Perhaps he had cried out, and help had come, while I lay senseless. However it was, I must get to the village and see what could be done. The quickest way was to climb up to the path again, and so get toward the long street o’ Slievochan, nearer than going back to find uncle an’ Rab, who’d most likely be at Donald Miller’s to look for me.
It was strange to think that I should have been fightin’ for Maggie, an’ all the time was the only one that made no claim to be her lover. I began to wonder whether, after all, the lassie might have understood me different, and had been waitin’ for me to speak out, preferrin’ me to Rab even, and wonderin’ why I had his name always foremost. The thought wasna’ a good one, for I felt a kind of sudden fancy to win the girl, even though I couldna say I loved her; indeed, I’d thought of her only as a winsome child; and, lately, had never spoke of her to Rab, except wi’ caution, for I could see that the puir laddie was sair in airnest. Somehow, the thought o’ my bein’ Maggie’s lover, though I put it frae me, caused me for a moment to wonder what she’d say to me if she saw me all dusty, and with torn clothes and grimy face. This made me look at my clothes, and, wi’ a sort o’ wonder, I found that my pilot coat had got all brown at the back, where I lay upon it, and broke as though it had been scorched. My shoes, too, were all dry and stiff; and as I began to climb the cliff, very slowly an’ painfully, my shirt an’ trousers gave way at knees and elbows. I sat down on the bank of the path after I’d reached it, a’most dead with faintness an’ hunger, so put my hand in my pocket to find my pipe. It was there, sure enough, along wi’ my steel bacca-box, and there was bacca there too, an’ a bit o’ flint to get a light. The bacca was dry as powder, but it eased the gnawin’ of my limbs, and I tottered on.
On to the first cottages, leading to the main street, where I meant to go first to Mrs Gillespie’s, and find some of the fishermen to search the cliff for the keeper. As I came nearer to those cottages, I could see that something was stirring in the village, for women an’ bairns were all out in the street, an’ in their best claes; and across the street farther away was a rope bearin’ a great flag an’ bunches of heather, an’ the people all about Mrs Gillespie’s door, an’ the by-way leadin’ toward Donald Miller’s cottage, and so right up to the kirk. I could see a’ this only when I got closer; but I could na’ turn up the high street. A kind o’ fear an’ wonder kept me back, an’ more than once I shut my e’en, and stretchit oot my arms all round, to feel whether I was na’ dreamin’ it all in the hole of the cliff side, or, maybe, in my bunk at hame, or on the deck of the Robert Bruce, wi’ Rab at the tiller, an’ uncle smoking forrard.
I turned up a by-way, and got near to the church itsel’, where a man and woman—strangers to me—were leanin’ against the wall, talkin’. I thought I knew everybody in the place; but these people had just come out o’ a cottage that belonged to auld Nannie Dun, and had turned the key o’ the door as though they lived there, at the sicht o’ me coming along the path.
They eyed me over, too, as I came near, and answered wi’ caution, when I asked what was goin’ on the day.
“Weel, it’s a weddin’ in the kirk,” says the wife, “an’ sae lang waited for that it’s little wonder a’ the toon is oot to give joy to the bonnie bride an’ groom. Ye’re a stranger, and where may ye come frae?”
“Nae, nae,” I said, between a laugh an’ a fright. “Ae body kens me hereabout; but where’s auld Nannie, that ye’ve come to see to-day; she’ll know me.”
The couple looked skeerit. “Auld Nannie Dun was deed an’ buried six years ago come July,” said the woman. “Ye’ve been long away frae this toon, I’m thinkin’.”
“Frae this village,” says I. “Slievochan’s na’ a toon.”
“’Deed, but it is, though, since the auld laird’s death, and the new street was built, two years’ ago; when Donal’ Miller an’ Ivan Dhu bought the land that it stands on for a portion for son an’ daughter—but there they come.”