It was in that season that the two men of my story met at a ceilidh, as we call a night gossiping, in a tacksman’s house in Maam.
There had been singing of the true Gaelic songs and telling of Gaelic stories. A fellow, Alan, sat in a dusky corner of the room with a girl, Ealasaid, and they had little heed of song or story, but whispered the sweet foolishnesses of their kind in a world of their own, till a man new over from Cowal—Red John, by the byname—stood to his feet and sang a Carrick ditty.
“I never heard better,” said Alan in the girl’s ear, for the new man and his new song had cried them back to the company.
“Good enough, I’m not denying,” said she, “but he looks slack; you never saw a man with a low lip so full and a laugh so round and ready who was not given to wandering.”
“Where from?” asked young Alan, his eyes roving between the girl and the man singing.
“From—oh! from good guidance,” said she, flushing; “from the plain ways of his more common and orderly neighbours—from the day’s work.”
“The day’s work,” said Alan, “had no great hold on my fancy, and still and on I’m not what one would call lazy. I wish, do you know, I could sing yon jovial gentleman’s songs, and think life so humoursome as I’ll warrant a man with that laugh finds it.”
He learned Red John’s best songs before summer-time, for Red John was his boon companion.
They wandered, the pair of them, day after day and dusk after dusk, in the way of good-fellowship, coming on many jovial adventures, gathering curious songs, meeting free-handed folk and bits of good fortune. They went many a time on the carouse of true comradery, and Alan, who should be loving a girl, sat with this merry Cowal man in wayside ale-houses, drinking starlight and the drug of the easy heart from earthen jars.
“Could you come to meet me to-morrow?” once asked Ealasaid, finding her lover alone on his way to a new folly. She put a hand on his arm and leaned up against his side.