All about Slievochan, there was no lassie like Maggie Miller. Her father was a kind o’ overlooker to the Laird o’ Taggart, and so was reckoned weel-to-do. He was an elder o’ the kirk, too, mind ye, and had a farm o’ his ain—or what was called a farm, though it was no mair than might be a sma’ holding, with a kye or twa, and fowls and live-stock, and a bit o’ pasture, and eneugh to butter the bannocks and give a flavour to the parritch; so that he was called a weel-to-do man. I doubt if any of ye know Slievochan; and it’s no deal likely ye would, for it’s but a by-place where, down to the village, a few fisher-bodies live; and up beyant the hills an’ the cliff is the sma’ farmers and the laird’s folk, with just the kirk an’ the bit shops, and beyond that the kirk itself, weel out o’ sight o’ the little whusky shop; and beyant the widow Gillespie’s “Herrin’ Boat Inn,” where our fishers go at times, when they ha’e drunk out the ale at their own place, “The Coil,” or, maybe, tasted a runnel o’ hollands or brandy, that has no paid the exciseman, or got the King’s mark upo’ it.
For there’s strange ways amang the fisherfolk? and between them and the village is a wide difference; though you’ll mind that some o’ the bodies wi’ a boat o’ their ain and a cottage that’s as well keepit as they that was built by the laird himsel’—and perhaps a store o’ claes and linen, and household goods, and a bit o’ siller put by at interest—may hold up their heads even wi’ men like Donald Miller, or may speer a word to the minister, or even ask him to taste a glass of eau-de-vie, when he gaes doon for pastoral veesitation. But, hoot! I’m clavering o’ the old place as it was above fifty years ago, when I was workin’ wi’ my uncle, Ivan Dhu, and my Aunt Tibby sat at the door, knit, knit, knitting, as she watched for our comin’ hame, and went in to make the parritch or skim the sheep’s-head broth, directly the jib o’ the Robert Bruce cocked over the ridge, and came tackin’ round the Ness o’ Slievochan, with uncle and me looking to the tackle and the gear, and my braw young cousin Rab at the tiller, wi’ his bonnie fair face an’ clustering curls, all blowing in the breeze that lifted us out o’ the surf, and sent us in with a whistle an’ a swirl, till the keel was ready to grate upon the beach. Rab was only eighteen, and we were great friends—though I was an orphan bairn, and Uncle Ivan had taken me and brought me up—so that his boy might have been jealous, but there was no jealousy in him. Uncle was a bachelor when I first went to him, a little raw lad, from Inverness, and I’d learnt to manage a boat and do fisherman’s work before Rab came, so that I grew to be a strapping lad, and was able to teach him in his turn. We loved each other weel, Rab and I; and quiet Auntie Tibbie used to sit knitting, and watch us both with a smile; and silent Uncle Ivan, with his great limbs, and dark face, and black locks—though he gave me to know that Rab would have the boat one day, if not a bigger one or two—would grip my hand and say, “Stick to the laddie, if aught suld happen, Sandy; for if ye’re no my son, ye’re next to him, and not much further frae my heart.”
Weel—but about Maggie Miller! Her father, you observe, was a man o’ some substance, and one trusted by the laird; so that the minister, and the bailie o’ the nearest town, an’ Mrs Gillespie, an’ the farmers all, ca’d him Mister; and my Uncle Ivan, who had his pounds away in the bank, ca’d him Mister, too, and would send me or Rab up with a creel o’ fish when we had a fine take, now and then; so that we were on a footing of visitors; and Maggie would stand and laugh and talk with me, and would gie Rab a blink, and a rose-blush, and a smile that made us all laugh taegither, till I used to wonder why it was that I wasn’t one of Maggie’s lovers—of which she had three already, not counting Rab, who was two years younger than she, and, of course, was lookin’ at her as a boy of eighteen always looks at a girl of twenty, too shy to speak, and too much in love to keep silent, and so talking to anybody who’ll listen to him, which in Rab’s case was me.
It wasn’t much in my mind that the boy loved her, but someway I’d got used to thinking of him and her at the same time; and many a time I’ve brought her home some trifle that I got from one of the coastmen—when they brought in a runlet or two of spirits, or lace, and tabacker—some French gewgaw or a handkerchief; and a good deal of my spare money went that way, for Uncle Ivan kept us pretty short of spending. It was like giving it to Rab, I thought; but yet I noticed once or twice that the boy looked serious when I showed him anything to give to Maggie, though I often asked him if he’d give it to her himself.
Maybe I’d ha’ been less easy if there had seemed to me more than a lad’s liking and a lassie’s pleasure, that meant little of lasting; for there were two men, if not three, hankering about Donald Miller’s house such times as they could make excuse to gae there, an’ one o’ them made believe often enough, for he was head keeper to the laird on some shootin’s that lay an hour’s stout walking from Slievaloch; an’ now it was a couple o’ rabbits for Mistress Miller, or a word or twa with Donald about the bit cover for game beyond the big house; but a’ the time he sat an’ smoked his tabacker, or took a sup o’ parritch or sowans, or a dish o’ herrin’, he’d have an eye to Maggie. An evil eye it was, too, for he was a lowerin’ carl, and ’twas said that he was more poacher than keeper; while some folk (and I was one) knew well that there was anither business brought him round toward Slievaloch. I shame to say it, but at that time—ye ken I speak of nigh sixty year ago—there was a smoke to be seen coming out frae a neuk i’ the hills at a wild place where there seemed to be naething but granite and bracken, and a shanty or two, for shelter to the men quarrying the granite. But it wasna frae the huts that the smoke rose. A good two mile awa’ there was a stone cottie, more like a cave, as though it had been burrowed out by wind and water, and got closed in wi’ boulders o’ rock, and covered with earth and broom, so that naebody could see how it led by a hole i’ the prong o’ the hill to just sic anither hut, and neither of the twa to be seen, except by goin’ o’er the hill-side. In this second one there was a fire smoulderin’ under a furnace, and a’ the place dark and smoky, and fu’ o’ the reek o’ sma’-still whisky, that had nae paid the king’s duty; an’ on a cowhide i’ the corner crouched auld Birnie, as blear and withered as a dried haddie, waitin’ for his wife to come trudgin’ back wi’ silver shillin’s and the empty leather bottle of twa gallons that she’d carried out full i’ the mornin’, under her lang, patched cloak, or hid awa’ in the loose kindlin’ wood at the bottom o’ the ricketin’ cart. It was suspected that Rory Smith, the keeper, was in league wi’ auld Birnie in this sma’ still, and that both he an’ the o’erseer o’ the quarrymen—a Welsh body o’ the name o’ Preece—knew weel enough what went wi’ the whisky. The two men were as unlike as a raven and an owl; Smith bein’ suspectit of half gipsy blood—though few men daur say so to his face, for he’d a heavy hand an’ a look in his face that boded mischief—while Preece was a slow, heavy-eyed, quiet body, short an’ square-built, and wi’ a still tongue an’ decent, careful ways, that yet kept his rough men in order, and got him speech of the tradefolk at the village where he lodged such times as he wasna’ up at the quarry.
These were the twa that went each in his own fashion to visit Donald Miller, and to cast an eye on Maggie; but neither o’ them could boast of much encouragement, least of all the keeper, who saw that the lassie shrank from him, and would hae no word to say when he tried to win her wi’ owches, an’ fairin’s, an’ even costlier gifs frae Edinbro’ itsel’, which she refused, sayin’ he maun keep them till he foun’ a lassie o’ his ain. Preece thought it mare prudent to wait till Smith was out o’ the way; an’ both of them, as I foun’ out after long years, were jealous o’ me for seemin’ to find mair favour wi’ Maggie, an’ carryin’ her the little presents that I told ye of, though never a word o’ love-making passed my lips; and perhaps baith o’ us thought more o’ my cousin Rab than o’ each other, though had it nae been for Rab, mind ye, I’ll no say that there’d been so clear a stage for the other twa if Maggie had been as winsome when I went to pay my respects to her parents, and laughed wi’ her at the door.
Weel, it was just on one o’ the occasions when I was on my way to the house, one evening in the airly summer, carrying with me a gaudy necklace o’ shining beads that I’d bought of a packman at Farmer Nicol’s shearin’, whaur I’d been the day before. I’d shown the toy to my step-mother, and uncle, and to Rab too, and had asked him to take it to Maggie himsel’; but he put me off, sayin’ that he’d rather not be amang them that was gi’en and gi’en sma’ things, for he’d gied her the best o’ himsel’ a’reedy. It was, maybe, to ponder over these words that I took the way up the steep bye-path that led up the beach, an’ so zig-zag along the cliff’s edge. There was a sort o’ neuk beside a turn o’ this path, where was a big stane, that one might sit upon, and so lose sight o’ everything but the distant sea an’ the beach below, to which the rocks shelved down, rugged an’ bare in places, an’ in others wi’ a toss an’ tangle o’ weed and brushwood, where there was a hollow in the face of the cliff.
There I sat, an’ sat, and felt all strange an’ drowsy, dreamin’ about Rab an’ Maggie, but not rightly thinking o’ anything; but holding in my hand the bauble that I had taken out o’ my pocket to look at. Night was comin’ down quick out at sea, and the mist was creepin’ over the hills, when I heard a man’s footstep on the path, and stood up to see who came.
No need to look twice; ’twas Rory Smith, the keeper, trampling quick and heavy, and with a heavy cudgel in his clenched hands—a murderous look in his eyes.
He turned upon me, clutching his stick.