"Do you think I would be caring, Bryde, if he ran off--if you were left with me?"

Ah, she was brave in her loving, was the Flower of Nourn.

Mirren McKinnon, that was once Mirren Stuart, was dowie that day, and her eyes red with greeting, for her son had gone to the sea, as his father had long ago. "I will be missing his step," she said softly, "when my man is on the hill," but Ronny would not be listening.

"It will make a man of the lad," said he; "there's something clean and fine about the sea."

Bryde had sold his beasts well, and it was his pleasure to be showing Margaret the bonniest foals, rough-haired and tousled as they were, and Hugh and me would be pa.s.sing judgment. There was a mob of mares and foals and yearlings gathered in one place, and the mainland dealers bargaining with the farmers--always on the point of fighting by their way of it, and laughing to scorn the offered prices, as you will see to this day when folks are dealing in horse.

And as we stood a little way off, a great burly red-faced man--a Lowland dealer, strong as a tree, and a wit in a coa.r.s.e way--turned his round drink-reddened eyes on us a time or two, and whispered behind his hand to his cronies, and I heard the t.i.tter of Dol Beag's laughing as Hugh pointed to a bonny yearling colt, and we stepped away, but not so far that I heard the dealer's words.

"Ou ay," says he, looking at Bryde, "Dan's is he? I've heard tell o'

him, but whitna queen is't that's lookin' at him like a motherless foal?"

At that Bryde put Margaret in my hands. His face was like a devil's and his teeth showed as though his mouth were dry. To Hugh he gave one word. "Stop!" said he, and the word was a snarl.

Never another word he spoke, but leapt among the bargainers, and slid through the great flailing arms of the bucolic wit, and his right hand sank into the man's red throat. I see him still, his left hand behind the man's back, the shoulders raised, all the lithe length of him as he stood on his toes, his eyes like blue flame. I saw him shake his enemy as a dog shakes a rabbit. The great red face took a blae colour--the tongue protruded from his mouth and the eyes stared wildly. Men would have dragged Bryde off, but he hissed a "begone" through clenched teeth (it was a word of his mother), and they fell back as from a sword-stroke.

"Go down, go down, ye beast, if ye never come up," he girned, and flung the man from him to the earth, where he lay.

I heard no word, and no look that I saw pa.s.sed between, but Margaret left us and ran to Bryde.

"Put your foot on that cur, my lady," says he, cold as an icicle, and his head bare. Her two white hands trembled at his sleeve and she turned her face from the groaning man in horror, and then she raised her great blue eyes in one long look, and then her little foot but touched the man's shoulder.

A grim smile came over the face of Bryde McBride, like sunlight in a dark pool. "A brave la.s.s," said he, and I only heard her reply, and saw her colour rise at his praise.

"Take me home," she whispered, "Bryde--Bryde _dear_."

"Drink," cried the man on the ground, "drink. G.o.d, I wis near hand it that time."

On the road home we pretended to be very merry, for nothing would please Margaret but Bryde would ride to her father's house. On the hill road she set spurs to her horse with a challenge to Bryde, and they left us some way behind, Hugh and me.

"Man," said Hugh, and his face was troubled, "this will not do."

"No," said I, and hated myself, "for the boy's as good as you or me."

"Good!" cries Hugh; "he's like the mountains--he's granite, and what are we but dressed sandstone--and the la.s.s kens it," says he. "G.o.d help us."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FIRST MEETING.

When we made our way indoors the dogs were bounding and frolicking round Margaret, and she was all laughter. Her eyes were dancing, and her wind-whipped cheeks glowed darkly; then she turned, one dainty finger at her lips, and we kent that no word of her doings that day was for the ears of her parents.

There was a bustle of women-folk about the house, and the noise of crockery, and booming into the corridors came the voice of John, Laird of Scaurdale.

"Chick or child," says he, "she's all I have--a wee Frenchified, Laird, but she'll learn the wie o' the Scots yet."

And as Margaret entered, a little startled, and us at her heels, "Come ben, my dear," he cries, "I've a new friend for ye," and beside the mistress I saw Helen Stockdale.

I was always the great one for watching faces, and as these two maidens approached, I saw the glowing cheeks of Margaret pale a little, her lips press together, and her chin become a little proud, but her eyes never wavered; but Mistress Helen beats me to be describing. There was an elegance about her and an air of languor, maybe from her sombre dark eyes, yet her every movement was graceful, and her smile a thing to be looking for, and she was slender as the stalk of a bluebell. The Laird of Scaurdale was in great humour, well on to seventy, his teeth still strong and white, and his shoulders with but a horseman's stoop.

"Kiss, my dearies," says he; "was ever such dainty ladies? Hugh, man, where are your manners, and you such a namely man among the Saint Andra la.s.sies. Hoots, man, this blateness does not become ye; ye've slept wi' the la.s.s before. Ha, Saint Bryde o' the Mountains," says he to Bryde, "well done, sir," for Mistress Helen, with a quick flashing upward glance, had rendered her little hand for salutation.

And at his words I saw, like a flash, a look of cold hate leap in the blue eyes of Margaret McBride.

I did much thinking while the others would be talking, and I thought of the day, fresh from the college, when we ploughed the stubble and Belle brought the wean in the tartan shawl,--the wean that grat beside Hugh in the old room when Belle carried her from the wee byre--the wean that was carried to McCurdy's hut with Belle and Dan McBride, and had lain in the crook of the arm of John of Scaurdale that night when McGilp had shown a light away seaward.

And there she was before me, Helen Stockdale, and I minded McGilp's words, "Yon's an heiress."

And sitting there in dour silence, there came on me such a longing for Dan McBride that I could have wept. Eighteen years had I watched the ploughing and the harvesting, the cutting of the peats and the carting of hay, and never a word of Dan since the queer outlandish messenger carried my word to him to come home. The boys were grown men, the Laird and his Lady getting on in years, and the old folk going away with every winter, and never a word.

McGilp and his _Seagull_ were not so often at the cove these last years, and yet McKinnon had a crack with him in Tiree, where he was buying a horse or two.

"Young Dan's deid," said McKinnon, "and Dol Beag will be hirpling aboot and eating his kail broth for many's the day."

There was one that never doubted--Belle, and after eighteen years she was little changed, a weary look sometimes in her eyes, for was she not like a wild thing chained, but more like a sister to Bryde than a mother.

And old Betty, Betty of eighty winters, sat by the fireside and would look at Bryde with her old, old eyes, hardly seeing, and whiles she would be calling the boy "Young Dan," and whiles havering of Miss Janet, his grandmother.

"You will be clever, clever," she would be saying to Belle, "and you will get another man yet. . . ."

And one night as I stood at the door--a clear night, I mind, with a harvest moon--"Hamish," said Belle, and her hand was at her heart, "I could go to him barefoot, for is he not always with me in the night?"

As I sat dreaming and listening in a kind of a way to the talk round me, it came on me that Margaret kept near to her mother, and once only did I see her look at Bryde, a hurried puzzled look,--but Hugh was ardent already, his face flushed and his laugh merry, and Mistress Helen was happy too.

There was the great struggling with our language, and she had a droll taking way of it that Hugh would be correcting in his college manner; but Bryde sat back, listening mostly, his face proud and swarthy in the shadows, and sometimes smiling to Mistress Helen, for her eyes would come back to him often.

When the moon was up, Bryde rose.

"With your leave," said he, "I will be on the road."

Margaret came over beside me and put her hand into mine.

"You're early, sir, you're early," cried Scaurdale; "it's asourying wi'

the la.s.ses ye will be at."

The mistress looked not so ill-pleased at that, but it seemed to me Margaret's hand tightened in mine with a little tremble.

"I'm thinking, Scaurdale, we will be getting a pair of colours for Bryde," said my uncle. "Would he not make a slashing light dragoon?"

At that Mistress Helen clapped her hands. "I think yes," said she, "but yes, certainly."

"I would be going to the sea," said Bryde, "like Angus McKinnon--the tall ships and the strange countries, the white sails in the moonlight, and the black cannon and the cutla.s.ses," said he, and then with a sort of shame, "and all that," but his eyes were full of longing and his cheek flushed.