The McBrides / A Romance of Arran

by John Sillars

"I am wondering," said she, dipping her hands in the little waves, "I am wondering if these little waves will maybe once have swirled under the forefoot of his ship," and I had not the heart to be giving her a lesson on physics, and a little understanding of the laws that will be governing the waves.

And Hugh that was the gallant would be interesting himself in all the matters of farming, and seldom riding out with his clean stirrups and polished leathers, and there were times when I was sore put to it to be keeping my hands off him, because he would be so douce and agreeable.

I would be trying the drink often, and took my glass with the Laird, my uncle, but it would not be bettering me any, and a man that drink will not be making merrier company of is in no good way.

At the farm in the hills the halflin would be doing finely—a little lavish with the feeding, as a body will be when the keep is not his own, but the beasts would be looking well, and the steading clean and tidy. Belle, it seemed to me, was a little dazed for many a long day, and whiles I would be finding her with some wee childish garb of Bryde's, and greeting and laughing at it in her hands, and old Betty yammering by the fireside, mixing her stories of bawkins and wee folk, and the ploys she would be having in her young days at the peats.

There was a moon at the New Year, I mind, and me standing in front of Belle's house, and Belle herself at the open door, with the light behind her, when there came to my ears the sound of a shod beast walking, and, thinks I to myself, this will be a horse broke loose. Then I saw the beast, and after a little wheedling and coaxing I was able to get my hand on his bridle. He was a great horse, bigger than any of ours, and a weight-carrier; but it was the gear on him that I could not be understanding, for there was on him a heavy saddle with a high pommel and cantle, and his bridle would have strange contrivances on it, but especially a spare curb chain strapped to the headpiece, and the bit was altogether new to me, resembling the bit with the long curving bars that the old crusaders would be using long ago.

He was thin and drawn up at the belly, but his eye was full and fiery, and I kent this was no serving-man's beast, but I took him to the stable and gave him a stall, with dry bracken for a bedding, and a measure of corn and peas, and the halflin came from the loft and got at the rubbing of him down, gabbling all the time about pasterns and withers, and Belle watched me, saying no word.

"There will be word for him in the morning," said I; "this will surely be a beast from the Castle," and at that Belle went into the house, and I left the halflin still watching the strange horse and made my way on foot across the hill. The peewits were circling over me with eerie cries, and now and then on the moor-side the curlews would be crying into the night—lonely as I was lonely; and in every heather tussock I would be seeing shapes, and dreading the thought of the Nameless Man and his brindled hunter, till my hair was like to rise on my head, and I would feel it in my legs to be running, but that I kent my folk, dead and gone, would be laughing at me, in their own place, for our past folk are not so much dead as just away, and maybe watching; and maybe I would be comforting myself with the thought that the Killer would be dead long syne in the course of nature—he and his great dog—but for all that I had a twig of rowan in my hand, for the night was not canny. And there came a kind of lifting of my spirit when I got the glint of the lights of the Big House, and kent there would be folks to be talking to and dogs to give a man heart.

When I was come to the stable door, there was old Tam, thrang with his bottles of straw for the horses' last bite (a thing to bring a man to himself it is to listen to horse beasts riving at straw and crunching into turnips), but Tam laid down his bundle and came close to me.

"There was a man here," says he, "in the gloaming after you would be leaving for your ceilidhing, and he would be giving me a festner," says he, with a toothless grin and his old eyes gleaming; "ay, a noble festner," says he, "from the bottle. He would be wanting speech with you."

"Whatna man was he?" said I.