“Of course,” said Kate, very conscious of that letter still unposted, “but—but he doesn’t say Charles anything, just Charles. It’s a daft-like thing not to give his name; it might be anybody. There’s my Charles, and there’s Charles Maclean from Oronsay,—what way am I to know which of them it is?”
“It’ll be either or eyether,” said Bud. “Do you know Charles Maclean?”
“Of course I do,” said the maid. “He’s following the sea, and we were well acquaint.”
“Did he propose to you?” asked Bud.
“Well, he did not exactly propose,” admitted Kate, “but we sometimes went a walk together to the churchyard on a Sunday, and you know yourself what that means out in Colonsay. I’ll just keep the letter and think of it. It’s the nicest letter I ever got, and full of information. It’s Charles Maclean, I’ll warrant you, but he did not use to call me Katherine—he just said Kate, and his face would be as red as anything. Fancy him going down with all hands! My heart is sore for him,” and the maid there and then transferred her devotion from the misty lad of her own imagination to Charles Maclean of Oronsay.
“You’ll help me to write him a letter back to-night,” she said.
“Yes, indeed, I’ll love to,” said the child wearily. But by the time the night came on, and Wanton Wully rang his curfew bell, and the rooks came clanging home to the tall trees of the forest, she was beyond all interest in life or love.
CHAPTER XIII.
Wanton Wully only briefly rang the morning bell, and gingerly, with tight-shut lips and deep nose breathings, as if its loud alarm could so be mitigated. Once before he had done it just as delicately—when the Earl was dying, and the bell-ringer, uncertain of his skill to toll, when the time came, with the right half-minute pauses, grieved the town and horrified the Castle by a rehearsal in the middle of a winter night. But no soul of mercy is in brazen bells that hang aloof from man in lofty steeples, and this one, swung ever so gently, sullenly boomed—boomed—boomed.
“Oh, to the devil wi’ ye!” said Wanton Wully, sweating with vexation. “Of all the senseless bells! A big, boss bluiter! I canna compel nor coax ye!” and he gave the rope one vicious tug that brought it, broken, round his ears; then went from the church into the sunny, silent, morning street, where life and the day suspended.