For a while we sat there till Dan and Belle joined us, and the lass could not be letting go of her man, the brave proud lass. I watched her hand quivering in his great brown one, and her eyes following his every change of look, and her face was all sorrow. I came near to hating Dan McBride too.
In the grey of the morning we made our way stealthily to the shore by the point.
Dan and the gipsy stood some way from us, on the cold dark shore head, and I think we had all a lowness of spirits, for that place is more sad and mournful than any place I have ever seen.
"You'll set McCurdy's hut to rights for my dark wife," said Dan to me, "and let it be her own place, and the money that is lying with my uncle, you'll be giving her when she needs it," and there he went on, keeping up her heart with his talk, and his eyes were straining longingly to the loom of hills in the dimness, like a man saying farewell, and I think the gangers and Dol Beag were clean forgot.
There came to our ears the low swish-sch of a boat gliding and slithering over wrack, and the beating of wings in the air as the sea-birds left the beach, and Alastair's boat grated on the gravel of the shore.
"Will ye no' come wi' me, my dear," cried Dan to the lass as she clung to him, and I had a twinge of jealousy that I was all forgot.
"Oh, fain, fain wid I be to travel wi' ye, my man, the cool long roads and the waving green meadows; but oh! ye hivna the nature o' my folk—there will be the great battles calling ye, and I would be trying to keep ye beside me, till ye grew weary o' me. But you will remember always and always in your wanderings you will never be thinking of me, but just that I will be loving you somewhere," and with a great cry, "Have I no' loved ye—can I ever be forgetting ye?"
When Dan would have taken her to his heart, she sprang away, her eyes blazing.
"Do not be petting me," she cries. "I am not a bairn to be quieted. Tell me ye love me—I want my ain fierce lover that wid make me kneel to him because he loved me—the love in his eyes and the strength o' his hands,—oh, I have loved a man." And then the man answered, and she saw the sorrow of parting in his face.
"My ain brave lass" . . . and at his words she came to him—"I will be waiting for you all the long days, for I will be with you again; but oh! it were better for all that ye never set your boot on these shores, for then the storm-clouds will gather, and the lightning will leap in the scarred mountains—my love, my love; but my heart cannot be brave enough to forbid you to come back to me." And for an instant the wild fierce woman clung to her lover, then fled from the shore. Dan stepped into the waiting boat in silence, his head on his breast, and a word from McKinnon or me, I think, would have kept him; but we said our farewells, and Alastair set to the sculling, and we watched the receding boat from the shore head until she drew close to the Seagull, and we saw Dan climb on board, and the skiff returning.