And Helen Stockdale was often with us, whiles, to my thinking, a little skeich[1] with Hugh, as though maybe she would rouse the temper in him, for that she seemed to delight in, but never would she be telling us what her man should be like.

"Husban'," she would say, with a shrug of her shoulder, "_il faut necessaire_--one must, I think, be sensible; is it not so?--perrhaps in anozer world one may know from the beginning," and I often wondered if she had forgotten how something should leap up at her heart. She would talk to Margaret about her gowns, using terms that never before had I heard tell of, and sending as far as Edinburgh for her braws, which, I am thinking, was a waste of good money, but I kept my thumb on that.

For the wedding was to come off at the back-end, and I would be hoping that the weather would keep up, and the harvest be well got, wedding or not.

And in these long summer evenings very often I would be taking one of the men with me and a net, and taking the boat from the beach we would go out with the splash-net, for I would be fond of the sport as well as of the daintiness of the eating in salmon trout. In the dusk we would be leaving, and whiles not coming in till it was two or three o'clock in the morning.

I am thinking that maybe long ago the folk on the island would be watching for an enemy landing from the water, for with the sea as calm as a mill-pond and just the loom of the land--maybe through a haze--the senses will become very alert, and any little noise without the boat a man will be hearing, and wondering about, as well as listening to the splash of a fish falling into the water after a gladsome leap, and the noise of splashing of the oars to frighten the salmon-trout into the meshes.

On an August evening we were in the little bay near the rock at the mouth of the wee burn that pa.s.ses the great granite stone on the sh.o.r.e--for that is a namely place for trout. There was a bright golden gleam as the oars dipped, and a swirl of phosphor fire at the stern like little wandering stars, when I heard the noise of oars and the creak of thole-pins, and I turned to look, thinking maybe some other was at the fishing, but the boat was heading for the port at the Point--wrack-grown now, and only to be seen at low tide.

In the bay at anchor was a schooner, a low raking black schooner, with the gleam of her riding light reflecting a long way over the water toward the sh.o.r.e--a sign of rain, we say. In a little I heard a gruff voice in the English, for the words came to me plainly--

"Easy, starbo'd; easy, all," and then the scrunch of a keel on sand, and after a little time I heard a boat being shoved off and the thrust of oars, and then the same voice again--

"Give way together," and it came to me that the quick command had the ring of a Government ship, and I was wondering if the _Gull_ was making for her home port, for my heart somehow warmed to the _Gull_, and McNeilage, when I would be looking at the loom of that raking black schooner, and hearing the quick short strokes of the oars of the row-boat with no singing or any laughter. We had a good catch of fish when we got started to row back to the place where we beached the little boat, and it would be the best of an hour's rowing to get there.

Little we spoke pa.s.sing round the Point, except maybe to voice a wonder that a boat should come in there. And never another word was said till such times as we would be going gently, feeling, as it were, for the little gut in the rock, where we made a habit of coming ash.o.r.e.

The sky was clearing to the eastward, the light giving a droll shape to the bushes, and showing a little mist hanging low when the keel grated on the gravel, and there on the sh.o.r.e-head was a man standing, a sea-coat, as I think they name it, round him. The eeriness of the dim light, the wild squawks of the sea-birds in the ears, and that great dark figure standing motionless, put a dread on the serving-man.

"In the name of G.o.d," said he, "cho-sin (who is it)?"

"If he is Finn himself," said I, trying to be bold, "he will be giving us a hand with the skiff whatever."

There came a ringing laugh from the stranger.

"Well done, Hamish; ye'll aye make good your putt--a bonny lan' tack they would make wanting you."

"It is he," cried the serving-man.

"Bryde," I cried, "what is it makes you come back this way and at this time of the night?"

These were the daftlike words I had for him, and me holding his hand and clapping him on the back, as if he were a wean again.

"It was a notion I had," said he, "to come back the way I would be leaving yon time--in the dark."

[1] Frisky.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

TELLS WHERE BRYDE MET HAMISH OG.

What would you be having me tell you now?--of how we carried the fish home from the skiff, of how we walked slowly up the sh.o.r.e road, with Bryde standing to look at the places he would have been remembering.

"I have been in many places," said he, "but I am not remembering so bonny a place as this."

Would it be pleasing you to hear that when we came to the Big House, Bryde left me standing, and went through the wood behind the stackyard and stood on the knowe and looked at the window where the Flower of Nourn slept.

"Now," said he after that, "I will go to my mother."

"She will be awaiting," said I, "your mother and the boy Hamish--your brother."

"And who," said he stopping, "who is the father of my brother?" and there was a whistling of his breath in his nostrils.

"Your father," said I.

"Ah," said he, "is that man home?" and his pace was quicker and there was a line deep in his brows. "How long has my father been in this place?"

"It would be soon after you would be following the seas, and they were married."

"He was a little behind the fair, it seems," and the bitterness in his voice was not good to be hearing. We were silent until we came in sight of the white stone below the house on the moor on the road to the three lonely ones, and then I cried, pointing--

"She is waiting."

"I see her," said he, "and the boy with her," and I looked at the far-seeing sailor eyes with the little wrinkles at the corners that seamen and hillmen have, and he left me. When I reached the stone they were there, the son comforting the mother, and the little boy Hamish standing a little way off, affrighted.

"Take me," he cried, his arms out, "Hamish is feared of the great black man," and I would have taken him, but Bryde was before me.

"Come, little dear," said he, and smiled, and the boy came to him slowly, the mother watching, and then Bryde swung his little brother on his shoulder.

"We will be doing finely now," said he; "and you kent I was coming,"

said he to the mother, smiling at her.

"I saw her sailing in the Firth, your black schooner, the neatness of her, and the pride, and I said, 'It is my son's ship you are'; and when she was at an anchor in the calm water I was watching for the little boat to be coming to the sh.o.r.e, but the darkness was down and your father took me away. Morning and evening," said she, "rain or fine, I would be looking for you since Angus McKinnon came home."

"What--is he home then? I forgathered with him, I mind. I was mate on the _Spray_," said Bryde. "Well, he would be telling you I was lucky.

I have word that I can be sailing a King's ship if I will be going back."

At the door of the place that was old McCurdy's hut, Dan McBride was standing. The white was streaking in the redness of his face, and he was shaking. Bryde put the boy in his mother's arms, and it is droll, but Belle went to the side of her man.

"Dan," said she, "I have brought you your son," and she looked from one to the other, her lips quivering. Bryde opened his mouth to speak, looking at his father--a long level look.

"You are a fine man," said he, "my father."

At the words Dan took a great gulp of a breath and his eyes were filling.

"I will have a great son," said he, and cried aloud on his Maker. "My son, oh, my son, can you be forgiving your father?"

"There is no ill in my heart for you," said the son, "only pity and a strange love since the day that Hamish put your gift to me into my hand. I will have been carving my own name with that sword, and it is kindness in you to be lending your name to me."

"My name and all that I have," cried the father, and took his son into the house.

Well, well, it is easy to be writing of that meeting, but the dread of it that was on me I kent afterwards when we were at meat, when we had all laughed together. It would be Betty that brought the laughing on us, for she would be crying to us to ken who was the stranger.

And when Bryde went to her bedside, she scrambled up among her pillows.