FullReads

So it was that from the Clints o’ Drumore and from among the scattered boulder-shelters around it, Roy and his men had been watching this intrusive stranger. Suddenly Roy gave a cry, and the prospect-glass shook in his hand. A little after there came the far-away sound of a gun.

“Somebody has let a shot intil him,” said Roy, dancing with excitement, “but it has no’ been a verra good shot, for he’s sittin’ on a stane an’ rubbin’ the croon o’ his hat. Have I no telled you till I’m tired tellin’ you, that there was no’ be no shootin’ till there was no fear o’ missin’? It is not good to have to shoot; but it iss a verra great deal waur to shoot an’ miss. If that’s Gavin Stevenson, the muckle nowt, I declare I’ll brek his ramshackle blunderbuss owre his thick heid.”

Taming for an instant his fury, the old man kept his eye on the distant point of interest, and the others fixed their eyes on him. Suddenly he leapt to his feet, uttering what, by the sound, were very strong words indeed, for they were in the Gaelic, a language in which it is good and mouth-filling to read the imprecatory psalms. When at last his feelings subsided to the point when his English returned to him, he said–

“May I, Roy Campbell, be boiled in my ain still-kettle, distilled through my ain worm, an’ drucken by a set o’ reckless loons, if that’s no my ain Flora that’s speakin’ till the man himsel’!”

The old man himself seemed much calmed either by the outbreak or by the discovery he had made; but on several of the younger men among his followers the news seemed to have an opposite effect.

* * * * *

At the same moment, high on the hill-side above them, a young woman was talking to a young man. She had walked towards him holding a bell-mouthed musket in her hands. As she approached, the youth rose to his feet with a puzzled expression on his face. But there was no fear in it, only doubt and surprise, slowly fading into admiration. He put his forefinger and the one next it through the hole in his hat, and said calmly, since the young woman seemed to expect him to begin the conversation–

“Did you do this?”

“I took the gun from the man who did. The accident will not happen again!”

It seemed inadequate as an explanation, but there was something in the girl’s manner of saying it which seemed to give the young man complete satisfaction. Then the speaker seated herself on a fragment of rock, and set her chin upon her hand. It was a round and rather prominent chin, and the young man, who stood abstractedly twirling his hat, making a pivot of the two fingers which protruded through the hole, thought that he had never seen a chin quite like it. Or perhaps, on second thoughts, was it that dimple at the side of the mouth, in which an arch mockery seemed to be lurking, which struck him more? He resolved to think this out. It seemed now more important than the little matter of the hole in the hat.

“You had better go away,” said the young girl suddenly.

“And why?” asked the young man.

“Because my father does not like strangers!” she said.

Again the explanation appeared inadequate, but again the youth was satisfied, finding reason enough for the dislike, mayhap, either in the dimple on the prominent chin, or in the hole by which he twirled his hat.

“Do you come from England?” he asked, referring to her accent.

The girl rose from her seat as she answered–

“Oh, no, I come from the ‘Back o’ Beyont’! What is your name?”

“My name,” said the young man stolidly, “is Hugh Kennedy; and I am coming soon to the ‘Back o’ Beyont,’ father or no father!”