“If I had any notion what a curra was,” returned Keith, “I might be able to satisfy your father’s curiosity. As it is——”
“A curra,” explained Neil, struggling, “iss . . . a large bird, having a long . . . a long . . .”
“It iss called ‘heron’ in the English,” interposed Lachlan. And he added violently, “Mallachd ort! wass you meeting a heron yessterday?”
The Erse sounded like an objurgation (which it was) and the speaker’s eyes as they glared at Keith had turned to dark coals. It was evidently a crime in these parts to encounter that bird, though to the heron’s victim himself it wore rather the aspect of a calamity. Ignoring this almost frenzied query he replied shortly to the official interpreter: “Yes, unfortunately I did meet a heron yesterday, which by frightening my horse led to—my being here to-day.”
Lachlan MacMartin smote his hands together with an exclamation which seemed to contain as much dismay as anger, but Neil contented himself with passing on this information to his parent, and after a short colloquy turned once more to the Englishman. “My father iss taibhsear,” he explained. “That iss, he hass the two sights. He knew that the heron would pe making Mac—the laird to meet with you.”
“Gad, I could wish it had not!” thought Keith; but judged it more politic not to give this aspiration utterance.
“And he asks you whether you wass first meeting Mac ’ic Ailein near watter?”
“If that name denotes Mr. Ewen Cameron,” replied Keith, “I did. Near a good deal of ‘watter’.”
This was passed on to the seer, involving the repetition of a word which sounded to Captain Windham like “whisky,” and roused in his mind a conjecture that the old man was demanding, or about to demand, that beverage. None, however, was produced, and after thanking the Englishman, in a very courtly way, through the medium of his son, the soothsayer departed again, shaking his head and muttering to himself; and Keith saw him, when he reached the cottages, sit down upon a bench outside the largest and appear to fall into a reverie.
Directly he was safely there, Lachlan MacMartin reverted with startling suddenness to his former character and subject of conversation.