Told in the Hills: A Novel

by Marah Ellis Ryan

"But she is not a fine lady at all," contradicted Rachel; "and she's a very affectionate, very good little woman. You are set against her because of that story of long ago—and that is hardly fair, Davy MacDougall."

"Well, then, I am not, lass. It's little call I have to judge children, but I own I'm ower cranky when I think o' the waste o' a man's life for a bit pigeon like that—an' a man like my lad was! The prize was no' worth the candle that give light to it. A man's life is a big thing to throw away, lass, an' I see nothing in that bit o' daintiness to warrant it. To me it's a woeful waste."

The girl walked on beside him through the fresh, sweet air of the morning that was filled with crisp kisses—the kisses that warn the wild things of the Frost-King's coming. She was separated so slightly from the wild things herself that she was growing to understand them in a new spirit—through a sympathy touched less by curiosity than of old. She thought of that man, who slept across on Scot's Mountian, in sight of Tamahnous Peak; how he had understood them!—not through the head, but the heart. Through some reflected light of feeling she had lived those last days of his life at a height above her former level. She had seen in the social outlaw who loved her a soul that, woman-like, she placed above where she knelt. Perhaps it had been the uncivilized heroism, perhaps the unselfish, deliberate sacrifice, appealing to a hero-worshiper. Something finer in nature than she had ever been touched by in a more civilized life had come to her through him in those last days—not through the man as men knew him, and not through the love he had borne her—but through the spirit she thought she saw there.

It may have been in part an illusion—women have so many—but it was strong in her. It raised up her life to touch the thing she had placed on the heights, and something of the elation that had come to him through that last sacrifice filled her, and forbade her return into the narrowed valleys of existence.

His wasted life! It had been given at last to the wild places he loved. It had left its mark on the humanity of them, and the mark had not been a mean one. The girl, thinking of what it had done for her, wondered often if the other lives of the valley that winter could live on without carrying indelible coloring from grateful, remorseful emotions born there. She did not realize how transient emotions are in some people; and then she had grown to idealize him so greatly. She fancied herself surely one of many, while really she was one alone.

"Yes, lass—a woeful waste," repeated the old man; and her thoughts wandered back to their starting-place.

"No!" she answered with the sturdy certainty of faith. "The prodigality there was not wastefulness, and was not without a method—not a method of his own, but that something beyond us we call God or Fate. The lives he lived or died for may seem of mighty little consequence individually, but what is, is more than likely to be right, Davy MacDougall, even if we can't see it from our point of view." Then, after a little, she added, "He is not the first lion that has died to feed dogs—there was that man of Nazareth."

Davy MacDougall stopped, looking at her with fond, aged eyes that shone perplexedly from under his shaggy brows.

"You're a rare, strange lass, Rachel Hardy," he said at last, "an' long as I've known ye, I'm not ower certain that I know ye at all. The lad used to be a bit like that at times, but when I see ye last at the night, I'm ne'er right certain what I'll find ye in the mornin'."

"You'll never find me far from that, at any rate," and she motioned up the "Hill of the Witches," and on a sunny level a little above them Mowitza and Kalitan were waiting.