She looked at me in amazement--her eyes alight. "Surely ye dinna expect me to believe that? You'd only seen me aince--and hardly spoken to me. It couldna be me ye meant."
I made both her hands captive. "Mary, it was. I swear it."
She drew her hands sharply away: "Then you had nae richt tae tak' sic' a liberty. Ye hardly kent me,"--and she sprang up. "I maun fetch the kye," she cried as she hastened off.
I watched her drive them in; then she came for me and led me carefully back to the house. It seemed to me that there was some message tingling from her heart to mine through the arm with which she supported me--but she spoke no word.
As we drew near the door, her mother came out to meet us and catching sight of the forgotten chaplet, exclaimed: "Mary, whatever are ye daein' wi' a string o' daisies in your hair? Ye look like a play-actress."
Laughingly Mary removed the wreath. "It was only a bairn's ploy," she said; then to my great cheer, she slipped the flowers into her bosom.
"Come awa' in," said Jean: and she assisted me to my place by the fire.
An adventurous hen with a brood of chickens--little fluffy balls of gold and snow--had followed us, and with noisy duckings from the mother, the little creatures pecked and picked from the floor. Jean clapped her hands at them: "Shoo! ye wee Covenanters!" she cried.
I laughed, as I said, "Why do you call them Covenanters?"
"Weel," she replied, "I often think that chickens and the hill-men ha'e muckle in common. Ye see maist Covenanters tak' life awfu' seriously. They ha'e few pleasures frae the minute they come into the world. A kitten will lie in the sun playin' wi' a bit o' 'oo', and a wee bit puppy will chase its tail for half an hour on end: but wha ever saw a chicken playin'? They dinna ken the way. It's scrape, scrape, pick, pick, frae the day they crack the shell till the day their necks are wrung. And your Covenanter's muckle the same. He's so borne doon wi' the wecht o' life that he has nae time for its joys. They're guid men, I'm no' denyin', but I sometimes think they've got queer notions of God. They fear God, and some o' them are feart o' Him. There's a difference--a big difference. I aye like to think o' the Almichty as a kind-hearted Father: but to hear some even o' the best o' the hill-men talk o' Him, ye micht weel think He was a roarin' fury chasin' weans oot frae amang the young corn wi' a big stick. But there are others. Now godly Samuel Rutherford and your frien' Alexander Main were brimfu' o' the joy o' life. They kent the secret; and it warmed their hearts and made them what they were. I like to think o' the love of God spread ower the whole earth like a May mist on the moors--something that is warm, that has the dew in it and that comes wi' refreshment to puir and lowly things.