When Steenie’s design was at length carried out, they had built up with stone and lime the open spaces between several of the rocks; had cased these curtain-walls outside and lined them inside with softer and warmer walls of fells or divots cut from the green sod of the hill; and had covered in the whole as they found it possible—very irregularly no doubt, but smoothing up all the corners and hollows with turf and heather. This done, one of the men who was a good thatcher, fastened the whole roof down with strong lines, so that the wind should not get under and strip it off. The result was a sort of burrow, consisting of several irregular compartments with open communication—or rather, perhaps, of a single chamber composed of recesses. One small rock they included quite: Steenie would make it serve for a table, and some of its inequalities for shelves. In one of the compartments or recesses, they contrived a fireplace, and in another a tolerably well-concealed exit; for Steenie, like a trap-door-spider, could not endure the thought of only one way out: one way was enough for getting in, but two were needful for getting out, his best refuge being the open hill.
The night came at length when Steenie, in whose heart was a solemn, silent jubilation, would take formal possession of his house. It was soft and warm, in the middle of the month of July. The sun had been set about an hour when he got up to leave the parlour, where the others always sat in the summer, and where Steenie would now and then appear among them. As usual he said goodnight to no one of them, but stole gently out.
Kirsty knew what was in his mind, but was careful not to show that she took any heed of his departure. As soon as her father and mother retired, however, when he had been gone about half an hour, she put aside her work, and hastened out. She felt a little anxious about him, though she could not have said why. She had no dread of displeasing by rejoining him; nothing, but a sight of the bonny man could, she knew, give him more delight than having her to share his night-watch with him. This she had done several times, and they were the only occasions on which, so far as she could tell, he had slept any part of the night.
Folded in the twilight, Earth lay as still and peaceful as if she had never done any wrong, never seen anything wrong in one of her children. There was light everywhere, and darkness everywhere to make it strange. A pale green gleam prevailed in the heavens, as if the world were a glow-worm that sent abroad its home-born radiance into space, and coloured the sky. In the green light rested a few small solid clouds with sharp edges, and almost an assertion of repose. Throughout the night it would be no darker! The sun seemed already to have begun to rise, only he would be all night about it. From the door she saw the point of the Horn clear against the green sky: Steenie would be up there soon! he was hurrying thither! Sometimes he went very leisurely, stopping and gazing, or sitting down to meditate: he would not do so that night! A special solemnity in his countenance made her sure that he would go straight to his new house. But she could walk faster than he, and would not be long behind him!
The sky was full of pale stars, and Kirsty amused herself, as she went, with arranging them—not into their constellations, though she knew the shapes and names of most of them, but into mathematical figures. The only star Steenie knew by name was the pole star, which, however, he always called The bonny man’s lantern. Kirsty believed he had thoughts of his own about many another, and a name for it too.
She had climbed the hill, and was drawing near the house, when she was startled by a sound of something like singing, and stopped to listen. She had never heard Steenie attempt to sing, and the very thought of his doing so moved her greatly: she was always expecting something marvellous to show itself in him. She drew nearer. It was not singing, but it was something like it, or something trying to be like it—a succession of broken, harsh, imperfect sounds, with here and there a tone of brief sweetness. She thought she perceived in it an attempt at melody, but the many notes that refused to be made, prevented her from finding the melody intended, or the melody, rather, after which he was feeling. The broken music ceased suddenly, and a different kind of sound succeeded. She went yet nearer. He could not be reading: she had tried to teach him to read, but the genuine effort he put forth to learn made his head ache, and his eyes feel wild, he said, and she at once gave up the endeavour. When she reached the door, she could plainly hear him praying.
He had been accustomed to hear his father pray—always extempore. To the Scot’s mind it is a perplexity how prayer and reading should ever seem one. Kirsty went a little deeper into the matter when she said:—
‘The things that I want, I ken; and I maun hae them! There’s nae necessity ava to tell me what I want. The buik may wauk a sense o’ want, I daur say, I dinna ken, but it maistly pits intil me the thoucht o’ something a body micht weel want, withoot makin me awaur o’ wantin ’t at that preceese moment.’
Prayer, with Steenie, as well as with Kirsty, was the utterance, audible or silent, in the ever open ear, of what was moving in him at the time. This was what she now heard him say:—
‘Bonny man, I ken ye weel: there’s naebody in h’aven or earth ’at’s like ye! Ye ken yersel I wad jist dee for ye; or gien there be onything waur to bide nor deein, that’s what I would du for ye—gien ye wantit it o’ me, that is, for I’m houpin sair ’at ye winna want it, I’m that awfu cooardly! Oh bonny man, tak the fear oot o’ my hert, and mak me ready jist to walk aff o’ the face o’ the warl’, weichty feet and a’, to du yer wull, ohn thoucht twise aboot it! And eh, bonny man, willna ye come doon sometime or lang, and walk the hill here, that I may luik upo’ ye ance mair—as i’ the days of old, whan the starlicht muntain shook wi’ the micht o’ the prayer ye heavit up til yer father in h’aven? Eh, gien ye war but ance to luik in at the door o’ this my hoose that ye hae gien me, it wud thenceforth be to me as the gate o’ paradise! But, ’deed, it’s that onygait, for it’s nigh whaur ye tak yer walks abro’d. But gien ye war to luik in at the door, and cry Steenie! sune wud ye see whether I was in the hoose or no!—I thank ye sair for this hoose: I’m gaein to hae a rich and a happy time upo’ this hill o’ Zion, whaur the feet o’ the ae man gangs walkin!—And eh, bonny man, gie a luik i’ the face o’ my father and mither i’ their bed ower at the Knowe; and I pray ye see ’at Kirsty’s gettin a fine sleep, for she has a heap o’ tribble wi’ me. I’m no worth min’in’, yet ye min’ me: she is worth min’in’!—and that clever!—as ye ken wha made her! And luik upo’ this bit hoosie, ’at I ca’ my ain, and they a’ helpit me to bigg, but as a lean-to til the hoose at hame, for I’m no awa frae it or them—jist as that hoose and this hoose and a’ the hooses are a’ jist but bairnies’ hooses, biggit by themsels aboot the big flure o’ thy kitchie and i’ the neuks o’ the same—wi’ yer ain truffs and stanes and divots, sir.’