"Many a time have I wearied for the sight o' a burn, Hamish, cold and sweet and clean, when we would be drinking water that was stinking," and he made preparations to splash his face; and it was droll to see the bronze of his face stop at the throat, and the skin below like a leek for whiteness.
There were many things to be telling the wanderer—that he had got some notion of from McNeilage of the Seagull, but for the most part it was hard to talk to a man walking fast.
We came up over the last of the three lonely hills, with bare moorlands and peat hags fornent us, and away below the sea, and I held on for the house on the moor that once was McCurdy's hut. The first beast we saw was a raddy, a droll sheep with four daft-like horns, and there came a great crying of curlews; and then, when we came near to the house without yet seeing it, there was a look of wonder in Dan's face.
"There was nae grass here when I left hame," says he; "this will be your work, Hamish. Ye were aye a great hand for grass."
As he spoke, it seemed to me that the voice was the same voice that I kent when I was a boy, but I was at the walking now and hurried him on.
"Grass," said I; "look at yon," and I pointed to the parks and the steading, with the smoke rising straight from the lums into the frosty morning air.
"That was the young lad's work," said I.
"He will be a farmer at all events . . ." and there was on Dan's face as he spoke a look of pride and pity all mixed.
"Belle will not be knowing you are here."
"Ay, but she will that, Hamish—ye don't ken Belle; look, man, look, she's at the doorstep now." And if ever a man had it in his bones to run it was Dan, and at the door they met—the very door where the woman had kissed her man and smote him on the cheek, when I lay in the heather, and the Laird of Scaurdale rode with the wean in the crook of his arm—the same Helen that had brought them there then, had brought also this happy meeting. It was a picture I would be aye wishing I could be painting—Belle, her dark face flushed, her eyes suffused, the pride, the love, the longing of her, and her hands twisting and clasping, and her lips trembling, without words coming to them. The heaving breast and the little flutter at the delicate nostril, what man can be telling of these things; and Dan, his brows pulled down, and the scar red on his cheek, and his arms half outstretched—Dan took his woman into his arms as a man lifts a wean, and I saw his head bend to her face, and the wild clasp of her arms round him, and her lips parting as she raised them to his.