many of her favourites—'The
Burial March of Dundee,' 'Jeannie Morrison,' 'Bonny
Kilmeny,' 'Christabel,' the 'Hymn before Sunrise in the
Valley of Chamounix,' and others of a similar noble or
mystical or tender kind; and perhaps, after all, these
were more in consonance with the gentle dignity and
rose-sweetness of her mind and nature than the gambols of a lot
of farm-lads and wenches?  He walked on to the bridge,
and sate down there for a while, in the dark and the silence;
he could hear the Mudal Water rippling by, but could see
nothing.  And when he passed along the road again, the
light in the small red-blinded window was gone; Meenie
was away in the world of dreams and phantoms—and he
wondered if the people there knew who this was who had
come amongst them, with her wondering eyes and sweet ways.

He went back to the barn, and resumed his pipe-playing
with all his wonted vigour—waking up the whole thing, as
it were; but nothing could induce him to allow one or
other of the lads to be his substitute, so that he might go
and choose a partner for one of the reels.  He would not
dance; he said his business was to keep the merry-making
going.  And he and they did keep it going till between
five and six in the morning, when all hands were piped for
the singing of 'Auld Lang Syne:' and thereafter there was
a general dispersal, candles going this way and that through
the blackness like so many will-o'-the-wisps; and the last
good-nights at length sank into silence—a silence as
profound and hushed as that that lay over the unseen
heights of Clebrig and the dark and still lake below.





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.. _`ENTICEMENTS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   ENTICEMENTS.

.. vspace:: 2

At about eleven o'clock on the same morning Miss Douglas
was standing at the window of her own little room looking
rather absently at the familiar wintry scene without, and
occasionally turning to a letter that she held in her hand,
and that she had apparently just then written.  Presently,
however, her face brightened.  There was a faint sound in
the distance as of some one singing; no doubt that was
Ronald; he would be coming along the road with the dogs,
and if she were in any difficulty he would be the one to
help.  So she waited for a second or two, hoping to be
able to signal him to stop; and the next minute he was in
sight, walking briskly with his long and steady stride, the
small terrier at his heels, the other dogs—some handsome
Gordon setters, a brace of pointers, and a big brown
retriever—ranging farther afield.

But why was it, she asked herself, that whenever he
drew near her father's cottage he invariably ceased his
singing?  Elsewhere, as well she knew, he beguiled the
tedium of these lonely roads with an almost constant
succession of songs and snatches of songs; but here he invariably
became mute.  And why did he not raise his eyes to the
window—where she was waiting to give him a friendly wave
of the hand, or even an invitation to stop and come within-doors
for a minute or two?  No, on he went with that long
stride of his, addressing a word now and again to one or
other of the dogs, and apparently thinking of nothing else.
So, as there was nothing for it now but to go out and
intercept him on his return, she proceeded to put on her
ulster and a close-fitting deerstalker's cap; and thus fortified
against the gusty north wind that was driving clouds and
sunshine across the loch and along the slopes of Clebrig, she
left the cottage, and followed the road that he had taken.

As it turned out, she had not far to go; for she saw
that he was now seated on the parapet of the little bridge
spanning the Mudal Water, and no doubt he was cutting
tobacco for his pipe.  When she drew near, he rose; when
she drew nearer, he put his pipe in his waistcoat pocket.

'Good-morning, Ronald!' she cried, and the pretty
fresh-tinted face smiled on him, and the clear gray-blue
Highland eyes regarded him in the most frank and friendly
way, and without any trace whatever of maiden bashfulness.

'Good-morning, Miss Douglas,' said he; he was far
more shy than she was.

'What a stupid thing happened this morning,' said she.
'When I heard that the American gentleman was going
south, I wanted to tell the driver to bring the children from
Crask with him as he came back in the evening; and I
sent Elizabeth round to the inn to tell him that; and
then—what do you think!—they had started away half an hour
before there was any need.  But now I have written a letter
to the Crask people, asking them to stop the waggonette as
it comes back in the afternoon, and telling them that we
will make the children very comfortable here for the night;
and if only I could get it sent to Crask everything would
be arranged.  And do you think now you could get one of
the young lads to take it to Crask if I gave him a shilling?'

She took out her purse, and selected a shilling from the
very slender store of coins there.

'It is not much for so long a walk,' she said, rather
doubtfully.  'Eight miles there and eight back—is it
enough, do you think?'

'Oh, I'll get the letter sent for ye, Miss Douglas, easily
enough,' said he—and indeed he had already taken it from
her hand.

Then she offered him the shilling, but with a little
gesture he refused it.  And then—for there flashed upon
her mind a sudden suspicion that perhaps he might choose
to walk all that way himself just to please her (indeed, he
had done things like that before)—she became greatly
embarrassed.

'Give me the letter, Ronald,' said she, 'and I will find
some one myself.  You are going away now with the dogs.'

'Oh no,' said he, 'I will see that the Crask folk get
your message.'

'And the money to pay the lad?' said she timidly.

'Dinna bother your head wi' that,' he answered.
'There's enough money scattered about the place just
now—the American gentleman was free-handed this morning.
Ay, and there's something I've got for you.'

'For me?' she said, with her eyes opening somewhat.

'Well,' said he (and very glad he was to have the letter
safe and sound in his possession), 'I was telling him about
the children's party to-morrow night; and he's a friendly
kind o' man, that; he said he would like to have been at
it, if he could have stayed; and I'm sure he would have
got on wi' them well enough, for he's a friendly kind o' man,
as I say.  Well, then, I couldna tell him the exact number
o' the bairns; but no matter what number, each one o' them
is to find sevenpence under the teacup—that's a penny for
each fish he got.  Ay, he's a shrewd-headed fellow, too;
for says he "I suppose, now, the old people will be for
having the children save up the sixpence, so at least they'll
have the penny to spend;" and he was curious even to find
out where the bairns in a place like this got their toys, or
if sweeties ever came their way.  "It's little enough of
either o' them," I said to him, "they see, except when Miss
Douglas has been to Lairg or Tongue;" and he was very
anxious to make your acquaintance, I may tell ye, but he
said he would wait till his daughter came with him the next
time.  I'm thinking the bairns will be pleased to find a
little packet of money in the saucers; and it's not too much
for a man to pay for the luck o' getting seven salmon in the
middle of January—for who could have expected that?'

And then Meenie laughed.

'It's little you know, Ronald, what is in store for you
to-morrow night.  It will be the hardest night's work you
ever undertook in your life.'

'I'm not afraid o't,' he answered simply.

'But you do not know yet.'

She opened her ulster and from an inside pocket
produced the formidable document that she had shown to
Ronald's sister; and then she buttoned the long garment
again, and contentedly sate herself down on the low stone
parapet, the programme in her hand.  And now all trace
of embarrassment was fled from her; and when she spoke
to him, or smiled, those clear frank eyes of hers looked
straight into his, fearing nothing, but only expecting a
welcome.  She did not, as he did, continually remember
that she was Miss Douglas, the doctor's daughter, and he
merely a smart young deerstalker.  To her he was simply
Ronald—the Ronald that every one knew and liked; who
had a kind of masterful way throughout this neighbourhood,
and was arbiter in all matters of public concern; but who,
nevertheless, was of such amazing good nature that there
was no trouble he would not undertake to gratify her
slightest wish.  And as he was so friendly and obliging
towards her, she made no doubt he was so to others; and
that would account for his great popularity, she considered;
and she thought it was very lucky for this remote little
hamlet that it held within it one who was capable of
producing so much good feeling, and keeping the social
atmosphere sweet and sound.

As for him, he met this perfect friendship of hers with a
studied respect.  Always, if it was on the one side 'Ronald,'
on the other it was 'Miss Douglas.'  Why, her very costume
was a bar to more familiar relations.  At this moment, as
she sate on the stone parapet of the bridge, looking down at
the document before her, and as he stood at a little distance,
timidly awaiting what she had to say, it occurred to him
again, as it had occurred before, that no matter what dress
it was, each one seemed to become her better than any
other.  What was there particular in a tight-fitting gray
ulster and a deerstalker's cap? and yet there was grace
there, and style, and a nameless charm.  If one of the
lasses at the inn, now, were sent on an errand on one of
these wild and blustering mornings, and got her hair blown
about, she came back looking untidy; but if Miss Douglas
had her hair blown about, so that bits and curls of it got free
from the cap or the velvet hat, and hung lightly about her
forehead or her ears or her neck, it was a greater witchery
than ever.  Then everything seemed to fit her so well and
so easily, and to be so simple; and always leaving her—however
it was so managed—perfect freedom of movement, so
that she could swing a child on to her shoulder, or run
after a truant, or leap from bank to bank of a burn without
disturbing in the least that constant symmetry and neatness.
To Ronald it was all a wonder; and there was a still
further wonder always seeming to accompany her and
surround her.  Why was it that the bleakest winter day, on
these desolate Sutherland moors, suddenly grew filled with
light when he chanced to see a well-known figure away
along the road—the world changing into a joyful thing, as
if the summer were already come, and the larks singing in
the blue?  And when she spoke to him, there was a kind
of music in the air; and when she laughed—why, Clebrig
and Ben Loyal and the whispering Mudal Water seemed
all to be listening and all to be glad that she was happy
and pleased.  She was the only one, other than himself,
that the faithful Harry would follow; and he would go with
her wherever she went, so long as she gave him an
occasional word of encouragement.

'Will I read you the programme, Ronald?' said she,
with just a trace of mischief in the gray-blue eyes.  'I'm
sure you ought to hear what has to be done, for you are
to be in the chair, you know.'

'Me?' said he, in astonishment.  'I never tried such
a thing in my life.'

'Oh yes,' she said cheerfully.  'They tell me you are
always at the head of the merry-makings: and is not this
a simple thing?  And besides, I do not want any other
grown people—I do not want Mr. Murray—he is a very
nice man—but he would be making jokes for the grown-up
people all the time.  I want nobody but you and Maggie
and myself besides the children, and we will manage it
very well, I am sure.'

There was a touch of flattery in the proposal.

'Indeed, yes,' said he at once.  'We will manage well
enough, if ye wish it that way.'

'Very well, then,' said she, turning with a practical air
to the programme.  'We begin with singing Old Hundred,
and then the children will have tea and cake—and the
sixpence and the penny.  And then there is to be an
address by the Chairman—that's you, Ronald.'

'Bless me, lassie!' he was startled into saying; and
then he stammered an apology, and sought safety in a
vehement protest against the fancy that he could make a
speech—about anything whatever.

'Well, that is strange,' said Meenie looking at him, and
rather inclined to laugh at his perplexity.  'It is a strange
thing if you cannot make a little speech to them; for I
have to make one—at the end.  See, there is my name.'

He scarcely glanced at the programme.

'And what have you to speak about, Miss Douglas?'

She laughed.

'About you.'

'About me?' he said, rather aghast.

'It is a vote of thanks to the chairman—and easy enough
it will be, I am sure.  For I have only to say about you
what I hear every one say about you; and that will be
simple enough.'

The open sincerity of her friendship—and even of her
marked liking for him—was so apparent that for a second
or so he was rather bewildered.  But he was not the kind
of man to misconstrue frankness; he knew that was part
of herself; she was too generous, too much inclined to
think well of everybody; and the main point to which he
had to confine himself was this, that if she, out of her
good-nature, could address a few words to those children—about
him or any other creature or object in the world—it
certainly behoved him to do his best also, although he
had never tried anything of the kind before.  And then a
sudden fancy struck him; and his eyes brightened eagerly.
'Oh yes, yes,' he said, 'I will find something to say.
I would make a bad hand at a sermon; but the bairns
have enough o' that at times; I dare say we'll find
something for them o' another kind—and they'll no be sorry
if it's short.  I'm thinking I can find something that'll
please them.'

And what was this that was in his head?—what but
the toast of the Mistress of the Feast!  If Meenie had
but known, she would doubtless have protested against the
introduction of any mutual admiration society into the
modest hamlet of Inver-Mudal; but at that moment she
was still scanning the programme.

'Now you know, Ronald,' she said, 'it is to be all quiet
and private; and that is why the grown-up people are to be
kept out except ourselves.  Well, then, after they have had
raisins handed round, you are to sing "My love she's but a
lassie yet"—that is a compliment to the little ones; and then
I will read them something; and then you are to sing "O
dinna cross the burn, Willie"—I have put down no songs
that I have not heard you sing.  And then if you would
play them "Lord Breadalbane's March" on the pipes——'

She looked up again, with an air of apology.

'Do you think I am asking too much from you, Ronald?'
she said.

'Indeed not a bit,' said he promptly.  'I will play or
sing for them all the night long, if you want; and I'm sure
it's much better we should do it all ourselves, instead o'
having a lot o' grown-up folk to make the bairns shy.'

'It is not the chairman anyway, that will make them
shy—if what they say themselves is true,' said Meenie very
prettily; and she folded up her programme and put it in
her pocket again.

She rose; and he whistled in the dogs, as if he would
return to the village.

'I thought you were taking them for a run,' said she.

'Oh, they have been scampering about; I will go back now.'

Nor did it occur to her for a moment that she would
rather not walk back to the door of her mother's house
with him.  On the contrary, if she had been able to attract
his notice when he passed, she would have gone down to
the little garden-gate, and had this conversation with him
in view of all the windows.  If she wanted him to do
anything for her, she never thought twice about going along
to his cottage and knocking at the door; or she would, in
the event of his not being there, go on to the inn and ask
if any one had seen Ronald about.  And so on this
occasion she went along the road with him in much
good-humour; praising the dogs, hoping the weather would
continue fine, and altogether in high spirits over her plans
for the morrow.

However, they were not to part quite so pleasantly.
At the small garden-gate, and evidently awaiting them,
stood Mrs. Douglas; and Ronald guessed that she was in
no very good temper.  In truth, she seldom was.  She
was a doll-like little woman, rather pretty, with cold clear
blue eyes, fresh-coloured cheeks, and quite silver-white hair,
which was carefully curled and braided—a pretty little old
lady, and one to be petted and made much of, if only she
had had a little more amiability of disposition.  But she was
a disappointed woman.  Her big good-natured husband had
never fulfilled the promise of his early years, when, in a
fit of romance, she married the penniless medical student
whom she had met in Edinburgh.  He was not disappointed
at all; his life suited him well enough; he was
excessively fond of his daughter Meenie, and wanted no
other companion when she was about; after the hard work
of making a round of professional visits in that wild district,
the quiet and comfort and neatness of the little cottage at
Inver-Mudal were all that he required.  But it was far
otherwise with the once ambitious little woman whom he
had married.  The shadow of the dignity of the Stuarts of
Glengask still dwelt over her; and it vexed her that she
had nothing with which to overawe the neighbours or to
convince the passing stranger of her importance.  Perhaps
if she had been of commanding figure, that might have
helped her, however poor her circumstances might be; as
it was, being but five feet two inches in height—and rather
toy-like withal—everything seemed against her.  It was
but little use her endeavouring to assume a majestic manner
when her appearance was somehow suggestive of a glass
case; and the sharpness of her tongue, which was considerable,
seemed to be but little heeded even in her own house,
for both her husband and her daughter were persons of an
easy good humour, and rather inclined to pet her in spite
of herself.

'Good morning, Mrs. Douglas,' Ronald said respectfully,
and he raised his cap as they drew near.

'Good morning, Mr. Strang,' she said, with much
precision, and scarcely glancing at him.

She turned to Meenie.

'Williamina, how often have I told you to shut the gate
after you when you go out?' she said sharply.  'Here
has the cow been in again.'

'It cannot do much harm at this time of the year,'
Meenie said lightly.

'I suppose if I ask you to shut the gate that is enough?
Where have you been?  Idling, I suppose.  Have you
written to Lady Stuart to thank her for the Birthday Book?'

It seemed to Ronald (who wished to get away, but
could scarcely leave without some civil word of parting)
that she referred to Lady Stuart in an unmistakably clear
tone.  She appeared to take no notice of Ronald's presence,
but she allowed him to hear that there was such a person
as Lady Stuart in existence.

'Why, mother, it only came yesterday, and I haven't
looked over it yet,' Meenie said.

'I think when her ladyship sends you a present,' observed
the little woman, with severe dignity, 'the least you can
do is to write and thank her at once.  There are many
who would be glad of the chance.  Go in and write the
letter now.'

'Very well, mother,' said Meenie, with perfect
equanimity; and then she called 'Good morning, Ronald!'
and went indoors.

What was he to do to pacify this imperious little dame?
As a gamekeeper, he knew but the one way.

'Would a hare or two, or a brace of ptarmigan be of
any use to you, Mrs. Douglas?' said he.

'Indeed,' she answered, with much dignity, 'we have
not had much game of any kind of late, for at Glengask
they do not shoot any of the deer after Christmas.'

This intimation that her cousin, Sir Alexander, was the
owner of a deer-forest might have succeeded with anybody
else.  But alas! this young man was a keeper, and very
well he knew that there was no forest at all at Glengask,
though occasionally in October they might come across a
stag that had been driven forth from the herd, or they might
find two or three strayed hinds in the woods later on; while,
if Mrs. Douglas had but even one haunch sent her in the
year—say at Christmas—he considered she got a very fair
share of whatever venison was going at Glengask.  But of
course he said nothing of all this.

'Oh, very well,' said he, 'I'm thinking o' getting two or
three o' the lads to go up the hill for a hare-drive one o'
these days.  The hares 'll be the better o' some thinning
down—on one or two o' the far tops; and then again, when
we've got them it's no use sending them south—they're no
worth the carriage.  So if ye will take a few o' them, I'm
sure you're very welcome.  Good morning, ma'am.'

'Good morning,' said she, a little stiffly, and she turned
and walked towards the cottage.

As for him, he strode homeward with right goodwill;
for Meenie's letter was in his pocket; and he had forthwith
to make his way to Crask—preferring not to place any
commission of hers in alien hands.  He got the dogs
kennelled up—all except the little terrier; he slung his
telescope over his shoulder, and took a stick in his hand.
'Come along, Harry, lad, ye'll see your friends at Crask ere
dinner time, and if ye're well-behaved ye'll come home in
the waggonette along wi' the bairns.'

It was a brisk and breezy morning; the keen north wind
was fortunately behind him; and soon he was swinging
along through the desolate solitudes of Strath Terry, his
footfall on the road the only sound in the universal
stillness.  And yet not the only sound, for sometimes he
conversed with Harry, and sometimes he sent his clear tenor
voice ringing over the wide moorland, and startling here or
there a sheep, the solitary occupant of these wilds.  For
no longer had he to propitiate that domineering little dame;
and the awful shadow of Glengask was as nothing to him;
the American, with his unsettling notions, had departed;
here he was at home, his own master, free in mind, and
with the best of all companions trotting placidly at his
heels.  No wonder his voice rang loud and clear and
contented:—

.. class:: italics

   |  '"'Tis not beneath the burgonet,
   |    Nor yet beneath the crown,
   |  'Tis not on couch of velvet,
   |    Nor yet on bed of down."

Harry, lad, do ye see that hoodie?  Was there ever such
impudence?  I could maist kill him with a stone.  But
I'll come along and pay a visit to the gentleman ere the
month's much older:—

.. class:: italics

   |  "'Tis beneath the spreading birch,
   |    In the dell without a name,
   |  Wi' a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
   |    When the kye come hame."

What think ye o' that now?—for we'll have to do our best
to-morrow night to please the bairns.  Ah, you wise wee
deevil!—catch you drinking out o' a puddle when ye see
any running water near.

.. class:: italics

   |  "When the kye come hame, when the kye come hame,
   |  Twixt the gloaming and the mirk, when the kye come hame."





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.. _`HIGH FESTIVAL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X.


.. class:: center medium bold

   HIGH FESTIVAL.

.. vspace:: 2

A children's tea-party in a Highland barn sounds a trivial
sort of affair; and, as a spectacle, would doubtless suffer in
contrast with a fancy-dress ball in Kensington or with a
State concert at Buckingham Palace.  But human nature
is the important thing, after all, no matter what the
surroundings may be; and if one considers what the ordinary
life of these children was—the dull monotony of it in those
far and bleak solitudes; their ignorance of pantomime
transformation scenes; their lack of elaborately illustrated
fairy tales, and similar aids to the imagination enjoyed by
more fortunate young people elsewhere—it was surely an
interesting kind of project to bring these bairns away from
the homely farm or the keeper's cottage, in the depth of
mid-winter, and to march them through the blackness of a
January evening into a suddenly opening wonderland of
splendour and colour and festivity.  They were not likely
to remember that this was but a barn—this beautiful place,
with its blazing candelabra, and its devices of evergreens
and great white and red roses, and the long table
sumptuously set forth, and each guest sitting down, finding
himself or herself a capitalist to the extent of sevenpence.  And
so warm and comfortable the lofty building was; and so
brilliant and luminous with those circles of candles; and
the loud strains of the pipes echoing through it—giving
them a welcome just as if they were grown-up people: no
wonder they stared mostly in silence at first, and seemed
awestruck, and perhaps were in doubt whether this might
not be some Cinderella kind of feast, that they might
suddenly be snatched away from—and sent back again
through the cold and the night to the far and silent cottage
in the glen.  But this feeling soon wore off; for it was no
mystical fairy—though she seemed more beautiful and
gracious, and more richly attired than any fairy they had
ever dreamed about—who went swiftly here and there and
everywhere, arranging their seats for them, laughing and
talking with them, forgetting not one of their names, and
as busy and merry and high-spirited as so great an occasion
obviously demanded.

Moreover, is it not in these early years that ideals are
unconsciously being formed—from such experiences as are
nearest?—ideals that in after-life may become standards of
conduct and aims.  They had never seen any one so
gentle-mannered as this young lady who was at once their
hostess and the little mother of them all, nor any one so
dignified and yet so simple and good-humoured and kind.
They could not but observe with what marked respect
Ronald Strang (a most important person in their eyes)
treated her—insisting on her changing places with him, lest
she should be in a draught when the door was opened;
and not allowing her to touch the teapots that came hot
and hot from the kitchen, lest she should burn her fingers;
he pouring out the tea himself, and rather clumsily too.
And if their ideal of sweet and gracious womanhood
(supposing it to be forming in their heads) was of but a
prospective advantage, was there not something of a more
immediate value to them in thus being allowed to look on
one who was so far superior to the ordinary human creatures
they saw around them?  She formed an easy key to the
few imaginative stories they were familiar with.  Cinderella,
for example: when they read how she fascinated the prince
at the ball, and won all hearts and charmed all eyes, they
could think of Miss Douglas, and eagerly understand.  The
Queen of Sheba, when she came in all her splendour: how
were these shepherds' and keepers' and crofters' children
to form any notion of her appearance but by regarding
Miss Douglas in this beautiful and graceful attire of hers?
In point of fact, her gown was but of plain black silk; but
there was something about the manner of her wearing it
that had an indefinable charm; and then she had a
singularly neat collar and a pretty ribbon round her neck; and
there were slender silver things gleaming at her wrists from
time to time.  Indeed, there was no saying for how many
heroines of history or fiction Miss Meenie Douglas had
unconsciously to herself to do duty—in the solitary
communings of a summer day's herding, or during the dreary
hours in which these hapless little people were shut up in
some small, close, overcrowded parish church, supposing
that they lived anywhere within half a dozen miles of such
a building: now she would be Joan of Arc, or perhaps
Queen Esther that was so surpassing beautiful, or Lord
Ullin's daughter that was drowned within sight of Ulva's
shores.  And was it not sufficiently strange that the same
magical creature, who represented to them everything that
was noble and beautiful and refined and queen-like, should
now be moving about amongst them, cutting cake for them,
laughing, joking, patting this one or that on the shoulder,
and apparently quite delighted to wait on them and serve
them?

The introductory singing of the Old Hundredth Psalm
was, it must be confessed, a failure.  The large majority of
the children present had never either heard or seen a piano;
and when Meenie went to that strange-looking instrument
(it had been brought over from her mother's cottage with
considerable difficulty), and when she sate down and struck
the first deep resounding chords—and when Ronald, at his
end of the table, led off the singing with his powerful
tenor voice—they were far too much interested and
awestruck to follow.  Meenie sang, in her quiet clear way, and
Maggie timidly joined in, but the children were silent.
However, as has already been said, the restraint that was at
first pretty obvious very soon wore off; the tea and cake
were consumed amid much general hilarity and satisfaction;
and when in due course the Chairman rose to deliver his
address, and when Miss Douglas tapped on the table to
secure attention, and also by way of applause, several of
the elder ones had quite enough courage and knowledge of
affairs to follow her example, so that the speaker may be
said to have been received with favour.

And if there were any wise ones there, whose experience
had taught them that tea and cake were but a snare to
entrap innocent people into being lectured and sermonised,
they were speedily reassured.  The Chairman's address
was mostly about starlings and jays and rabbits and ferrets
and squirrels; and about the various ways of taming these,
and teaching them; and of his own various successes and
failures when he was a boy.  He had to apologise at the
outset for not speaking in the Gaelic; for he said that if he
tried they would soon be laughing at him; he would have
to speak in English; but if he mentioned any bird or beast
whose name they did not understand, they were to ask him,
and he would tell them the Gaelic name.  And very soon
it was clear enough that this was no lecture on the wanderings
of the children of Israel, nor yet a sermon on justification
by faith; the eager eyes of the boys followed every
detail of the capture of the nest of young ospreys; the girls
were like to cry over the untimely fate of a certain tame
sparrow that had strayed within the reach—or the spring
rather—of an alien cat; and general laughter greeted the
history of the continued and uncalled-for mischiefs and evil
deeds of one Peter, a squirrel but half reclaimed from its
savage ways, that had cost the youthful naturalist much
anxiety and vexation, and also not a little blood.  There
was, moreover, a dark and wild story of revenge—on an
ill-conditioned cur that was the terror of the whole village, and
was for ever snapping at girls' ankles and boys' legs—a most
improper and immoral story to be told to young folks,
though the boys seemed to think the ill-tempered beast got
no more than it deserved.  That small village, by the way,
down there in the Lothians, seemed to have been a very
remarkable place; the scene of the strangest exploits and
performances on the part of terriers, donkeys, pet kittens,
and tame jackdaws; haunted by curious folk, too, who
knew all about bogles and kelpies and such uncanny
creatures, and had had the most remarkable experiences of them
(though modern science was allowed to come in here for a
little bit, with its cold-blooded explanations of the
supernatural).  And when, to finish up this discursive and
apparently aimless address, he remarked that the only thing
lacking in that village where he had been brought up, and
where he had observed all these incidents and wonders,
was the presence of a kind-hearted and generous young
lady, who, on an occasion, would undertake all the trouble
of gathering together the children for miles around, and
would do everything she could to make them perfectly happy,
they knew perfectly well whom he meant; and when he
said, in conclusion, that if they knew of any such an one
about here, in Inver-Mudal, and if they thought that she
had been kind to them, and if they wished to show her that
they were grateful to her for her goodness, they could not
do better than give her three loud cheers, the lecture came
to an end in a perfect storm of applause; and Meenie—blushing
a little, and yet laughing—had to get up and say
that she was responsible for the keeping of order by this
assembly, and would allow no speech-making and no
cheering that was not put down in the programme.

After this there was a service of raisins; and in the
general quiet that followed Mr. Murray came into the room,
just to see how things were going on.  Now the innkeeper
considered himself to be a man of a humorous turn; and
when he went up to shake hands with Miss Douglas, and
looked down the long table, and saw Ronald presiding at
the other end, and her presiding at this, and all the children
sitting so sedately there, he remarked to her in his waggish
way—

'Well, now, for a young married couple, you have a
very large family.'

But Miss Douglas was not a self-conscious young person,
nor easily alarmed, and she merely laughed and said—

'I am sure they are a very well-behaved family indeed.'

But Ronald, who had not heard the jocose remark, by
the way, objected to any one coming in to claim Miss
Douglas's attention on so important an occasion; and in
his capacity of Chairman he rose and rapped loudly on the
table.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, 'we're not going to
have any idlers here the night.  Any one that bides with
us must do something.  I call on Mr. Murray to sing his
well-known song, "Bonnie Peggie, O."'

'Indeed no, indeed no,' the innkeeper said, instantly
retreating to the door.  'There iss too many good judges
here the night.  I'll leave you to yourselfs; but if there's
anything in the inn you would like sent over, do not be
afraid to ask for it, Ronald.  And the rooms for the children
are all ready, and the beds; and we'll make them very
comfortable, Miss Douglas, be sure of that now.'

'It's ower soon to talk about beds yet,' Ronald said,
when the innkeeper had gone; and he drove home the
wooden bolt of the door, so that no other interloper should
get in.  Meenie had said she wanted no outsiders present;
that was enough.

And then they set about getting through the programme—the
details of which need not be repeated here.  Song
followed song; when there was any pause Meenie played
simple airs on the piano; for 'The Cameraman's Dream,'
when it came to her turn to read them something, she
substituted 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin,' which was listened
to with breathless interest.  Even the little Maggie did her
part in the 'Huntingtower' duet very creditably—fortified
by the knowledge that there were no critics present.  And
as for the children, they had become quite convinced that
there was to be no sermon; and that they were not to be
catechised about their lessons, nor examined as to the
reasons annexed to the Fourth Commandment; all care
was gone from them; for the moment life was nothing but
shortbread and raisins and singing, with admiration of Miss
Douglas's beautiful hair and beautiful kind eyes and soft
and laughing voice.

And then, as the evening wore on, it became time to
send these young people to the beds that had been prepared
for them at the inn; and of course they could not break
up without singing 'Auld Lang Syne'—Meenie officiating
at the piano, and all the others standing up and joining
hands.  And then she had to come back to the table to
propose a vote of thanks to the Chairman.  Well, she
was not much abashed.  Perhaps there was a little extra
colour in her face at the beginning; and she said she had
never tried to make a speech before; and, indeed, that now
there was no occasion, for that all of them knew Ronald
(so she called him, quite naturally), and knew that he was
always willing to do a kindness when he was asked.  And
she said that he had done a great deal more than had been
originally begged of him; and they ought all of them,
including herself, to be very grateful to him; and if they
wished to give him a unanimous vote of thanks, they were
all to hold up their right hand—as she did.  So that vote
was carried; and Ronald said a few words in reply—mostly
about Miss Douglas, in truth, and also telling them to whom
they were indebted for the money found in each saucer.
Then came the business of finding wraps for them and
muffling them up ere they went out into the January night
(though many a one there was all unused to such
precautions, and wondered that Miss Douglas should be so
careful of them), while Ronald, up at the head of the room, was
playing them a parting salute on the pipes—*Caidil gu lo* it
was, which means 'Sleep on till day.'  Finally, when
Maggie and Meenie were ushering their small charges
through the darkness to the back-door of the inn, he found
himself alone; and, before putting out the candles and fastening
up, he thought he might as well have a smoke—for that
solace had been denied him during the long evening.

Well, he was staring absently into the mass of smouldering
peats, and thinking mostly of the sound of Meenie's
voice as he had heard it when she sang with the children
'Whither, pilgrims, are you going?' when he heard
footsteps behind him, and turning found that both Meenie
and Maggie had come back.

'Ronald,' said Meenie, with her pretty eyes smiling at
him, 'do you know that Maggie and I are rather tired——'

'Well, I dinna wonder,' said he.

'Yes, and both of us very hungry too.  And I am sure
there will be no supper waiting for either Maggie or me
when we go home; and do you think you could get us
some little thing now?'

'Here?' said he, with his face lighting up with pleasure:
were those three to have supper all by themselves?

'Oh yes,' said she, in her friendly way.  'I am not sure
that my mother would like me to stay at the inn for supper;
but this is our own place; and the table laid; and Maggie
and I would rather be here, I am sure.  And you—are
you not hungry too—after so long a time—I am sure you
want something besides raisins and shortbread.  But if it
will be any trouble—

'Trouble or no trouble,' said he quickly, 'has nothing
to do wi't.  Here, Maggie, lass, clear the end of the table;
and we'll soon get some supper for ye.'

And away he went to the inn, summoning the lasses
there, and driving and hurrying them until they had
arranged upon a large tray a very presentable
supper—some cold beef, and ham, and cheese, and bread, and ale;
and when the fair-haired Nelly was ready to start forth with
this burden, he lit a candle and walked before her through
the darkness, lest she should miss her footing.  And very
demure was Nelly when she placed this supper on the table;
there was not even a look for the smart young keeper; and
when Meenie said to her—

'I hear, Nelly, you had great goings-on on Monday
night'—she only answered—'Oh yes, miss, there was that'—and
could not be drawn into conversation, but left the
moment she had everything arranged.

But curiously enough, when the two girls had taken
their seats at this little cross table, Ronald remained
standing—just behind them, indeed, as if he were a waiter.
And would Miss Douglas have this? and would Miss
Douglas have that? he suggested—mostly to cloak his
shamefacedness; for indeed that first wild assumption that
they were all to have supper together was banished now as
an impertinence.  He would wait on them, and gladly;
but—but his own supper would come after.

'And what will you have yourself, Ronald?' Meenie asked.

'Oh,' said he, 'that will do by and by.  I am not so
hungry as you.'

'Did you have so much of the shortbread?' said she,
laughing.

He went and stirred up the peats—and the red glow
sent a genial warmth across towards them.

'Come, Ronald,' said the little Maggie, 'and have some
supper.'

'There is no hurry,' he said evasively.  'I think I will go
outside and have a pipe now; and get something by and by.'

'I am sure,' said Meenie saucily, 'that it is no compliment
to us that you would rather go away and smoke.  See, now,
if we cannot tempt you.'

And therewith, with her own pretty fingers, she made
ready his place at the table; and put the knife and fork
properly beside the plate; and helped him to a slice of beef
and a slice of ham; and poured some ale into his tumbler.
Not only that, but she made a little movement of arranging
her dress which was so obviously an invitation that he
should there and then take a place by her, that it was not
in mortal man to resist; though, indeed, after sitting down,
he seemed to devote all his attention to looking after his
companions.  And very soon any small embarrassment was
entirely gone; Meenie was in an unusually gay and merry
mood—for she was pleased that her party had been so
obviously a success, and all her responsibilities over.  And
this vivacity gave a new beauty to her face; her eyes seemed
more kind than ever; when she laughed, it was a sweet
low laugh, like the cooing of pigeons on a summer afternoon.

'And what are you thinking of, Maggie?' she said,
suddenly turning to the little girl, who had grown rather
silent amid this talking and joking.

'I was wishing this could go on for ever,' was the simple
answer.

'What?  A perpetual supper?  Oh, you greedy girl!
Why, you must be looking forward to the Scandinavian
heaven——'

'No, it's to be with Ronald and you, Meenie dear—just
like now—for you seem to be able to keep everybody
happy.'

Miss Douglas did blush a little at this; but it was an
honest compliment, and it was soon forgotten.  And then,
when they had finished supper, she said—

'Ronald, do you know that I have never played an
accompaniment to one of your songs?  Would you not
like to hear how it sounds?

'But—but I'm not used to it—I should be putting you
wrong——'

'No, no; I'm sure we will manage.  Come along,' she
said briskly.  'There is that one I heard you sing the other
day—I heard you, though you did not see me—"Gae bring
to me a pint o' wine, and fill it in a silver tassie; that I
may drink, before I go, a service to my bonnie lassie"—and
very proud she was, I suppose.  Well, now, we will try
that one.'

So they went to the other end of the barn, where the
piano was; and there was a good deal of singing there, and
laughing and joking—among this little party of three.
And Meenie sang too—on condition (woman-like) that
Ronald would light his pipe.  Little Maggie scarcely knew
which to admire the more—this beautiful and graceful
young lady, who was so complaisant and friendly and kind,
or her own brother, who was so handsome and manly and
modest, and yet could do everything in the world.  Nor
could there have been any sinister doubt in that wish of hers
that these three should always be together as they were
then; how was she to know that this was the last evening
on which Meenie Douglas and Ronald were to meet on
these all too friendly terms?





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.. _`A REVELATION`:

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   CHAPTER XI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A REVELATION.

.. vspace:: 2

Early the next morning, when as yet the sunrise was still
widening up and over the loch, and the faint tinge of red
had not quite left the higher slopes of Clebrig, Ronald had
already finished his breakfast, and was in his own small
room, smoking the customary pipe, and idly—and with
some curious kind of whimsical amusement in his brain—turning
over the loose sheets of scribbled verses.  And that
was a very ethereal and imaginary Meenie he found there—a
Meenie of lonely hillside wanderings—a Meenie of daydreams
and visions: not the actual, light-hearted, shrewd-headed
Meenie of the evening before, who was so merry
after the children had gone, and so content with the little
supper-party of three, and would have him smoke his pipe
without regard to her pretty silk dress.  This Meenie on
paper was rather a wistful, visionary, distant creature; whereas
the Meenie of the previous evening was altogether
good-humoured and laughing, with the quaintest mother-ways in
the management of the children, and always a light of
kindness shining in her clear Highland eyes.  He would have
to write something to portray Meenie (to himself) in this
more friendly and actual character.  He could do it easily
enough, he knew.  There never was any lack of rhymes
when Meenie was the occasion.  At other things he had to
labour—frequently, indeed, until, reflecting that this was
not his business, he would fling the scrawl into the fire, and
drive it into the peats with his heel, and go away with much
content.  But when Meenie was in his head, everything
came readily enough; all the world around seemed full of
beautiful things to compare with her; the birds were singing
of her; the mountains were there to guard her; the burn,
as it whispered through the rushes, or danced over the open
bed of pebbles, had but the one continual murmur of
Meenie's name.  Verses? he could have written them by
the score—and laughed at them, and burned them, too.

Suddenly the little Maggie appeared.

'Ronald,' she said, 'the Doctor's come home.'

'What—at this time in the morning?' he said turning
to her.

'Yes, I am sure; for I can see the dog-cart at the door
of the inn.'

'Well now,' said he, hastily snatching up his cap, 'that
is a stroke of luck—if he will come with us.  I will go
and meet him.'

But he need not have hurried so much; the dog-cart
was still at the door of the inn when he went out; and
indeed remained there as he made his way along the road.
The Doctor, who was a most sociable person, had stopped
for a moment to hear the news; but Mr. Murray happened
to be there, and so the chat was a protracted one.  In the
meantime Ronald's long swinging stride soon brought him
into their neighbourhood.

'Good morning, Doctor!' he cried.

'Good morning, Ronald,' said the other, turning round.
He was a big man, somewhat corpulent, with an honest,
wholesome, ruddy face, soft brown eyes, and an expressive
mouth, that could temper his very apparent good-nature
with a little mild sarcasm.

'You've come back in the nick of time,' the keeper
said—for well he knew the Doctor's keen love of a gun.
'I'm thinking of driving some of the far tops the day, to
thin down the hares a bit; and I'm sure ye'd be glad to
lend us a hand.'

'Man, I was going home to my bed, to tell ye the truth,'
said the Doctor; 'it's very little sleep I've had the last ten
days.'

'What is the use of that?' said Ronald, 'there's aye
plenty o' time for sleep in the winter.'

And then the heavy-framed occupant of the dog-cart
glanced up at the far-reaching heights of Clebrig, and there
was a grim smile on his mouth.

'It's all very well,' said he, 'for herring-stomached young
fellows like you to face a hill like that; but I've got weight
to carry, man; and—

'Come, come, Doctor; it's not the first time you've been
on Clebrig,' Ronald said—he could see that Meenie's father
wanted to be persuaded.  'Besides, we'll no try the highest
tops up there—there's been too much snow.  And I'll tell
ye how we'll make it easy for ye; we'll row ye down the
loch and begin at the other end and work home—there,
it's a fair offer.'

It was an offer, at all events, that the big doctor could
not withstand.

'Well, well,' said he, 'I'll just drive the dog-cart along
and see how they are at home; and then if the wife lets
me out o' her clutches, I'll come down to the loch side as
fast as I can.'

Ronald turned to one of the stable-lads (all of whom
were transformed into beaters on this occasion).

'Jimmy, just run over to the house and fetch my gun;
and bid Maggie put twenty cartridges—number 4, she
knows where they are—into the bag; and then ye can
take the gun and the cartridge-bag down to the boat—and
be giving her a bale-out till I come along.  I'm going to the
farm now, to get two more lads if I can; tell the Doctor
I'll no be long after him, if he gets down to the loch first.'

Some quarter of an hour thereafter they set forth; and
a rough pull it was down the loch, for the wind was
blowing hard, and the waves were coming broadside on.  Those
who were at the oars had decidedly the best of it, for it
was bitterly cold; but even the others did not seem to
mind much—they were chiefly occupied in scanning the
sky-line of the hills (a habit that one naturally falls into in
a deer country), while Ronald and the Doctor, seated in
the stern, were mostly concerned about keeping their guns
dry.  In due course of time they landed, made their way
through a wood of young birch-trees, followed the channel
of a burn for a space, and by and by began to reach the
upper slopes, where the plans for the first drive were
carefully drawn out and explained.

Now it is unnecessary to enter into details of the day's
achievements, for they were neither exciting nor difficult
nor daring.  It was clearly a case of shooting for the pot;
although Ronald, in his capacity of keeper, was anxious to
have the hares thinned down, knowing well enough that
the over-multiplying of them was as certain to bring in
disease as the overstocking of a mountain farm with sheep.
But it may be said that the sport, such as it was, was done
in a workmanlike manner.  In Ronald's case, each cartridge
meant a hare—and no praise to him, for it was his business.
As for the Doctor, he was not only an excellent shot, but
he exercised a wise and humane discretion as well.  Nothing
would induce him to fire at long range on the off-chance
of hitting; and this is all the more laudable in the
shooting of mountain hares, for these, when wounded, will
frequently dodge into a hole among the rocks, like a rabbit,
baffling dogs and men, and dying a miserable death.
Moreover, there was no need to take risky shots.  The two guns
were posted behind a stone or small hillock—lying at full
length on the ground, only their brown-capped heads and
the long barrels being visible.  Then the faint cries in the
distance became somewhat louder—with sticks rattled on
rocks, and stones flung here and there; presently, on the
sky-line of the plateau, a small object appeared, sitting
upright and dark against the sky; then it came shambling
leisurely along—becoming bigger and bigger and whiter
and whiter every moment, until at length it showed itself
almost like a cat, but not running stealthily like a cat,
rather hopping forward on its ungainly high haunches; and
then again it would stop and sit up, its ears thrown back,
its eyes not looking at anything in front of it, its
snow-white body, with here and there a touch of bluish-brown,
offering a tempting target for a pea-rifle.  But by this time,
of course, numerous others had come hopping over the
sky-line; and now as the loud yells and shouts and striking of
stones were close at hand, there was more swift running
instead of hobbling and pausing among the white frightened
creatures; and as they cared for nothing in front (in fact
a driven hare cannot see anything that is right ahead of it,
and will run against your boots if you happen to be standing
in the way), but sped noiselessly across the withered
grass and hard clumps of heather—bang! went the first
barrel, and then another and another, as quick as fingers
could unload and reload, until here, there, and everywhere—but
always within a certain radius from the respective
posts—a white object lay on the hard and wintry ground.
The beaters came up to gather them together; the two
guns had risen from their cold quarters; there were found
to be thirteen hares all told—a quite sufficient number for
this part—and not one had crawled or hobbled away
wounded.

But we will now descend for a time from these bleak
altitudes and return to the little hamlet—which seemed to
lie there snugly enough and sheltered in the hollow, though
the wind was hard on the dark and driven loch.  Some
hour or so after the shooters and beaters had left, Meenie
Douglas came along to Ronald's cottage, and, of course,
found Maggie the sole occupant, as she had expected.
She was very bright and cheerful and friendly, and spoke
warmly of Ronald's kindness in giving her father a day's
shooting.

'My mother was a little angry,' she said, laughing, 'that
he should go away just the first thing after coming home;
but you know, Maggie, he is so fond of shooting; and it
is not always he can get a day, especially at this time of
the year: and I am very glad he has gone; for you know
there are very few who have to work so hard.'

'I wish they may come upon a stag,' said the little
Maggie—with reckless and irresponsible generosity.

'Do you know, Maggie,' said the elder young lady,
with a shrewd smile on her face, 'I am not sure that my
mother likes the people about here to be so kind; she is
always expecting my father to get a better post—but I know
he is not likely to get one that will suit him as well with
the fishing and shooting.  There is the Mudal—the gentlemen
at the lodge let him have that all the spring through;
and when the loch is not let, he can always have a day by
writing to Mr. Crawford; and here is Ronald, when the
hinds have to be shot at Christmas, and so on.  And if
the American gentleman takes the shooting as well as the
loch, surely he will ask my father to go with him a day or
two on the hill; it is a lonely thing shooting by one's self.
Well now, Maggie, did you put the curtains up again in
Ronald's room?'

'Yes, I did,' was the answer, 'and he did not tear them
down this time, for I told him you showed me how to hang
them; but he has tied them back so that they might just
as well not be there at all.  Come and see, Meenie dear.'

She led the way into her brother's room; and there,
sure enough, the window-curtains (which were wholly
unnecessary, by the way, except from the feminine point of
view, for there was certainly not too much light coming
in by the solitary window) had been tightly looped and
tied back, so that the view down the loch should be
unimpeded.

'No matter,' said Meenie; 'the window is not so bare-looking
as it used to be.  And I suppose he will let them
remain up now.'

'Oh yes, when he was told that you had something to
do with them,' was the simple answer.

Meenie went to the wooden mantelpiece, and put the
few things there straight, just as she would have done in
her own room, blowing the light white peat-dust off them,
and arranging them in neater order.

'I wonder, now,' she said, 'he does not get frames for
these photographs; they will be spoiled by finger marks
and the dust.'

Maggie said shyly—

'That was what he said to me the other day—but not
about these—about the one you gave me of yourself.  He
asked to see it, and I showed him how careful I was in
wrapping it up; but he said no—the first packman that
came through I was to get a frame if he had one, and
glass too; or else that he would send it in to Inverness to
be framed.  But you know, Meenie, it's not near so
nice-looking—or anything, anything like so nice-looking—as
you are.'

'Nothing could be that, I am sure,' said Meenie lightly;
and she was casting her eyes about the room, to see what
further improvements she could suggest.

But Maggie had grown suddenly silent, and was standing
at the little writing-table, apparently transfixed with
astonishment.  It will be remembered that when Ronald,
in the morning, heard that the Doctor was at the door of
the inn, he had hurriedly hastened away to intercept him;
and that, subsequently, in order to save time, he had sent
back a lad for his gun and cartridges, while he went on to
the farm.  Now it was this last arrangement that caused
him to overlook the fact that he had left his writing
materials—the blotting-pad and everything—lying exposed
on the table; a piece of neglect of which he had scarcely
ever before been guilty.  And as ill-luck would have it, as
Maggie was idly wandering round the room, waiting for
Meenie to make any further suggestions for the smartening
of it, what must she see lying before her, among these
papers, but a letter, boldly and conspicuously addressed?

'Well!' she exclaimed, as she took it up.  'Meenie,
here is a letter for you! why didna he send it along to
you?'

'A letter for me?' Meenie said, with a little surprise.
'No! why should Ronald write a letter to me?—I see him
about every day.'

'But look!'

Meenie took the letter in her hand; and regarded the
address; and laughed.

'It is very formal,' said she.  'There is no mistake about
it.  "*Miss Wilhelmina Stuart Douglas*"—when was I ever
called that before?  And "*Inver-Mudal, Sutherlandshire,
N.B.*"  He should have added *Europe*, as if he was sending
it from the moon.  Well, it is clearly meant for me, any
way—oh, and open too——'

The next minute all the careless amusement fled from
her face; her cheeks grew very white, and a frightened,
startled look sprang to her eyes.  She but caught the first
few lines—

.. class:: italics

   |  'O wilt thou be my dear love?
   |      (Meenie and Meenie)
   |  O wilt thou be my ain love?
   |      (My sweet Meenie)?

and then it was with a kind of shiver that her glance ran
over the rest of it; and her heart was beating so that she
could not speak; and there was a mist before her eyes.

'Maggie,' she managed to say at length—and she
hurriedly folded up the paper again and placed it on the
table with the others—'I should not have read it—it was
not meant for me—it was not meant that I should read
it—come away, come away, Maggie.'

She took the younger girl out of the room, and herself
shut the door, firmly, although her fingers were all trembling.

'Maggie,' she said, 'you must promise never to tell any
one that you gave me that letter—that I saw it——'

'But what is the matter, Meenie?' the smaller girl
said in bewilderment, for she could see by the strange
half-frightened look of Miss Douglas's face that something
serious had happened.

'Well, it is nothing—it is nothing,' she forced herself to
say.  'It will be all right.  I shouldn't have read the
letter—it was not meant for me to see—but if you say nothing
about it, no harm will be done.  That's all; that's all.
And now I am going to see if the children are ready that
are to go by the mail-car.'

'But I will go with you, Meenie.'

Then the girl seemed to recollect herself; and she
glanced round at the interior of the cottage, and at the little
girl, with an unusual kind of look.

'No, no, not this morning, Maggie,' she said.  'You have
plenty to do.  Good-bye—good-bye!' and she stooped and
kissed her, and patted her on the shoulder, and left,
seeming anxious to get away and be by herself.

Maggie remained there in considerable astonishment.
What had happened?  Why should she not go to help with
the children? and why good-bye—when Meenie would be
coming along the road in less than an hour, as soon as the
mail-car had left?  And all about the reading of something
contained in that folded sheet of paper.  However, the
little girl wisely resolved that, whatever was in that letter,
she would not seek to know it, nor would she speak of it
to any one, since Meenie seemed so anxious on that point;
and so she set about her domestic duties again—looking
forward to the end of these and the resumption of her
knitting of her brother's jersey.

Well, the winter's day went by, and they had done good
work on the hill.  As the dusk of the afternoon began to
creep over the heavens, they set out for the lower slopes on
their way home; and very heavily weighted the lads were
with the white creatures slung over their backs on sticks.
But the dusk was not the worst part of this descent; the
wind was now driving over heavy clouds from the north;
and again and again they would be completely enveloped,
and unable to see anywhere more than a yard from their
feet.  In these circumstances Ronald took the lead; the
Doctor coming next, and following, indeed, more by sound
than by sight; the lads bringing up in the wake in solitary
file, with their heavy loads thumping on their backs.  It
was a ghostly kind of procession; though now and again
the close veil around them would be rent in twain, and they
would have a glimpse of something afar off—perhaps a spur
of Ben Loyal, or the dark waters of Loch Meidie studded
with its small islands.  Long before they had reached
Inver-Mudal black night had fallen; but now they were on easier
ground; and at last the firm footing of the road echoed to
their measured tramp, as the invisible company marched on
and down to the warmth and welcome lights of the inn.

The Doctor, feeling himself something of a truant,
went on direct to his cottage; but the others entered
the inn; and as Ronald forthwith presented Mrs. Murray
with half a dozen of the hares, the landlord was right willing
to call for ale for the beaters, who had had a hard day's
work.  Nor was Ronald in a hurry to get home; for he
heard that Maggie was awaiting him in the kitchen; and so
he and Mr. Murray had a pipe and a chat together, as was
their custom.  Then he sent for his sister.

'Well, Maggie, lass,' said he, as they set out through
the dark, 'did you see all the bairns safely off this morning?'

'No, Ronald,' she said, 'Meenie did not seem to want
me; so I stayed at home.'

'And did you find Harry sufficient company for ye?  But
I suppose Miss Douglas came and stayed with ye for a while.'

'No, Ronald,' said the little girl, in a tone of some
surprise; 'she has not been near the house the whole day, since
the few minutes in the morning.'

'Oh,' said he, lightly, 'she may have been busy, now her
father is come home.  And ye maun try and get on wi' your
lessons as well as ye can, lass, without bothering Miss
Douglas too much; she canna always spend so much time with ye.'

The little girl was silent.  She was thinking of that
strange occurrence in the morning of which she was not to
speak; and in a vague kind of way she could not but
associate that with Meenie's absence all that day, and also
with the unusual tone of her 'good-bye.'  But yet, if there
were any trouble, it would speedily pass away.  Ronald
would put everything right.  Nobody could withstand him—that
was the first and last article of her creed.  And so,
when they got home, she proceeded cheerfully enough to
stir up the peats, and to cook their joint supper in a manner
really skilful for one of her years; and she laid the cloth;
and put the candles on the table; and had the tea and
everything ready.  Then they sate down; and Ronald was
in very good spirits, and talked to her, and tried to amuse her.
But the little Maggie rather wistfully looked back to the
brilliant evening before, when Meenie was with them; and perhaps
wondered whether there would ever again be a supper-party
as joyful and friendly and happy as they three had been when
they were all by themselves in the big gaily-lit barn.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`'WHEN SHADOWS FALL'`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   'WHEN SHADOWS FALL.'

.. vspace:: 2

The deershed adjoining the kennels was a gloomy place,
with its bare walls, its lack of light, and its ominous-looking
crossbeams, ropes, and pulley for hanging up the slain
deer; and the morning was dark and lowering, with a bitter
wind howling along the glen, and sometimes bringing with
it a sharp smurr of sleet from the northern hills.  But these
things did not seem to affect Ronald's spirits much as he
stood there, in his shirt-sleeves, and bare-headed, sorting
out the hares that were lying on the floor, and determining
to whom and to whom such and such a brace or couple of
brace should be sent.  Four of the plumpest he had already
selected for Mrs. Douglas (in the vague hope that the useful
present might make her a little more placable), and he was
going on with his choosing and setting aside—sometimes
lighting a pipe—sometimes singing carelessly—

.. class:: italics

   |  'O we aft hae met at e'en, bonnie Peggie, O,
   |  On the banks o' Cart sae green, bonnie Peggie, O,
   |    Where the waters smoothly rin,
   |    Far aneath the roarin' linn,
   |  Far frae busy strife and din, bonnie Peggie, O'—

when the little Maggie came stealing in.

'Ronald,' she said, with an air of reproach, 'why are ye
going about on such a morning without your jacket, and
bare-headed, too?'

'Toots, toots, lassie, it's a fine morning,' said he
indifferently.

'It was Meenie said I was not to let you do such foolish
things,' the little lass ventured to say diffidently.

Of course this put a new aspect on the case, but he
would not admit as much directly.

'Oh, well,' said he, 'if you bring me out my coat and
bonnet I will put them on, for I'm going down to the
Doctor's with two or three of the hares.'

And then she hesitated.

'Ronald,' said she, 'I will take them to Mrs. Douglas, if
you like.'

'You?' said he.

'For I would give them to her with a nice message from
you; and—and—if you take them, you will say nothing at
all; and where is the compliment?'

He laughed.

'Ye're a wise little lass; but four big hares are heavy
to carry—with the wind against ye; so run away and get
me my coat and my Glengarry; and I will take them along
myself, compliment or no compliment.'

However, as it turned out, Mrs. Douglas was not the
first of the family he was fated to meet that morning.  He
had scarcely left the deershed when he perceived Meenie
coming along the road; and this was an auspicious and
kindly event; for somehow the day seemed to go by more
smoothly and evenly and contentedly when he had chanced
to meet Meenie in the morning, and have a few minutes'
chat with her about affairs in general, and an assurance that
all was going well with her.  So he went forward to meet
her with a light heart; and he thought she would be pleased
that he was taking the hares to her mother; and perhaps,
too, he considered that they might be a little more frank
in their friendship after the exceeding good fellowship of
the night of the children's party.

He went forward unsuspectingly.

'Good morning, Miss Douglas!' said he, slackening in
his pace, for naturally they always stopped for a few seconds
or minutes when they met thus.

But to his astonishment Miss Douglas did not seem
inclined to stay.  Her eyes were bent on the ground as
she came along; she but timidly half lifted them as she
reached him; and 'Good morning, Ronald!' she said,
and would have passed on.  And then it seemed as if, in
her great embarrassment, she did not know what to do.
She stopped; her face was suffused with red; and she said
hurriedly—and yet with an effort to appear unconcerned—

'I suppose Maggie is at home?'

'Oh yes,' said he, and her manner was so changed that
he also scarce knew what to say or to think.

And again she was going on, and again she lingered—with
a sudden fear that she might be thought ungracious
or unkind.

'The children all got away safely yesterday morning,'
said she—but her eyes never met his; and there was still
tell-tale colour in her cheeks.

'So I heard,' he answered.

'I am sure they must have enjoyed the evening,' she
said, as if forcing herself to speak.

And then it suddenly occurred to him—for this encounter
had been all too brief and bewildering for any proper
understanding of it—that perhaps her mother had been reproving
her for being too friendly with the people about the inn
and with himself, and that he was only causing her
embarrassment by detaining her, and so he said—

'Oh yes, I'm sure o' that.  Well, good morning, Miss
Douglas; I'm going along to give your mother these two
or three hares.'

'Good morning,' said she—still without looking at
him—and then she went.

And he, too, went on his way; but only for a brief
space; presently he sate down on the low stone dyke by
the roadside, and dropped the hares on the ground at his
feet.  What could it all mean?  She seemed anxious to
limit their acquaintanceship to the merest formalities; and
yet to be in a manner sorry for having to do so.  Had he
unwittingly given her some cause of offence?  He began
to recall the minutest occurrences of the night of the
children's party—wondering if something had then happened
to account for so marked a change?  But he could think
of nothing.  The supper-party of three was of her own
suggestion; she could not be angry on that account.
Perhaps he ought to have asked this person or that person
over from the inn to join them, for the sake of propriety?
Well, he did not know much about such matters; it seemed
to him that they were very happy as they were; and that
it was nobody else's business.  But would she quarrel with
him on that account?  Or on account of his smoking in
her presence?  Again and again he wished that his pipe
had been buried at the bottom of the loch; and indeed
his smoking of it that evening had given him no enjoyment
whatever, except in so far as it seemed to please her; but
surely, in any case, that was a trifle?  Meenie would not
suddenly become cold and distant (in however reluctant a
way) for a small matter like that?  Nor could she be angry
with him for taking her father away for a day on the hill;
she was always glad when the Doctor got a day's shooting
from anybody.  No; the only possible conclusion he could
come to was that Mrs. Douglas had more strongly than
ever disapproved of Meenie's forming friendships among
people not of her own station in life; and that some
definite instructions had been given, which the girl was
anxious to obey.  And if that were so, ought he to make
it any the more difficult for her?  He would be as reserved
and distant as she pleased.  He knew that she was a very
kindly and sensitive creature; and might dread giving pain;
and herself suffer a good deal more than those from whom
she was in a measure called upon to separate herself.  That
was a reason why it should be made easy for her; and he
would ask Maggie to get on with her lessons by herself, as
much as she could; and when he met Miss Douglas on the
road, his greeting of her would be of the briefest—and yet
with as much kindness as she chose to accept in a word or
a look.  And if he might not present her with the polecat's
skin that was now just about dressed?—well, perhaps the
American gentleman's daughter would take it, and have it
made into something, when she came up in March.

The pretty, little, doll-like woman, with the cold eyes
and the haughty stare, was at the front-door of the cottage,
scattering food to the fowls.

'I have brought ye two or three hares, Mrs. Douglas, if
they're of any use to ye,' Ronald said modestly.

'Thank you,' said she, with lofty courtesy, 'thank you;
I am much obliged.  Will you step in and sit down for a
few minutes?—I am sure a little spirits will do you no
harm on such a cold morning.'

In ordinary circumstances he would have declined that
invitation; for he had no great love of this domineering
little woman, and much preferred the society of her big,
good-natured husband; but he was curious about Meenie,
and even inclined to be resentful, if it appeared that she
had been dealt with too harshly.  So he followed
Mrs. Douglas into the dignified little parlour—which was more
like a museum of cheap curiosities than a room meant for
actual human use; and forthwith she set on the crimson-dyed
table-cover a glass, a tumbler, a jug of water, and a
violet-coloured bulbous glass bottle with an electro-plated
stopper.  Ronald was bidden to help himself; and also, out
of her munificence, she put before him a little basket of
sweet biscuits.

'I hear the Doctor is away again,' Ronald said—and a
hundred times would he rather not have touched the violet
bottle at all, knowing that her clear, cold, blue eyes were
calmly regarding his every movement.

'Yes,' she said, 'to Tongue.  There is a consultation
there.  I am sure he has had very little peace and quiet
lately.'

'I am glad he had a holiday yesterday,' Ronald said,
with an endeavour to be agreeable.

But she answered severely—

'It might have been better if he had spent the first day
of his getting back with his own family.  But that has
always been his way; everything sacrificed to the whim of
the moment—to his own likings and dislikings.'

'He enjoys a day's sport as much as any man I ever
saw,' said he—not knowing very well what to talk about.

'Yes, I daresay,' she answered shortly.

Then she pushed the biscuits nearer him; and returned
to her attitude of observation, with her small, neat, white
hands crossed on her lap, the rings on the fingers being
perhaps just a little displayed.

'Miss Douglas is looking very well at present.' he said,
at a venture.

'Williamina is well enough—she generally is,' she said
coldly.  'There is never much the matter with her health.
She might attend to her studies a little more and do
herself no harm.  But she takes after her father.'

There was a little sigh of resignation.

'Some of us,' said he good-naturedly, 'were expecting
her to come over on Monday night to see the dancing.'

But here he had struck solid rock.  In a second—from
her attitude and demeanour—he had guessed why it was
that Meenie had not come over to the landlord's party: a
matter about which he had not found courage to question
Meenie herself.

'Williamina,' observed the little dame, with a magnificent
dignity, 'has other things to think of—or ought to have, at
her time of life, and in her position.  I have had occasion
frequently of late to remind her of what is demanded of
her; she must conduct herself not as if she were for ever
to be hidden away in a Highland village.  It will be necessary
for her to take her proper place in society, that she is
entitled to from her birth and her relatives; and of course
she must be prepared—of course she must be prepared.
There are plenty who will be willing to receive her; it will
be her own fault if she disappoints them—and us, too, her
own parents.  Williamina will never have to lead the life
that I have had to lead, I hope; she belongs by birth to
another sphere; and I hope she will make the most of her
chances.'

'Miss Douglas would be made welcome anywhere, I am
sure,' he ventured to say; but she regarded him with a
superior look—as if it were not for him to pronounce an
opinion on such a point.

'Soon,' she continued—and she was evidently bent on
impressing him, 'she will be going to Glasgow to finish in
music and German, and to get on with her Italian: you
will see she has no time to lose in idle amusement.  We
would send her to Edinburgh or to London, but her sister
being in Glasgow is a great inducement; and she will be
well looked after.  But, indeed, Williamina is not the kind
of girl to go and marry a penniless student; she has too
much common sense; and, besides, she has seen how it
turns out.  Once in a family is enough.  No; we count
on her making a good marriage, as the first step towards
her taking the position to which she is entitled; and I am
sure that Lady Stuart will take her in hand, and give her
every chance.  As for their taking her abroad with them—and
Sir Alexander almost promised as much—what better
could there be than that?—she would be able to show off
her acquirements and accomplishments; she would be
introduced to the distinguished people at the ministerial
receptions and balls; she would have her chance, as I say.  And
with such a chance before her, surely it would be nothing
less than wicked of her to fling away her time in idle follies.
I want her to remember what lies before her; a cottage
like this is all very well for-me—I have made my bed and
must lie on it; but for her—who may even be adopted
by Lady Stuart—who knows? for stranger things have
happened—it would be downright madness to sink into
content with her present way of life.'

'And when do you think that M— that Miss Douglas
will be going away to Glasgow?' he asked—but absently,
as it were, for he was thinking of Inver-Mudal, and Clebrig,
and Loch Loyal, and Strath-Terry, and of Meenie being
away from them all.

'That depends entirely on herself,' was the reply.  'As
soon as she is sufficiently forward all round for the finishing
lessons, her sister is ready to receive her.'

'It will be lonely for you with your daughter away,'
said he.

'Parents have to make sacrifices,' she said.  'Yes, and
children too.  And better they should make them while
they are young than all through the years after.  I hope
Williamina's will be no wasted life.'

He did not know what further to say; he was dismayed,
perplexed, downhearted, or something: if this was a lesson
she had meant to read him, it had struck home.  So he
rose and took his leave; and she thanked him again for
the hares; and he went out, and found Harry awaiting him
on the doorstep.  Moreover, as he went down to the little
gate, he perceived that Meenie was coming back—she had
been but to the inn with a message; and, obeying some
curious kind of instinct, he turned to the left—pretending
not to have seen her coming; and soon he was over the
bridge, and wandering away up the lonely glen whose
silence is broken only by the whispering rush of Mudal
Water.

He wandered on and on through the desolate moorland,
on this wild and blustering day, paying but little heed to
the piercing wind or the driven sleet that smote his eyelids.
And he was not so very sorrowful; his common sense had
told him all this before; Rose Meenie, Love Meenie, was
very well in secret fancies and rhymes and verses; but
beyond that she was nothing to him.  And what would
Clebrig do, and Mudal Water, and all the wide, bleak
country that had been brought up in the love of her, and
was saturated with the charm of her presence, and seemed
for ever listening in deathlike silence for the light music of
her voice?  There were plenty of verses running through
his head on this wild day too; the hills and the clouds and
the January sky were full of speech; and they were all of
them to be bereft of her as well as he:—

.. class:: italics

   |  Mudal, that comes from the lonely loch,
   |    Down through the moorland russet and brown,
   |  Know you the news that we have for you?—
   |    Meenie's away to Glasgow town.
   |
   |  See Ben Clebrig, his giant front
   |    Hidden and dark with a sudden frown;
   |  What is the light of the valley to him,
   |    Since Meenie's away to Glasgow town?
   |
   |  Empty the valley, empty the world,
   |    The sun may arise and the sun go down;
   |  But what to do with the lonely hours,
   |    Since Meenie's away to Glasgow town?
   |
   |  Call her back, Clebrig!  Mudal, call.
   |    Ere all of the young spring time be flown;
   |  Birds, trees, and blossoms—you that she loved—
   |    O summon her back from Glasgow town!
   |

'*Call her back, Clebrig!  Mudal, call!*' he repeated to
himself as he marched along the moorland road; for
what would they do without some one to guard, and some
one to watch for, and some one to listen for, in the first
awakening of the dawn?  Glasgow—the great and grimy
city—that would be a strange sort of guardian, in the
young Spring days that were coming, for this fair Sutherland
flower.  And yet might not some appeal be made
even there—some summons of attention, as it were?

.. class:: italics

   |  O Glasgow town, how little you know
   |    That Meenie has wandered in
   |  To the very heart of your darkened streets,
   |    Through all the bustle and din.
   |
   |  A Sutherland blossom shining fair
   |    Amid all your dismal haze,
   |  Forfeiting the breath of the summer hills,
   |    And the blue of the northern days.
   |
   |  From Dixon's fire-wreaths to Rollox stalk,
   |    Blow, south wind, and clear the sky,
   |  Till she think of Ben Clebrig's sunny slopes,
   |    Where the basking red-deer lie.
   |
   |  Blow, south wind, and show her a glimpse of blue
   |    Through the pall of dusky brown;
   |  And see that you guard her and tend her well,
   |    You, fortunate Glasgow town!
   |

But then—but then—that strange, impossible time—during
which there would be no Meenie visible anywhere
along the mountain roads; and Mudal Water would go by
unheeded; and there would be no careless, clear-singing
girl's voice along Loch Naver's shores—that strange time
would surely come to an end, and he could look forward
and see how the ending of it would be:

.. class:: italics

   |  The clouds lay heavy on Clebrig's crest,
   |    For days and weeks together;
   |  The shepherds along Strath-Terry's side
   |    Cursed at the rainy weather;
   |  They scarce could get a favouring day
   |    For the burning of the heather.
   |
   |  When sudden the clouds were rent in twain
   |    And the hill laughed out to the sun;
   |  And the hinds stole up, with wondering eyes,
   |    To the far slopes yellow and dun;
   |  And the birds were singing in every bush
   |    As at spring anew begun,
   |
   |  O Clebrig, what is it that makes you glad,
   |    And whither is gone your frown?
   |  Are you looking afar into the south,
   |    The long, wide strath adown?
   |  And see you that Meenie is coming back—
   |    Love Meenie, from Glasgow town!
   |

He laughed.  Not yet was Love Meenie taken away
from them all.  And if in the unknown future the Stuarts
of Glengask and Orosay were to carry her off and make a
great lady of her, and take her to see strange places, and
perhaps marry her to some noble person, at least in the
meantime Ben Clebrig and Ben Loyal and the wide straths
between knew that they still held in the mighty hollow of
their hand this sweet flower of Sutherlandshire, and that
the world and the skies and the woods and lakes seemed
fairer because of her presence.  And as regarded himself,
and his relations with her?  Well, what must be must.
Only he hoped—and there was surely no great vanity nor
self-love nor jealousy in so modest a hope—that the change
of her manner towards him was due to the counsels of her
mother rather than to anything he had unwittingly said or
done.  Rose Meenie—Love Meenie—he had called her in
verses; but always he had been most respectful to herself;
and he could not believe that she thought him capable of
doing anything to offend her.





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.. _`A NEW ARRIVAL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A NEW ARRIVAL.

.. vspace:: 2

Very early one Sunday morning, while as yet all the world
seemed asleep, a young lady stole out from the little hotel
at Lairg, and wandered down by herself to the silent and
beautiful shores of Loch Shin.  The middle of March it
was now, and yet the scene around her was quite summer-like;
and she was a stranger from very far climes indeed,
who had ventured into the Highlands at this ordinarily
untoward time of the year; so that there was wonder as
well as joy in her heart as she regarded the fairyland
before her, for it was certainly not what she had been
taught to expect.  There was not a ripple on the glassy
surface of the lake; every feature of the sleeping and
faintly sunlit world was reflected accurately on the perfect
mirror: the browns and yellows of the lower moorland;
the faint purple of the birch-woods; the aerial blues of the
distant hills, with here and there a patch of snow; and the
fleecy white masses of the motionless clouds.  It was a
kind of dream-world—soft-toned and placid and still, the
only sharp bit of colour being the scarlet-painted lines of a
boat that floated double on that sea of glass.  There was
not a sound anywhere but the twittering of small birds;
nor any movement but the slow rising into the air of a tiny
column of blue smoke from a distant cottage; summer
seemed to be here already, as the first light airs of the
morning—fresh and clear and sweet—came stealing along
the silver surface of the water, and only troubling the
magic picture here and there in long trembling swathes.

The young lady was of middle height, but looked taller
than that by reason of her slight and graceful form; she
was pale, almost sallow, of face, with fine features and a
pretty smile; her hair was of a lustrous black; and so,
too, were her eyes—which were large and soft and
attractive.  Very foreign she looked as she stood by the
shores of this Highland loch; her figure and complexion
and beautiful opaque soft dark eyes perhaps suggesting
more than anything else the Spanish type of the Southern
American woman; but there was nothing foreign about her
attire; she had taken care about that; and if her jet-black
hair and pale cheek had prompted her to choose unusual
tones of colour, at all events the articles of her costume
were all correct—the warm and serviceable ulster of some
roughish yellow and gray material, the buff-coloured,
gauntleted gloves, and the orange-hued Tam o' Shanter
which she wore quite as one to the manner born.  For the
rest, one could easily see that she was of a cheerful
temperament; pleased with herself; not over shy, perhaps;
and very straightforward in her look.

However, the best description of this young lady was
the invention of an ingenious youth dwelling on the
southern shores of Lake Michigan.—'Carry Hodson,' he
observed on one occasion, 'is just a real good fellow, that's
what she is.'  It was a happy phrase, and it soon became
popular among the young gentlemen who wore English
hats and vied with each other in driving phantom vehicles
behind long-stepping horses.  'Carry Hodson?—she's just
the best fellow going,' they would assure you.  And how
better can one describe her?  There was a kind of frank
*camaraderie* about her; and she liked amusement, and was
easily amused; and she laboured under no desire at all of
showing herself 'bright'—which chiefly reveals itself in
impertinence; but, above all, there was in her composition
not a trace of alarm over her relations, however frank and
friendly, with the other sex; she could talk to any man—old
or young, married or single—positively without wondering
when he was about to begin to make love to her.  For
one thing, she was quite capable of looking after herself;
for another, the very charm of her manner—the delightful
openness and straightforwardness of it—seemed to drive
flirtation and sham sentiment forthwith out of court.  And
if, when those young gentlemen in Chicago called Miss
Carry Hodson 'a real good fellow,' they could not help
remembering at the same time that she was an exceedingly
pretty girl, perhaps they appreciated so highly the privilege of
being on good-comrade terms with her that they were
content to remain there rather than risk everything by seeking
for more.  However, that need not be discussed further
here.  People did say, indeed, that Mr. John C. Huysen,
the editor of the *Chicago Citizen*, was more than likely to
carry off the pretty heiress; if there was any truth in the
rumour, at all events Miss Carry Hodson remained just
as frank and free and agreeable with everybody—especially
with young men who could propose expeditions and amusements.

Now there was only one subject capable of entirely
upsetting this young lady's equanimity; and it is almost a
pity to have to introduce it here; for the confession must
be made that, on this one subject, she was in the habit of
using very reprehensible language.  Where, indeed, she
had picked up so much steamboat and backwoods slang—unless
through the reading of *Texas Siftings*—it is impossible
to say; but her father, who was about the sole
recipient of these outbursts, could object with but little
show of authority, for he was himself exceedingly fond, not
exactly of slang, but of those odd phrases, sometimes
half-humorous, that the Americans invent from day to day
to vary the monotony of ordinary speech.  These phrases
are like getting off the car and running alongside a little
bit; you reach your journey's end—the meaning of the
sentence—all the same.  However, the chief bugbear and
grievance of Miss Carry Hodson's life was the Boston girl
as displayed to us in fiction; and so violent became her
detestation of that remarkable young person that it was
very nearly interfering with her coming to Europe.

'But, pappa, dear,' she would say, regarding the book
before her with some amazement, 'will the people in
Europe think I am like *that*?'

'They won't think anything about you,' he would say
roughly.

'What a shame—what a shame—to say American girls
are like *that*!' she would continue vehemently.  'The
self-conscious little beasts—with their chatter about tone,
and touch, and culture!  And the men—my gracious,
pappa, do the people in England think that our young
fellows talk like *that*?  "Analyse me; formulate me!" he
cries to the girl; "can't you imagine my environment by the
aid of your own intuitions?"—I'd analyse him if he came
to me; I'd analyse him fast enough: Nine different sorts
of a born fool; and the rest imitation English prig.  I'd
formulate him if he came to me with his pretentious idiotcy;
I'd show him the kind of chipmunk I am.'

'You are improving, Miss Carry,' her father would say
resignedly.  'You are certainly acquiring force in your
language; and sooner or later you will be coming out with
some of it when you least expect it; and then whether it's
you or the other people that will get fits I don't know.
You'll make them jump.'

'No, no, pappa, dear,' she would answer good-naturedly;
for her vehemence was never of long duration.  'I have my
company manners when it is necessary.  Don't I know
what I am?  Oh yes, I do.  I'm a real high-toned North
Side society lady; and can behave as sich—when there's
anybody present.  But when it's only you and me, pappa,
I like to wave the banner a little—that's all.'

This phrase of hers, about waving the banner, had come
to mean so many different things that her father could not
follow half of them, and so it was handy in winding up a
discussion; and he could only remark, with regard to her
going to Europe, and her dread lest she should be suspected
of resembling one of the imaginary beings for whom she
had conceived so strong a detestation, that really people in
Europe were as busy as people elsewhere, and might not
show too absorbing an interest in declaring what she was
like; that perhaps their knowledge of the Boston young
lady of fiction was limited, and the matter not one of
deep concern; and that the best thing she could do was
to remember that she was an American girl, and that she
had as good a right to dress in her own way and speak in
her own way and conduct herself in her own way as any
French, or German, or English, or Italian person she might
meet.  All of which Miss Carry received with much
submission—except about dress: she hoped to be able to study
that subject, with a little attention, in Paris.

Well, she was standing there looking abroad on the
fairy-like picture of lake and wood and mountain—and
rather annoyed, too, that, now she was actually in the midst of
scenes that she had prepared herself for by reading, she could
recollect none of the reading at all, but was wholly and
simply interested in the obvious beauty of the place
itself—when she became conscious of a slow and stealthy footstep
behind her, and, instantly turning, she discovered that a
great dun-coloured dog, no doubt belonging to the hotel,
had come down to make her acquaintance.  He said as
much by a brief and heavy gambol, a slow wagging of his
mighty tail, and the upturned glance of his small, flat,
leonine eyes.

'Well,' she said, 'who are you?  Would you like to go
for a walk?'

Whether he understood her or no he distinctly led the
way—taking the path leading along the shores of the loch
towards Inver-shin; and as there did not seem to be any
sign yet of anybody moving about the hotel, she thought she
might just as well take advantage of this volunteered
escort.  Not that the mastiff was over communicative in
his friendliness; he would occasionally turn round to see
if she was following; and if she called to him and spoke to
him, he would merely make another heavy effort at a
gambol and go on again with his slow-moving pace.  Now
and again a shepherd's collie would come charging down on
him from the hillside, or two or three small terriers, keeping
sentry at the door of a cottage, would suddenly break the
stillness of the Sunday morning by the most ferocious barking
at his approach; but he took no heed of one or the other.

'Do you know that you are an amiable dog—but not
amusing?' she said to him, when he had to wait for her to
let him get through a swinging stile.  'I've got a dog at
home not a quarter as big as you, and he can talk twice as
much.  I suppose your thoughts are important, though.
What do they call you?  Dr. Johnson?'

He looked at her with the clear, lionlike eyes, but only for
a second; seemed to think it futile trying to understand her;
and then went on again with his heavy, shambling waddle.
And she liked the freshness of the morning, and the novelty
of being all alone by herself in the Scottish Highlands, and
of going forward as a kind of pioneer and discoverer; and
so she walked on in much delight, listening to the birds,
looking at the sheep, and thinking nothing at all of breakfast,
and the long day's drive before her father and herself.

And then a sudden conviction was flashed on her mind
that something was wrong.  There was a man coming rushing
along the road after her—with neither coat nor cap
on—and as he drew near she could hear him say—

'Ah, you rascal! you rascal!  Bolted again?'

He seemed to pay no attention to her; he ran past her
and made straight for the mastiff; and in a couple of
minutes had a muzzle securely fastened on the beast, and
was leading him back with an iron chain.

'Surely that is not a ferocious dog?' said she, as they
came up—and perhaps she was curious to know whether
she had run any chance of being eaten.

'The master had to pay five pounds last year for his
worrying sheep—the rascal,' said the man; and the great
dog wagged his tail as if in approval.

'Why, he seems a most gentle creature,' she said,
walking on with the man.

'Ay, and so he is, miss—most times.  But he's barely
three years old, and already he's killed two collies and a
terrier, and worried three sheep.'

'Killed other dogs?  Oh, Dr. Johnson!' she exclaimed.

'He's sweirt[#] to begin, miss; but when he does begin
he *maun* kill—there's no stopping him.  The rascal! he
likes fine to get slippin' away wi' one of the gentlefolks, if
he's let off the chain for a few minutes—it's a God's mercy
he has done no harm this morning—it was the ostler let
him off the chain—and he'd have lost his place if there
had been ony mair worrying.'


[#] *Sweirt*, reluctant.


'No, no, no, he would not,' she said confidently.  'I
took the dog away.  If any mischief had been done, I
would have paid—why, of course.'

'*Why, of cois*' was what she really said; but all the
man knew was that this American young lady spoke with a
very pleasant voice; and seemed good-natured; and was
well-meaning, too, for she would not have had the ostler
suffer.  Anyway, the mastiff, with as much dignity as was
compatible with a muzzle and an iron chain, was conducted
back to his kennel; and Miss Hodson went into the hotel,
and expressed her profound sorrow that she had kept
breakfast waiting; but explained to her father that it was
not every morning she had the chance of exploring the
Highlands all by herself—or rather accompanied by a huge
creature apparently of amiable nature, but with really dark
possibilities attached.

In due course of time the waggonette and horses were
brought round to the door of the little hotel; their baggage
was put in; and presently they had set forth on their drive
through the still, sunlit, solitary country.  But this was a
far more pleasant journey than his first venturing into these
wilds.  He had been warning his daughter of the bleak
and savage solitude she would have to encounter; but now
it appeared quite cheerful—in a subdued kind of way, as if
a sort of Sunday silence hung over the landscape.  The
pale blue waters of Loch Shin, the beech-woods, the russet
slopes of heather, the snow-touched azure hills along the
horizon—all these looked pretty and were peacefully
shining on this fair morning; and even after they had got
away from the last trace of human habitation, and were
monotonously driving through mile after mile of the wide,
boggy, hopeless peatland, the winter colours were really
brighter than those of summer, and the desolation far from
overpowering.  If they met with no human beings, there
were other living objects to attract the eye.  A golden
plover—standing on a hillock not half a dozen yards off,
would be calling to his mate; a wild duck would go
whirring by; a red-plumed grouse-cock would cease dusting
himself in the road, and would be off into the heather as
they came along, standing and looking at them as they
passed.  And so on and on they went, mile after mile,
along the fair shining Strath-Terry; the morning air blowing
freshly about them; the sunlight lying placidly on those
wide stretches of russet and golden bogland; and now and
again a flash of dark blue showing where some mountain-tarn
lay silent amid the moors.

'And you thought I should be disappointed, pappa
dear?' said Miss Carry, 'or frightened by the loneliness?
Why, it's just too beautiful for anything!  And so this is
where the Clan Mackay lived in former days?'

'Is it?' said her father.  'I wonder what they lived on.
I don't think we'd give much for that land in Illinois.
Give for it?  You couldn't get a white man to trade for
that sort of land; we'd have to ask Wisconsin to take it
and hide it away somewhere.'

'What are those things for?' she asked, indicating
certain tall poles that stood at intervals along the roadside.

'Why, don't you know?  These are poles to tell them
where the road is in snow time.'

'Then it is not always May in these happy latitudes?'
she observed shrewdly.

He laughed.

'I heard some dreadful stories when I was here in
January—but I don't believe much in weather stories.
Anyhow, we've got to take what comes now; and so far
there is not much to howl about.'

And at last they came in sight of the ruffled blue waters
of Loch Naver; and the long yellow promontories running
out into the lake; and the scant birch-woods fringing here
and there the rocky shore; with the little hamlet of
Inver-Mudal nestling down there in the hollow; and far away in
the north the mountain-masses of Ben Hope and Ben Loyal
struck white with snow.  And she was very curious to see
the kind of people who lived in these remote solitudes; and
the pretty sloe-black eyes were all alert as the waggonette
rattled along towards the two or three scattered houses;
and perhaps, as they drove up to the inn, she was
wondering whether Ronald the gamekeeper, of whom she had
heard so much, would be anywhere visible.  But there was
scarcely any one there.  The Sabbath quiet lay over the
little hamlet.  Mr. Murray appeared, however,—in his
Sunday costume, of course,—and an ostler; and presently
Miss Carry and her father were in the sitting-room that
had been prepared for them—a great mass of peats cheerfully
blazing in the capacious fireplace, and the white-covered
table furnished with a substantial luncheon.

'And what do you think of your future maid?' her
father asked, when the pretty Nelly had left the room.

'Well, I think she has the softest voice I ever heard a
woman speak with,' was the immediate answer.  'And
such a pretty way of talking—and looking at you—very
gentle and friendly.  But she won't do for my maid,
pappa; she's too tall; I should want to put a string round
her neck and lead her about like a giraffe.'

However, she was pleased with the appearance and
manner of the girl, and that was something; for, oddly
enough, Mr. Hodson seemed to imagine that he had
discovered this remote hamlet, and was responsible for it,
and anxious that his daughter should think well of it, and
of the people she might meet in it.  He called her attention
to the scent of the peat; to the neatness with which
the joints on the table had been decorated with little paper
frills; to the snugness and quiet of the sitting-room; to
the spacious character of the views from the windows—one
taking in Clebrig and the loch, the other reaching away up
to Ben Loyal.  All these things he had provided for her,
as it were; and it must be said that she was a most
excellent travelling-companion, always content, easily
interested, never out of humour.  So, when he proposed, after
luncheon, that they should go along and call on Ronald
Strang, she readily consented; no doubt a keeper's dwelling
in these wilds would be something curious—perhaps
of a wigwam character, and of course filled with all kinds
of trophies of his hunting.

Well, they went along to the cottage, and Mr. Hodson
knocked lightly on the door.  There was no answer.  He
rapped a little more loudly; then they heard some one
within; and presently the door was thrown open, and
Ronald stood before them—a book in one hand, a pipe in
the other, no jacket covering his shirt-sleeves, and the
absence of any necktie showing a little more than was
necessary of the firm set of his sun-tanned throat.  He had
been caught unawares—as his startled eyes proclaimed; in
fact, he had been reading *Paradise Regained*, and manfully
resisting the temptation to slip on to the gracious melody
of *L'Allegro*, and *Il Penseroso*, and *Lycidas*; and when he
heard the tapping he fancied it was merely one of the lads
come for a chat or the last newspaper, and had made no
preparations for the reception of visitors.

'How are you, Ronald?' said Mr. Hodson.  'I have
brought my daughter to see you.'

'Will ye step in, sir?' said Ronald hastily, and with a
terrible consciousness of his untidy appearance.  'Ay, in
there—will ye sit down for a few minutes—and will ye
excuse me—I thought you werena coming till to-morrow——'

'Well, I thought they might object to driving me on a
Sunday.  I can't make it out.  Perhaps what I have read
about Scotland is not true.  Or perhaps they have altered
of late years.  Anyhow they made no objection, and here
I am.'

In the midst of these brief sentences—each pronounced
with a little rising inflexion at the end—Ronald managed
to slip away and get himself made a little more presentable.
When he returned the apparent excuse for his absence
was that he brought in some glasses and water and a bottle
of whisky; and then he went to a little mahogany sideboard
and brought out a tin case of biscuits.

'You need not trouble about these things for us; we
have just had lunch,' Mr. Hodson said.

'Perhaps the young lady——?' said Ronald timidly,
and even nervously, for there was no plate handy, and he
did not know how to offer her the biscuits.

'Oh no, I thank you,' she said, with a pretty and
gracious smile; and he happened to meet her eyes just at
that time; and instantly became aware that they were
curiously scrutinising and observant, despite their apparent
softness and lustrous blackness.

Now Miss Carry Hodson had an abundance of shrewd
feminine perception, and it was easy for her to see that
this handsome and stalwart young fellow had been grievously
disturbed, and was even now unnerved, through his
having been caught in disarray on the occasion of a young
lady visiting him; and accordingly, to allow him to recover,
she deliberately effaced herself; saying not a word, nor even
listening, while her father and he proceeded to talk about
the salmon-fishing, and about the distressingly fine weather
that threatened to interfere with that pursuit.  She sate
silent, allowing those observant eyes of hers to roam freely
round the room, and indeed wondering how a man of his
occupations could so have contrived to rob his home of all
distinctive character and to render it so clearly
common-place.  There was nothing wild or savage about it; not
the skin of any beast, nor the plumage of any bird;
everything was of a bourgeois neatness and respectability—the
ornaments on the mantel-shelf conspicuously so; and what
was strangest of all—though this will scarcely be
believed—the two roebucks' heads that adorned the wall, in a
country where roe abound, were earthenware casts, and
very bad casts too, obviously hailing from Germany.  She
observed, however, that there were a good many books
about—some of them even piled in obscure corners; and
to judge by the sober character of their cloth binding she
guessed them to be of a rather superior class.  The pictures
on the walls were some cheap reprints of Landseer; a
portrait of the Duke of Sutherland, in Highland garb; a
view of Dunrobin Castle; and a photograph of Mr. Millais'
'Order of Release.'

After a while she began to know (without looking) that
the young man had assumed sufficient courage to glance at
her from time to time; and she allowed him to do that;
for she considered that the people in Regent Street had
fitted her out in Highland fashion in a sufficiently accurate
way.  But it soon appeared that he was talking about her;
and what was this wild proposal?

'It seems a pity,' he was saying, 'if the fish are taking,
not to have two boats at the work.  And there's that big
rod o' yours, sir—you could use that for the trolling; and
let the young lady have one o' your grilse rods.  Then
there's mine—she can have that and welcome——'

'Yes, but the gillies——'

'Oh, I'll take a turn myself; I'm no so busy the now.
And I can get one o' the lads to lend a hand.'

'Do you hear this, Carry?' her father said.

'What, pappa?'

'Ronald wants you to start off salmon-fishing to-morrow,
in a boat all to yourself—

'Alone?'

'Why, no!  He says he will go with you, and one of
the lads; and you will have all the best advice and
experience—I don't think it's fair, myself—but it's very
good-natured anyhow——'

'And do you think there's a chance of my catching a
salmon?' she said eagerly, and she turned her eloquent
black eyes, all lit up with pleasure, full upon him.

'Oh yes, indeed,' said he, looking down, 'and many
and many a one, I am sure, if we could only get a little
wet weather.'

'My!' she exclaimed.  'If I caught a salmon, I'd have
it stuffed right away——'

'With sage and onions, I suppose,' her father said
severely.

'And we begin to-morrow?  Why, it's just too delightful—I
was looking forward to days and days indoors, with nothing
but books.  And I shall really have a chance?——'

'I think you might as well thank Ronald for his offer,'
her father said.  'I should never have thought of it.'

Well, she hesitated; for it is a difficult thing to make
a formal little speech when it is asked for by a third
person; but the young keeper quickly laughed away her
embarrassment.

'No, no, sir; we'll wait for that till we see how our
luck turns out.  And we'll have the Duke's boat, mind, that
Duncan says is the lucky one; you'll have to look sharp,
sir, or we'll have the biggest show on the grass at the end
of the day.'

Mr. Hodson now rose to take his leave, for he wanted
his daughter to walk down to the shores of the loch where
they were next day to begin their labours.  And thus it
was that Miss Carry—who had looked forward at the most
to sitting in the boat with her father and looking
on—found herself pledged to a course of salmon-fishing, under
the immediate guidance and instruction of the young keeper;
and she had noticed that he had already talked of the
occupants of the Duke's boat as 'we'—assuming that he
and she were in a sort of partnership, and pitted against
the others.  Well, it would be amusing, she thought.  She
also considered that he was very good-looking; and that it
would be pleasanter to have a companion of that kind than
a surly old boatman.  She imagined they might easily
become excellent friends—at least, she was willing enough;
and he seemed civil and good-humoured and modest;
and altogether the arrangement promised to work very well.





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.. _`'ABOUT ILLINOIS'`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   'ABOUT ILLINOIS.'

.. vspace:: 2

There was a good deal of bustle in the inn next morning;
Ronald busy with the fishing-tackle for the second boat;
luncheon being got ready for six; and the gillies fighting
as to which party should have the landing-net and which
the clip.  In the midst of all this Miss Carry—looking
very smart in her Highland costume, Tam o' Shanter and
all—came placidly in to breakfast, and as she sate down
she said—

'Pappa dear, I met such a pretty girl.'

'Have you been out?' he asked.

'Only as far as the bridge.  I met her as I was coming
back.  And she looked so pretty and shy that I spoke to
her; I think she was a little frightened at first; but anyway
I got to know who she is—the Doctor's daughter.  Oh, you
should hear her speak—the accent is so pretty and gentle.
Well, it's all settled, pappa; I'm just in love with the
Highland people, from this out.'

'There's safety in numbers,' observed her father grimly;
and then he proceeded to explore the contents of the
covers.

When they were ready to go down to the loch they
found that the men had already set out—all but Ronald,
who had remained behind to see if there was nothing further
he could carry for the young lady.  So these three started
together; and of course all the talk was about the far too
fine weather, and the chances of getting a fish or two in
spite of it, and the betting on the rival boats.  Miss Carry
listened in silence; so far she had heard or seen nothing
very remarkable about the handsome young keeper who
had so impressed her father.  He spoke frankly and freely
enough, it is true (when he was not speaking to her), and
he was recounting with some quiet sarcasm certain
superstitious beliefs and practices of the people about there;
but, apart from the keen look of his eyes, and the manly
ring of his voice, and the easy swing of the well-built figure,
there was nothing, as she considered, very noticeable about
him.  She thought his keeper's costume rather picturesque,
and weather-worn into harmonious colour; and wondered
how men in towns had come to wear the unsightly garments
of these present days.  And so at last they arrived at the
loch; and found that the gillies had got the rods fixed and
everything ready; and presently the black boat, with
Mr. Hodson and his two gillies, was shoved off, and Ronald,
before asking the young lady to step into the green boat—the
Duke's boat—was showing her what she should do if
a salmon should attach itself to either of the lines.

'I don't feel like catching a salmon somehow,' she
remarked.  'I don't think it can be true.  Anyway you'll
see I shan't scream.'

She stepped into the boat and took her seat; the rods
were placed for her; the coble was shoved farther into the
water, and then Ronald and the young lad got in and took
to the oars.  Miss Carry was bidden to pay out one of the
lines slowly as they moved away from the bank; and in
due course she had both lines out and the two rods fixed
at the proper angle, and the reels free.  She obeyed all
his instructions without haste or confusion.  She was a
promising pupil.  And he wondered what nerve she would
show when the crisis came.

Now it may be explained for the benefit of those
inexperienced in such things that these fishing cobles have a
cross bench placed about midway between the stern and
the thwart occupied by the stroke oar; and the usual
custom is for the fisherman to sit on this bench facing the
stern, so that he can see both rods and be ready for the
first shaking of the top.  But Miss Carry did not understand
this at all.  In entering the coble she naturally took
her place right astern, facing the rowers.  It never entered
her head to be guilty of the discourtesy of turning her back
on them; besides, Ronald was directing her with his eyes
as much as with his speech, and she must be able to see
him; moreover he did not tell her she was sitting the
wrong way; and then again was not the first signal to be
the shrieking of the reel?—and both reels were now under
her observation, so that she could snatch at either rod in
a second.  The consequence of all this was that she and
Ronald sate face to face—not more than a yard and a half
between them—their eyes exactly on a level—and when
they spoke to each other, it was very distinctly *unter vier
Augen*, for the boy at the bow was mostly hidden.

'Pappa dear,' she said to her father that evening, 'he
is a very nervous man.'

'Who?'

'Ronald.'

'Nonsense.  He is hard as nails.  He don't know what
nerves mean.'

'He is a very nervous man,' she insisted (and had she
not been studying him for a whole day?).  'His eyes throb
when you meet them suddenly.  Or rather he seems to
know they are very powerful and penetrating—and he does
not like to stare at you—so you can see there is a tremor
of the lid sometimes as he looks up—as if he would partly
veil his eyes.  It's very curious.  He's shy—like a wild
animal almost.  And that pretty girl I met this morning
has something of that look too.'

'Perhaps they're not used to having the cold gaze of
science turned on them,' her father remarked drily.

'Is that me?'

'You may take it that way.'

'Then you're quite wrong.  It isn't science at all.  It
is an active and benevolent sympathy; I am going to make
friends with every one of them.  Ronald says her name is
Miss Douglas—and I mean to call.'

'Very well, then,' said her father, who left this young
lady pretty much the mistress of her own actions.

However, to return to the fishing: the morning did not
promise well, the weather being too bright and clear, though
there was a very fair breeze—of a curious sultry character
for the middle of March—blowing up from the south and
making a good ripple on the loch.  Again and again the
two boats crossed each other; and the invariable cry was—

'Nothing yet?'

And the answer—

'Not a touch.'

By this time Miss Carry had got to know a good deal
about the young keeper whose eyes were so directly on a
level with hers.  He had been to Aberdeen, and to Glasgow,
and to Edinburgh; but never out of Scotland?—no.  Had
he no wish to see London and Paris?  Had he no wish to
see America?—why, if he came over, her father would
arrange to have him put in the way of seeing everything.
And perhaps he might be tempted to stay?—there were
such opportunities for young men, especially in the west.
As for her, she was most communicative about herself; and
apparently she had been everywhere and seen everything—except
Stratford-on-Avon: that was to be the climax; that
was to be the last thing they should visit in Europe—and
then on to Liverpool and home.  She had been a great
deal longer in Europe than her father, she said.  Her
mother was an invalid and could not travel; her brother
George (Joidge, she called him) was at school; so she and
a schoolfellow of hers had set out for Europe, accompanied
by a maid and a courier, and had 'seen most everything'
from St. Petersburg to Wady Halfa.  And all this and more
she told him with the black soft eyes regarding him openly;
and the pale, foreign, tea-rose tinted face full of a friendly
interest; and the pretty, white, delicate small fingers idly
intertwisting the buff-coloured gloves that she had taken off
at his request.  Inver-Mudal, Clebrig, Ben Loyal, the straths
and woods around looked to him small and confined on
this quiet morning.  She seemed to have brought with her
a wider atmosphere, a larger air.  And for a young girl like
this to know so much—to have seen so much—and to talk
so simply and naturally of going here, there, or anywhere,
as if distance were nothing, and time nothing, and money
nothing; all this puzzled him not a little.  She must have
courage, then, and daring, and endurance, despite the pale
face and the slender figure, and the small, white,
blue-veined hands?  Why, she spoke of running over to Paris,
in about a fortnight's time, to be present at the wedding of
a friend, just as any one about here would speak of driving
on to Tongue and returning by the mail-cart next day.

Suddenly there was a quick, half-suppressed exclamation.

'There he is!—there he is!'

And all in a second, as it seemed, Ronald had flung his
oar back to the lad behind, seized one of the rods and
raised it and put it in her hands, and himself got hold of
the other, and was rapidly reeling in the line.  What was
happening she could hardly tell—she was so bewildered.
The rod that she painfully held upright was being violently
shaken—now and again there was a loud, long whirr of the
reel—and Ronald was by her shoulder, she knew, but not
speaking a word—and she was wildly endeavouring to
recall all that he had told her.  Then there was a sudden
slackening of the line—what was this?

'All right,' said he, very quietly.  'Reel in now—as
quick as ye can, please.'

Well, she was reeling in as hard as her small and
delicate wrist was able to do—and in truth she was too
bewildered to feel excited; and above all other earthly
things was she anxious that she shouldn't show herself a
fool, or scream, or let the thing go—when all at once the
handle of the reel seemed to be whipped from her grasp;
there was a long whirring shriek of the line; she could
hear somewhere a mighty splash (though she dared not look
at anything but what was in her hands), and at the same
moment she fancied Ronald said, with a quiet laugh—

'We've beat them this time—a clean fish!'

'Do you think we'll get him?' she said breathlessly.

'We'll hold on to him as long as he holds on to us,'
Ronald said; and she heard him add to himself, 'I would
rather than five shillings we got the first fish!'

'But this thing is so heavy!' she pleaded.

'Never mind—that's right—that's right—keep a good
strain on him—we'll soon bring him to his senses.'

Again there was a sudden slackening of the line; and
this time she actually saw the animal as it sprang into the
air—a white gleaming curved thing—but instantly her
attention was on the reel.

'That's it—you're doing fine,' he said, with an
intentional quietude of tone, so that she might not get
over-nervous and make a mistake.

Then he made her stand up, and fortunately the coble
was rocking but little; and he moved her left hand a little
higher up the rod, so that she should have better leverage;
and she did all that she was bid mutely and meekly, though
her arm was already beginning to feel the heavy strain.
She vowed to herself that so long as she could draw a
breath she would not give in.

The other boat was passing—but of course at a respectful
distance.

'Hold on to him, Carry!' her father called.

She paid no heed.  She dared not even look in his
direction.  The fish seemed to be following up the coble
now, and it was all that the slender wrist could do to get
in the line so as to keep the prescribed curve on the rod.
And then she had to give way again; for the salmon went
steadily and slowly down—boring and sulking—and they
pulled the boat away a bit, lest he should suddenly come
to the surface and be after some dangerous cantrip.  She
took advantage of this period of quiet to pass the rod from
her left hand to her right; and that relieved her arm a
little; and she even ventured to say—

'How long is he going on like this?'

'We'll give him his own time, Miss,' Ronald said.

'Don't call me Miss,' she said, with a little vexation.

'I—I beg your pardon—what then?'

'Oh, anything you like.  Mind you catch me if I fall
into the water.'

The truth was she was a little bit excited, and desperately
anxious that her strength should hold out; and even
permitting herself an occasional gleam of hope and joy and
triumph.  Her first salmon?  Here would be tidings for
the girls at home!  If only the beast would do something—or
show signs of yielding—anything rather than she should
have to give in, and weakly resign the rod to Ronald!  As
for him, he stood almost touching her shoulder.

'No, no,' said he, 'there's no fear o' your falling into
the water.  We've got to get this gentleman out first.'

And then her feeble efforts at talking (meant to show
that she was not excited, but having exactly the contrary
effect) all went by the board.  Something was happening—she
knew not what—something wild, terrifying, violent,
desperate—and apparently quite near—and all the line was
slack now—and the handle of the reel stuck in her frantic
efforts to turn it with an impossible quickness—and her
heart was choking with fright.  For why would this beast
spring, and splash, and churn the water, while the line
seemed to go all wrong and everything become mixed?
But her trembling fingers got the reel to work at last; and
she wound as quickly as she could; and by this time the
salmon had disappeared again, and was bearing an even,
dead strain on the rod, but not so heavily as before.

'My gracious!' she said—she was quite breathless.

'It's all right,' he said quietly; but he had been pretty
breathless too, and for several seconds in blank despair.

The fish began to show signs of yielding—that last fierce
thrashing of the water had weakened him.  She got in
more and more line—Ronald's instructions being of the
briefest and quietest—and presently they could see a faint
gleam in the water as the big fish sailed this way or that.
But still, she knew not what he might not do.  That terrible
time had been altogether unexpected.  And yet she knew—and
her left arm was gratefully conscious—that the strain
was not so heavy now; the line was quite short; and she
became aware that she was exercising more and more power
over her captive and could force him to stop his brief and
ineffectual rushes.

Once or twice he had come quite near the boat—sailing
in on his side, as it were—and then sheering off again
at the sight of them; but these efforts to get away were
growing more and more feeble; and at last Ronald called—

'We'll try him this time—give him the butt well—that's
right—lift his head—now——' and then there was a
quick stroke of the clip, and the great monster was in the
boat, and she sank down on to the bench, her arms limp
and trembling, but her hand still grasping the rod.  And
she felt a little inclined to laugh and to cry; and she
wondered where her father was; and she looked on in a
dazed way as they killed the fish, and got the phantom-minnow
out of its mouth, and proceeded to the weighing
of the prize.

'Eleven pounds and a half—well done the Duke's
boat!' Ronald cried.  'Is it your first salmon, Miss Hodson?'

'Why, certainly.'

'You'll have to drink its health, or there'll be no more
luck for you this season,' said he, and he reached back
for a pocket-flask.

'But where is my father?' she said—she was anxious
he should hear the news.

'Oh,' said he coolly, 'they've been into a fish for the
last ten minutes; I wouldna tell ye, in case it might
distract ye.'

'Have they got one?' she cried.

'They've got something—and I dinna think it's a kelt
from the way they're working.'

She clapped her hands in delight.  Yes, and that
involuntary little action revealed to her what she had not
known before—that one of her fingers was pretty badly cut,
and bleeding.

'What's this?' she said, but she did not heed much—now
that the great beautiful gleaming fish lay in the bottom
of the boat.

Ronald cared a great deal more.  He threw aside the
flask.  A cut?—it was his own stupidity was the cause of
it; he ought to have known that her delicate fingers could
not withstand the whirring out of the line; he should have
allowed her to keep on her gloves.  And nothing would
do but that she must carefully bathe the wound in the fresh
water of the loch; and he produced a piece of plaster; and
then he cut a strip off her handkerchief, and bound up the
finger so.

'What do I care?' she said—pointing to the salmon.

And then he begged her to drink a little whisky and
water—for luck's sake—though he had been rather scornful
about these customs in the morning; and she complied—smiling
towards him as the Netherby bride may have looked
at Young Lochinvar; but yet he would not drink in her
presence; he put the flask aside; and presently they were
at their work again, both lines out, and the southerly breeze
still keeping up.

They passed the other boat.

'What weight?' was the cry.

'Eleven and a half.  Have you got one?'

'Yes.'

'How much?'

'Just over seven.'

'Duncan will be a savage man,' said Ronald, with a
laugh.  'It's all the bad luck of his boat, he'll be saying;
though it's good enough luck for the two first fish to be clean
fish and no kelt.'

However, the Duke's boat fell away from its auspicious
beginning that morning.  When lunch time arrived, and
both cobles landed at a part of the shore agreed upon,
where there was a large rock for shelter, and a good ledge
for a seat, Miss Carry had but the one fish to be taken out
and placed on the grass, while her father had two—respectively
seven and thirteen pounds.  And very picturesque,
indeed, it was to see those white gleaming creatures lying
there; and the two boats drawn up on the shore, with the
long rods out at the stern; and the gillies forming a group at
some distance off under the shelter of the stone dyke; and
the wide waters of the lake all a breezy blue in the cup of the
encircling sunlit hills.  Ronald got out the luncheon, for he
had seen to the packing of it—and he knew more about
table-napkins and things of that sort than those men; and then,
when he had made everything right, and brought ashore a
cushion for Miss Carry to sit upon, and so forth, he went away.

'Ronald,' Mr. Hodson called to him, 'ain't you going
to have some lunch?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Come along, then; there's plenty of room right here.'

'Thank ye, sir; I know where they've put my little
parcel,' said he—and he went and sate down with the
gillies; and soon there was enough talking and laughing
amongst them—faintly heard across the wind.

'Well?' said her father, when they were left alone.

'Oh, it's just too delightful for anything.'

This was her summing up of the whole situation.  And
then she added—

'Pappa, may I send my salmon to Lily Selden?'

'I wouldn't call it kindness,' said he.  'Looks more
like boasting.  And what's the good, since she is staying at
a hotel?'

'Oh, she will be as glad as I am even to see it.  But
can't they cook it at a hotel anyway?  I want to be even with
Lily about that balloon.  I don't see much myself in going
up in a balloon.  I would just like to have Lily here
now—think she wouldn't fall down and worship those beautiful
creatures?'

'Well, you may send her yours, if you like,' her father
said.  'But you needn't dawdle so over your luncheon.
These days are short; and I want to see what we can do
on our first trial.'

'I'm ready now, if it comes to that,' said she placidly;
and she put a couple of sweet biscuits in her pocket, to
guard against emergency.

And soon they were afloat again.  But what was this
that was coming over the brief winter afternoon?  The
sultry south wind did not die away, nor yet did any
manifest clouds appear in the heavens, but a strange gloom
began to fill the skies, obscuring the sun, and gradually
becoming darker and darker.  It was very strange; for,
while the skies overhead were thus unnaturally black, and
the lapping water around the boats similarly livid, the
low-lying hills at the horizon were singularly keen and intense in
colour.  The air was hot and close, though the breeze still
came blowing up Strath-Terry.  There was a feeling as if
thunder were imminent, though there were no clouds
anywhere gathering along the purple mountain-tops.

This unusual darkness seemed to affect the fishing.
Round after round they made—touching nothing but one
or two kelts; and this Ronald declared to be a bad sign,
for that when the kelts began to take, there was small chance
of a clean fish.  However, Miss Carry did not care.  She
had caught her first salmon—that was enough.  Nay, it
was sufficient to make her very cheerful and communicative;
and she told him a good deal about her various friends in
the Garden City—but more especially, as it seemed to the
respectful listener, of the young men who, from a humble
beginning, had been largely successful in business; and she
asked him many questions about himself, and was curious
about his relations with Lord Ailine.  Of course, she went
on the assumption that the future of the world lay in
America, and that the future of America lay in the bountiful
lap of Chicago: and she half intimated that she could not
understand how any one could waste his time anywhere
else.  Her father had been born in a log-cabin; but if
he—that is, Ronald—could see the immense blocks devoted
to 'Hodson's reaper' 'on Clinton and Canal Streets' he
would understand what individual enterprise could achieve
out west.  The 'manifest destiny' of Chicago loomed large
in this young lady's mind; the eastern cities were 'not in
it,' so to speak; and Ronald heard with reverence of the
trade with Montana, and Idaho, and Wyoming, and
Colorado, and Utah, and Nevada.  It is true that she was
recalled from this imparting of information by a twenty-five
minutes' deadly struggle with a creature that turned out
after all to be a veritable clean salmon: and with this
triumph ended the day's sport; for the afternoon was
rapidly wearing to dusk.  The gloom of the evening, by
the way, was not decreased by a vast mass of smoke that
came slowly rolling along between the black sky and the
black lake; though this portentous thing—that looked as if
the whole world were on fire—meant nothing further than
the burning of the heather down Strath-Terry way.  When
both cobles were drawn up on the beach, it was found that
Mr. Hodson had also added one clean salmon to his score;
so that the five fish, put in a row on the grass, made a very
goodly display, and were a sufficiently auspicious beginning.

'Carry,' said her father, as they walked home together
in the gathering darkness, 'do you know what you are
expected to do?  You have caught your first salmon: that
means a sovereign to the men in the boat.'

'I will give a sovereign to the young fellow,' said she,
'and willingly; but I can't offer money to Ronald.'

'Why not?  it is the custom here.'

'Oh, I declare I couldn't do it.  My gracious, no!  I
would sooner—I would sooner—no, no, pappa dear, I
could not offer him money.'

'Well, we must do something.  You see, we are taking
up all his time.  I suppose we'll have to send for another
gillie—if you care to go on with that boat——'

'I should think I did!' she said.  'But why should
you send for another gillie so long as Ronald says he is not
busy?  I dare say he can tell us when he is; I don't
believe he's half so shy as he looks.  And he's much better
fun than one of these Highlanders; he wants his own way;
and, with all his shyness, he has a pretty good notion of
himself and his own opinions.  He don't say you are a fool
if you differ from him; but he makes you feel like it.  And
then, besides,' she added lightly, 'we can make it up to
him some way or other.  Why, I have been giving him a
great deal of good advice this afternoon.'

'You?  About what?'

'About Illinois,' she said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WILD TIMES`:

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   CHAPTER XV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   WILD TIMES.

.. vspace:: 2

What that mysterious gloom had meant on the previous
evening was revealed to them the next morning by a roaring
wind that came swooping down from the Clebrig slopes,
shaking the house, and howling through the bent and
leafless trees.  The blue surface of the lake was driven white
with curling tips of foam; great bursts of sunlight sped
across the plains and suddenly lit up the northern hills;
now and again Ben Hope or Ben Hee or Ben Loyal would
disappear altogether behind a vague mass of gray, and then as
quickly break forth again into view, the peaks and shoulders
all aglow and the snow-patches glittering clear and sharp.
The gillies hung about the inn door, disconsolate.  Nelly
made no speed with the luncheon-baskets.  And probably
Mr. Hodson and his daughter would have relapsed into
letter-writing, reading, and other feeble methods of passing a
rough day in the Highlands, had not Ronald come along and
changed the whole aspect of affairs.  For if the wind was
too strong, he pointed out, to admit of their working the
phantom-minnow properly, they might at least try the fly.
There were occasional lulls in the gale.  It was something
to do.  Would Miss Hodson venture?  Miss Hodson replied
by swinging her waterproof on her arm; and they all set out.

Well, it was a wild experiment.  At first, indeed, when
they got down to the shores of the loch, the case was quite
hopeless; no boat—much less a shallow flat-bottomed
coble—could have lived in such a sea; and they merely
loitered about, holding themselves firm against the force of
the wind, and regarding as best they might the savage
beauty of the scene around them—the whirling blue and
white of the loch, the disappearing and reappearing hills,
the long promontories suddenly become of a vivid and
startling yellow, and then as suddenly again steeped in
gloom.  But Miss Carry was anxious to be aboard.

'We should only be driven across to the shore yonder,'
Ronald said; 'or maybe capsized.'

'Oh, but that would be delightful,' she remarked
instantly.  'I never had my life saved.  It would read very
well in the papers.'

'Yes, but it might end the other way,' her father
interposed.  'And then I don't see where the fun would come
in—though you would get your newspaper paragraph all
the same.'

Ronald had been watching the clouds and the direction
of the squalls on the loch; there was some appearance of
a lull.

'We'll chance it now,' he said to the lad; and forthwith
they shoved the boat into the water, and arranged the
various things.

Miss Carry was laughing.  She knew it was an
adventure.  Her father remonstrated; but she would not be
hindered.  She took her seat in the coble, and got hold of
the rod; then they shoved off and jumped in; and
presently she was paying out the line, to which was attached
a 'silver doctor' about as long as her forefinger.  Casting,
of course, was beyond her skill, even had the wind been
less violent; there was nothing for it but to trail the fly
through these rushing and tumbling and hissing waves.

And at first everything seemed to go well enough—except
that the coble rolled in the trough of the waves so
that every minute she expected to be pitched overboard.
They were drifting down the wind; with the two oars held
hard in the water to retard the pace; and the dancing
movement of the coble was rather enjoyable; and there
was a kind of fierceness of sunlight and wind and hurrying
water that fired her brain.  These poor people lingering on
the shore—what were they afraid of?  Why, was there ever
anything so delightful as this—the cry of the wind and the
rush of the water; and everything around in glancing lights
and vivid colours; for the lake was not all of that intense
and driven blue, it became a beautiful roseate purple
where the sunlight struck through the shallows on the long
banks of ruddy sand.  She would have waved her cap to
those poor forlorn ones left behind, but that she felt both
hands must be left free in case of emergency.

But alas! that temporary lull in which they had started
was soon over.  A sharper squall than any before came
darkening and tearing across the loch; then another and
another; until a downright gale was blowing, and apparently
increasing every moment in violence.  Whither were they
drifting?  They dared not run the coble ashore; all along
those rocks a heavy sea was breaking white; they would
have been upset and the boat stove in in a couple of
minutes.

'This'll never do, Johnnie, lad,' she heard Ronald call
out.  'We'll have to fight her back, and get ashore at the top.'

'Very well; we can try.'

And then the next moment all the situation of affairs
seemed changed.  There was no longer that too easy and
rapid surging along of the coble, but apparently an effort
to drive her through an impassable wall of water; while
smash after smash on the bows came the successive waves,
springing into the air, and coming down on the backs of
the men with a rattling volley of spray.  Nay, Miss Carry,
too, got her Highland baptism—for all her crouching and
shrinking and ducking; and her laughing face was running
wet; and her eyes—which she would not shut, for they
were fascinated with the miniature rainbows that appeared
from time to time in the whirling spray—were half-blinded.
But she did not seem to care.  There was a fierce excitement
and enjoyment in the struggle—for she could see how
hard the men were pulling.  And which was getting the
better of the fight—this firm and patient endeavour, or the
fell power of wind and hurrying seas?

And then something happened that made her heart
stand still: there was a shriek heard above all the noise
of the waves—and instinctively she caught up the rod and
found the line whirling out underneath her closed fingers.
What was it Ronald had exclaimed?  'Oh, thunder!' or
some such thing; but the next moment he had called to
her in a warning voice—

'Sit still—sit still—don't move—never mind the fish—let
him go—he'll break away with the fly and welcome.'

But it seemed to him cowardly advice too; and she one
behind her father in the score.  He sent a glance forward
in a kind of desperation: no, there was no sign of the
squall moderating, and they were a long way from the head
of the loch.  Moreover, the salmon, that was either a strong
beast or particularly lively, had already taken out a large
length of line, in the opposite direction.

'Do you think,' said he hurriedly, 'you could jump
ashore and take the rod with you, if I put you in at the
point down there?'

'Yes, yes!' she said, eagerly enough.

'You will get wet.'

'I don't care a cent about that—I will do whatever
you say——'

He spoke a few words to the lad at the bow; and suddenly
shifted his oar thither.

'As hard as ye can, my lad.'

And then he seized the rod from her, and began reeling
in the line with an extraordinary rapidity, for now they were
drifting down the loch again.

'Do ye see the point down there, this side the bay?'

'Yes.'

'There may be a little shelter there; and we're going
to try to put ye ashore.  Hold on to the rod, whatever ye
do; and get a footing as fast as ye can.'

'And then?' she said.  'What then?  What am I to do?'—for
she was rather bewildered—the water still blinding
her eyes, the wind choking her breath.

'Hold on to the rod—and get in what line ye can.'

All this wild, rapid, breathless thing seemed to take
place at once.  He gave her the rod; seized hold of his
oar again, and shifted it; then they seemed to be turning the
bow of the boat towards a certain small promontory where
some birch trees and scattered stones faced the rushing
water.  What was happening—or going to happen—she
knew not; only that she was to hold on to the rod; and
then there was a sudden grating of the bow on stones—a
smash of spray over the stern—the coble wheeled round—Ronald
had leapt into the water—and, before she knew
where she was, he had seized her by the waist and swung
her ashore—and though she fell, or rather slipped and quietly
sat down on some rocks, she still clung to the rod, and
she hardly had had her feet wet!  This was what she knew
of her own position; as for Ronald and the lad, they paid
no further heed to her, for they were seeking to get the
coble safe from the heavy surge; and then again she had
her own affairs to attend to; for the salmon, though it was
blissfully sulking after the first long rushes, might suddenly
make up its mind for cantrips.

Then Ronald was by her side again—rather breathless.

'You've still got hold of him?—that's right—but give
him his own time—let him alone—I don't want him in
here among the stones in rough water like this.'

And then he said, rather shamefacedly—

'I beg your pardon for gripping ye as I had to do—I—I
thought we should have been over—and you would
have got sorely wet.'

'Oh, that's all right,' she said—seeking in vain amid the
whirling waste of waters for any sign or glimpse of the
salmon.  'But you—you must be very wet—why did you
jump into the water?'

'Oh, that's nothing—there, let him go!—give him his
own way!—now, reel in a bit—quicker—quicker—that'll
do, now.'

As soon as she had got the proper strain on the fish
again, she held out her right hand.

'Pull off my glove, please,' she said—but still with her
eyes intent on the whirling waves.

Well, he unbuttoned the long gauntlet—though the
leather was all saturated with water; but when he tried the
fingers, he could not get them to yield at all; so he had
to pull down the gauntlet over the hand, and haul off the
glove by main force—then he put it in his pocket, for there
was no time to waste on ceremony.

There was a sudden steady pull on the rod; and away
went the reel.

'Let him go—let him go—ah, a good fish, and a clean
fish too!  I hope he'll tire himself out there, before we
bring him in among the stones.'

Moreover, the gale was abating somewhat, though the
big waves still kept chasing each other in and springing
high on the rocks.  She became more eager about getting
the fish.  Hitherto, she had been rather excited and
bewildered, and intent only on doing what she was bid; now
the prospect of really landing the salmon had become
joyful.

'But how shall we ever get him to come in here?' she said.

'He's bound to come, if the tackle holds; and I'm
thinking he's well hooked, or he'd been off ere now, with
all this scurrying water.'

She shifted the rod to her right hand; her left arm was
beginning to feel the continued strain.

'Has the other boat been out?' she asked.

'No, no,' said he, and then he laughed.  'It would be
a fine thing if we could take back a good fish.  I know
well what they were thinking when we let the boat drift
down the second time—they were thinking we had got the
line aground, and were in trouble.  And now they canna
see us—it's little they're thinking that we're playing a
fish.'

'We' and 'us' he said quite naturally; and she, also,
had got into the way of calling him Ronald—as every
one did.

Well, that was a long and a stiff fight with the salmon;
for whenever it found that it was being towed into the
shallows, away it went again, with rush on rush, so that
Miss Carry had her work cut out for her, and had every
muscle of her arms and back aching.

'Twenty pounds, you'll see,' she heard the lad Johnnie
say to his companion; and Ronald answered him—

'I would rather than ten shillings it was.'

Twenty pounds!  She knew that this was rather a rarity
on this loch—ten or eleven pounds being about the average;
and if only she could capture this animal—in the teeth of
a gale too—and go back to the others in triumph, and
also with another tale to tell to Lily Selden!  She put more
and more strain on; she had both hands firm on the butt;
her teeth were set hard.  Twenty pounds!  Or if the hook
should give way?  Or the line be cut on a stone?  Or the
fish break it with a spring and lash of its tail?  Fortunately
she knew but little of the many and heart-rending
accidents that happen in salmon-fishing, so that her fears
were fewer than her hopes; and at last her heart beat
quickly when she saw Ronald take the clip in his hand.

But he was very cautious; and bade her take time; and
spoke in an equable voice—just as if she were not growing
desperate, and wondering how long her arms would hold
out!  Again and again, by dint of tight reeling up and
putting on a deadly strain, she caught a glimpse of the
salmon; and each of these times she thought she could
guide it sailingly towards the spot where Ronald was
crouching down by the rocks; and then again it would turn and
head away and disappear—taking the line very slowly now,
but still taking it.  She took advantage of one of these
pauses in the fight to step farther back some two or three
yards; this was at Ronald's direction; and she obeyed
without understanding.  But soon she knew the reason;
for at last the salmon seemed to come floating in without
even an effort at refusal; and as she was called on to give
him the butt firmly, she found she could almost drag him
right up and under Ronald's arm.  And then there was a
loud 'hurrah!' from the lad John as the big silver fish
gleamed in the air; and the next second it was lying there
on the withered grass and bracken.  Miss Carry, indeed,
was so excited that she came near to breaking the top of
the rod; she forgot that the struggle was over; and still
held on tightly.

'Lower the top, Miss,' the lad John said, 'or ye can
put the rod down altogether.'

Indeed he took it from her to lay it down safely, and
right glad was she; for she was pretty well exhausted by
this time, and fain to take a seat on one of the rocks
while they proceeded to weigh the salmon with a pocket-scale.

'Seventeen pounds—and a beauty: as pretty a fish as
ever I saw come out of the loch.'

'Well, we've managed it, Ronald,' said she, laughing,
'but I don't know how.  There he is—sure; but how we
got him out of that hurricane I can't tell.'

'There was twice I thought ye had lost him,' said he
gravely.  'The line got desperately slack after ye jumped
ashore——'

'Jumped ashore?' she said.  'Seems to me I was flung
ashore, like a sack of old clothes.'

'But ye were not hurt?' said he, glancing quickly at her.

'No, no; not a bit—nor even wet; and if I had been,
*that* is enough for anything.'

'Johnnie, lad, get some rushes, and put the fish in the
box.  We'll have a surprise for them when we get back,
I'm thinking.'

'And can we get back?' she said.

'We'll try, anyway—oh yes—it's no so bad now.'

But still it was a stiff pull; and they did not think it
worth while to put out the line again.  Miss Carry devoted
her whole attention to sheltering herself from the spray;
and was fairly successful.  When, at length, they reached
the top of the loch and landed, they were treated to a little
mild sarcasm from those who had prudently remained on
shore; but they said nothing; the time was not yet come.

Then came the question as to whether all of them could
pull down the opposite side of the loch to the big rock; for
there they would have shelter for lunch; while here in the
open every gust that swooped down from the Clebrig slopes
caught them in mid career.  Nay, just then the wind seemed
to moderate; so they made all haste into the cobles; and
in due time the whole party were landed at the rock, which,
with its broad ledges for seats, and its overhanging ferns,
formed a very agreeable and sheltered resort.  Of course,
there was but the one thing wanting.  A fishing party at
lunch on the shores of a Highland loch is a very picturesque
thing; but it is incomplete without some beautiful
silver-gleaming object in the foreground.  There always is a bit
of grass looking as if it were just meant for that display;
and when the little plateau is empty, the picture lacks its
chief point of interest.

'Well, you caught something if it wasn't a salmon,' her
father said, glancing at her dripping hat and hair.

'Yes, we did,' she answered innocently.

'You must be wet through in spite of your waterproof.
Sometimes I could not see the boat at all for the showers
of spray.  Did you get much shelter where you stopped?'

'Not much—a little.'

'It was a pretty mad trick, your going out at all.
Of course Ronald only went to please you; he must have
known you hadn't a ghost of a chance in a gale like that.'

'Pappa dear,' said she, 'there's nothing mean about me.
There's many a girl I know would play it on her pa; but
I'm not one of that kind.  When I have three kings and a
pair—

'Stop it, Carry,' said he angrily, 'I'm tired of your Texas
talk.  What do you mean?'

'I only want to show my hand,' she said sweetly; and
she called aloud—'Johnnie!'

The young lad jumped up from the group that were
cowering under the shelter of the stone dyke.

'Bring the fish out of the boat, please.'

He went down to the coble, and got the salmon out of
the well; and then, before bringing it and placing it on the
grass before the young lady, he held it up in triumph for
the gillies to see: the sarcasm was all the other way now.

'You see, pappa dear, you would have bet your boots
against it, wouldn't you?' she remarked.

'But where did you get it?' he said, in amazement.  'I
was watching your boat all the time.  I did not see you
playing a fish.'

'Because we got ashore as fast as we could, and had
the fight out there.  But please, pappa, don't ask me
anything more than that.  I don't know what happened.  The
wind was choking me, and I was half-blind, and the stones
were slippery and moving, and—and everything was in a
kind of uproar.  Perhaps you don't think I did catch the
salmon.  If my arms could speak, they could tell you a
different tale just at this minute; and I shall have a back
to-morrow morning, I know that.  Seventeen pounds,
Ronald says; and as prettily shaped a fish as he has ever
seen taken out of the lake.'

'He is a handsome fish,' her father admitted; and then
he looked up impatiently at the wind-driven sky.  'There
is no doubt there are plenty of fish in the lake, if the weather
would only give us a chance.  But it's either a dead calm
or else a raging gale.  Why, just look at that!'

For at this moment a heavier gust than ever struck
down on the water—and widened rapidly out—and tore
the tops of the waves into spray—until a whirling gray
cloud seemed to be flying over to the other shores.  The
noise and tumult of the squall were indescribable; and
then, in five or six minutes or so, the loch began to reappear
again, black and sullen, from under that mist of foam; and
the wind subsided—only to keep moaning and howling as
if meditating further springs.  There was not much use
in hurrying lunch.  The gillies had comfortably lit their
pipes.  Two of the younger lads were trying their strength
and skill at 'putting the stone;' the others merely lay and
looked on; an occasional glance at the loch told them they
need not stir.

It was not jealousy of his daughter having caught a fish
that made Mr. Hodson impatient; it was the waste of time.
He could not find refuge in correspondence; he had no
book with him; while gazing at scenery is a feeble substitute
for salmon-fishing, if the latter be your aim.  And then
again the loch was very tantalising—awaking delusive hopes
every few minutes.  Sometimes it would become almost
quiet—save for certain little black puffs of wind that fell
vertically and widened and widened out; and they would
be on the point of summoning the men to the cobles when,
with a low growl and then a louder roar, the gale would be
rushing down again, and the storm witches' white hair
streaming across the suddenly darkened waters.

'"Ben Clebrig—the Hill of the Playing Trout,"' said
he peevishly.  'I don't believe a word of it.  Why, the
Celtic races were famous for giving characteristic names to
places—describing the things accurately.  "The Hill of
the Playing Trout!"  Now, if they had called it "The Hill
of the Infernal Whirlwinds," or "The Hill of Blasts and
Hurricanes," or something of that kind, it would have been
nearer the mark.  And this very day last year, according
to the list that Ronald has, they got nine salmon.'

'Perhaps we may get the other eight yet, pappa,' said
she lightly.

And indeed, shortly after this, the day seemed to be
getting a little quieter; and her father decided upon a start.
The men came along to the coble.  Ronald said to her—

'We will let them get well ahead of us; it's their turn
now.'  And so he and she and the lad John remained on
the shore, looking after the departing boat, and in all sincerity
wishing them good luck.

Presently she said, 'What's that?'—for something had
struck her sharply on the cheek.  It was a heavy drop of
rain, that a swirl of wind had sent round the side of the
rock; and now she became aware that everywhere beyond
their shelter there was a loud pattering, becoming every
moment heavier and heavier, while the wind rose and rose
into an ominous high screeching.  And then all round
there was a hissing and a roar and from under the rock
she looked forth on the most extraordinary phantasmagoria—for
now the sheets of rain as they fell and broke on the
water were caught by the angry mountain blasts and torn
into spindrift, so that the whole lake seemed to be a mass
of white smoke.  And her father?—well, she could see
something like the ghost of a boat and two or three
phantom figures; but whether they were trying to fight their
way, or letting everything go before the tempest, or what,
she could not make out—for the whirling white rain-smoke
made a mere spectral vision of them.  Ronald came to her.

'That's bad luck,' said he composedly.

'What?' she asked, quickly.  'They are not in danger?'

'Oh no,' said he.  'But they've got both minnows
aground, as far as I can make out.'

'But what about that? why don't they throw the rods
and everything overboard, and get into safety?'

'Oh, they'll try to save the minnows, I'm thinking.'

And they did succeed in doing so—after a long and
strenuous struggle; and then Mr. Hodson was glad to have
them row him back to the shelter of the rock.  Apparently
his success with regard to the minnows had put him into
quite a good humour.

'Carry,' said he, 'I'm not an obstinate man—I know
when I've got enough.  I will allow that this battle is too
much for me.  I'm going home.  I'm going to walk.'

'Then I will go with you, pappa,' she said promptly.

'You may stay if you choose,' said he.  'You may stay
and take my share as well as your own.  But I'm going to
see what newspapers the mail brought this morning; and
there may be letters.'

'And I have plenty to do also,' said she.  'I mean to
call on that pretty Miss Douglas I told you of—the Doctor's
daughter.  And do you think she would come along and
dine with us?—or must I ask her mother as well?'

'I don't know what the society rules are here,' he
answered.  'I suspect you will have to find out.'

'And Ronald—do you think he would come in and
spend the evening with us?  I can't find out anything
about him—it's all phantom-minnows and things when he
is in the boat.'

'Well, I should like that too,' said he: for he could
not forsake the theories which he had so frequently
propounded to her.

And so they set forth for the inn, leaving the men to
get the boats back when they could; and after a long and
brave battling with rain and wind they achieved shelter at
last.  And then Miss Carry had to decide what costume
would be most appropriate for an afternoon call in the
Highlands—on a day filled with pulsating hurricanes.
Her bodice of blue with its regimental gold braid she
might fairly adopt—for it could be covered over and
protected; but her James I. hat with its gray and saffron
plumes she had to discard—she had no wish to see it
suddenly whirling away in the direction of Ben Loyal.





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.. _`DREAMS AND VISIONS`:

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   CHAPTER XVI.


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   DREAMS AND VISIONS.

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Miss Hodson was in no kind of anxiety or embarrassment
about this visit; she had quite sufficient reliance on her
own tact; and when, going along to the Doctor's cottage,
she found Meenie alone in that little room of hers, she
explained the whole situation very prettily and simply and
naturally.  Two girls thrown together in this remote and
solitary place, with scarcely any one else to talk with; why
should they not know each other?  That was the sum and
substance of her appeal; with a little touch here and there
about her being a stranger, and not sure of the ways and
customs of this country that she found herself in.  And
then Meenie, who was perhaps a trifle overawed at first by
this resplendent visitor, was almost inclined to smile at the
notion that any apology was necessary, and said in her
gentle and quiet way—

'Oh, but it is very kind of you.  And if you had lived
in one or two Scotch parishes, you would know that the
minister's family and the doctor's family are supposed to
know every one.'

She did not add 'and be at every one's disposal'—for
that might have seemed a little rude.  However, the
introduction was over and done with; and Miss Carry set
herself to work to make herself agreeable—which she could
do very easily when she liked.  As yet she kept the
invitation to dinner in the background; talked of all kinds
of things—the salmon-fishing, the children's soirée she had
heard of; Ronald; Ronald's brother the minister; and her
wonder that Ronald should be content with his present
position; and always those bright dark eyes seemed to be
scanning everything in the room with a pleased curiosity,
and then again and again returning to Meenie's face, and
her dress, and her way of wearing her hair, with a frank
scrutiny which made the country mouse not a little shy in
the presence of this ornate town mouse.  For Miss Carry,
with her upper wrappings discarded, was not only very
prettily attired, but also she had about her all kinds of
nick-nacks and bits of finery that seemed to have come
from many lands, and to add to her foreign look.  Of
course, a woman's glance—even the glance of a shy
Highland girl—takes note of these things; and they seemed
but part of the unusual character and appearance of this
stranger, who seemed so delicate and fragile, and yet was
full of an eager vivacity and talkativeness, and whose soft,
large, black eyes, if they seemed to wander quickly and
restlessly from one object to another, were clearly so full of
kindness and a wish to make friends.  And very friendly
indeed she was; and she had nothing but praise for the
Highlands, and Highland scenery, and Highland manners,
and even the Highland accent.

'I suppose I have an accent myself; but of course
I don't know it,' she rattled on.  'Even at home they
say our western accent is pretty bad.  Well, I suppose I
have got it; but anyway I am not ashamed of it, and I
am not in a hurry to change it.  I have heard of American
girls in Europe who were most afraid to speak lest they
should be found out—-found out!  Why, I don't see that
English girls try to hide their accent, or want to copy any
one else; and I don't see why American girls should be
ashamed of having an American accent.  Your accent,
now; I have been trying to make out what it is, but I
can't.  It is very pretty; and not the least like the
English way of talking; but I can't just make out where the
difference is.'

For this young lady had a desperately direct way of
addressing any one.  She seemed to perceive no
atmosphere of conventionality between person and person; it
was brain to brain, direct; and no pausing to judge of the
effect of sentences.

'I know my mother says that I speak in the Highland
way,' Meenie said, with a smile.

'There now, I declare,' said Miss Hodson, 'that did not
sound like an English person speaking, and yet I could not
tell you where the difference was.  I really think it is more
manner than accent.  The boatmen and the girls at the
inn—they all speak as if they were anxious to please you.'

'Then it cannot be a very disagreeable accent,' said
Meenie, laughing in her quiet way.

'No, no; I like it.  I like it very much.  Ronald now,
has nothing of that; he is positive and dogmatic—I would
say gruff in his way of talking, if he was not so obliging.
But he is very obliging and good-natured; there is just
nothing he won't do for us—and we are perfect strangers
to him.'

And so she prattled on, apparently quite satisfied that
now they were good friends; while Meenie had almost
forgotten her shyness in the interest with which she
listened to this remarkable young lady who had been all over
the world and yet took her travelling so much as a matter
of course.  Then Miss Hodson said—

'You know my father and I soon exhaust our remarks
on the events of the day when we sit down to dinner;
and we were wondering whether you would take pity on
our solitude and come along and dine with us this evening.
Will you?  I wish you would—it would be just too kind
of you.'

Meenie hesitated.

'I would like very well,' said she, 'but—but my mother
and the lad have driven away to Tongue to fetch my
father home—and it may be late before they are back——'

'The greater reason why you should come—why, to
think of your sitting here alone!  I will come along for
you myself.  And if you are afraid of having too much of
the star-spangled banner, we'll get somebody else in who
is not an American; I mean to ask Ronald if he will come
in and spend the evening with us—or come in to dinner
as well, if he has time——'

Now the moment she uttered these words she perceived
the mistake she had made.  Meenie all at once looked
troubled, conscious, apprehensive—there was a touch of
extra colour in her face: perhaps she was annoyed that
she was betraying this embarrassment.

'I think some other night, if you please,' the girl said,
in a low voice, and with her eyes cast down, 'some other
night, when mamma is at home—I would like to ask her
first.'

'Class distinctions,' said Miss Carry to herself, as she
regarded this embarrassment with her observant eyes.
'Fancy class distinctions in a little community like this—in
mid-winter too!  Of course the Doctor's daughter must
not sit down to dinner with Lord Ailine's head keeper.'

But she could not offer to leave Ronald out—that
would but have added to the girl's confusion, whatever was
the cause of it.  She merely said lightly—

'Very well, then, some other evening you will take
pity on us—and I hope before I go to Paris.  And then
I want you to let me come in now and again and have a
cup of tea with you; and I get all the illustrated periodicals
sent me from home—with the fashion-plates, you know.'

She rose.

'What a nice room—it is all your own, I suppose?'

'Oh yes; that is why it is so untidy.'

'But I like to see a room look as if it was being used.
Well, now, what are these?' she said, going to the
mantel-shelf, where a row of bottles stood.

'These are medicines.'

'Why, you don't look sick,' the other said, turning
suddenly.

'Oh no.  These are a few simple things that my father
leaves with me when he goes from home—they are for
children mostly—and the people have as much faith in me
as in anybody,' Meenie said, with a shy laugh.  'Papa
says I can't do any harm with them, in any case; and the
people are pleased.'

'Hush, hush, dear, you must not tell me any secrets of
that kind,' said Miss Carry gravely; and then she
proceeded to get on her winter wraps.

Meenie went downstairs with her, and at the door
would see that she was all properly protected and buttoned
up about the throat.

'For it is very brave of you to come into
Sutherlandshire in the winter,' said she; 'we hardly expect to see
any one until the summer is near at hand.'

'Then you will let me come and have some tea with
you at times, will you not?'

'Oh yes—if you will be so kind.'

They said good-bye and shook hands; and then Miss
Carry thought that Meenie looked so pretty and so shy,
and had so much appealing gentleness and friendliness in
the clear, transparent, timid blue-gray eyes, that she kissed
her, and said 'Good-bye, dear,' again, and went out into
the dusk and driving wind of the afternoon, entirely well
pleased with her visit.

But it seemed as though she were about to be disappointed
in both directions; for when she called in at
Ronald's cottage he was not there; and when she returned
to the inn, he was not to be found, nor could any one say
whither he had gone.  She and her father dined by
themselves.  She did not say why Meenie had declined to come
along and join them; but she had formed her own opinion
on that point; and the more she thought of it, the more
absurd it seemed to her that this small handful of people
living all by themselves in the solitude of the mountains
should think it necessary to observe social distinctions.
Was not Ronald, she asked herself, fit to associate with
any one?  But then she remembered that the Highlanders
were said to be very proud of their descent; and
she had heard something about Glengask and Orosay; and
she resolved that in the future she would be more
circumspect in the matter of invitations.

About half-past eight or so the pretty Nelly appeared
with the message that Ronald was in the inn, and had
heard that he was being asked for.

'What will I tell him ye want, sir?' she said, naturally
assuming that Ronald was to be ordered to do something.

'Give him my compliments,' said Mr. Hodson, 'and say
we should be obliged if he would come in and smoke a pipe
and have a chat with us, if he has nothing better to do.'

But Nelly either thought this was too much politeness
to be thrown away on the handsome keeper, or else she
had some small private quarrel with him; for all she said
to him, and that brusquely, was—

'Ronald, you're wanted in the parlour.'

Accordingly, when he came along the passage, and
tapped at the door and opened it, he stood there uncertain,
cap in hand.  And Mr. Hodson had to repeat the
invitation—explaining that they had wanted him to have some
dinner with them, but that he could not be found; and
then Ronald, with less of embarrassment than might have
been expected—for he knew these two people better
now—shut the door, and laid down his cap, and modestly
advanced to the chair that Mr. Hodson had drawn in
towards one side of the big fireplace.  Miss Carry was
seated apart on a sofa, apparently engaged in some sort of
knitting work; but her big black eyes could easily be
raised when there was need, and she could join in the
conversation when she chose.

At first that was mostly about the adjacent shooting,
which Mr. Hodson thought of taking for a season merely
by way of experiment; and the question was how long he
would in that case have to be away from his native country.
This naturally took them to America, and eventually and
alas! to politics—which to Miss Carry was but as the
eating of chopped straw.  However, Mr. Hodson (if you
could keep the existence of lords out of his reach) was no
very violent polemic; and moreover, whenever the Bird of
Freedom began to clap its wings too loudly, was there not
on the sofa there a not inattentive young lady to interfere
with a little gentle sarcasm?  Sometimes, indeed, her
interpositions were both uncalled for and unfair; and
sometimes they were not quite clearly intelligible.  When,
for example, they were talking of the colossal statue of
Liberty enlightening the World which the French Republic
proposed to present to the American Republic to be set
up in New York Bay, she pretended not to know in which
direction—east or west—the giant figure was to extend
her light and liberty-giving arm; and her objection to her
father's definition of the caucus system as a despotism
tempered by bolting, was a still darker saying of which
Ronald could make nothing whatever.  But what of that?
Whatever else was veiled to him, this was clear—that her
interference was on his behalf, so that he should not be
overpressed in argument or handicapped for lack of
information; and he was very grateful to her, naturally; and
far from anxious to say anything against a country that
had sent him so fair and so generous an ally.

But, after all, was not this laudation of the institutions
of the United States meant only as a kindness—as an
inducement to him to go thither, and better his position?
There was the field where the race was to the swiftest,
where the best man got to the front, and took the prize
which he had fairly won.  There no accident of birth, no
traditional usage, was a hindrance.  The very largeness of
the area gave to the individual largeness of view.

'Yes,' said Miss Carry (but they took no heed of her
impertinence) 'in our country a bar-tender mixes drinks
with his mind fixed on Niagara.'

Nay, the very effort to arouse dissatisfaction in the
bosom of this man who seemed all too well contented with
his circumstances was in itself meant as a kindness.  Why
should he be content?  Why should he not get on?  It
was all very well to have health and strength and high
spirits, and to sing tenor songs, and be a favourite with the
farm-lasses; but that could not last for ever.  He was
throwing away his life.  His chances were going by him.
Why, at his age, what had so-and-so done, and what had
so-and-so not done?  And how had they started?  What
did they owe to fortune—what, rather, to their own
resolution and brain?

'Ronald, my good fellow,' said his Mentor, in the most
kindly way, 'if I could only get you to breathe the
atmosphere of Chicago for a fortnight, I am pretty sure you
wouldn't come back to stalk deer and train dogs for Lord
Ailine or any other lordship.'

Miss Carry said nothing; but she pictured to herself
Ronald passing down Madison Street—no longer, of course,
in his weather-tanned stalking costume, but attired as the
other young gentlemen to be found there; and going into
Burke's Hotel for an oyster luncheon; and coming out
again chewing a toothpick; and strolling on to the Grand
Pacific to look at the latest telegrams.  And she smiled
(though, indeed, she herself had not been behindhand in
urging him to get out of his present estate and better his
fortunes), for there was something curiously incongruous in
that picture; and she was quite convinced that in Wabash
Avenue he would not look nearly as handsome nor so much
at his ease as now he did.

'I am afraid,' said he, with a laugh, 'if ye put me down
in a place like that, I should be sorely at a loss to tell what
to turn my hand to.  It's rather late in the day for me to
begin and learn a new trade.'

'Nonsense, man,' the other said.  'You have the knowledge
already, if you only knew how to apply it.'

'The knowledge?' Ronald repeated, with some surprise.
Most of his book-reading had been in the field of
English poetry; and he did not see how he could carry
that to market.

Mr. Hodson took out his note-book; and began to
look over the leaves.

'And you don't need to go as far as Chicago, if you
would rather not,' said he.

'If you do,' said Miss Carry flippantly, 'mind you don't
eat any of our pork.  Pappa dear, do you know why a
wise man doesn't eat pork in Illinois?  Don't you know?
It is because there is a trichinosis worth two of that.'

Ronald laughed; but her father was too busy to attend
to such idiotcy.

'Even if you would rather remain in the old country,'
he continued, 'and enjoy an out-of-door life, why should
you not make use of what you already know?  I have
heard you talk about the draining of soil, and planting of
trees, and so on: well, look here now.  I have been
inquiring into that matter; and I find that the Highland
and Agricultural Society of Scotland grants certificates for
proficiency in the theory and practice of forestry.  Why
shouldn't you try to gain one of those certificates; and
then apply for the post of land-steward?  I'll bet you
could manage an estate as well as most of them who are at
it—especially one of those Highland sporting estates.
And then you would become a person of importance; and
not be at any lordship's beck and call; you would have an
opportunity of beginning to make a fortune, if not of making
one at once; and if you wanted to marry, there would be
a substantial future for you to look to.'

'And then you would come over and see us at Chicago,'
said Miss Carry.  'We live on North Park Avenue; and
you would not feel lonely for want of a lake to look
at—we've a pretty big one there.'

'But the first step—about the certificate?' said Ronald
doubtfully—though, indeed, the interest that these two kindly
people showed in him was very delightful, and he was
abundantly grateful, and perhaps also a trifle bewildered
by these ambitious and seductive dreams.

'Well, I should judge that would be easy enough,'
continued Mr. Hodson, again referring to his note-book in
that methodical, slow-mannered way of his.  'You would
have to go to Edinburgh or Glasgow, and attend some
classes, I should imagine, for they want you to know
something of surveying and geology and chemistry and botany.
Some of these you could read up here—for you have plenty
of leisure, and the subjects are just at your hand.  I don't
see any difficulty about that.  I suppose you have saved
something now, that you could maintain yourself when you
were at the classes?'

'I could manage for a while,' was the modest answer.

'I have myself several times thought of buying an estate
in the Highlands,' Mr. Hodson continued, 'if I found that
I have not forgotten altogether how to handle a gun; and
if I did so, I would give you the management right off.  But
it would not do for you to risk such a chance; what you
want is to qualify yourself, so that you can take your stand
on your own capacity, and demand the market value for it.'

Well, it was a flattering proposal; and this calm,
shrewd-headed man seemed to consider it easily practicable—and
as the kind of thing that a young man in his country would
naturally make for and achieve; while the young lady on
the sofa had now thrown aside the pretence of knitting,
and was regarding him with eloquent eyes, and talking as
if it were all settled and attained, and Ronald already
become an enterprising and prosperous manager, whom
they should come to see when they visited Scotland, and
who was certainly to be their guest when he crossed the
Atlantic.  No wonder his head was turned.  Everything
seemed so easy—why, both she and her father appeared to
be surrounded, when at home, with men who had begun
with nothing and made fortunes.  And then he would not
be torn away altogether from the hills.  He might still have
a glimpse of the dun deer from time to time; there would
still be the dewy mornings by lake and strath and mountain-tarn,
with the stumbling on a bit of white heather, and the
picking it and wearing it for luck.  And if he had to bid
farewell to Clebrig and Ben Loyal and Ben Hope and
Bonnie Strath-Naver—well, there were other districts far
more beautiful than that, as well he knew, where he would
still hear the curlew whistle, and the grouse-cock crow in
the evening, and the great stags bellow their challenge
through the mists of the dawn.  And as for a visit to
Chicago?—and a view of great cities, and harbours, and
the wide activities of the world?—surely all that was a
wonderful dream, if only it might come true!

'I'm sure I beg your pardon,' said he, rising, 'for letting
ye talk all this time about my small affairs.  I think you'll
have a quieter day to-morrow; the wind has backed to the
east; and that is a very good wind for this loch.  And I've
brought the minnows that I took to mend; the kelts are
awful beasts for destroying the minnows.'

He put the metal box on the mantelpiece.  They would
have had him stay longer—and Miss Carry, indeed, called
reproaches down on her head that she had not asked him
to smoke nor offered him any kind of hospitality—but he
begged to be excused.  And so he went out and got home
through the cold dark night—to his snug little room and
the peat-fire, and his pipe and papers and meditations.

A wonderful dream, truly—and all to be achieved by
the reading up of a few subjects of some of which he
already knew more than a smattering.  And why should
he not try?  It seemed the way of the world—at least, of
the world of which he had been learning so much from
these strangers—to strive and push forward and secure, if
possible, means and independence.  Why should he remain
at Inver-Mudal?  The old careless happiness had fled from
it.  Meenie had passed him twice now—each time merely
giving him a formal greeting, and yet, somehow, as he
imagined, with a timid trouble in her eyes, as if she was
sorry to do that.  Her superintendence of Maggie's lessons
was more restricted now; and never by any chance did she
come near the cottage when he was within or about.  The
old friendliness was gone; the old happy companionship—however
restricted and respectful on his side; the old,
frank appeal for his aid and counsel when any of her own
small schemes had to be undertaken.  And was she in
trouble on his account?—and had the majesty of Glengask
and Orosay been invoked?  Well, that possibility need
harrow no human soul.  If his acquaintanceship—or
companionship, in a measure—with Meenie was considered
undesirable, there was an easy way out of the difficulty.
Acquaintanceship or companionship, whichever it might be,
it would end—it had ended.

And then again, he said to himself, as he sate at the
little table and turned over those leaves that contained
many a gay morning song and many a midnight musing—but
all about Meenie, and the birds and flowers and hills
and streams that knew her—soon she would be away from
Inver-Mudal, and what would the place be like then?
Perhaps when the young corn was springing she would take
her departure; and what would the world be like when she
had left?  He could see her seated in the little carriage;
her face not quite so bright and cheerful as usually it was;
her eyes—that were sometimes as blue as a speedwell in
June, and sometimes gray like the luminous clear gray of
the morning sky—perhaps clouded a little; and the
sensitive lips trembling?  The children would be there, to
bid her good-bye.  And then away through the lonely glens
she would go, by hill and river and wood, till they came in
sight of the western ocean, and Loch Inver, and the great
steamer to carry her to the south.  Meenie would be
away—and Inver-Mudal, *then*?

.. class:: italics

   |  Small birds in the corn
   |  Are cowering and quailing:
   |  O my lost love,
   |  Whence are you sailing?
   |
   |  Fierce the gale blows
   |  Adown the bleak river;
   |  The valley is empty
   |  For ever and ever.
   |
   |  Out on the seas,
   |  The night-winds are wailing:
   |  O my lost love,
   |  Whence are you sailing?

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center

   END OF VOL. \I.

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::