"I ain't afraid, so there! Robby Trevelyan! My papa never said I couldn't go!"
Cary majestically slipped into the stolen boat, and seated herself in the bow. Johnny took the rudder and Rob the oars.
The boy was as much at home on the sea as he was in his bed at night. Indeed, more so, since he hated the one and loved the other with all the passionate strength of a coast-child's heart. He had been born in inland England, but had lived most of his life in western Scotland where the great rocks rise boldly along the coast—that coast intersected by numerous sea-lochs, bounded by hills and separated from each other by mountainous peninsulas.
The burden of the deep sea's song of eternal restlessness had become the controlling passion of the boy's life. The wild freedom of wild living things appealed to him and fear was a word unknown. Not a nearby cliff he had not climbed; not a nearby, darkened cave, formed by the overhanging rocks, he had not explored. The Scottish folk forgot he was an English lad as his skiff became a familiar feature of the western sea-bound landscape. There was scarcely a Scottish boy of double his age who could outstrip him in swimming, and when the hated books had been laid to one side and the tutor had gone away for the summer months, old Mactier, a retainer of his father's, had taken the child in charge, carrying him over to the moorland country and teaching him the meaning and the use of firearms. His mother had at first protested, but Trevelyan had only laughed. "Let the boy alone," he said, and he gloried with old Mactier at the lad's stocky build, firm muscles and enduring fearlessness, knowing that in her secret heart his wife remembered the traditions of her Scottish clan, and was glad.
Then Trevelyan's wife had died. The home on western, rock-bound Scotland had been closed, until the boy should grow to man's estate and enter on his mother's heritage. Trevelyan sent the boy to his sister—Johnny's mother—living in east Scotland, and then returned to England. The sudden loss, the still more sudden change from the wild free life lived on the western coast to the quietness of the life lived by the Stewarts, told upon the child. Mercifully, his healthy training was stronger than the inroads made by childish grief, but his mind was ill at ease and homesick. He hated the flatness of this new eastern country—the low and shelving coast. This was not Scotland to him. It was not the Scotland he had known. It was not Mactier's Scotland—and his.
His aunt was kind—overkind, her own children sometimes thought when she sat out all their bedtime hour on the foot of Robert's bed, instead of theirs—but "auntie" couldn't understand. All the three children were kind but they couldn't quite understand either. Johnny was undoubtedly the best, but Johnny loved books as passionately as Rob hated them, and would listen to his father discuss politics by the hour, if he only had the chance. Robert loathed politics.
Then one day Johnny's mother had a talk with her husband. It ended in her giving up a London season and starting with Johnny and Trevelyan's boy, for America. A long promised visit to a life friend, who had married a United States officer, was the excuse. It was not until years after, when Trevelyan's little son had grown to manhood that he knew the real reason for that sudden ocean voyage.
The change had the desired effect. He met new people. He saw new things. He watched new customs. He knew Cary.
But the wistfulness for Mactier was in the boy's eyes now as he looked over Johnny's head in front of him, to the long stretch of low sand country he was leaving. He pulled with long, even strokes.
Cary was talkative.