“Again she bade me name you Causleen, because you’d be the Evening Star to me. She was near to death, and knew—what I came to know—that you’d be the light of my westering years.”
A grief too deep for tears came to the girl. Some weakness in the pedlar’s brave old voice—his looking backward, though all his sturdy gospel was to front the hills of each day—as they came—his hard endeavour to get the pack jauntily over his shoulders once again—all pointed the one way.
They crossed the bridge in silence, each knowing that they journeyed to a new life. It might be worse or better than the old. They did not know; but, either way, it was a stage nearer to the end of this life’s climb.
As they went up the road, a light blinked out at them from Logie house across the last glow of twilight that lingered on the hills above.
“There’ll be a bed for the night up there,” said Donald,—“a bed for you with the maids.”
“And the hay-mow for you?”
“There’s worse lying. You needn’t fret, bairn. Smell of the hay is no bad company.”
“We were not born to it, father,” she said, her slim, young body shaken with passion—not for herself, but for him, fuller of courage than strength.
“Aye, but we were, for we’ve come to it, Causleen. Life’s made that way. The road we trudge, with its ups and downs—it’s the long, grey road we were meant to tread.”
Donald was himself again, and the girl’s mood yielded to this indomitable, half-laughing courage that would not be dismayed.