The Last of Their Race

by Annie S. Swan

"Yes, Miss Isla, and if Mr. Malcolm is to come home what will he do here in the glen, for sure he is a great big, strong gentleman--glory be to God--and it is not thinkable that he can be here doing nothing?"

"I haven't got so far as that, Diarmid," said Isla, wearily. "My head aches and aches with thinking. I sometimes wish I could fall asleep at night and never waken any more."

"Yes, Miss Isla, but then the sun would go down upon the glen for efer and efer," said the old man with twitching lips.

He had carried her as a baby in his arms, he had set her almost before she could toddle upon the back of the old sheltie that now lived, a fat pensioner, in the paddock behind the house; he had watched her grow from sweet girlhood to womanhood, and his heart had rebelled against the hardness of her destiny. She had never had her due. Other girls in her position had married well, had happy homes and devoted husbands, and little children about their knees, while she, the flower of them all, remained unplucked.

Diarmid, a religious man--as befitted one who had lived such an uneventful and happy life--was sometimes tempted to ask whether the God whom he worshipped had fallen asleep over the affairs of Achree. Of late, his rebellion had become acute. In the silence of his dingy pantry he had even been known to shake his fist over the silver he was polishing and to utter words not becoming on the lips of so circumspect a servant.

"Say nothing to the others, Diarmid. Let them think that Mr. Malcolm is only home on furlough," she pursued. "I must make it right with my father somehow. I'll go to him now and tell him about the letter."

"Yes, Miss Isla. And Mr. Malcolm, he is quite well, I hope?"

"Oh, yes, he is always well. Perhaps, if he were not--but there, I must guard my tongue. The days are very dark over Achree, Diarmid, and it may be that its sun will soon set for ever."

"God forbid! He will nefer let that happen--no, nor anypody else, forby," he said vaguely. "Keep up your brave heart, Miss Isla. I haf seen it fery dark over the loch of a morning, and again, by midday, it would clear and the sun come out. It will be like that now, nefer fear."

But though brave words were on the old man's tongue, black despair was in his heart. He was only a servingman, but he could read between the lines, and he knew that this sudden and unexpected home-coming of the ne'er-do-weel meant something dire for Achree. His hands trembled very much as he proceeded with his table duties, while his young mistress made her way across the hall again to the library, a queer little octagon room on the south side of the house, with no view to speak of from its high, narrow windows that looked out on the rising slope of a heather hill which made the beginning of the moor of Creagh. It was, however, the snuggest room in the whole house, for which reason it was used almost entirely by the General as a living place.