“That means yes, yes—for two no’s make a consent,” cried Lord John, seizing her again in his arms.
Drumcarro had scoffed at Kirsteen and her warning, but like many another suspicious man, he had remembered the warning he scorned. He had kept an eye upon all Jeanie’s movements since that day. On this afternoon he had seen her steal out, and had cautiously followed her. It was not difficult on the soft grass, doubly soft with the penetrating moisture like a bank of green mossy sponge, to steal along without making any noise; and the trees were thick enough to permit a wayfarer to steal from trunk to trunk undiscovered, especially when those who were watched were so altogether unafraid. Thus Drumcarro, his tall shadow mingled with the trees, had come close to the log on which they sat, and had heard everything. No scruple about listening moved his mind. With his hand grasping a young birch, as if it were a staff, he stood grim and fierce, and heard the lovers talk. His eyes gave forth a gleam that might have set the wood on fire when he heard of the postchaise, and the young tree shivered in his hand. Jeanie was at the end of her powers. She put up her hand to her face to cover it from the storm of her lover’s kisses. His passion carried her away. She murmured, No, no! still, but it was in gasps, with her failing breath.
“You’ll come, you’re coming—to-night—and hurrah for love and freedom,” cried Lord John.
At this moment he was seized from behind by the collar of his coat—a furious hand full of force and passion caught him with sudden, wild, overpowering strength—Lord John was young but not strong, his slim form writhed in the sudden grasp. There was a moment’s struggle, yet scarcely a struggle, as Drumcarro assumed his choking hold. And then something dashed through the air with the speed and the force of a thunderbolt—flung by sheer force of passion. A gasping cry, and an answering roar of the linn as if to swallow down in its caves the object tossed and spinning down—a flash far below. And in another moment all was still.
What was it that had been done? Jeanie looking up to see her father’s transformed and impassioned face, and finding herself free, had fled in the first impulse of terror. And on the log where the lovers had been seated, the old man sat down quivering with the strain he had made, wiping the drops of moisture from his forehead. He was old, but not beyond the strength of his prime; the unaccustomed effort had brought out the muscles on his hands, the veins upon his forehead. The blood was purple in his face. His capacious chest and shoulders heaved; he put his hand, the hand that had done it, to his mouth, to blow upon it, to relieve the strain. He sat down to recover his breath.
How still everything was!—as it is after a rock has fallen, after a tree has been torn up, the silence arching over the void before any whispering voice gets up to say where is it. The waters and the sighing branches both seemed still—with horror. And Drumcarro blew upon his hand which he had strained, and wiped the perspiration from his face.
After a while he rose, still panting a little, his feet sinking into the spongy grass, and went homeward. He met nobody on the way, but seeing Duncan in the yard where he was attending to the cattle, beckoned to him with his hand. Duncan came at the master’s call, but not too quickly. “Ye were wanting me, sir,” he said. “No—I was not wanting you.” “Ye cried upon me, maister.” “No, I did not cry upon you—is it me that knows best or you? Go back to your beasts.” Drumcarro stood for a moment and watched the man turn back reluctantly, then he raised his voice: “Hey, Duncan—go down yonder,” pointing his thumb over his shoulder—“and see if anything’s happened. I’m thinking there’s a man—tummult over the linn.” Having said this the master went quietly to his own room and shut himself up there.
CHAPTER XXI.
Duncan gave a great start at this strange intimation—“Tummult over the linn!” That was not an accident to be spoken of in such an easy way. He put down the noisy pail he had been carrying in his hand. “Lord!” he said to himself; but he was a man slow to move. Nevertheless after two or three goings back upon himself, and thoughts that “the maister must have gone gyte,” Duncan set himself slowly in motion. “A man tummult o’er the linn—that’s a very sarious thing,” he said to himself. It was a great ease to his mind to see Glendochart coming down the path from the hill, and he stopped until they met. “Sir,” said Duncan, “have ye noticed anything strange about the maister?” “Strange about Drumcarro? I have noticed nothing beyond the ordinary,” was the reply. “What has he been doing, Duncan?” “He has been doing naething, Glendochart. But he just came upon me when I was doing my wark in the yaird. And I says, ‘Are ye wanting me, maister?’ And he says, ‘Me wanting ye? No, I’m no wanting ye.’ But afore I can get back to my wark I hear him again, ‘Duncan!’ ‘What is it, maister?’ says I. And says he, ‘I think there’s a man tummult over the linn. Ye can go and see.’”
“Tumbled over the linn!” cried Glendochart “Good Lord! and did ye go and see?”