Soon after that another scene came up. Veale had been drinking hard all day, and at night was fairly intoxicated. As Cathrin came into the cave, her head crowned with evergreen, and her hands full of flowers, she heard the merry, musical laugh, which she well knew came from none but Harris, immediately followed by a volley of oaths, such as she seldom heard.
“I can drink wine and not suffer for it in that style,” he said, “and why cannot you? Come, get up, now, or by the powers, I will run you through—do you hear?” and he brandished his glittering sword in true buccaneer style.
Veale was lying upon the floor of the cave, apparently not too insensible to carry on the joke. Cathrin shrunk trembling away, and commenced clearing the tea-table. Her presence did not act as a controlling influence, as Arabel’s had. The men are willing to do anything in reason for the merry girl, however, and the life she led at the cave was not altogether intolerable.
Months passed, and a little stranger opened his eyes and claimed protection.
“Who will be thy mother, darling?” Cathrin said, pleasantly, for she thought she would soon be a spirit. But things were differently ordered. It was not long before she was out again, at night-fall, watching for the arrivals.
And now again pictures, darker and more gloomy, arise before our parti-colored glass.
It was early one bright, autumn morn that Cathrin was kneeling by the spring, splashing the cool water over the flowers she had gathered, to keep them fresh, when she heard a low, stifled, wailing cry from the beautiful couch, where she had left the child. When she reached it, Veale was walking slowly down the mountain path, and the babe lay gasping for breath in the sunlight. All the long day did Cathrin chafe the marble brow and tiny hands of the insensible child, and at night, when the men returned, she was still holding it in her arms. Harris looked pityingly upon her, and she laid the little form beside him on the silken couch. But the bright-eyed stranger’s life had fled. Cathrin was childless.
Again we leave them for a short time, but their crime is not forgotten. They are watched constantly. At last three of them were out at sea, the remaining four were traced to the Glen, and there were taken. Before they reached the vessel that was to convey them to England one escaped. Of course it was the daring Veale, who spurned law and order, and defied pursuit. Harris had been in Italy some time then, and had, therefore, no means of knowing what was going on. Veale fled to the rock, but he was not pursued again. Cathrin lost her merry, life-loving heart and pined in solitude. Veale used to light signal fires upon rocks to wreck vessels along the coast, and only when she saw him lighting his dark lantern, and preparing his flaming pine knots, could she be won from her silent mournfulness. Then she would talk hours in her thrilling childish way, and sing to him until her clear voice filled every part of the cavern, and woke the echoes among the gray old rocks; for she dreaded the idea of feeling that her very life was in the keeping of one who would so heedlessly destroy others.
“You will not light the treacherous coys this fearful stormy eve?” she said, pleadingly. “O, I will sing you all the legends of my Welsh home, and all the songs Roland has taught me, if you will not go now.”
Sometimes she would prevail, and he would sit by the heavy chest that served them for a table, and laugh at the brilliant fairy tales she wove from her memories of the dear old home in Wales.