[Chapter XXVI]. A Subterranean Adventure.
It was little that I saw of my old school companions now that I had become a farm worker and spent my days in the fields. Sometimes, indeed, when I was tending my nibbling flock on the hillside, or driving them over to the distant pasture land by the margin of the loch of Harray, where the grass grew sweetest, I would chance to see Thora Kinlay on her way from Crua Breck to Stromness, and occasionally she would come to Lyndardy to see my sister Jessie. These were the summer days; but when the harvest season came round, and our crop of oats had to be gathered in, and, later still, our turnips stored away for the winter, I was then always busy with my work, and very seldom had opportunity of speaking with Thora, or of even seeing her from a distance.
And yet I had often a wish to be near her, and to show her what kindness or sympathy a lad can show to a girl whom he believes to have but little happiness in life. For the treatment that Thora received at her home was becoming day by day more severe.
With Tom she of course had no pursuits in common; he treated her with harshness, and as much as possible she avoided him. Even Mrs. Kinlay seemed to regard her with very scant affection, and as the girl grew in years her position at the farm became that of a servant rather than of a daughter. As for Carver Kinlay himself, he seldom spoke a gentle word to body or beast, and Thora had no exception from his severity. His continued ill treatment of her was, however, the more difficult to endure, since from simple abuse it often extended to actual brutality. She could never understand why her father and mother were so unkind to her, and to hear a few words of sympathy was always comforting.
One day late in the autumn I was tending our sheep on the banks above the cliffs of Gaulton, lying on the soft green turf with my hands under my chin, looking dreamily across the sea towards the blue outline of hills on the Scotch coast. I had just finished reading the last pages of Robinson Crusoe, and the book had fallen from my hand. Like my sheep, I was languid with the heat of the noonday sun, and the sight of the ships and the whirling seagulls was refreshing to me. The sound of the waves down below on the rocks was soothing.
Presently something dropped lightly on the grass before my eyes. It was a sprig of sweetbrier. I turned lazily and saw Thora standing by my side. Without speaking a word she sat down, and together we looked out upon the blue sea.
We remained silent for several moments without greeting each other. But at last I said:
"I was thinking maybe you'd be coming across to see me, Thora, one o' these bonnie days, now that we never meet at the school. It was good o' ye to come."
She turned to me with a smile, but I saw that her eyes were moistened with tears.
"What has gone wrong, Thora?" I continued. "Has Carver been ill using you again?"