When I saw the great, bare house—all the more forlorn for the lot of rantipole boys and girls, children of my poor Uncle Scottos—wanting the feeling of a home, that somehow seems absent without a woman about—for my sister Margaret was the same as adopted by Lady Jane Drummond—and my poor father waiting his end among his books, alone, year in year out, I first realized something of what my absence had meant to him, and of the effort it had cost him to send me away.
It was decided we should remain where we were for the present, until something definite was heard from the Prince, which might lead to further action. As it would only have courted danger, which I hold a man has no right to do, we put off our uniforms and soon were transformed by the Highland dress.
To me it was nothing, this change to a kilt and my own short hair, replacing the bag wig with a blue bonnet, but Father O'Rourke would fain have returned to the cassock he had left behind him on board the Swallow, and was most uncomfortable for many days until he learned to manage the kilt "with decency, if not with grace," as he said himself.
"Oh, Isaiah, Isaiah!" he groaned; "little did I dream you were preaching at me when you commanded, 'Uncover thy locks, make bare the leg' (Discooperi humerum, revela crura)," and he would pretend to cover up his great knees with his short kilt, to the delight of the children, who were hail-fellow-well-met with him from the hour of his arrival.
Many was the pleasant talk he had with my father, who was full of his remembrances of Rome and the College he so loved in the via delle Quattro Fontane. With him he stopped all his tomfooleries, and I was surprised to see what excellent reason he would discourse, and take a pleasure in it too. But it must not be taken he only amused himself and my father, for more than one weary journey did he make into the hills to minister to some wounded unfortunate there in hiding, sore needing the spiritual consolation he alone could carry. As the "Sagairt an t-Saighdeir" (the Soldier Priest) he was soon known and demanded far and near, and no request ever met with a refusal, no matter what danger might offer.
I may mention it was now the common people began to speak of me as "Spanish John," a name that has stuck fast to the present; indeed, such names serve a purpose useful enough where a whole country-side may have but one family name, and I can assure you, the McDonells never wanted for Johns. There were Red Johns, and Black Johns, and Fair Johns, and Big Johns, and Johns of every size and colour and deformity. Had they known a little more geographically, they might have come nearer the mark; but it is not for me to quarrel with the name they saw fit to fasten upon me, as most of them knew as little difference between Spain and Italy as between Mesopotamia and Timbuctoo.
The English were about at times, and more than once we had to take to the heather, and lie skulking for days together in the hills; but no harm came to Crowlin. Indeed, I thought but little of the ravages committed, though they have been made much of since, for waste many a mile of country had I helped to lay, and that a country like to the Garden of Eden compared with this tangle of heath and hill. It was only the fortune of war; and, after all, there was many a one who lived on without being disturbed, always ready to lend a hand to those less fortunate.
"MANY WAS THE PLEASANT TALK HE HAD WITH MY FATHER"