Macleod laughed a loud laugh.
"Why, Hamish, you want to become a famous person! You would carry off a popular actress, and have all the country ringing with the exploit! And would you have a piper, too, to drown her screams—just as Macdonald of Armadale did when he came with his men to South Uist and carried off Flora Macdonald's mother?"
"And was there ever a better marriage than that—as I have heard many a man of Skye say?" Hamish exclaimed, eagerly. "Oh yes, it is good for a woman to know that a man's will is stronger than a woman's will! And when we have the fine English madam caged up in the cabin, and we are coming away to the North again, she will not have so many fine airs, I think. And if the will cannot be broken, it is the neck that can be broken; and better that than that Sir Keith Macleod should have a shame put on him."
"Hamish, Hamish, how will you dare to go into the church at Salen next Sunday?" Macleod said; but he was now regarding the old man with a strange curiosity.
"Men were made before churches were thought of," Hamish said, curtly; and then Macleod laughed, and rode on.
The laugh soon died away from his face. Here was the stone bridge on which she used to lean to drop pebbles into the whirling clear water. Was there not some impression even yet of her soft warm arm on the velvet moss? And what had the voice of the streamlet told him in the days long ago—that the summer-time was made for happy lovers; that she was coming; that he should take her hand and show her the beautiful islands and the sunlit seas before the darkening skies of the winter came over them. And here was the summer sea; and moist, warm odors were in the larch-wood; and out there Ulva was shining green, and there was sunlight on the islands and on the rocks of Erisgeir. But she—where was she? Perhaps standing before a mirror; with a dress all of white; and trying how orange-blossoms would best lie in her soft brown hair. Her arms are uplifted to her head; she smiles: could not one suddenly seize her now by the waist and bear her off, with the smile changed to a blanched look of fear? The wild pirates have got her; the Rose-leaf is crushed in the cruel Northern hands; at last—at last—what is in the scabbard has been drawn, and declared, and she screams in her terror!
Then he fell to brooding again over Hamish's mad scheme. The fine English church of Hamish's imagination was no doubt a little stone building that a handful of sailors could carry at a rush. And of course the yacht must needs be close by; for there was no land in Hamish's mind that was out of sight of the salt-water. And what consideration would this old man have for delicate fancies and studies in moral science? The fine madam had been chosen to be the bride of Macleod of Dare; that was enough. If her will would not bend, it would have to be broken; that was the good old way. Was there ever a happier wife than the Lady of Armadale, who had been carried screaming downstairs in the night-time, and placed in her lover's boat, with the pipes playing a wild pibroch all the time?
Macleod was in the library that night when Hamish came to him with some papers. And just as the old man was about to leave, Macleod said to him,—
"Well, that was a pretty story you told me this morning, Hamish, about the carrying off the young English lady. And have you thought any more about it?"
"I have thought enough about it," Hamish said, in his native tongue.