Had anyone interrupted him as he strolled along and asked him what he was thinking of, he would have found it difficult, if not impossible to give a satisfactory reply. The thoughts of youth, as the poet tells us, “are long, long thoughts,” which is another way of saying it is given them to indulge in indefinable longings. But whatever were the musings of Robert Grierson on this evening he was suddenly brought back to his surroundings by a scream and a splash.
At the opposite side of the stream and knee-deep up to his fore-legs in it, was a pony, on which sat a lady, looking scared but gloriously beautiful in the light of the setting sun.
“Oh, I’ll be drowned! I’ll be drowned!”
There was no danger whatever. The pony had come down a boreen leading to the river—to a watering place and knew what he was about. Not so the lady, whom Grierson saw was a stranger, and who was evidently afraid the pony would carry her up mid-stream.
Grierson without hesitation plunged in, and waded up to his neck for a short distance until he swam by the pony’s head. Assuring the lady that there was no danger, he waited until the pony had slaked his thirst, and then turning his head round led him back to the boreen.
The lady was profuse in her thanks, which Grierson protested were not at all deserved, but they were, nevertheless, very grateful to him, for they were uttered in a voice the most musical he had ever heard. It was soft, almost caressing, and there was, moreover, a flavour of a foreign accent which seems to claim a special tender consideration for the speaker when she is a lady, young and beautiful, and a stranger.
With a final graceful wave of her hand, and shooting a Parthian glance from her dark eyes that went with unerring aim to Grierson’s heart, she urged her pony forward, and rounding a bend of the boreen was quickly lost to view.
Grierson stood gazing after her, like one whose gaze was fixed on a vision. It may be that the sun had sunk down behind the hills when she vanished, as it were, from his sight, but the very air seemed dark, the river ran in shadows, and his clinging wet clothes helped to free him from the spell of enchantment under which he had been drawn.
He ought to have hastened home to change his clothing, but he went there slowly, rehearsing in his mind the little scene in which he had taken part. Never was face so fair, he whispered to himself; never was voice so sweet, never were eyes so bewitching. As he thought of them his very soul seemed striving to escape from him to follow them.