XI
THE WEAVER'S REWARD
Love came at dawn when all the world was fair,
When crimson glories, bloom and song were rife;
Love came at dawn when hope's wings fanned the air,
And murmured, "I am life."
Love came at even when the day was done,
When heart and brain were tired and slumber pressed;
Love came at eve, shut out the sinking sun,
And whispered, "I am rest."
—WILLIAM WILFRED CAMPBELL.
And just as Scotty entered manhood a wonderful thing happened in the Highlands, something that amazed the neighbours and convinced them of the instability of all things, particularly of a woman's resolution, for Kirsty John promised to marry the Weaver. All these weary years, as faithful as the sun and as untiring, Jimmie had been climbing the hills to the Oa to shed the beams of his devotion unheeded at Kirsty's doorstep; but now the long period of Jacob-like service was over, for he had at last won his Rachel.
Some declared that this was only a new method Kirsty had found for tormenting her hapless lover, and that after they were tied up she would lead him a dog's life. But Long Lauchie's girls—there were still girls at Long Lauchie's, though a goodly number of matrons looked back to the place as their old home—declared that Jimmie no longer dodged when Kirsty passed him, and that he even entered her house without knocking. And Big Malcolm's wife would shake her head smilingly at all the dark predictions and declare in her quiet, firm way that indeed they need never fear for Jimmie.
And she was right; the Weaver was not undertaking any such hazardous enterprise as the neighbours supposed. For a change had come over Kirsty the winter she lost the frail little mother, and only Big Malcolm's wife knew its depth. All Kirsty's bold courage, all her fearless fight with poverty, had had for its inspiration the poor sufferer on the bed in the corner of the little shanty, and when the spring of action was removed there went also the daughter's dauntless spirit, and nowhere was the change so strongly evinced as in this promise to marry the Weaver.
Kirsty's grief had no bitterness in it. It had softened her greatly, for the little mother's death had been as beautiful as her patient, pain-filled life. And wonderful it seemed that, like that other woman who had suffered so long before, just eighteen years of pain had been completed when the Master called her to Him and said in His infinite love, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity."
"But you will surely not be leaving me," pleaded Kirsty brokenly when her mother told her the end could not be far off. "Ah've nobody but you."