The Last of Their Race

by Annie S. Swan

While Malcolm was stationed at home, at Colchester, at Sheerness, and at the Curragh, complaints had been many and his scrapes innumerable, and Isla had welcomed with abundant relief the news that his regiment was ordered to India. That was three years ago. And now the final blow had fallen. He had been dismissed the army, in itself a disgrace so overwhelming that Isla knew there must be some scandalous story behind.

Presently he would be home to loaf about in idleness, to harry the people, to wring her heart and the heart of the old man, in so far as he was able to comprehend. And, with it all, he would smile his wicked and alluring smile and get off scot-free. This was the first time condign punishment had been meted out to him, and he took it lightly and merely remarked that it was injustice. Everything was injustice that sought in any way to hamper the wayward impulses of Malcolm Mackinnon. It had been so from his youth up.

But what was to be done? That half-hour of anguish did its work on the face of Isla Mackinnon. It ploughed a few more lines on it and took away the last remnant of its girlish curve. She had a woman's work in front of her, and a man's combined, for the intellect of the old General was clouded now, and his bodily health frail. There was no one to act for Achree save her alone.

And she would act. Presently she threw her head up, and the pride of her race crept back to sustain her, and her eye even flashed with the swift strength of her new resolve.

The dogs, hovering wistfully about her feet, asking mutely why she lingered and cheated them out of their scamper down the hill, reminded her of the passage of time. She pulled herself together, thrust the letter into her bosom, and, grasping her stick, walked on with feet which faltered only at the first step.

She reached the village, gave her order at the little shop, inquired for a child who was sick in the house above, passed the time of day with all whom she met, and even listened patiently to a tinker's tale, told with the persuasive guile of her tribe. She felt herself a dual person that day. Never had the brain of the inner self been so active. Her swift planning was so intense as to make her head ache.

All her small commissions done, she breasted the hill again and so came to the gate of Darrach farm-house, where Elspeth Maclure was looking out for her.

Now it must be explained that Elspeth had been a nurse-girl at Achree and had had Isla in her absolute care for the first seven years of her life. Then she had married honest Donald Maclure and had flitted to the house of Darrach, whose chief recommendation, in her eyes, was that it stood straight on the main road and that, from its windows, she could see all who passed to and fro between the village and the old Castle.

The private life of its inmates was not hid from Elspeth. She, too, remembered and took anxious note of the Indian mail-day. As she came down the path, wiping the flour of her baking from her hands on the snow-white of her apron, her deep, dark eyes scanned the beloved face of her darling with all a mother's solicitude.

Elspeth was now considerably over forty--a comely, motherly woman with a clear, rosy face and abundant black hair, a model wife and mother, and the staunchest friend of Isla Mackinnon's whole life.