CHAPTER XIV
THE BEND IN THE ROAD
"'Brave Derwentwater he is dead;
From his fair body they took the head:
But Mackintosh and his friends are fled,
And they'll set the hat upon another head'"—
chanted the Fair View storekeeper, and looked aside at Mistress Truelove Taberer, spinning in the doorway of her father's house.
Truelove answered naught, but her hands went to and fro, and her eyes were for her work, not for MacLean, sitting on the doorstep at her feet.
"'And whether they're gone beyond the sea'"—
The exile broke off and sighed heavily. Before the two a little yard, all gay with hollyhocks and roses, sloped down to the wider of the two creeks between which stretched the Fair View plantation. It was late of a holiday afternoon. A storm was brewing, darkening all the water, and erecting above the sweep of woods monstrous towers of gray cloud. There must have been an echo, for MacLean's sigh came back to him faintly, as became an echo.
"Is there not peace here, 'beyond the sea'?" said Truelove softly. "Thine must be a dreadful country, Angus MacLean!"
The Highlander looked at her with kindling eyes. "Now had I the harp of old Murdoch!" he said.
"'Dear is that land to the east,
Alba of the lakes!
Oh, that I might dwell there forever'"—