John Sillars

“ And if ever a man had it in his bones to run it was Dan, and at the door they met—the very door where the woman had kissed her man and smote him on the cheek, when I lay in the heather, and the Laird of Scaurdale rode with the wean in the crook of his arm—the same Helen that had brought them there then, had brought also this happy meeting. It was a picture I would be aye wishing I could be painting—Belle, her dark face flushed, her eyes suffused, the pride, the love, the longing of her, and her hands twisting and clasping, and her lips trembling, without words coming to them. ”

“ Behind the wee hill I lay when the moon was young and the grass was cool on my brow, and I would be hearing the breathings of the hills in the silence as they slept, and the moon sailed behind a black cloud and all the world was dark, and I heard a great laughing in the dark near me like diamonds and pearls sparkling, so wee was the sound and so bright the laughing, and then the moon sailed out clear silver in a blue sky, and there were all the Wee Folk at their games on the short turf. ”

“ Many a morning had I stood at the loose-box door and watched the devil in the horse and the devil in the man battle for mastery, and aye the horse was cowed. Even on the mornings when I heard Dan's step, soft and wary on the cobbles, before the sun was up, and knew by the look of him, and the gruffness in his voice, that he had travelled many a weary mile from his light-o'-love, and that sleep had not troubled him, I would hear the stable door opening and Dan whistling like the cheery early bird as he opened the corn-kist. ”

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

“ As we lay Dan struck it three times with a stone about the size of a putting-ball, and a great low baying sounded, and my blood ran cold, and then the grey rock moved inch by inch, and I heard a great rift of Gaelic, and Dan went crawling like a snake through the hole, and myself and McKinnon at his heels.
"Welcome, hearty welcome; whatever drives ye sae fast. Welcome to
McAllan's Locker."
"It's latish for ceilidhing," said Dan. "I'm hoping me and my friends are not putting ye out in any ways, but just a shakedown o' breckans is all we're asking, and thankful for it." ”

“ I am thinking that maybe long ago the folk on the island would be watching for an enemy landing from the water, for with the sea as calm as a mill-pond and just the loom of the land—maybe through a haze—the senses will become very alert, and any little noise without the boat a man will be hearing, and wondering about, as well as listening to the splash of a fish falling into the water after a gladsome leap, and the noise of splashing of the oars to frighten the salmon-trout into the meshes. ”

“ Go there and I will come soon," and the lad walked the horses away, and these two stood watching. Then Helen turned to Bryde and looked at him, her black eyes flashing, her cheeks wind-whipped, her hair a disarray with the speed of her travelling, and her lips smiling. If ever there would be beauty in a woman in the white night with a half gale, it was in Helen. She took his two hands and stood back from him a little and looked, and then from her white throat there came laughter, bubbling laughter, like a little brook in summer, joy and happiness and content was in her laughing. ”

“ Into them with the steel."
"Fire," screamed Gilchrist—"fire, or we're by wi' it," and the pieces burst and spattered round us in a wild confusion. With the blaze of the pieces I saw Dol Beag spring at Bryde as a wild cat springs; crooked and bestial he was, and his knife flashing, but swifter than the knife-flash was the love of the maid, who fell as Bryde fell. Into the bedlam of smoke and noise and groaning men, came the horrible laughter of a man, wild and high and devilish.
"McBride, Dan McBride, McBride, Dan McBride, look at the bonny bastard; look at your bonny bastard." ”

“ At the door of the place that was old McCurdy's hut, Dan McBride was standing. The white was streaking in the redness of his face, and he was shaking. Bryde put the boy in his mother's arms, and it is droll, but Belle went to the side of her man.
"Dan," said she, "I have brought you your son," and she looked from one to the other, her lips quivering. Bryde opened his mouth to speak, looking at his father—a long level look.
"You are a fine man," said he, "my father." ”

“ As he spoke, the Red Laird lolled his head on the back of his chair. His eyes were closed, and his mind looked backwards; and as he cried for the sun and the growing grass and the wave of the wind in the hay, his hand rose and fell. And McRae, McRae the piper, looked long into the glowing fire, looked till his harsh face softened and the smiling came round his eyes, and softly, softly he played. ”

“ And while we lay in the frozen cold of the pool, the water tinkled and gurgled and laughed, and went plout-plout at my knees, as though it was a hot summer day and we were stooping to drink.
"We must just lie here like rats," whispered the smuggler, and I held my chin to stop the chattering of my teeth, "for this burn gets narrower than a sheep drain. We must just steep in the water and think of the whisky." ”

“ Would the race never end? My tongue, dry and swollen, stuck raspily against the roof of my mouth. Round my lips was a hot fire, for I had grasped a handful of snow and melted it in my mouth as I ran. We were past the peat hags, and the ground fell away under our feet; the heather got scantier and sprits more common, until we had descended, maybe, five hundred feet into a wide valley with a level plain at its heart, with many clumps of stunted birches and hardy firs. Here was the great grazing for young beasts in the summer, away here in the glen, but now only stillness and desolation. ”

“ Ay, bodies and beasts I have seen the good words working a cure on, but wae's me, Hamish, I will never be hearing the cuckoo again. I am loath to part wi' this bonny place, calm and peaceful for a body's old age, and I will be missing the fine smell of the grass when it will be newly cut, and the clink of the stones on the cutting-hooks. ”

“ CHAPTER XII. McALLAN'S LOCKER.
Over the first rise of the hills was a long dreary waste—treeless, awesome, desolate. Whiles, as we ran, a curlew would rise, and its long whirling cry rose in the night, filling the ears and leaving an emptiness afterwards in the silence, for things not canny to be filling. Once we startled a herd of red-deer feeding round the mossy lips of a frozen pool, and away they galloped. One lordly stag wheeled with antlers high, gazed at our flight, and vanished, leaving us in that dreadful stillness, and a cold eerie wind whined and sighed over us. ”

“ I hated the grass roots, and dreamed horribly of them piercing into my heart, and drawing the life-blood to feed the bloated sweaty leaves, but the graveyard had an awful fascination for me. Sometimes old men would wander inside the dyke and move slowly to a rude stone and sit there, and I would hear great sighs bursting into the quiet afternoon, when the sun always beat down. ”

“ Ah, she was brave in her loving, was the Flower of Nourn.
Mirren McKinnon, that was once Mirren Stuart, was dowie that day, and her eyes red with greeting, for her son had gone to the sea, as his father had long ago. "I will be missing his step," she said softly, "when my man is on the hill," but Ronny would not be listening.
"It will make a man of the lad," said he; "there's something clean and fine about the sea."
Bryde had sold his beasts well, and it was his pleasure to be showing Margaret the bonniest foals, rough-haired and tousled as they were, and Hugh and me would be passing judgment. ”

“ As he spoke, it seemed to me that the voice was the same voice that I kent when I was a boy, but I was at the walking now and hurried him on.
"Grass," said I; "look at yon," and I pointed to the parks and the steading, with the smoke rising straight from the lums into the frosty morning air.
"That was the young lad's work," said I.
"He will be a farmer at all events . . ." and there was on Dan's face as he spoke a look of pride and pity all mixed.
"Belle will not be knowing you are here."
"Ay, but she will that, Hamish—ye don't ken Belle; look, man, look, she's at the doorstep now." ”

“ And I would often be laughing at Margaret and her talk of milk, and fowls, and calves, and lambs, but she would be very serious.
"A woman should be knowing these things, Hamish," she would say.
But Belle was the slave of Margaret since the days when Hugh and Bryde and the little wild lass would be playing in the heather, and climbing for jackdaw's eggs or young rock-pigeons in Dun Dubh. But that day Margaret was beside old Betty, and making her comfortable in the chair by the fire of red peats. ”

“ Well, well, I'm fond of this farming, but I have set out to tell a tale, which in my poor fancy should even be like a rotation of crops, from the breaking in of the lea to the sowing out in grass, with the sun and winds and sweet rains to ripen and swell the grain—the crying of the harvesters and the laughing of lassies among the stocks in the gloaming, the neighing of horse and the lowing of kine in the evening. ”

“ My dear, could you be trusting yourself to me in the great new land, for the farming is in the very marrow of my bones. Would you be grieving for your own folk, and your own hills, in that new land, where the cattle would be grazing knee-deep in grass, and the horses roaming in herds, long-tailed and with great tangled manes—roaming on the great pastures? ”

“ I made my way to the graveyard and lay among the long lush grass, for the grass grew nowhere so long or so full of sap as in the graveyard, and I thought of all the great warriors of our glens whose bones had been laid in this place, and shivered to think of the hot red blood stilled in death, and the grass roots creeping downwards like tentacles into the chinks of the wood, and sending up great fat greasy blades that sweated in the sun. ”

“ In these night trakings in the hills I learned the shape of every stunted bush and tree, and the place of every rock on either hand, and many's the droll ploy I came into. Ye'll still see the track yet down from the peat hags like a scar on the hillside, but the stories of the road are lost in the swirling mists, and carried away in the winter gales.
There was a burn running over the road down from the little loch with the green rush islands, where the sea-birds build, and the staghorn moss is boot-deep, and in that little plouting burn there was grand water to be making the whisky. ”

“ We were crouched in a wee burn winding among the bushes; for they grew strongly on either side, and left a little tunnel which one could creep through without much hindrance, and as the riders drove their unwilling beasts among the whins we crawled upwards like cats. While the men on foot beat for us, and the horsemen kept wary eyes for a movement to betray us, we crept from the whins and crawled like adders belly flat up the little stream, over which dry bracken still hung and straggling whin bushes, like soldiers marching away from the main body. ”

“ Hugh and Mistress Helen went their own road, and we watched them from the doorstep, and Dan himself put the saddle gear on Margaret's little horse, and walked a bit of the way with us on the home road.
"I am liking that man too," said Margaret, when we were alone, "but I am thinking there was a liking for the wandering, and the fighting in him, or else he had been back long syne."
"He would have his happy days these twenty years," said she, "in new towns and among new folk, and Belle kind of chained to the moor here—it is that silent woman I will be liking the best of all, Hamish." ”

“ There is a fate that stalks in the hills and plays with the lives of the folk in the valleys. "You will stop with your mother,"—these were the words that Helen gave her serving-man, John McCook, that night she rode with Bryde, and McCook stayed for a little in his mother's house, and then, being young and of good spirit, he made his way to the inn to be seeing his friends. And he sat with them in McKelvie's place above the quay, and now and then when Robin would be bringing drink into a room a little apart, he would be hearing gusts of laughter, and whiles the snatches of words. ”

“ We came out on the old road to the cove, and rough enough passage we made, for a hill burn that crossed the bare rock o' the road had frozen and melted and frozen again, so that on the worst o' the hill we took our hands and knees for it, and even that comedown to a hillman was better than breaking our necks over the rocks on the low side, for the track was whiles no more than a scratch along a precipice. ”

“ By a stream the house would be, where there would be fishing, and the byres and the stables and the dykes to be building, and you would be loving to see the little foals near to you, and the young calves in the joy of living, running daftlike races in the sunshine."
"Bryde, is it not the land of the Ever Young you will be showing me?"
"It is a young land, a land for strong youth. ”

“ The lass McKinnon, with the bonny boyish face, stooped to pick up her shawl, and Gilchrist was jumping and shouting. "A bonny catch," he cried—"a bonny catch," and at that the boyish lass straightened herself. "The boats ahoy," she cried, "ahoy, the boat; the gaugers are on us."
"Stop the bitch," screamed Gilchrist, and sprang at the lass with his fist raised.
"Back, ye damned kerrigan," and Bryde's voice was high like a bugle-note, and he sprang forward.
"Dan McBride has the sailors on us," came a shout from Dol Beag, and then Dan's great voice, laughing, "Fall on, lads; fall on. ”