"There's whiles I come near to hating you when you will be talking like that," said the swarthy girl. "Mirren Stuart brought me word."
"You'll be glad to be rid o' me then. You'll be forgetting me soon," and the man let his arm drop from her shoulders, and the cold intolerant pride of his voice stung like a whip-lash, for he never could thole that the woman he loved could even have a thought different from his own, let alone a love-hatred.
I expected a proud heart-breaking lie from the sombre beauty, but for all his answer she crept close, and clung to him with both hands, and hid her face on his breast; then holding him at the stretch of her arms she raised her head, and looked Dan in his eyes.
"Oh, man," she cried, "I have that that will keep me in mind o' ye, shameless, shameless that I am," and two great tears rose in her eyes, the first tears I ever saw there, but Dan lifted her in his arms like a baby.
"Was ever there such a mother for a bold man's son," I heard him cry in a voice of love and pride and laughter.
In Alastair's kitchen the thought came to me then what will the son of these two be—the father strong as a mountain ash, and with the cruel arrogant pride of a long-bred race behind him, his own will his only law, and the queer twist of tenderness for old stories and old songs and his love for all nature—a stark man, who would reach out and take what he desired; and the mother fiercely tender, wildly, passionately loving her chosen man, all the dark East in her black eyes, all the deadly South in her blazing angers—a graceful, hard, blue steel blade of Damascus, with jewel-encrusted hilt and sheath of velvet. What was the son of these to be?
Alastair slipped out quietly, and Ronny and me sat at the fireside.
"We'll manage," said McKinnon, "for the gomerils have let us slip at their bonfire and lost us. The goodman here is McGilp's man, and his skiff's ready, and the Gull will be close in behind the point at high water. It will just be good-bye to Dan McBride wi' the turn o' the tide."
"But how can this godly man be a smuggler?" said I, more to make talk than anything else.
"Godly men must live like ither folk," said Ronny.