I might have been there fifteen minutes or half an hour when M’Iver, impatient at my delay or fearing some injury to my person, came in and joined me. He too was struck with amazement at the desertion of the house.
He measured the candles, he scrutinised the fires, he went round the building out and in and he could but conclude that we must be close upon the gate when the house was abandoned.
“But why abandon it?” I asked.
“That’s the Skyeman’s puzzle; it would take seven men and seven years to answer it,” said he. “I can only say it’s very good of them (if there’s no ambuscade in it) to leave so fine an inn and so bonny a supper with a bush above the door and never a bar against entrance. We’ll just take advantage of what fortune has sent us.”
“The sooner the better,” said I, standing up to a fire that delighted my body like a caress. “I have a trick of knowing when good fortune’s a dream, and i’ll be awake and find myself lying on hard heather before the bite’s at my mouth.”
M’Iver ran out and brought in our companions, none of them unwilling to put this strange free hostel to the test for its warmth and hospitality. We shut and barred the doors, and set ourselves down to such a cold collation as the most fortunate of us had not tasted since the little wars began. Between the savage and the gentleman is but a good night’s lodging. Give the savage a peaceful hearth to sit by, a roof to his head, and a copious well-cooked supper, and his savagery will surrender itself to the sleek content of a Dutch merchantman. We sat at a table whose load would have rationed a company of twice our number, and I could see the hard look of hunting relax in the aspect of us all: the peering, restless, sunken eyes came out of their furrowed caverns, turned calm, full, and satisfied; the lines of the brow and mouth, the contour of the cheek, the carriage of the head, the disposition of the hands, altered and improved. An hour ago, when we were the sport of ferocious nature in the heart of a country infernal, no more than one of us would have swithered to strike a blow at a fellow-creature and to have robbed his corpse of what it might have of food and comfort Now we gloated in the airs benign of Dalness house, very friendly to the world at large, the stuff that tranquil towns are made of. We had even the minister’s blessing on our food, for Master Gordon accepted the miracle of the open door and the vacant dwelling with John Splen-did’s philosophy, assuring us that in doing so he did no more than he would willingly concede any harmless body of broken men such as we were, even his direst enemies, if extremity like ours brought them to his neighbourhood.
“I confess I am curious to know how the thing happened, but the hand of the Almighty’s in it anyway,” he said; and so saying he lay back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction that lost nothing of its zest by the influence of the rain that blattered now in drumming violence on the window-panes.
John Splendid, at the table-end, laughed shortly between his sups at a flagon of wine.
“All the same,” said he, “I would advise you to put some of the Almighty’s provand in your pouch, for fear the grace that is ours now may be torn suddenly enough from us.”
Sonachan pointed at Stewart, who had already filled every part of his garments with broken meat, and his wallet as well. “There’s a cautious man,” said he, “whatever your notion of sudden ceasing may be. He has been putting bite about in his wallet and his stomach since ever we sat down. Appin ways, no doubt.”