She followed, pouting her lips in the darkness. "It's quite different from what I expected," she said, whispering as they pa.s.sed the front door and down by the burn.

"And with me too," he confessed. "I had it made up in my mind all otherwise. There should have been moonlight and a horse, and many other things." "It seems to me you are not making so much as you might of what there is," she suggested. "Are you sure it is not a trouble to carry the lantern and the bundle too?"

"Oh! no, no!" he cried softly, but eagerly, every chivalric sentiment roused lest she should deprive him of the pleasure of doing all he could for her. She sighed.

"Are you vexed you have come?" he asked, stopping and turning on her his yet wan face full of regret and of dubiety too.

"The thing is done," she answered abruptly, and they were stepping carefully over the burn that ran about its boulders in the dark, gurgling. "Are you sure you are not sorry yourself?"

"I am not a bit sorry," he said, "but--but----"

"Your 'buts' are too late, Gilian," she went on firmly. "If you rued the enterprise now, I would go myself." But she relaxed some of the coldness of her mood as he shifted his lantern to the other hand and put a bashful but firm and supporting hand below her arm to secure her footing in the rough ascent. This was a little more like what she had expected, she told herself, though she missed something of warmth in the action.

How could she tell that the hand that held her was trembling with pa.s.sion, that her shawl fringe as it was blown across his face by the breeze was something he could have kissed rapturously?

And now they were well up the hillside. The house of Maam, the garden, the plantings, the noisy river, were down in the valley, all surrendered to the night. Their lantern, swinging on the lad's finger, threw a path of light before them, showing the short cropped gra.s.s, the rushy patches, or the gall they trod odorously, or the heather in its rare clumps. No sound came louder than the tumbling waters; their voices, as they spoke even yet guardedly as people will in enterprises the most solitary when their consciences are unresting, seemed strange and unfamiliar to each other.

Soon they were on the summit of the hill range and below them lay the two glens, and the first breath of the morning came behind from Strone, where dawn threw a wan grey flag across the world. They plunged into the caldine trees of Strongara, sped fast across Aray at Three Bridges, and the dawn was on Balantyre, where the farm-touns high and low lay like thatched forts, grey, cold, unwelcoming in the morning, with here and there a stream of peat reek from the _greasach_ of the night's fires.

They became, as it might be, children again as they hastened through the country. He lost all his diffident dubiety and was anew the bold adventurer, treading loverlike upon the very stars. A pa.s.sion of affection was on him; he would take her unresisting hand and lead her as though she were his, really, and before them was their moated castle.

And Nan forgot herself in the fresh zest of the dewy morning that now was setting the birds to their singing in the dens that hang above the banks of the Balantyre burn.

A rosy flush came to the hills where on the upper edges spread the antlers of deer sniffing the wind, rejoicing in the magnificence of the fine highland country in its autumn time. Nan hummed and broke into a strain of the verse of Donacha Ban that chants the praise of day and deer-hunting; she charmed her comrade; he felt the pa.s.sion of the possessor and stopped and turned upon her and made to kiss. She laughed temptingly, drew back, warding her lips with the screen that now she had arranged in a new and pleasing fashion on her shoulders so that she looked some Gaelic huntress of the wilds. "So, so, Gilian!" said she, "you have found that there might be more in the books than simply to take the girl away with not so much as 'Have you a mouth?' when she stepped out at the window."

"What a fool I was!" he cried. "I was thinking of it all the time, but did not dare." But awakened to the actuality of what he now had dared, he was ashamed to go further.

Nan laughed. He looked odd indeed standing facing her with the lantern burning yet in his hand though the day was almost wide-awake. He was a poet bearing his own light about the world extravagantly while the sun was shining for common mortals.

"Out with your light!" said she. And then she added: "If you dared not do it in the dark when you met me first, you cannot do it now," and he was dashed exceedingly. He puffed out the flame.

"That's aye me!" he said as they resumed their journey up the second hill of their morning escapade. "I am too often a day behind the fair.

I was--I was--kissing you a score of times in fancy and all the time you were willing in the actual fact."

"Was I indeed?" she retorted shortly, with a movement to bring her shawl more closely round her. "Do not be so flattering. I like you little over-blate, Gilian, but I like you less over-bold. If you could see yourself you would know which suits you best."

He had no answer. He must face his brae with lacerated feelings, now a step removed from the girl who walked with him. But only for a little was he depressed. She saw she had vexed him, and soon she was humming again, and again they were children of illusion and content.

They reached the pa.s.s that led to the lochs, and now Gilian had to confess himself in a strange country, but he did not reveal the fact to his companion. They talked of their coming sojourn in these lovely wilds that her mother had known and loved. The sun would shine constantly for them; the lakes--the little and numerous lakes--would be fringed with dreams and delight, starshine would find them innocent among the heather, remitted to the days of old when they were happy and careless, when no trouble marred their sky. Only now and then, as they sped on their way, Gilian wished fervently he knew more of where he was going, and was certain that life in the wilds would be so pleasant and easy as they pictured it.

When they came at last upon the slope of Cruach-an-Lochain that revealed the great valley of the lakes, they stood raptured by the spectacle before them. Far off, the great hollow among the hills was hazy and mysterious, but spread before them was the moor, tangled with gra.s.s and heather, all vacant in the morning dream. A tremor of wind was in the gra.s.s about their feet, a little mist tarried about the warm side of Ben Bhreac, caught among the juniper bushes the hunters had put there for shelter. All over brooded calm, a land forgetful of its stormy elements, of the dripping nights, the hail-beat, shrewd ost and hurricane. They could not, the pair of them, flying from a world of anxieties, but stop and look at the spectacle, when they came on the face of the Cruach. For a little they did not speak.

"My G.o.d!" said Gilian at last, a lump somewhere at his throat. "It seems as if this place had been waiting on us tenantless since the start of time. Where have we been to be so long and so far away from it? _Mo chridhe, mo chridhe!_"

"Now that I see it," said she doubtfully, "it seems melancholy enough. I wish----" She hung upon her sentence, with a rueful gaze out of her eyes at the scene.

"Melancholy!" he repeated. "Of course, of course," he quickly came to her reflection, "what could it be but melancholy with all the past unrecoverable behind it? It must be brooding for its people gone. Empty, empty, but I see all the old peoples roaming in bands over it, the sun smiting them, the rain drenching, I cannot but be thinking of shealing huts that spotted the levels, of bairns crying about the doors, of nights of _ceilidh_ round peat fires dead and cold now, but yet with the smoke of them hanging somewhere round the universe."

He stopped, and turned away from her, concealing his perturbation.

She shivered at the thought and partly from weariness and hunger, with a little sucking in of the breath his ear caught, and he turned, a different man.

"You are tired; will we rest before we go further?" "Is it far?" she asked.

He reddened. He cast a fast glance round the country as if to look for some familiar landmark, but all was strange to him.

"I do not know," he confessed humbly. "I was never on the moor before."

"Mercy!" she said. "I thought there was never a lad from town but had fished here."

"But I was different," he replied. "The woods and waters about the door were enough for me. But we'll get to Elasaid's very soon, I'm sure, and find fire, food, and rest."

She bit her nether lip in annoyance at a courtier so ill-prepared for their adventure. She turned to look back to the familiar country they were leaving behind them, and for a moment wished she had never come.

"I wish we could have them now," she said at last; the words drawn from her by her weariness.

"And so we can," said he eagerly, with a delight at a reflection that sprung into his mind like a revelation. "We can go down to the water there and build a fire, and rest and eat. It will be like what I fancied, a real adventure of hunters, and I will be the valet, and you will be the--the queen."

So they went down to the lake side. Heathery braes rose about it, reflected in its dark water; an islet overgrown with scrub lay in the middle of it, the very haunt of possible romance; Gilian straight inhabited the same with memories and exploits. Nan sat her down on the springy heather that swept its scents about her, she leaned a tired shoulder on it, and the bells of the ling blushed as they swayed against her cheek. Gilian put down his lantern, a ludicrous companion in broad sunshine, and was dashed by the sudden recollection that though he had talked of something to eat, he had really no means of providing it!

The girl observed his perturbation and shrewdly guessed the reason.

"Well?" she said maliciously, without a smile; "and where are we to get the food you so nicely spoke of?"

He stood stupefied, and so dolorous a spectacle that she could not but laugh.

"You have got none at all, but imagined our feast--as usual," she said, unfolding her bundle. "It was well I did not depend on your forethought, Gilian," and she took a flask of milk and some bread from within. He was as much vexed at the spoiling of his illusion about the contents of the bundle as at the discovery of his thoughtlessness. What he had been so fervently caressing against his side had been no more romantic than bread and cheese and some more substantial augmentation for the poor table of the old woman they were going to meet!

The side of the loch bristled with dry heather roots; he plucked them and placed them on the side of a boulder beside Nan, and set fire to them, and soon a cheerful blaze competed with the tardy morning chill.

They sat beside it singularly uplifted by this domestic hearth among the wilds; he felt himself a sort of householder, and to share as he did the fare of the girl was a huge delight. Her single cup pa.s.sed between them; at first he was shy to touch at all the object her lips had kissed; he showed the feeling in his face, and she laughed again.

He joined in the merriment, quite comprehending. Next time the cup came his way he boldly turned it about so that where last she had sipped came to his lips, and there he lingered--just a shade too long for the look of the thing. What at first she but blushed and smiled at, she frowned upon at last with a sparkle of the eye her Uncle Jamie used to call in the Gaelic the torch of temper. Gilian missed it; that touch of his lip upon her cup had recalled the warmth of her hand upon the flowers he had gathered when she had let them fall in the Duke's garden, but this was closer and more stirring. As he knelt on the heather he felt himself a worshipper of ancient days, and her the G.o.ddess of long-lost times. An uplifting was in his eyes; it would have been great and beautiful to any one that could have understood, but her it only vexed. When he handed back the cup she tossed it from her. It broke--sad omen!--on their first hearthstone. "That'll do," said she shortly, "it's time we were going."

And she gathered hastily the remains of their breakfast and made for a departure.

He surveyed her dubiously, wondering why she so abruptly checked the advances he could swear she had challenged.

"I am sorry I vexed you," he stammered. She brought down her brows questioningly. There was something pleasant and tempting though queenlike and severe in her straightened figure standing over him curved and strong and full, her screen fallen to her waist, a strand of her hair blown about her cheek by a saucy wind.

"Vexed?" she queried, and then smiled indifferent. "What would I be vexed at? We are finished, are we not? Must we be burdening ourselves unnecessarily going on a road you neither know the length or nature of?"

And without a word more they proceeded towards the shealing that was to be the end of their adventure.

CHAPTER x.x.x--AMONG THE HEATHER

Old Elasaid met them at the door. She was a woman with eyes profound and piercing under hanging brows, a woman grey even to the colour of her cheeks and the checks of the gown that hung loosely on her gaunt figure.

It was with no shealing welcome, no kind memory of the old nurse even, she met them, but stood under her lintel looking as it were through them to the airt of the country whence they had come. She pa.s.sed the time of day as if they had been strangers, puckering her mouth with a sort of unexpressed disapproval. They stood before her very much put out at a reception so different from what they had looked for, and Gilian knew that there must be something decisive to say but could not find it in his head.

"Well," said the old woman at last, "this'll be the good man, I'm thinking?" But still she had that in her tone, a sour dissatisfaction that showed she had her doubts.