Up the street some men sat on the Cross steps waiting the coming of the ferry-boat from Kilcatrine, for it was the day of the weekly paper. Old Islay went from corner to corner, looking eager out to sea, his hands deep in the pockets of his long coat. Major McNicol put his head cautiously out at his door that his servant la.s.s held open and scanned the deadly world where Frenchmen lay in ambush. He caught a glimpse of Gilian spying from the pend close and darted in trembling, but soon came out again, with the maid patting him kindly and a.s.suringly on the back.

From close to close he made a tactical advance--swift dashes between on his poor bent old limbs, and he drew up by Gilian's side.

"All's well!" said he with a breath of relier. "Man! but they're throng to-day; the place is fair botching with them."

Gilian expressed some commonplace and left the shelter of the pend close and went up the street round the factor's corner. He looked behind him there. The ferry-boat from Kilcatrine was in. Young Islay had stepped the first off the skiff and was speaking--not to his father, but to General Turner, whose horse, spattered with foam and white with autumn dust, a boy held at the quay head. The post-runner took a newspaper from his pocket and handed it to the men waiting at the Cross; they hastened into the vintners, and one of them read aloud to the company with no need to replenish his gla.s.s. Against the breast wall the tide at the full lapped with a pleasant sound. Mr. Spencer came out to the front of the Inns, smoking a segar, very perjink with a brocade waistcoat and a collar so high it rasped his ears.

Everything visible impressed itself that day acutely on Gilian as he went out of the town; not only as if he were naked but as if he were raw and feeling flesh, and he was glad when the turn of the road at the Arches hid this place from his view.

A voice cried behind him, and turning around he found Peggy running after him with a basket, Miss Mary's afterthought for the fugitive girl on the moor.

Very quickly he sped up the hills; Nan ran out to meet him as he came up the brae from Little Fox. She had been crying in the morning till tears would come no longer, but now she was composed; at least her eyes were calm and her cheeks lost the pallor they had from a night almost sleepless in that lonely dwelling. As he saw her running out to meet him he filled with elation and with apprehension. She was so beautiful, so airy, so seemingly his alone as she ran out thus from their refuge, that he grudged the hours he had been gone from her.

"Oh," she cried, "the Spring was no more welcome to the wood. I hope you have brought good news, Gilian." And up she went to him and linked an arm through his with some of the composure of the companion and some of the ardour of the sweetheart.

"I think it's all well," said he, putting his arm round her as they went up towards the hut together.

"Is it only thinking?" she asked with disappointment in her voice, all the ardour gone from her face, and her arm withdrawn. "I was so certain it would be sureness for once. Will Miss Mary not help me? I am sorry I asked her. It was not right, perhaps, that my father's daughter should be expecting anything from the sister of the Campbells of Keil." She was all tremulous with vexed pride and disappointment.

"Miss Mary is your very kind friend, Nan," he protested, "and she will help you as readily as she will help me."

"I am to go down then?" she cried, uplifted again.

"Well, yes--that is, it is between ourselves."

"That's what I would be thinking myself, John Hielan'man," she thought.

And still with all her contempt for his shrinking uncertainty there was a real fondness that might in an hour have come to full blossom in that solitude where they so depended on each other.

"I was to ask you something," he said.

"My wise Miss Mary!" said Nan to herself. "Women have all the wits." But she said nothing aloud, waiting for his explanation.

"I thought there was no need of it myself, but she said she knew better."

"Very likely she was right too," said Nan. "And now you must tell me all about what is going on down-by. Are they looking for me? What is my father saying? Do they blame me?"

Gilian told her all he knew or thought desirable, as they went up to the hut and prepared for the first meal Nan had that day. It was good that the weather favoured them. No sign of its habitual rain and wind hung over the moorland. Soft clouds, white like the wool of lambs new-washed in running waters, hung motionless where the sky met the moor, but over them still was the deep blue, greying to the dip.

They lit a fire in the hut with sc.r.a.ps of candle-fir Gilian had picked up on the way from the town, and a cheerful flame illumined the mean interior, but in a while they preferred to go outside and sit by the edge of Little Fox. In a hollow there the wilds seemed more compact about them; the sense of solitude disappeared; it was just as if one of their berrying rambles in the woods behind Maam had been prolonged a little farther than usual Lazily they reclined upon the heather, soft and billowy to their arms; the kind air fanned them, a melody breathed from the rippling sh.o.r.e.

All the reading in Marget Maclean's books, the shy mornings, the pondering eves, the ruminations lonely by wood and sh.o.r.e, had prepared Gilian for such an hour, and now he felt its magic. And as they sat thus on the bank of the little lake, Nan sung, forgetting herself in her song as she ever must be doing. The waves stilled to listen; the birds on the heather came closer; the clouds, like wool on the edge of Ben Bhreac, tarried and trembled. And Gilian, as he heard, forgetting all that ancient town below of unable elders and stagnant airs, illusion gone and glory past, its gossip at well and close, its rancours of clan and family, knew the message now of the bird that cried across the swampy meadow-land at Kilmalieu. Love, love, love--and death. It was the message of bird and flower, of wave and wind, the deep and constant note in Nan's song, whatever the words might be. No more for a moment the rustic, the abashed shepherd, but with the secret of the world filling his heart, he crept closer to Nan's side as she leaned upon the heather, and put an arm around her waist.

"Nan, Nan," he cried, "could we not be here, you and I, alone together for ever?"

The gaudy bubble of her expectation burst; she released herself from his grasp with "John Hielan'-man! John Hielan'man!" in her mind.

"And was that Miss Mary's question? I thought she was a more sensible friend to both of us."

"Never a better," said he. "She offered her all and----"

"What!" cried Nan, anger flaring in her face, "are you in the market too?"

He stammered an excuse.

"It was not a gift," said he, "but to you and me; and that, indeed, was as much as Old Islay meant, to give him his due."

"Old Islay, Old Islay!" she repeated, turning her face from him to hide its sudden remorse. "Islay, Islay," she repeated to herself. He noticed the hand she leaned upon, so soft, so white, so beautiful, trembled in its nest among the heather. He was so taken up with it there among the heather, so much more beautiful than the fairest flower, that he did not notice how far he had given up his secret.

He caught the hand and fondled it, and still she repeated to herself like a coronach, "Islay, Islay." For once more the rude arm was round her waist in Maam, and the bold soldier was kissing her on the lips.

Gilian stood up and "Oh!" he cried, as he looked from her to the landscape, and back from the landscape to her again, "Oh!" he cried, "I wondered, when you were gone in Edinburgh, what was wanting here. When Miss Mary told me you were come home, I felt it was the first time the sun had shone, and the birds had found a song."

"Young Islay!" she still was thinking, hearing the dreamer but to compare him with the pract.i.tioner she knew.

And then the dreamer, remembering that his question was still unput, uttered it shyly and awkwardly. "Do you love me?" said he.

It was for this she had fled from Young Islay, who knew his mind and had no fear to speak it!

"Do I love you?" she repeated. "Are you not too hasty?"

"Am I?" he said, alarmed. And she sighed.

"Oh yes, of course you are! You know so little of me. You have taken me from my father's house by a ladder at night, and share a moor with me, and you know I have no friend to turn to in the world but yourself. You have eyes and ears, and still you must be asking if it is not hasty to find out if I love you. It is a wonder you have the boldness to say the word itself."

"Well," he pursued gawkily, though he perceived her drift clearly, "here I am, and I do love you. Oh, what a poor word it is, that love, for the fire I feel inside me. There is no word for that, there is nothing but a song for it that some day I must be making. Love, quo' she; oh, I could say that truly of the heather kissing your hand, ay, of the glaur your feet might walk on upon a wet day!"

"My best respects to you, Master Gilian!" said Nan. "You have the fine tongue in your head after all. What a pity we have been wasting such a grand opportunity for it here!" and there was an indulgence in her eye, though now and then the numb regret of a blunder made came upon her spirit.

"Will you come down with me?" he went on, far too precipitate for her fancy.

"When?" she asked, thoughtlessly robbing a heather-tuft bell by bell with idle fingers.

"Now; Miss Mary expects us this evening."

"Miss Mary!" said she, a little amused and annoyed. "You would never have come to the bit but for her."

"Perhaps not," he confessed, "but here I am, and G.o.d bless her for bringing me to it! Will you--will you take my white heather now?" And he stood, something of a lout, with nervous hands upon his hips.

"It looks very pretty where it is," she answered playfully. "And for what should I be decking myself in the wilderness?"

She wanted the obvious compliment, but this was a stock from a kail garden, and "Oh, John Hielan'man!" she cried aloud for the first time.

"You promised, you know," he said lamely.

"That was yesterday, and this is to-day, and----" she could not finish for thinking of Young Islay.

"Must I be taking it to you?" he went on, making to move to the door of the hut where lay the symbol of his love and the token of her surrender.

"Wait! wait!" she cried, standing to her feet and approaching him. "Is that all there is in the bargain? Are there no luck-pennies at this sort of market?"