"The man that lives here is a farmer and a fisherman," said he, "and a very po-lite man in his taalk moreover, for I know him well," and he mimicked the Loch Ranza speech, which, indeed, is very proper speech, and I was very startled at one time to hear the very weans with the polite way of it.
"Ye will be havin' the dogs on us," says Dan in a low voice; "and there's folks here that are unfreens o' mine."
"Alaister Jock has weans enough to do without the dogs," says Ronny, "for dogs are unchancy beasts in the smuggling nights, and Alaister himsel' will be always up wi' the drake's dridd."
In a little time Ronny came back to us, and we made our way into Alastair's house, a place where a grown man could stand broad-soled on the clay floor and touch the rafters of the roof with the flat of his palms. The peat fire was smouldering on the floor, and the reek made its way out at the rigging. Alastair himself, a tall stooped man with a red beard and a thin beak of a nose, brought peats and threw them on the fire.
"There was one came for you in the night yesterday," says he to Dan in his very proper polite way. "I would not be having her in my house at all, for I am a reeleegious man with a family to rear before the Lord. I put her into the byre with the kye, for she is of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; and my wife sprinkled a little meal and a little saut over the rumps of the kye to keep away her spells, for we must meet spell with spell—not that I will be believing in these evil-doers of the Black Art."
"Och, I kent, I kent," cried Dan, long before Alastair had done with his speaking, and disappeared through a door which gave me a glimpse of a cow's head looking over its biss, and it struck me that the byre was the handy place to get at in Loch Ranza. Ronny and Alastair were thrang at the talking, with the farmer laying off with his hands, and wagging his head like a minister in the pulpit, and all in a voice so raised in tone that I believed from hearing him what our folks say, that when two farmers are ploughing at the north end they can talk comfortably across three fields, and they are great at the handling of their skiffs and bold sailors. I heard Dan—
"Och, my lass, my ain lass; it went sair against my heart to be leaving without seein' you at all."
I heard her brave voice with a crooning quiver like a mother's.
"I ran, I ran all the long road, for I kent it all from the first o' it," and in the dimness of the byre I could see these two clinging to each other.
"Is it the sight[1] ye think ye have now, my droll dark lass?" says Dan, looking down at her, one arm holding her away from him and the great love in his eyes.