THE RESTLESS DAWN
As they stood there, a stifled bark sounded from the doorway. Storm, his grizzled hide quivering with eagerness, came sidling in. Fire and gunshot and the night’s swift happenings had opened the windows through which dogs and horses see things hidden from most men.
He knew that death was in the room, and cringed his way to Donald’s side. He crouched for a while, his head on the still body, and whimpered like a child; for the pedlar and he had shared many an hour of friendship when life was wrong with both.
Then the sheep-slayer rose and shook himself. There was no cringeing now, no sorrow. Self-reliant, strong of body and of courage, he came to Hardcastle, who knew less than he what was soon to happen on Logie-side. He looked at the Master with brown, candid eyes—a lingering glance of sheer affection—and put two hairy paws on his shoulders while he licked his face. And afterwards he said good-bye to Causleen, and turned once at the broken casement before passing out into the night.
“Poor devil,” muttered Hardcastle. “I’d whistle him back, if Brant was not about the house.”
“Brant would not shoot him, after all we’ve shared with Storm?”
“In cold blood. Logie might go, and all of us, if Stephen’s ewes were safe.”
“It is a hard country,” said Causleen, clinging to his sleeve with sharpening dread.
And now Rebecca came running to the door, and stood like one turned to stone when she saw these two together. The kingdom of her days at Logie was ended. That was plain.
“What is it?” asked the Master.
“Naught that matters now; but, for my part, I’d have chosen a likelier time for sweethearting. My kitchen asking a week o’ days to redd it up again—fire and brimstone on this side o’ the house—and you two fancying you’re cushat-doves high up in a mating tree. I’ve no patience.”
“What is it?” asked Hardcastle again.
“Naught that would trouble you if I told it. You’re past caring how an old woman fares, though she’s skin and bone for your sake—wearing her life out, cooking and scrubbing. And, ‘What is it?’ asks the Master. It’s this, if you must know. Brant’s not come back, and I’m tired of guarding my kitchen with a rolling-pin against yond lean swine from Garsykes. If Brant’s gone, some o’ them are lurking in the stable-yard.”
Hardcastle put Causleen from him gently. The new peril was harsh enough, but he was quick these days to face unexpected happenings.
“Stay here, child,” he said sharply.
She stayed for one snatched moment to stoop above her father and give his soul a God-speed. Then she followed Hardcastle, and he felt a hand steal into his.
“Oh, get back, child,” he said. “There’s trouble.”
“So my place is with you.”
She would not be denied; and when they came into the kitchen, Brant the shepherd was crossing the doorway.
“Spared us the need to go in search of you, have you, Stephen?” snapped Rebecca. “You look moiled, and fuzzy in your wits.”
“So you’d look,” grumbled Brant, “if you had forgotten there were two ends to a blunderbuss—one that spat at the Garsykes sort, and t’ other that knocked me heels over head with the back-kick. I struck against a rock in falling, and lay silly for a time.”
“Well, it would be no new feeling to you, Brant.”
“If I had a tongue like thine, Rebecca, I’d do two things—tie a double knot in it, then cut it at the root.”
“Hark to him, Jonah,” shrilled the old woman, gaunt and fiery. “Comes bringing his saucy ways to Logie’s kitchen, where you and me live.”
The brindled cat knew his mistress, her every look and change of voice. His fur had been scorched, moreover, at some time of the wild onset, and he was in evil temper. He stalked up and down about Brant’s knees, growling as a dog might.
“Going Storm’s way, are you?” said the shepherd. “You’ll be for the wild lands soon, and a dollop of lead to teach you poacher’s shrift.”
Causleen looked on, wide-eyed and troubled. In her Highland glens they had sung of far-off battles. She had been suckled in the faith that warriors returned from victory with glad faces and shouts of triumph. Yet here at Logie, safe through heavy odds, Rebecca and the shepherd were snarling at each other, as if all was lost. It was her first taste of battle and its aftermath.
“While I was getting up from my dazement, Master,” said Brant by and by, “I heard another screech and running of the Garsykes Men, and made shift to follow with the butt-end of the blunderbuss. But they outran me, like. So I stepped in here, to ask what had happened.”
“All the world, Stephen—and what’s beyond it.”
And now Causleen heard the note of victory at last—heard it in his voice. All that was Hardcastle was hers, and she was his. She thought of the father lying yonder. He would be content.
Hardcastle, going to the porch to hear if there were any lurking Wilderness Folk about the courtyard, lifted a foot instinctively as he crossed the threshold. He remembered the body that had fallen in answer to his charge of shot.
“Aye, he was there,” said Rebecca dryly; “but I took leave to shift him into the stable-yard. We’ll hoist him over the Long Pasture wall to-morrow—and the Garsykes sort will steal up to take him off. They’re like rats in that way, too—attentive to their burials.”
Dawn crept grey and misty over Logie. And as they stood in Rebecca’s kitchen—a silent company, waiting for they knew not what—the old house grew restless. It knew itself secure for a little while. There was safety as yet, the rout of the Lost Folk. Yet one of their dead lay just outside the porch, pleading for reprisals.
Logie was no senseless block of stone and mortar. It had sheltered Hardcastles through seven hundred years of weather. Its heart and spirit had grown with the growing generations that romped and married and died within the kingdom of its stubborn loyalty. It had watched lusty fathers lick their sons into manhood’s shape—listened to the muffled tread of bearers as they carried one and another of the race to burial—heard women groaning in the child-birth, lest there should be none to reign in Logie-side.
And to-night Logie did not know what would chance. It had felt the pain of its flaming door, had been aware of the oaths of prowling men who threatened walls and rafter-beams. Every nerve and sinew had been racked by battle, and the end was not yet. The stir of unguessed dreads to come roamed its corridors, and sorrow piped through every casement. For Logie had found life strong and sweet of savour, and was loath to die.