He shared the luncheon, and when they landed they went to his strange house, with the boat for a roof, and there he made them tea, although there were not cups for all, and Duncan himself had to drink his out of a mug.
But there really was more in this little old fisherman than might at first appear. Anyhow he astonished Miss Gale by his recitations of Ossian’s poems, both in the ancient Gaelic, and in English. Even Jessie, child though she was, experienced a thrill of indefinable pleasure as she listened to the rise and fall of the measured words, the magic of the wondrous verse, rolling out from the lips of this little old man, who looked so wild and weird, and mingling with the dull roar of the breaking waves.
The child never forgot it.
And now the little party stood on the hill overlooking the sea, and a walk of two miles took them, after a rest, to the fairy glen. But Archie, while they rested, had run on before, for everybody was coming to the cave, and Archie must see that it was neat and tidy.
There were freshly pulled ferns or brackens laid down as a carpet for the cave, and seats constructed out of the blooming heather. While making these Kenneth was thinking all the time about Jessie, and about how her eyes would sparkle when she saw these.
As they walked on over the hills, Kenneth by golden-haired Jessie’s side, the sky above them blue and clear, the clouds on the horizon looking like snow-white feathers, and the bees making drowsy music among the pinky heath, Kenneth got his child-companion to talk and tell him more about the great world, that mighty ocean of life that lay in the far beyond, the ceaseless throb of whose billows was hardly ever heard among those peaceful hills.
The boy stopped and looked backwards and away out towards the sea. Probably he never looked half so handsome as he did now, with his heart filled with manly resolves, with the light of a half-kindled ambition making his face to shine.
“I’m very, very happy here, Miss Jessie,” he said. “I may never, never be so happy as I am now, as I have been to-day. But before long I mean to leave this country, leave Scotland, and go away into the world, Miss Jessie.”
The child looked at him half afraid.
“Yes, I’m foolish, I suppose, but I cannot help it; go I must. I daresay I have read too many books, but—I long to go.