CHAPTER XV.
THE STRANGER ON THE MOORS.
It would be well on into May, for the men were thrang with work, and the lassies at the big house haining a bit of bannock to be putting under their pillows for fear of hearing the cuckoo, when first I heard the strange whistling. It is not a very lucky thing to be hearing the cuckoo and you wanting food, and I think this is just a haver of the old folk to be making the young ones rise early on the fine clear mornings; but many's the first bite I ken was taken from below the pillows, and the cuckoo crying like all that.
There was a thick bit of a wood behind the stackyard at the big house, and as I lay listening to the sounds of the early morning there came often of late this clear melody, not loud but sweet and thrilling, as I had heard Ronny McKinnon whistle and Dan too, and the words of that tune are not to be talked about; but when I went quietly to the planting one morning there was only the little moving of birds in the greyness of the morning and the stillness of the wood.
I came back to the kitchen and rummaged the aumary for something to be eating, and made my way to the stable and put a feed before my beast, and watched him hard at it and the other beasts stamping and rattling at their chains in their impatience.
We were on the hill road before the sun, for there was the matter of a calf to be seeing to, and it was fine to be alone in the fresh day with the dew still heavy on the green grass and wetting the horse to the fetlocks; and the sun was coming up in the East, and here and there the curl of blue smoke rising up from far-out clachans. I would maybe be on the other side of the black hill and going finely, and relishing the green of the new growth, when there came to me that sweet whistling again, and cooried by the roadside beside a grey stone I saw a man sitting. He was the droll figure of a man, with outlandish garb and wee gold earrings. His teeth showed white as milk against his swarthy face, and he had many colours about him, at his throat and his waist, and useless tatters and tassels, but withal he had the proud bearing of mountain folk, and level black brows.
Abreast of him we came and he bended low, but with such grace and so much dignity that it were as though he were a king receiving a vassal.
"Have you the Gaelic?" said I in the old tongue.
"Cha nail, cha nail, cha nail," cried he, so quickly and with such gestures of his hands that I was startled.
"Geelp," said he—"Geelp."
"Are you McGilp's man?" said I.
"Man, yass," says he, and all his body would seem to be very glad; and then I questioned him of his whistling, and got his story from him.
By his way of it, he had been a camp-follower or servant to a horse-soldier in the Low Countries, which was maybe true, for I will not be denying these wandering folk have the way of horse, and he made a play of himself to be showing how he was beaten often with the stirrup-leather. Some time in his wanderings in the Low Countries he fell in with "les Ecossais," and he was at the play-acting again with his hands to be describing the Scotch soldiers, and then from some pouch or hidie-hole about his outlandish garb he brought Dan's letter.
At that I sat on the roadside, and the Eastern man, with the rein loose in his hand, crouched on his hunkers before me like an image.
There was much of sadness in that letter, and much of Belle the gipsy lass, and of many wanderings from France to the Low Countries,
"Hamish, man, I'm minding the very stanes in the hill dykes and the track o' the sheep on the hillside." Why he had been kind to the Egyptian he told me. "Ye'll ken fine, Hamish, for what lass's sake,"—and sent him into France with a Scotch soldier he kent, returning there, with directions to wait at the little town on the coast where McGilp would whiles be, and "bring you this word o' me and a wheen things for Belle." He was asking me to see McGilp too. The last of it was like Dan. "I'm thinking, Hamish, if the houris in his paradise kenned the words o' the spring I've been deaving him wi', the Egyptian would be very greatly thought of."
When I was by with the reading of Dan's news, "Ye'll have another letter," said I, making signs at the pagan.
"Yass," and at that he put it in my hands. It was for Belle.
We got on the road again, the pony trotting now and the messenger running easily, one brown hand at the stirrup-leather, and very many times he would be saying "Geelp," till it came on me that McGilp would be wishing to be seeing me at once.
At Belle's cottage door I dismounted, and with the clatter of the horse there came old Betty, with that queer look on her face of disdain and mystery, and just itching to be at the talking.
"The wean's hame," said she, and slammed the door with a last nod of her old head and her lips pursed up; and then there came the snuffling ill-natured greeting of a wean that made me grue as I made my way to the byre, for till then my mind had clean forgot the calf I was to be seeing that day.
In the byre we sat, the heathen and me—for we were but simple men in this affair—and the byre was a dark place to be sitting, and in a while old Betty came, havering at hens and talking to herself. As she came and stood in the doorway and looked closely within, with her back bent and her hand on the lintel, her eyes fell on the messenger, and she let a great cry from her in the Gaelic. To be putting it in English is not so good, but it would be like this, "What dost thou require of me, father of devils?" and she fell on her knees. Well, well, I can laugh at that sight yet. But she "came to" in a little, and took me into the sunlight, and said the gipsy lass would be seeing me for a little time; and I was taken to Belle's sleeping-place, and her arm was round her wean, and she was lying on her back, and her black hair a little damp curling on the pillow.
"You have been very good," said she. "My man, your kinsman, will be owing you thanks." And at that her eyes suffused, and two great tears gathered and glittered, and she smiled up to me, and I gave her the letter and turned away.
In a long while she cried, proud and piteous—
"Bring me the messenger; he will have his father's gift for my son." And the lilt of joy in her voice made me think shame to be a man at all. Silently the messenger came, his eyes on the ground, and kneeled, and at that they were at it in their own Gaelic, and Belle raised the wean a little, and I saw his face wrinkled and red, and his blue staring eyes. And the man laid a long blue blade across the bed, and the little groping fingers of the child fluttered a moment, and then closed on the hilt, and when I lifted the gleaming snake-like sword, from the hilt scroll with a tinkling fell a ring, and it fell on the bosom of the mother—and she lay and smiled.
* * * * * *
But I made a safe place for that sword and scabbard (for the messenger gave that last into my hands), and for many nights in my dreams the little dimpled hand fluttered and closed on the hilt.