"SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
COLLAND McTAVISH,
WHO DISAPPEARED, AGED FIVE YEARS,
JUNE 15TH, 1801."
Immediately below the inscription a bar of music was engraved in the marble. "I can't read that," said McTavish.
Mrs. Nevis hummed a pathetic air very sweetly, almost under her breath. He listened until she had finished and then: "What tune is that?" he asked, excitedly.
"'Wandering Willie,'" she answered.
"Of course," said he, "it would be that."
"Was this the stone you came to see?" she asked presently.
"Yes," he said. "Colland McTavish, who disappeared, was my great-grandfather. The old gentleman—I never saw him myself—used to say that he remembered a long, long driveway, and a great iron gate, and riding for ever and ever in a wagon with a tent over it, and sleeping at night on the bare hills or in forests beside streams. And that was all he remembered, except being on a ship on the sea for years and years. But he had this—"
McTavish extracted from a pocket into which it had been buttoned for safety what appeared, at first sight, to be a linen handkerchief yellow with age. But, on unfolding, it proved to be a child's shirt, cracked and broken in places, and lacking all but one of its bone buttons. Embroidered on the tiny shirt tail, in faint and faded blue, was the name Colland McTavish.
"He always thought," said McTavish, "that the gypsies stole him. It looks as if they had, doesn't it? And, just think, he used to live in this beautiful place, and play in it, and belong to it! Wasn't it curious, my seeing that tablet the first thing when we came in? It looked as big as a house and seemed to beckon me."
"It looks more like the ghost of a little child," said Mrs. Nevis quietly. "Perhaps that is why it drew you so."