There came into the sheiling a little, wiry old keeper with shaggy gray hair and keen black eyes. “Cosh bless me!” he said, petulantly, as he wrung the rain out of his bonnet, “you hef let the peats go out, Mr. Lavender, and who will tell when the rain will go off?”
“It can’t last long, Neil. It came on too suddenly for that. I thought we were going to get one fine day when we started this morning, but you don’t often manage that here, Neil.”
“Indeed, no, sir,” said Neil, who was not a native of Jura, and was as eager as any one to abuse the weather prevailing there: “it is a ferry bad place for the weather. If the Almichty were to tek the sun away a’ tagether, it would be days and weeks and days before you would find it oot. But it iss a good thing, sir, you will get the one stag before the mist came down; and he is not a stag, mirover, but a fine big hart, and a royal, too, and I hef not seen many finer in the Jura hills. Oh, yes, sir, when he wass crossing the burn I made out his points ferry well, and I wass saying to myself, ‘Now, if Mr. Lavender will get this one, it will be a grand day this day, and it will make up for many a wet day among the hills.’ ”
“They haven’t come back with the pony yet?” Lavender asked, laying down his gun and going to the door of the hut.
“Oh, no,” Neil said, following him. “It iss a long way to get the powny, and maybe they will stop at Mr. MacDougall’s to hef a dram. And Mr. MacDougall was saying to me yesterday that the ferry next time you wass shoot a royal he would hef the horns dressed and the head stuffed to make you a present, for he is ferry proud of the picture of Miss Margaret; and he will say to me many’s sa time that I wass to gif you the ferry best shooting, and not to be afraid of disturbing sa deer when you had a mind to go out. And I am not sure, sir, we will not get another stag to tek down with us yet, if the wind would carry away the mist, for the rain that is nearly on now; and as you are ferry wet, sir, already, it is no matter if we go down through the glen and cross the water to get the side of Ben Bheulah.”
“That is true enough, Neil, and I fancy the clouds are beginning to lift. And there they come with the pony.”
Neil directed his glass toward a small group that appeared to be coming up the side of the valley below them, and that was still at some considerable distance.
“Cosh bless me!” he cried, “what is that? There iss two strangers—oh yes, indeed, and mirover—and there is one of them on the pony.”
Lavender’s heart leaped within him. If they were strangers they were coming to see him, and how long was it since he had seen the face of any of his old friends and companions? It seemed to him years.
“Is it a man or a woman on the pony, Neil?” he asked hurriedly, with some wild fancy flashing through his brain. “Give me the glass.”