The soft voice grew full of quick and eager fire. “We could have bought ease—and we’re better as we are.”
Donald laughed quietly as he shouldered his pack and trudged down the hill. The lass was bone of his bone, and had no regrets. Sharing honest exile, they had learnt the strange alchemy of the Pedlar’s Road that turns much bitterness to gold. A laugh by the wayside here, a vigil there with stricken folk—no taxes asked of their poverty, and none to deny them wind and weather—it was a big life, after all, open to the sky.
Only when they came to Logie Brigg, and Donald felt his knees grow weak again, so that he had to rest awhile, he doubted the wisdom of their days together. He was old and tiring fast. What of his girl if he died by the way? There was honour of the Road, and she would not lack many friends among the pedlars and the cheery tinkers and the men who poached fat hares by night. True—but there were perils for a maid who went alone.
“Child,” he said, as they rested on the bridge and heard Wharfe River croon and swirl below them, “it’s a vagabond’s life, after all—and, Causleen, I’m weary.”
“Your mother seems very near to us,” said Donald, his head lifted as if he heard the pipes calling him up some far hill. “There was the night she was dying, and you a week-old baby in her arms—how clear it all returns—and she saw that I hated you.”
“Hated?”
“Because you robbed me of a wife.”
Storm the sheep-stealer had seen ghosts of armed men pass to and fro across the Brigg, no longer since than yesterday. These two were seeing the broken years behind them, the slow growing into a comradeship as strong as the hills that guarded Logie Brigg.
“She put you into my arms,” went on the pedlar by and by, “and bade me christen you Causleen. I fear I was rough with you, lass.” The old, whimsical humour showed in his tired eyes. “Your mother chided me gently—taught me how to hold you.”
“Yes?”