S. R. Crockett

“ Scarlett laughed good-naturedly, like one who will not take offence even when offence is meant.
"I am not in love, you see," he said. "It is love that is fertile of stratagems. I am but an old, wizened apple-jack. But so was it not ever. The days have been—ah, lad, the days have been!—when Jack Scarlett did not ride hot-foot after another man's lass."
"Hear my idea," said Wat, paying little heed to him. "We may hit or miss, it is true, but in any case the ship would be a small one, and most likely she would run for the nearest point of safety. ”

“ Help me to make of our Scotland a land of faith and freedom. Love me for the sake of the cause, Kate, if not for mine own most unworthy sake."
"The cause is indeed still great and precious to me. I have been honored to suffer the least things for it. Nevertheless the cause is not to be served by one doing wrong, but by many doing right. You are—I believe it—an honorable man, my Lord Barra. You will serve your master faithfully till that good day comes when Scotland shall again have freedom to worship under kirk-rigging or roof-tree, or an it liketh her under the broad span of the sky." ”

“ And so saying Maisie passed from the room as silently as a white swan swims athwart the mere. In a little while she returned with Kate, who, beside her budding matronhood, seemed but a young lissom slip of willow-wand.
"Here, Kate," said Maisie, as she entered holding her friend by the hand, "is our cousin Wat, come in on us to bid farewell. He goes a far road and on a heavy adventure. He would say good-bye to the friends who are with him in this strange land before he departs, and of these you are one, are you not, my Kate?" ”

“ Misfortunate Colin lay as he had fallen, with the keys of the dungeon tucked under his belt. The chief turned him over with his foot.
"Nail him up to that door by the hands and feet!" he ordered, briefly, looking at the man with cold, malevolent eyes.
A woman's shriek rang out, and like a mænad she came flying down the hill, loose-haired, wild-eyed, and flung herself down, grovelling bestially at Barra's feet.
"Mercy, master of life and death!" she cried, clasping him firmly by the knees; "all misfortunes fall on my man. And this is not his fault. All the island was even as he is." ”

“ If all speak the truth in Holland where we come from, it will not be long ere the king has filled up the measure of his folly."
"In that case I might have to fight for the fool and his folly both," said Wat, quietly.
"Aye, there it is!" cried Kate; "a lass in her heart cares nought for king or prince when once she has given herself to love. But a man will hold to his own way of it, and put in peril his happiness and the happiness of another in order to have the right shade of color set upon the cushions of the throne." ”

“ Lochinvar shook off his cousin's hand a little impatiently. He wanted nothing better than just to go on watching Kate McGhie's profile as it outlined itself against the broad, shining reach of water. He marvelled that he had been aforetime so blind to its beauty; but then these ancient admirations in Scotland had been only lightness of heart and a young man's natural love of love-making. But Walter Gordon knew that this which had stricken him to the heart, as he came suddenly upon the girl pillowing her head on her palms at Maisie's knee, was no mere love-making. ”

“ So without further word Wat and Scarlett set their thews to the wall; and between them, panting with the long chase and grimed with powder, where the touchhole had spat up in her face, the Little Marie threw herself on the parapet to help on the catastrophe with all her feeble strength.
The wall swayed in a piece and quivered a moment on the verge ere it fell with a prodigious crash upon the straggling file of men in the deep defile below. A hoarse, confused cry was heard, running up, as the pursuers too late recognized their danger, into a shriek of agony. ”

“ Then he swam ashore, and followed Kate and Scarlett over to the northern side of the island.
The moon was just dipping below the horizon when, with Kate in the stern and Wise Jan handling the boat to a marvel, they left the beautiful island behind them.
Kate drew in a long breath, and her hand rested a moment on Wat's in the darkness. It was the isle of her first assurance and her dawning happiness. No place could ever be quite the same to her. There it lay, Fiara, the Isle of Bliss, looming gray against the dark, solemn, bird-haunted front of Lianacraig. Should she ever see it more? ”

“ Kate rose and walked away without answering a word. She cared no jot for Wat Gordon, so she told herself. He was nothing to her, save that she desired his safety and had risked much to give him shelter. Yet this Duchess of Wellwood—that woman of whom the gross popular tongue whispered commonly the most terrible things! Had Lochinvar made love to her? Was he to meet her at the end of the avenue? She could not believe it. It was, indeed, no matter if he did. What did she care? Go to the arbor, become an eavesdropper—not for any man alive, least of all for Wat Gordon! ”

“ And I would sooner set the knife into her sweet throat with mine own hand than that Barra should so much as lay a finger upon her."
"And your friend?" said Bess Landsborough. She was smiling in the dark as if she were well pleased.
"Jack Scarlett I love," replied Wat, "but not for him did I break prison, overpass the hollow seas, and lay my life like a very little thing in the palm of a maiden's hand."
"It is well," said Bess Landsborough, with a sigh. "That is the true lilt of the only love that is worth the having. ”

“ Most clearly of all he bethought him of the old tower in the midst of the Loch of Lochinvar under the heathery fell of lone Knockman. Then he looked straight at the man before him.
"Jack Scarlett," he said, "it was you who taught me how to thrust and parry. Then your hand was like steel, but your heart was not also hard as the millstone. You were not used to be a man untrue, forsworn. God knows then, at least, you were no traitor. You were no spy. You were no murderer, though a soldier of fortune. You called me a friend, and I was not ashamed of the name. I do not judge you even now. ”

“ There are in this land and in our own country a thousand fairer, a thousand worthier than I."
"Kate," said Barra, more intently and tenderly than he had yet spoken, "some day, and in some isle of quiet bliss where all evil and untoward things are put behind us, I will yet make you love me. For never have I thus set all my fancy on any woman before. And by the word of Murdo, Lord of Barra, none but you will I wed, and, by the honor of my clan, no other shall have you but I!" ”

“ Great slaty purple mountains stretched away to the north; a range of lower hills, cut down to the roots by the narrow cleft of a pass, warded the bay to the east; while to the south the comrades looked out on a wilderness of isles and islets, reefs and spouting skerries, which foamed and whitened as the black iron teeth of the rock showed themselves, and the slow swell of the Atlantic came lumbering and arching in.
Wat and Scarlett sat down on the shore, which stretched away lonely and barren for miles on either side of them. ”

“ Meanwhile, upon Fiara Wise Jan ran his errands and gathered his drift-wood under the orders of the master-at-arms, while Wat and Kate, content to dwell together in an innocent garden of Eden, a garden from which the serpent was for the moment excluded, walked hand in hand under the shelter of the long central cliff-line of the isle on which they had found shelter. The history of their love's growth was a constant marvel to them, and their chief interest and happiness now lay in unravelling the why and the wherefore of each incident in their pasts. ”

“ None save she who loved him can ever know, for Kate has not revealed it. But the word was spoken. The word was heard. A moment only the bride's eyes sought her lover's. The next his arm was about her waist, and her foot left the gravel with a spring airy as a bird's first morning flight. The reins were gathered in Wat's hand, his love was safe on the saddle before him. The spurs were set in Drumclog's dark flanks, the brave horse sprang forward, and before ever so much as a cry could go up from that watching assembly, Wat Gordon was riding straight for Dee water with his love between his arms. ”

“ None of the three uttered a word of threatening or explanation; they only advanced and seized her arms. In a moment they had wrapped Kate in a great cloak, slipped a soft elastic gag into her mouth, and carried her towards the window. The single wild cry which she had time to utter before her mouth was stopped was whirled away by a gust yet fiercer than any of those which all night had ramped and torn their way to the sea betwixt the irregular gables and twisted chimney-stalks of the ancient street of Zaandpoort. ”

“ For, by the common bruit of the country-side, the girl had been denominated—while yet but a child with great hazel eyes that promised dangerous things, and a tossing fleece of curls—the Pride of Balmaghie. And the maid herself, when asked her name, was accustomed to reply frankly:
"I is little Kate McGhie—
What everybody loves."
But this same Gordon lad from the Glenkens, scornful in the pride of half a dozen years of superior age, never heard the phrase without adding his own contemptuous disclaimer, "Little brute, I don't love her." ”

“ Behind them the surf was roaring on the rocks which, like the black fins of sharks, jutted, toothed and threatening, from the tail-end of the Suck of Suliscanna. There came also a chill sough of wind from the west, and with it, rising as it were from the ocean depths, the dead sea-mist, which swelled and eddied about the boat of our four travellers. Presently the bright reflection of the stars on the crest of each coming wave, as Wat lay in the stern and watched, dimmed itself. ”

“ She had been there but a bare week when Wat came into her life, and his words to the girl were the first of genuine, unselfish kindness she had listened to in that abode of smiling misery and radiant despair.
As a trampled flower raises its head after a gentle rain, so her scarcely dulled childish purity reawakened within her, and with it—all the more fiercely that it came too late—the love that suffereth all things and upbraideth not. Marie was suddenly struck to the heart by the agony of her position. She might love, but none could give her back true love in return. ”

“ With this most disabling thought in his mind to warn him from a too complete victory, Wat once more guarded, and for a long time contented himself with keeping off the furious strokes of the chief's assault, as easily, to all appearance, as a roof turns aside the pelting of a summer shower. Then, as Keppoch took breath a moment, his first fury having worn itself out, Wat attacked in his turn, and, puzzling his opponent, as was his wont, with the lightning swiftness of his thrust and recovery, caught his claymore deftly near the hilt, and in a moment it was flying out of his fingers. ”

“ From the southern ridge of the headland of Lianacraig Kate and her companion could look almost directly down upon the gambols of the treacherous Suck of Suliscanna. The boat lay clear to their sight upon the surface of the sea—two men in her, one sitting with the rope of the sheet in his hand, and the other at the stern with an oar to turn her off from the hidden dangers, as the seething run of the tidal currents brought her head on to some sunken reef or dangerous skerry. ”

“ After he had passed the Bridge of New Galloway, and had ridden, to the astonishment and delight of those early astir in the ancient borough town, down the long, straggling, pig-haunted street, he dismounted and allowed his horse to walk by the loch-side, and even at intervals to crop the sweet grasses of the road-side.
Yet it was from no consuming admiration of the supreme beauties of that fair pathway that Wat Gordon lagged so long upon it that September morn. To no purpose the loch rippled its deepest blue for him. ”

“ So, though she might think well enough of Wat Gordon, that handsome exile from his heritages and lordships now in picturesque hiding as her father's under-gardener, she was (so at least she told herself) in no danger of permitting that liking to develop into any feeling more dangerous or more exacting.
So these two fenced, each of them in their own way, right gallantly with lightsome love; while the love that is not lightsome, but strong as death, smiled out upon them from behind the rose-bushes, and lay in wait for one and the other. ”

“ Wat paused for breath amid the rush of his words ere he went on:
"'I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more,'
somewhat thus runs the catch. But the man that made that kenned nothing of love. For I would make all the honor of men no more than a straw-wisp to feed the flames to warm the feet of my love withal. To 'die for her' is a pretty saying, and forever in the mouth of every prating fool whenever he comes anigh a woman; but I would smile under the torture of the boot and abide silently the Extreme Question only to preserve her heart from a single pang." ”

“ A few fishing-boats were drawn up into a swallow's nest of a harbor, and beyond league on league stretched the desolate dunes, through which the river Lis felt its tortuous way among the sand-hollows to the wider levels of the sea.
Wat and Scarlett, with their attendant, were about to ride directly and without challenge through the street of the village towards the harbor, when a man came staggering out of a narrow entry betwixt two of the taller houses, so suddenly that the horse of the Little Marie almost knocked him down. ”

“ Could he be back in time on the morrow to hear the first trip of a light foot on the stairs in Zaandpoort Street, as she came from her sleeping-room, fresh as though God had made her all anew that morning?
For this is a quality of the wisdom of man, that thinking upon a maid ofttimes makes it vain—especially if the man be very brave or very wise, and the maid exceeding fair. Gradually, however, the changing clatter of the dozen hoofs behind Lochinvar forced itself upon his hearing, and he remembered that he was not alone. ”

“ The day was so still, the tide so smooth as it swept inshore after passing the oily "bullers" of the roost, that she had no idea of the world of danger those in the adventurous bark had to pass before her prow could grate on the white sand of the landing-beach between the opposing headlands of Aionaig and Lianacraig.
Kate's heart beat strangely, almost painfully. It was wonderful, she thought, that men should undergo perils and cross a world's seas for a simple girl's sake. ”

“ Wat saw the unbelief settle deeper on the face of Roger McGhie, and the very demon of jealousy and malice wink from under the eyelids of my Lady Wellwood.
"I have a question to ask you, my noble captain of various services," said Barra, "a question concerning this girl and your gallant companion. What did you first think when this Marie joined you with the horses—in page's dress, as I have heard you say—and what when she told you that she had stabbed your friend's enemy and hers to the death?"
"I thought what any other man would think," answered Scarlett, brusquely. ”