Colin approached the hearth and leaned his arm against the cheek of the chimney, staring into the glowing fire.
"It was some one on horseback," said he; "I heard the horse's hoofs on the stones just before you said 'What a night it is!'"
Sir Donald Leslie continued reading under the dim light of the lamp that hung above his head. Presently Elspeth Macdonald left the room on tiptoe, closing the door behind her. Colin applied himself to casting a new log upon the fire. Regardless of his grandfather, he began to whistle the lightsome air of a certain Jacobite song. Soon his whistling changed into the song itself and he chanted, half under his breath, the words—
"Oh, Charlie is my darling,
My darling, my darling,
Charlie is my darling,
The young Chevalier."
Suddenly a fluttering book flew past his curly head.
"How dare you? How dare you sing that accursed Jacobite song in my hearing?" cried his grandfather, red with rage. "Have I not told you a hundred times that I'll have none of your rebel rantings in my house?"
"I meant no harm, grandfather," said Colin, picking up the book and placing it on the corner of the table near the old man's elbow, "I was not thinking of the meaning of the words."
"May-be not, may-be not," returned Sir Donald, as he idly took up his book. Then, calming himself, he added more softly, shaking his head the while: "Colin, you are just the very reflection of my brother Neil. My father had exactly the same trouble with him in the Forty-Five that I have with you in these more peaceful days. You try to persuade me that you have no real sympathy with the wild adventurer you were now singing about. But[!-- [Pg 118] --] I'll be bound that if there were another rising (which Heaven forfend!) you'd on with the kilt and be off with another Stuart, just as Neil Leslie went off with the young Pretender—luckless loon that he was. But I'll not have it, look you. I'll have none of your Jacobite thoughts here; no, not even so much as the whistling of their inflammatory tunes!"