by Neil Munro
CHAPTER XXIII.--THE WIDOW OF GLENCOE.
Of the seven of us, Stewart was the only one with a notion of the lie ofthe country. He had bought cattle in the glen, and he had borrowed (aswe may be putting it) in the same place, and a man with the gifts ofobservation and memory, who has had to guess his way at night amongforeign clans and hills with a drove of unwilling and mourning cattlebefore him, has many a feature of the neighbourhood stamped upon hismind. Stewart's idea was that to-night we might cross Glencoe, diveinto one of the passes that run between the mountains called the Big andLittle Herdsman, or between the Little Herd and Ben Fhada, into the footof the forest of Dalness, then by the corries through the Black Mount ofBredalbane to Glen-urchy. Once on the Brig of Urchy, we were as safe, ina manner, as on the shores of Loch Finne. On Neill Bane's map this looksa very simple journey, that a vigorous mountaineer could accomplishwithout fatigue in a couple of days if he knew the drove-roads; but itwas a wicked season for such an enterprise, and if the Dame Dubh's talewas right (as well enough it might be, for the news of Argile's fallwould be round the world in a rumour of wind), every clan among thesevalleys and hills would be on the hunting-road to cut down broken menseeking their way back to the country of MacCailein Mor. Above all wasit a hard task for men who had been starving on a half-meal drammock fortwo or three days. I myself felt the hunger gnawing at my inside likea restless red-hot conscience. My muscles were like iron, and with afootman's feeding, I could have walked to Inneraora without more thantwo or three hours' sleep at a time; but my weakness for food was sogreat that the prospect before me was appalling.
It appalled, indeed, the whole of us. Fancy us on barren hills, unableto venture into the hamlets or townships where we had brought torch andpike a few days before; unable to borrow or to buy, hazarding no step ofthe foot without a look first to this side and then to yon, lest enemiesshould be up against us. Is it a wonder that very soon we had theslouch of the gangrel and the cunning aspect of the thief? But there'ssomething in gentle blood that always comes out on such an occasion. Thebaron-bailie and Neil Campbell, and even the minister, made no ado abouttheir hunger, though they were suffering keenly from it; only the twotacksmen kept up a ceaseless grumbling.
M'Iver kept a hunter's ear and eye alert at every step of our progress.He had a hope that the white hares, whose footprints sometimes showedamong the snow, might run, as I have seen them do at night, within reachof a cudgel; he kept a constant search for badger-hamlets, for he wouldhave dug from his sleep that gluttonous fat-haunched rascal who gorgeshimself in his own yellow moon-time of harvest. But hare nor badger fellin our way.
The moon was up, but a veil of grey cloud overspread the heavens anda frosty haze obscured the country. A clear cold hint at an odour ofspring was already in the air, perhaps the first rumour the bush getsthat the sap must rise. Out of the haze now and then, as we descendedto the valley, there would come the peculiar cry of the red-deer, or theflaff of a wing, or the bleat of a goat It was maddening to be in theneighbourhood of the meal that roe, or bird, or goat would offer, andyet be unable to reach it.
Thus we were stumbling on, very weary, very hungry, the man with thewant in a constant wail, and Sonachan lamenting for suppers he had beensaucy over in days of rowth and plenty, when a light oozed out of thegrey-dark ahead of us, in the last place in the world one would look forany such sign of humanity.
We stopped on the moment, and John Splendid went ahead to see what layin the way. He was gone but a little when he came back with a heartyaccent to tell us that luck for once was ours.
"There's a house yonder," said he, talking English for the benefit ofthe cleric; "it has a roaring fire and every sign of comfort, and it'smy belief there's no one at home within but a woman and a few bairns.The odd thing is that as I get a look of the woman between the door-postand the wall, she sits with her back to the cruisie-light, patchingclothes and crooning away at a dirge that's broken by her tears. If ithad been last week, and our little adventures in Glencoe had brought usso far up this side of the glen, I might have thought she had sufferedsomething at our hands. But we were never near this tack-house before,so the housewife's sorrow, whatever it is, can scarcely be at our door.Anyway," he went on, "here are seven cold men, and weary men and hungrymen too (and that's the worst of it), and I'm going to have supper and aseat, if it's the last in the world."
"I hope there's going to be no robbery about the affair," said theminister, in an apparent dread of rough theft and maybe worse.
M'Iver's voice had a sneer in every word of it when he answered in avery affected tongue of English he was used to assume when he wished tobe at his best before a Saxon.
"Is it the logic of your school," he asked, "that what's the rightconduct of war when we are in regiments is robbery when we are but sevenbroken men? I'm trying to mind that you found fault with us forhelping ourselves in this same Glencoe last week, and refused to eatCorrycrick's beef in Appin, and I cannot just recall the circumstance.Are we not, think ye, just as much at war with Glencoe now as then? Andhave seven starving men not an even better right, before God, to foragefor themselves than has an army?"
"There's a difference," said the minister, stiffly. "We were thenlegitimate troops of war, fighting for the Solemn League and Covenantunder a noble lord with Letters. It was the Almighty's cause, and----"
"Was it indeed?" said John Splendid. "And was Himself on the other sideof Loch Leven when His tulzie was on?"
"Scoffer!" cried Gordon, and M'Iver said no more, but led us through thedark to the house whose light so cheerfully smiled before us.
The house, when we came to it, proved a trig little edifice of fargreater comfort than most of the common houses of the Highlands--nota dry-stone bigging but a rubble tenement, very snugly thacked andwindowed, and having a piece of kail-plot at its rear. It was perchedwell up on the brae, and its light at evening must have gleamed like afriendly star far up the glen, that needs every touch of brightness tomitigate its gloom. As we crept close up to it in the snow, we couldhear the crooning John Splendid had told us of, a most doleful sound ina land of darkness and strangers.
"Give a rap, and when she answers the door we can tell our needspeaceably," said the minister.
"I'm not caring about rapping, and I'm not caring about entering at allnow," said M'I ver, turning about with some uneasiness. "I wish we hadfallen on a more cheery dwelling, even if it were to be coerced withclub and pistol. A prickle's at my skin that tells me here is dool, andI can smell mort-cloth."
Sonachan gave a grunt, and thumped loudly on the fir boards. A silencethat was like a swound fell on the instant, and the light within wentout at a puff. For a moment it seemed as if our notion of occupancy andlight and lament had been a delusion, for now the grave itself was nomore desolate and still.
"I think we might be going," said I in a whisper, my heart thud-thuddingat my vest, my mind sharing some of John Splendid's apprehension that wewere intruders on some profound grief. And yet my hunger was a furiousthing that belched red-hot at my stomach.
"Royal's my race!" said Stewart "I'll be kept tirling at no door-pin inthe Highlands,--let us drive in the bar."
"What does he say?" asked the cleric, and I gave him the English of it.
"You'll drive no doors in here," said he firmly to Stewart "We can butgive another knock and see what comes of it Knock you, M'Iver."
"Barbreck."
"Barbreck be it then."
"I would sooner go to the glen foot, and risk all," said John.
Sonachan grunted again; out he drew his dirk, and he rapped with thehilt of it loud and long at the door. A crying of children rose within,and, behold, I was a child again! I was a child again in Shira Glen,alone in a little chamber with a window uncurtained and unshuttered,yawning red-mouthed to the outer night My back was almost ever tothe window, whose panes reflected a peat-fire and a face as long as afiddle, and eyes that shone like coal; and though I looked little at thewindow yawning to the wood, I felt that it never wa
nted some curious spyoutside, some one girning or smiling in at me and my book. I must lookround, or I must put a hand on my shoulder to make sure no other handwas there,--then the Terror that drives the black blood from the heartthrough all the being, and a boy unbuckling his kilt with feveredfingers and leaping with frantic sobs to bed! One night when the blackblood of the Terror still coursed through me, though I was dovering overto sleep, there came a knocking at the door, a knock commanding, a knocknever explained. It brought me to my knees with a horror that almostchoked me at the throat, a cold dew in the very palms of the hands. Idare not ask who rapped for fear I should have an answer that comes someday or other to every child of my race,--an answer no one told me of, ananswer that then I guessed.
All this flashed through my mind when the children's crying rose in thedark interior--that cry of children old and young as they go through themysteries of life and the alley-ways of death.
The woman soothed her children audibly, then called out, asking what wewanted.
"I'm a man from Appin," cried out Stewart with great promptness andcunning, "and I have a friend or two with me. I was looking for thehouse of Kilinchean, where a cousin of mine--a fine spinner and knitter,but thrawn in the temper--is married on the tenant, and we lost our way.We're cold and we're tired, and we're hungry, and----"
"Step in," said the woman, lifting back the door. "You are many milesfrom Kilinchean, and I know Appin Mary very well."
But three of us entered, Stewart, M'Iver, and myself, the others on asudden inspiration preferring not to alarm the woman by betraying thenumber of us, and concealing themselves in the byre that leaned againstthe gable of the dwelling.
"God save all here!" said M'Iver as we stepped in, and the woman lit thecruisie by sticking its nose in the peat-embers. "I'm afraid we come onyou at a bad time."
She turned with the cruisie in her hands and seemed to look over hishead at vacancy, with large and melting eyes in a comely face.
"You come," said she, "like grief, just when we are not expecting it,and in the dead of night But you are welcome at my door."
We sat down on stools at her invitation, bathed in the yellow light ofcruisie and peat. The reek of the fire rose in a faint breath among thepot-chains, and lingered among the rafters, loath, as it were, to emergein the cold night In a cowering group beneath the blankets of a bed ina corner were four children, the bed-clothes hurriedly clutched up totheir chins, their eyes staring out on the intruders. The woman put outsome food before us, coarse enough in quality but plenty of it, and wassearching in a press for platters when she turned to ask how many of usthere were. We looked at each other a little ashamed, for it seemed asif she had guessed of our divided company and the four men in the byre.It is likely she would have been told the truth, but her next words setus on a different notion.
"You'll notice," said she, still lifting her eyes to a point over ourheads, "that I have not my sight."
"God! that's a pity," said M'Iver in genuine distress, with just thataccent of fondling in it that a Highlander in his own tongue can uselike a salve for distress.
"I am not complaining of it," said the woman; "there are worse hardshipsin this world."
"Mistress," said John, "there are. I think I would willingly have beenbl---- dim in the sight this morning if it could have happened."
"Ay, ay!" said the woman in a sad abstraction, standing with plates inher hand listening (I could swear) for a footstep that would never comeagain.
We sat and warmed ourselves and ate heartily, the heat of that homelydwelling--the first we had sat in for days--an indulgence so rare andprecious that it seemed a thing we could never again tear ourselves awayfrom to encounter the unkindness of those Lorn mounts anew. The childrenwatched us with an alarm and curiosity no way abated, beholding in usperhaps (for one at least was at an age to discern the difference ourtartan and general aspect presented from those of Glencoe) that wewere strangers from a great distance, maybe enemies, at least with somerigour of warfare about our visage and attire.
The mother, finding her way with the readiness of long familiarity aboutthe house, got ease for her grief, whatever it was, in the duties thussuddenly thrust upon her: she spoke but seldom, and she never asked--inthat she was true Gael--any more particulars about ourselves thanStewart had volunteered. And when we had been served with our simpleviands, she sat composedly before us with her hands in her lap, and hereyes turned on us with an appearance of sedate scrutiny no whit the lessperplexing because we knew her orbs were but fair clean window-panesshuttered and hasped within.
"You will excuse my dull welcome," she said, with a wan smile, speakinga very pleasant accent of North Country Gaelic, that turned upon thepalate like a sweet "A week or two ago you would have found a verycheerful house, not a widow's sorrow, and, if my eyes were useless, myman (_beannachd leis!_) had a lover's eyes, and these were the eyes forhimself and me."
"Was he at Inverlochy?" I asked softly; "was he out with Montrose?"
"He died a week come Thursday," said the woman. "They're telling me ofwars--weary on them and God's pity on the widow women they make, andthe mothers they must leave lonely--but such a thing is sorrow that theworld, from France to the Isles, might be in flames and I would stillbe thinking on my man that's yonder in the cold clods of the yard....Stretch your hands; it's your welcome, gentlemen."
"I have one or two other friends out-bye there in the byre," put inStewart, who found the vigilance of the youths in the bed gave noopportunity for smuggling provand to the others of our party.
The woman's face flamed up a little and took on the least of a look ofalarm that Stewart--who was very cunning and quick in some matters--setabout removing at once with some of those convenient lies that he seemednever out of the want of.
"Some of our lads," said he, with a duck of apology at M'Iver and myselffor taking liberties with the reputation of our friends. "They're verywell where they are among the bracken, if they had but the bite and sup,and if it's your will I could take them that."
"Could they not be coming in and sitting by the fire?" asked the woman,set at rest by Stewart's story; but he told her he would never thinkof filling her room with a rabble of plain men, and in a little he wastaking out the viands for our friends in the byre.
The woman sat anew upon her stool and her hands on her lap, listeningwith a sense so long at double exercise that now she could not readilyrelax the strain on it M'Iver was in a great fidget to be off. I couldsee it in every movement of him. He was a man who ever disliked to havehis feelings vexed by contact with the everlasting sorrows of life, andthis intercourse with new widowhood was sore against his mind. As forme, I took, in a way of speaking, the woman to my heart She stood to mefor all the griefs I had known in life, and was yet the representative,the figure of love--revealing an element of nature, a human passion sodifferent from those tumults and hatreds we had been encountering. I hadbeen thinking as I marched among the wilds of Lochaber and Badenochthat vengeance and victory and dominion by the strong hand were themain spurs to action, and now, on a sudden, I found that affection wasstronger than them all.
"Are you keeping the place on?" I asked the widow, "or do you go back toyour folks, for I notice from your tongue that you are of the North?"
"I'm of the Grants," she said; "but my heart's in Glencoe, and I'llnever leave it I am not grieving at the future, I am but minding on thepast, and I have my bairns.... More milk for the lads outside; stretchyour hands.... Oh yes, I have my bairns."
"Long may they prosper, mistress," said M'Iver, drumming with a hornspoon on his knee, and winking and smiling very friendly to the littlefellows in a row in the bed, who, all but the oldest, thawed to thishumour of the stranger. "It must be a task getting a throng like yonbedded at evening. Some day they'll be off your hand, and it'll be nomore the lullaby of Crodh Chailein, but them driving at the beasts forthemselves."
"Are you married?" asked the woman.
"No," said John, with a low laugh, "not yet. I neve
r had the fortune tofill the right woman's eye. I've waited at the ferry for some one who'lltake a man over without the ferry fee, for I'm a poor gentleman thoughI'm of a good family, and had plenty, and the ones with the tocher won'thave me, and the tocherless girls I dare not betray."
"You ken the old word," said the woman; "the man who waits long at theferry will get over some day."
Stewart put down a cogie and loosened a button of his vest, and with anair of great joviality, that was marred curiously by the odd look hisabsence of lugs conferred, he winked cunningly at us and slapped thewoman in a rough friendship on the shoulder.
"Are you thinking yourself----" he began, and what he would finish withmay be easily guessed. But M'Iver fixed him with an eye that prickedlike a rapier.
"Sit ye down, Stewart," said he; "your race is royal, as ye must be ayetelling us, but there's surely many a droll bye-blow in the breed."
"Are you not all from Appin?" asked the woman, with a new interest,taking a corner of M'Iver's plaiding in her hand and running a fewchecks through fine delicate fingers of a lady. Her face dyed crimson;she drew back her stool a little, and cried out--
"That's not off a Stewart web--it was never waulked in Appin. Whom haveI here?"
John Splendid bent to her very kindly and laid a hand on hers.
"I'll tell you the God's truth, mother," said he; "we're broken men: wehave one Stewart of a kind with us, but we belong to parts far off fromhere, and all we want is to get to them as speedily as may be. I'll putyou in mind (but troth I'm sure it's not needed) of two obligations thatlie on every Gaelic household. One of them is to give the shelter of thenight and the supper of the night to the murderer himself, even if thecorpse on the heather was your son; and the other is to ask no questionoff your guest till he has drunk the _deoch-an-doruis_."
"I'm grudging you nothing," said the woman; "but a blind widow isentitled to the truth and frankness."
M'Iver soothed her with great skill, and brought her back to her bairns.
"Ay," said he, "some day they'll be off your hands, and you the ladywith sons and servants."
"Had you a wife and bairns of your own," said the woman, "you mightlearn some day that a parent's happiest time is when her children areyoung. They're all there, and they're all mine when they're under theblanket; but when they grow up and scatter, the nightfall never bringsthem all in, and one pair of blankets will not cover the cares of them.I do not know that," she went on, "from what I have seen in my ownhouse; but my mother told me, and she had plenty of chance to learn thetruth of it, with sons who died among strangers, and sons who bruisedher by their lives more than they could by their deaths."
"You have some very ruddy and handsome boys there," said M'Iver. And ayehe would be winking and smiling at the young rogues in the corner.
"I think they are," said the woman. "I never saw but the eldest, and hewas then at the breast, the dear, his father's image."
"Then the father of him must have been a well-fared and pretty man,"said John, very promptly, not a bit abashed by the homeliness of theyouth, who was the plainest of the nock, with a freckled skin, a lowhang-dog brow, and a nose like the point of a dirk.
"He was that," said the woman, fondly--"the finest man in the parish.He had a little lameness, but----"
"I have a bit of a halt myself," said M'I ver, with his usual folly;"and I'm sure I'm none the worse for it."
The oldest boy sat up in bed and gloomed at us very sullenly. He couldscarcely be expected to understand the conceits of M'Iver's tale abouthis lameness, that any one with eyes could behold had no existence.
"But I never think of my man," the woman went on, "but as I saw himfirst before he met with his lameness. Eyes are a kind of doubtfulblessing too in some ways. Mine have forgotten all the ugly thingsthey knew, and in my recollection are but many bonny things: my man wasalways as young to me as when he came courting in a new blue bonnet anda short coat; my children will be changing to every one but to me."
Stewart, with his own appetite satisfied, was acting lackey to thegentlemen in the byre--fetching out cogies of milk and whangs ofbear-meal bannock, and the most crisp piquant white cheese ever I puttooth to. He was a man without a conscience, and so long as his own endsand the ends of his friends were served, he would never scruple to emptythe woman's girnel or toom her last basin, and leave her no morsel offood or drink at the long-run. But M'Iver and I put an end to that, andso won, as we thought, to the confidence of the elder lad in the bed,who had glunched low-browed among his franker brethren.
We slept for some hours, the seven of us, among the bracken of the byre,wearied out and unable to go farther that night, even if the very dogswere at our heels. We slept sound, I'm sure, all but M'Iver, whom,waking twice in the chill of the night, I found sitting up and listeninglike any sentinel.
"What are you watching for there?" I asked him on the second time.
"Nothing at all, Colin, nothing at all. I was aye a poor sleeper atthe best, and that snore of Rob Stewart is the very trump of the nextworld."
It was in the dawn again he confessed to his real apprehension,--only tomy private ear, for he wished no more to alarm the others by day than tomar my courtship of slumber by night.
"The fact is," said he, "I'm not very sure about our young gentlemanyonder in the bed. He's far too sharp in the eye and black in thetemper, and too much of Clan Donallachd generally, to be trusted withthe lives and liberties of seven gentlemen of a tartan he must knowunfriendly to Glencoe. I wish I saw his legs that I might guess thelength of him, or had had the wit to ask his mother, his age, for eitherwould be a clue to his chance of carrying the tale against us down thevalley there. He seemed tremendous sharp and wicked lying yonder lookingat us, and I was in a sweat all night for fear he would be out and tellon us. But so far he's under the same roof as ourselves."
Sonachan and the baron-bailie quarrelled away about some point ofpedigree as they sat, a towsy, unkempt pair, in a dusty corner of thebyre, with beards of a most scraggy nature grown upon their chins.Their uncouthness gave a scruple of foppishness to M'I ver, and sent himseeking a razor in the widow's house. He found the late husband's, andshaved himself trimly, while Stewart played lackey again to the rest ofus, taking out a breakfast the housewife was in the humour to force onus. He had completed his scraping, and was cracking away very freelywith the woman, who was baking some bannocks on the stone, with sleevesrolled up from arms that were rounded and white. They talked of thehusband (the one topic of new widowhood), a man, it appeared, of athousand parts, a favourite with all, and yet, as she said, "When itcame to the black end they left me to dress him for the grave, and astranger had to bury him."
M'Iver, looking fresh and spruce after his cleansing, though his eyeswere small for want of sleep, aroused at once to an interest in thecause of this unneighbourliness.
The woman stopped her occupation with a sudden start and flared crimson.
"I thought you knew," said she, stammering, turning a rolling-pin in herhand--"I thought you knew; and then how could you?... I maybe shouldhave mentioned it,... but,... but could I turn you from my door in thenight-time and hunger?"
M'Iver whistled softly to himself, and looked at me where I stood in thebyre-door.
"Tuts," said he, at last turning with a smile to the woman, as if shecould see him; "what does a bit difference with Lowland law make afterall? I'll tell you this, mistress, between us,--I have a name myselffor private foray, and it's perhaps not the first time I have earnedthe justification of the kind gallows of Crief by small diversions amongcattle at night It's the least deserving that get the tow gravatte."
(Oh you liar! I thought.)
The woman's face looked puzzled. She thought a little, and said, "Ithink you must be taking me up wrong; my man was never at the trade ofreiving, and----"
"I would never hint that he was, goodwife," cried John, quickly,puzzled-looking himself. "I said I had a name for the thing; but theywere no friends of mine who gave me the credit, and
I never stole stotor quey in all my life."
(I have my doubts, thinks I.)
"My man died of the plague," said the woman, blurting out her news, asif eager to get over an awkward business.
I have never seen such a sudden change in a person's aspect as cameover John Splendid in every feature. The vain trim man of a minute ago,stroking his chin and showing a white hand (for the entertainment of thewoman he must always be forgetting was without her sight), balancingand posturing on well-curved legs, and jauntily pinning his plaid on hisshoulder, in a flash lost backbone. He stepped a pace back, as if someone had struck him a blow, his jaw fell, and his face grew ashen.
Then his eyes went darting about the chamber, and his nostrils sniffedas if disease was a presence to be seen and scented, a thing tangible inthe air, maybe to be warded off by a sharp man's instruction in combatof arms.
"God of grace!" he cried, crossing himself most vigorously for a personof the Protestant religion, and muttering what I have no doubt was somecharm of his native glen for the prevention of fevers. He shut his mouththereafter very quickly on every phrase he uttered, breathing throughhis nose; at the same time he kept himself, in every part but theshoe-soles he tiptoed on, from touching anything. I could swear the openair of the most unfriendly glen in Christendom was a possession to beenvious of for John M'Iver of Barbreck.
Stewart heard the woman's news that came to him as he was carrying infrom the byre the vessels from which he had been serving his companions.He was in a stew more extraordinary than John Splendid; he blanched evento the scars of his half-head, as we say, spat vehemently out of hismouth a piece of bread he was chewing, turned round about in a flash,and into the byre past me as I stood (not altogether alarmed, but yet alittle disturbed and uneasy) in the doorway. He emptied his clothing andknapsack of every scrap of food he had purloined, making a goodly heapupon the floor,--the very oaten flour he dusted off his finger-tips,with which he had handled cake that a little ago he was riskinghis soul's salvation to secure. And--except the minister--the otheroccupants of the byre were in an equal terror.
For in this matter of smittal plagues we Highlanders are the most arrantcowards. A man whose life we would save on the field, or the rock-face,or the sea, at the risk of our own lives or the more abominable perilof wound and agony, will die in a ditch of the Spotted Death or a feverbefore the most valiant of us would put out a hand to cover him againwith his blanket He will get no woman to sound his coronach, even ifhe were Lord of the Isles. I am not making defence or admitting blame,though I have walked in Hamburg when the pitch-barrels blazed in thestreet, fuming the putrid wind; but there is in the Gaelic character adread of disfiguration more than of sudden and painful death. What wefear is the black mystery of such disorders: they come on cunning windsunheralded, in fair weather or bad, day or night, to the rich and tothe poor, to the strong as to the weak. You may be robust to-day in asmiling country and to-morrow in a twist of agony, coal-black, writhingon the couch, every fine interest in life blotted out by a yellow filmupon the eyes. A vital gash with a claymore confers a bloodier but amore comely and natural end. Thus the Gael abhors the very roads thatlead to a plague-struck dwelling. If plagues do not kill, they willmar--yes, even against the three charms of Island! and that, too, makesheavier their terror, for a man mutilated even by so little as the lossof a hand is an object of pity to every hale member of his clan. He mayhave won his infirmity in a noble hour, but they will pity him, and pityto the proud is worse than the glove in the face.
Instantly there was a great to-do in getting away from this mostunfortunate dwelling. The lads in the byre shook tartan and out to thefresh air, and rejoiced in the wind with deep-drawn gulping breaths,as if they might wash the smallest dust of disease from their bodilysystems. So at last only M'Iver and I were left standing at the door.
"Well," said John, with an effort, "we must be going. I never thoughtit was so late. And we must be on the other side of Dalness beforevery long. You have been very good to us, and my name's John M'I ver ofBarbreck--a kind of a Campbell with a great respect for the Mac-Donalds,of whom I kent a few perfect gentry in foreign wars I have been at thefighting of. And--good day, mistress, we must be going. My friends havethe very small manners surely, for they're off down the road. Well justlet them go that way. What need ye expect off small men and gillies?"
He signed to me with a shake of his sporran to show it was empty, and,falling to his meaning, I took some silver from my own purse and offeredit to the glum-faced lad in the blankets. Beetle-brow scowled, andrefused to put a hand out for it, so I left it on a table without aclink to catch the woman's ear.
"Would you not have a _deoch-an-doruis?_" asked the woman, making to apress and producing a bottle.
M'Iver started in a new alarm. "No, no. You're very good," said he; "butI never take it myself in the morning, and--good day, mistress--and myfriend Elrigmore, who's left with me here, is perhaps too free with itsometimes; and indeed maybe I'm that way myself too--it's a thing thatgrows on you. Good-bye, mistress."
She put out her hand, facing us with uplifted eyes. I felt a push at myshoulder, and the minister, who had left the four others down the brae,stepped softly into the room. M'Iver was in a high perplexity. He darenot shake the woman's hand, and still he dare not hurt her feelings. "Mythong's loose," said he, stooping to fumble with a brogue that needed nosuch attention. He rose with the minister at his shoulder.
"And good day to you again, mistress," said M'Iver, turning about to go,without heeding the outstretched hand.
Master Gordon saw the whole play at a glance. He took the woman's handin his without a word, wrung it with great warmth, and, seized as itseemed by a sudden whim, lifted the fingers to his lips, softly kissedthem, and turned away.
"O," cried the woman, with tears welling to her poor eyes--"O ClanCampbell, I'll never call ye down! Ye may have the guile they claim forye, but ye have the way with a widow's heart!"
I did it with some repugnance, let me own; but I, too, shook her hand,and followed the minister out at the door. M'Iver was hot with annoyanceand shame, and ready to find fault with us for what we had done; but thecleric carded him like wool in his feelings.
"Oh, valour, valour!" he said in the midst of his sermon, "did I not sayyou knew your duty in hate better than in affection?"
John Splendid kept a dour-set jaw, said never a word, and the seven ofus proceeded on our way.
It was well on in the morning, the land sounding with a new key oftroubled and loosening waters. Mists clogged the mountain-tops, andGlencoe far off to its westward streamed with a dun vapour pricked withthe tip of fir and ash. A moist feel was in the air; it relapsed anon toa smirr of rain.
"This is a shade better than clear airs and frost and level snow forquarries on a hunting," said I.
"I'm glad it suits you," said M'Iver. "I've seen the like before, andI'm not so sure about the advantage of it."