‘Maybe ye did and maybe ye didna see him,’ replied Kirsty; ‘but that disna metter sae muckle, for he’s aye seein you; and ye’ll see him, and be sure ’at ye see him, whan the richt time comes.’
‘Ye div think that, Kirsty?’
‘Ay div I,’ returned Kirsty, confidently.
‘I s’ wait,’ answered Steenie, and in silence followed Kirsty along the gallery.
This was Steenie’s first, and all but his last descent into the earth-house, or Picts’ House, or weem, as a place of the sort is called: there are many such in the east of Scotland, their age and origin objects of merest conjecture. The moment he was out of it, he fled to the Horn.
The next Sunday he heard read at church the story of the burial and resurrection of the Lord, and unavoidably after their talk about the catacombs, associated the chamber they had just discovered with the tomb in which ‘they laid him,’ at the same time concluding the top of the hill, where he had, as he believed, on certain favoured nights met the bonny man, the place whence he ascended—to come again as Steenie thought he did! The earth-house had no longer any attraction for Steenie: the bonny man was not there; he was risen! He was somewhere above the mountain-top haunted by Steenie, and that he sometimes descended upon it Steenie already knew, for had he not seen him there!
Happy Steenie! Happier than so many Christians who, more in their brain-senses, but far less in their heart-senses than he, haunt the sepulchre as if the dead Jesus lay there still, and forget to walk the world with him who dieth no more, the living one!
But his sister took a great liking to the place, nor was repelled by her mistaken suspicion that there the people of the land in times unknown had buried some of their dead. In the hot days, when the earth-house was cool, and in the winter when the thick blanket of the snow lay over it, and it felt warm as she entered it from the frosty wind, she would sit there in the dark, sometimes imagining herself one of the believers of the old time, thinking the Lord was at hand, approaching in person to fetch her and her friends. When the spring came, she carried down sod and turf, and made for herself a seat in the central chamber, there to sit and think. By and by she fastened an oil lamp to the wall, and would light its rush-pith wick, and read by it. Occasionally she made a good peat fire, for she had found a chimney that went sloping into the upper air; and if it did not always draw well, peat-smoke is as pleasant as wholesome, and she could bear a good deal of its smothering. Not unfrequently she carried her book there when no one was likely to want her, and enjoyed to the full the rare and delightful sense of absolute safety from interruption. Sometimes she would make a little song there, with which as she made it its own music would come, and she would model the air with her voice as she wrote the words in a little book on her knee.
CHAPTER XIII
A VISIT FROM FRANCIS GORDON
The summer following Gordon’s first session at college, castle Weelset and Corbyknowe saw nothing of him. No one missed him much, and but for his father’s sake no one would have thought much about him. Kirsty, as one who had told him the truth concerning himself, thought of him oftener than anyone except her father.