Something of this I told to Dan as we gathered in the sheep from the far hills on the day before the big storm. I mind it fine, the grey heavy sky, the bursts of wind that rose ever and anon in the hills, and died away with an eerie cry, and made me think that all the winds had word to gather somewhere, and were hastening to the feast like corbies to a dying ewe.
There was the smell of snow in the air, and the moss pools were frozen hard, and beautiful it was to see the stag-horn moss entombed in the clear ice, and the wee water-plants, pale and cold and pitiful, at the bottom of the pools. Round the far marches we gathered—the wild shy wethers, seeing the dogs, paused as if to question the right of the intruders, and then bounded away like goats, and in my mind's eye I see yet the whitey-yellow wool where the wind ruffled the fleeces. Dan was very quiet that day, speaking seldom except to the dogs.
"There's something no canny coming, Hamish," said he; "I feel it in my banes. We're but puir craturs when a's said and done. A pig can see the wind, and there's them that can hear the grass growing, but a man just breenges on, blin', blin', and fou o' pride."
And again, "Ye've a terrible hankerin' for bawkins,[1] Hamish. I whiles think ye will be some old Druid priest come back that's forgotten the word o' power, but kens dimly in his mind that the white glistening berries o' the oak and the old standing stanes are freens. Ye're no feart o' bawkins, and ye're never tired o' hearing about them. Aweel, it's a kind o' bravery I envy ye, for weel I mind that first time I heard the Black Hound o' Nourn bay. I can feel the tingle of fear run in my bones yet when I think o' the dogs leaving me alane in that unchancey wood, and that devil beast near me in the dark."
By this time we were at Bothanairidh, maybe a heather mile from Craignaghor, the flock heading quietly in and the dogs at heel, and at a bare hawthorn tree Dan stopped.
"An' this, Hamish, will be another o' your freens," said he. "There's many a lilting laugh hidden in the ears o' this old tree, for here it was the cailleachs cam' tae spin in the long summer forenights, when everybody left their hames and took their beasts tae the hill for the summer. There were no dykes or hedges in those days, and the beasts had to be herded on the hill if the crops were to come to anything. Aweel, the men a' went to the fishing and a' the weemen stayed at Bothanairidh, and in the evenings the young lassies would be making great laughing while the cailleachs span; and once, long long ago, when the crotal was young on the rocks on the moors, there came a swarthy lad and said fareweel tae his lass under this tree. There was red wild blood in the boy, and before he came back he had seen a many men swing from the yard-arm. Ay, when he did return, he met a red bride, for another had awaited his coming.
"'This will be the bride ye are seeking,' snarled he that waited, and gave the sailor the dagger where the throat dimples above the collar-bone. And they say the swarthy lad writhed him up against the old tree and laughed.
"'As long as this tree stands,' he cried, 'you'll never hold to your coward heart the lass ye have done the dirty killin' for,' and died. Well, Hamish, I'm no' hand at stories, but the old hawthorn had aye flourished white until then, and after that the flourish was fine rich red, and when he that slew the swarthy lad sought to tear the tree down, his hair changed colour in a night, and the strange folks' mark was on him, and he wandered in the hills and died."
As we stood, I fitted into Dan's brief story—for his tale seemed to me to resemble more the headings of a story than a real story,—I fitted in a background of great wind-swept spaces, of bare rocks and cold heather and that poor love-maddened outcast wandering alone, and wondered what black pool cooled his brow at the last of it, and there came to my ears a distant cry, and so sure was I that I had imagined it, that I never turned to look, till Dan's laugh roused me.
"Come away from the standin' stanes and the heroes' graves. That wasna the skirl o' a ghost, but a hail frae a sonsy lass—but what gars her risk her bonny legs in yon daft-like wie beats me."