"Back, my bonny horse," said he to Chieftain, and there was a kind of joyous lilt in his voice. "Draw away your pair, Hamish, and this lan' horse o' mine. We'll miss our dinner maybe, but I've an unco hankering after this word."
Away down in my heart I knew what was coming, and I watched the woman loosen her tartan shawl and lay her infant in a neuk among the hedge roots.
"I'm waitin' now, my dear," said Dan, "and in case I dee I'll tell ye I think I could break you in, for I like the devil temper bleezin' in your bonny black een, and your lips would warm a deein' man. My dear, I think I could be your man for a' ye say I cam' crooked; for spaewife or no—God's life, ye're awfu' bonny, Belle."
The gipsy gave a little lilting laugh.
"You," says she—"you. I'm not saying but you're a pretty man, and I've good looks enough for baith—if I loved ye; but, man, my love would be a flame. Wid ye burn with me, lad; wid ye burn?"
"I think I would too," said he, "for your een have started the bleeze a'ready, and I'm dootin' it'll finish in brimstane."
"Ay, ay, Dan; I'm spaein' true. I jibed at you, although you did not say the word o' the glens o' the wee creatur' under the hedge there, as ye might have. Ye've good blood in ye, lad, and I'm loving your spirit, but I'm the Belle o' your death, Dan, the Death-Bell. Now!"
No words of mine can convey my impression of that scene. There were the hills, silent and grandly contemptuous, there was a rabbit loping across the road to the hedge foot, and there the road the woman had come stretched upwards; but as she spoke some subtle essence seemed to flood her veins, her sombre eyes flashed, her cheeks glowed darkly, and she trembled so that I could see her clenched hands flutter like segans.[1] It was not excitement, but to my mind as though some vital powerful force had taken possession of her body and shook it, as an aspen quivers in a gale.
The power seemed to grow stronger and stronger as she spoke, until with her word it seemed to break free and envelop us.
Where I have written "Now" she leaned rigidly towards Chieftain and almost hissed, so sharply came a word between her teeth. With some such sound, I think, will the devil unshackle his hounds. Well for me that my horses were rugging at the hedge, or I had never been troubled more with headache.