"Are you thinking she is easy?" said I.

"I am thinking she is a merry la.s.s and wants a bold man--she will be loving a bold man."

"I think that too."

"Who is it?" said Margaret, like a flash.

"Oh, just Hugh."

"Hamish," said the la.s.s, "ye never lied to me before."

A halflin lad took the horses and we came to the house, and there was Belle to meet us, smiling to Margaret, and her eyes wandering to where her son was at the ploughing.

Now it was a droll thing to me to watch these two, for Margaret McBride had the pride of her mother, and there were many times when she would be very haughty, and yet in this moorland farmhouse she would be all softness and the quiet laughter of gladness, and talking very wisely to Belle about homely things. And I would often be laughing at Margaret and her talk of milk, and fowls, and calves, and lambs, but she would be very serious.

"A woman should be knowing these things, Hamish," she would say.

But Belle was the slave of Margaret since the days when Hugh and Bryde and the little wild la.s.s would be playing in the heather, and climbing for jackdaw's eggs or young rock-pigeons in Dun Dubh. But that day Margaret was beside old Betty, and making her comfortable in the chair by the fire of red peats.

"Will you be very wise, old Betty?" said she, looking down on the old one.

"Yess, yess, Betty has the wisdom, and Betty kens the secrets o' the hill folks, but ye will not be needing to ken the secrets, for will you not be keeping the lads away from ye with a stick. Na, na, ye will not be needing the love secret."

"My motherless la.s.s!" cried Margaret, with a droll laugh, "and is there a secret way of it?"

"Yess, yess, a very goot way, mo leanabh; you will chust be sc.r.a.ping a little from the white of your nail and putting it in his dram, yess, and he will be yours through all the worlds. . . ."

"But what," said I, "if he'll not be taking a dram?"

"I could always be wheedling him, Hamish," she laughed. At that I looked at her.

"I am thinking of Hugh," says she, "Hugh and Mistress Helen," but she had the grace to be shamed a little.

"Indeed," said Belle, "they are a bonny pair, the young Laird and the young lady. She will be riding here many times, for the Laird of Scaurdale will have been telling her old tales of the place."

"Will they be making a match of it?" said I.

"I am hoping that, Hamish," said Belle--"and, indeed, she is liking the hills and the folk, and fond of the horses too, and will be keen to be seeing Bryde breaking the young beasts, and watching him for long. She will whiles be putting the old tartan shawl round her."

At that Margaret went out of the house, and in a while I saw her with Bryde, walking step for step with him on the lea he was breaking, and her hand would sometimes be beside his on the stilt of the plough.

On the home road that day I would be showing her the road we had travelled that night of the whin-burning, and where in the hills was McAllan's Locker, and wondering what had come to the Killer, the dead white man. And I would be minding a story of a dog that howled in the night and slunk by in the darkness of Lag 'a bheithe, and I wondered if the Nameless Man had gone to his love that beckoned in the pool, or if the ravens had got him at the last of it, and if the pigeons built still away in the cranny of the Locker, and there was a sadness in me.

She had not been speaking, the la.s.s beside me, and her merriness was all gone, for she was aye merry with Bryde, and at last--

"Hamish," said she, "there is something will happen."

And on top of my own mood I was startled, and the words did not come to me.

"Am I not the daft la.s.sie?" said she, and started to the singing of merry airs; but before we saw the rowan-tree that grows on the face of the black hill, her songs were sad again.

"He will be lonesome away there, Bryde," said she, looking back.

"He will be looking for a la.s.s one of these nights," said I, a little angry, "and there are bonny la.s.ses here and there, between here and Scaurdale."

"I am wishing, Hamish, I could be at the herding and the kelp-burning with the other la.s.ses," said she, looking at me, and there was a little smile at her lips, and a kind of eagerness I did not understand.

"Do you think Bryde will be looking at these wenches," said I in great scorn (for I feared he did).

"No, Hamish, no," she cried amidst her laughter, and I understood then.

"Mistress Margaret," said I, "I am not a match for you in wit, it seems, but since we are agreed he canna just be suited with these la.s.sies, there will just be two left by your way of it."

"Between here and Scaurdale, Hamish," said she, "it is your own words I am giving you."

"Bryde is a fine lad," said I, "but he's like to be spoiled, and," said I, "your mother will have told you he has not even a name." At that the dull anger I had been choking down most of that day broke over me.

"d.a.m.n the whole affair," said I, and dismounted.

When I lifted her from her horse, she was laughing and blinking tears from her lashes, and she put her arms very tightly about my neck.

"Oh, Hamish, Hamish," said she, "I will have been doing that this while."

CHAPTER XX.

"THE LOVE SECRET."

La.s.sies are droll creatures, and will tell many things the one to the other in the way of a ploy, and Margaret McBride made great work with old Betty's love potion, and that to Helen alone.

"I will be trying it on Hugh," said she, "when I have you sleeping, for I will get sc.r.a.ping the white of your nail then."

And now this is the droll thing that came about. We had a day after the otters at the Bennan, a wet cold day, with little that was laughable in it, except that a man of the Macdonalds took an otter home over his shoulders, and the beast dead, as we thought; but coming in at his own door it gripped him by the back of his hip, and at the start he got he let a great cry to his wife in the Gaelic.

"Fell the beast, fell the beast," and the wife, with a beetle in her hand, and in a flurry of excitement to be felling the beast, came a dour on her man's head that felled him, poor man, and we left them then, the otter killed at last, and the man and wife demented with the suddenness of the happenings, and came to the house of Scaurdale.

Now the la.s.sies, Margaret and Helen, were in the mood for a ploy, and Margaret it was who sc.r.a.ped the little white powder from Helen's polished nail. "A wee tashte," she laughed, "old Betty would be saying, 'chust a wee tashte.'" And when the boys came in red-faced and with sparkling eyes (for I was watching the prank), "Now," said Margaret, "I will be giving poor Hugh his dram, and then everything will do finely."

"But," said Helen, "I will be my own cup-bearer, or maybe the charm will be a useless thing." And she took the old gla.s.s--a rummer it was--and she carried it very daintily to the boys and bowed.

"Here is refreshment, my tired hunter," said she, and gave the gla.s.s into Bryde's hand, and that swarthy hillman raised the gla.s.s to the cup-bearer and drained it.

"I will not be very clever, it seems, Hamish," said Margaret.

But I had admiration for Helen, for she came back, laughing very softly. "Now we shall prove your charm, Mistress Margaret," said she; "for truly M'sieu Hugh did not require it, but Bryde--he is cold and hard like his own hills with me."

And that very night it was as though old Betty's havers were potent spells, for Bryde was the fair-haired laddie with the Laird of Scaurdale always, and as the evening wore on he grew a little flushed with wine, so that all his silence left him, and he was very shyly bold and very gallant; but Margaret was stately and proud like her mother, and smiled but little. And Hugh gloomed and laughed by turns, and had an air of patronage to his cousin that was hurtful for me to be seeing in him.