"Faith," answered Cleg, "ye should be braw an' thankfu', Warrior, for ye hae gotten what ye haena had for years, and had muckle need o'!"
"And what was that, ye de'il's buckie?" cried the angry ranger.
"A wash!" said Cleg Kelly, as he dropped down the city side of the wall, and sped home to his fortress.
ADVENTURE III.
WHY CLEG KELLY HATED HIS FATHER.
This is a bad, black tale; yet, for the sake of what comes after, it must be told.
Cleg Kelly had a father. He was a deeply pockmarked man who hated his son; but not so bitterly as his son hated him. Once on a time Cleg Kelly had also a mother, and it is the story of his mother which remains to tell. The story of most men is the story of their mother. They drank love or hatred, scorn or sympathy, at her breasts.
So it was with Cleg Kelly. So let the story of Isbel Kelly be told. How a woman may be murdered in this land and none swing for it! How a woman may be put to the torture every day and every night for years, and the voice of her crying mount (we must believe it) into the ears of the God of Sabaoth, yet no murmur reach her nearest neighbour upon the earth! Gladlier would I tell a merrier tale, save that it is ever best to get the worst over first, as medicine goes before barley-sugar.
Isbel Kelly had not always been Isbel Kelly. That is to say, she had not always been unhappy. There was a time when Timothy Kelly had not come into her life. Isbel Beattie was once a country girl. She had sung in the morn as she went afield to call the dappled kine, as glad a milkmaid as any in song or story. Her foot was the lightest in the dance at the "kirn," her hand the deftest at the spinning-wheel, her cheerful presence the most desired when the butter would not come. For the butter ever comes fastest for a good-tempered woman. A vixenish disposition only curdles the milk. That is why young men, landward but wise, so eagerly offer to help the maids at the butter-making. And no sweeter maiden than Isbel Beattie ever wore print gowns and lilted "O whistle and I'll come to ye, my lad," in all the parish of Ormiland—that is, till Timothy Kelly came, and Isbel sang no more.
Isbel Beattie was "fey," they said, and would take no advice. Lads tight and trig stood in rows to wait for her as she came out of the kirk, on fine Sabbath days when the lilac blossoms, white and purple, were out, and there was a drooping sprig in every spruce bachelor's coat. But Isbel passed them all by with a toss of her head. She could have married a rather stupid young farmer of the best intentions and unquestioned solvency had she so chosen. But Isbel was "fey," and would take counsel from neither maid nor matron.