“Look at Boboon, Boboon, Boboon, the father of Lady Betty!” they cried, and John Fine shook his fist and cursed their families.
But there was no ease from the trouble in this fashion, so he got up and went behind the town, and threw himself under the large trees with an ear to the ground. Beside him the cattle crunched the sappy grass in so sweet and hearty mouthfuls that he could well wish he had the taste of nature himself, and they breathed great breaths of content. His keen ears could catch the hopping of beasts on the grass and the scratching of claws in the wood, he could hear the patter of little feet, and the birds above him scraping on the bark when they turned in their sleep. A townman would think the world slept, so great was the booming of quietness; but Boboon heard the song of the night, the bustle of the half world that thrives in shade and starshine.
Leaning now on an elbow, he let his eyes rove among the beeches, into the bossy tops, solemn and sedate, and the deep recesses that might be full of the little folk of fairy-land at their cantrips. And then farther back and above all was Dunchuach the stately, lifting its face, wood-bearded, to the stars!
“If a wind was here it was all I wanted,” said Boboon, and when he said it the wind came—a salty air from the sea. The whole country-side cooled and gave out fresh scents of grass and earth.
“O God! O God!” cried the wanderer, “here we are out-by, the beasts and the birds and the best of Boboon together! Here is the place for ease and the full heart.”
He up and ran into the town, and up to the captain's gate and in.
“Master,” he cried, 'it's the old story,—I must be taking the road for it; here's no rest for John Fine Macdonald!”
“But you'll leave the girl,” said the captain, who saw the old fever in the man's eyes; “I have taken a notion of her, and—”
“So be it! let her bide.”
“I'll marry her before the morn's out.”