He drew a deep sigh, fell heavily from my arms, rolled over on his side, and there – with the dead agent’s fixed and glassy eyes staring the frightful stare of death straight at him – lay cowld and still!
The sound of the futsteps came nearer and nearer. I started at my best speed for home. When I stepped into the house, the children had been put to bed, but the ould people were still talking by the dim light of the nearly burnt-out turf fire. I wished them good-night, plading fataigue, and reached my small room without their having an opportunity of noticing the state of alarm and agitation I was in.
The next day was an awful one for me. The violent death of the middleman was in every one’s mouth; but it was some relief to find no mention was made of the finding the corpse of poor O’Rourke.
I concluded the footsteps we had both heard were those of some of his associates, and that they had carried off and concealed his body.
I fulfilled O’Rourke’s wishes to the best of my power; saw Mary Sheean safe on boord ship, put her in the care of a dacent, middle-aged countrywoman of her own – and as I was assuring her, in O’Rourke’s words, that he would soon join her, all I had to say was cut short by the arrival of a parcel of peelers on boord, and the rason of their coming was the assassination of the agent had been discovered. O’Rourke was missing, and so suspicion fell on him – and there was a reward of two hundred pounds offered for him. It was thought possible he might be on boord the George Washington, and they had come, with a full description of his person, to sarch the ship.
The passengers – and it was a tadeous job – were all paraded – over three hundred in the steerage, let alone the cabin and the crew – every part of the ship was overhauled, but, as may naturally be supposed, no Miles O’Rourke was found.
I need scarcely tell yez, boys, what a relief that was to pretty Mary Sheean and myself.
When the police-officers had left the George Washington, she beckoned me to her, and whispered, “Thanks be to the Lord he was not on boord! though I know he would never take any man’s life; still, as he was out that night, it would have gone hard wid him. But, never fear, he’ll come by the next ship; and so I’ll wait and watch for him at New York. There’s his box – take care of it for him till we get there; and see, here’s the kay – mind that, too; maybe I’d lose it.”
I hadn’t the heart to undecaive her, so I answered her as cheerfully as I could, put the kay in my pocket and the box in my locker, and went about my business, wid a mighty heavy heart entirely.
All went on smoothly enough – but about the tenth day after we sailed, a report got afloat that the ship was haunted.
At first, the captain only laughed at such an absurd rumour; but finding the men believed it, and went unwillingly about their duty after dark, unless in couples, he set to work to find out who had been the first person to circulate the story.
After a deal of dodging and prevarication, it was traced to black Sam, the nigger cook.
The skipper called the ould darky up to the quarter-deck, and then, in the hearing of the cabin-passengers and most of the crew, the cook stated, afther we had been at say for a few days, that one night, as he was dozing in the caboose, he was startled by the appearance of a tall figure, with a face as pallid as death, noiselessly entering through the half-open door. The ghost – for such Sam was willing to swear it was, to use his own words, “on a stack of bibles as high as the main topmast” – had on a blood-stained shroud. It slowly approached the terror-stricken cook, who, fearing it intended to do him some bodily harrum, sprang from his bunk, and yell’d loudly for assistance. At the first sound of Sam’s voice, the lamp wint out of itself, and the ghost vanished.
Several sailors bore testimony to hearing the cook screaming for help – to the fearful state of fright he was in; and, as they could see no trace of the apparition Sam so minutely described, confirmed his report as to the sudden disappearance of the supernatural intruder.
This was the origin of the report; but, some days after, at least half a dozen seamen declared they had seen the self-same spectre gliding about the deck soon after midnight; and among them the boatswain, as brave a fellow as ever brandished a rope’s-end, declared that, upon waking suddenly one night, he saw the ghost sated on his locker, either imitating the action of a person ating voraciously, or making a series of such horribly ugly grimaces as would have done honour to Vanity Fair itself.
The whole affair was considered a good joke by the skipper and cabin-passengers; but those in the steerage and the ship’s crew placed implicit confidence in the cook’s narrative, corroborated and supported as it was by the sailors and the boatswain.
For my part, I had no faith in any worse sperrits than those than that come out of a bottle, or, maybe, a hogshead, and I lost no chance of trotting out the friends of the ghost.
But my turn had to come – and come it did, with a vingeance.
One night, boy-like, I had been braggin’ mightily loud about my courage. Ould Sam offered to bet his three days’ grog against mine I daren’t slape in the caboose he had deserted since he saw the sperrit that same night.
The wager was made, and I turned in, thinking what a laugh I should have against the ould darky when I handed him back his complement of rum.
I’ll do the ould nagur the justice to say, whin I accepted the wager, he offered to let me off; and, when he found I was determined to stick to it, he warned me, with a sigh that sounded like a groan, I had much better not; but anyway, happen what might, he hoped I would hould him harmless, and forgive him for my misfortune, if any should overtake me.
Wid a smile, bedad! I promised to do so, and, when the time came, turned into the bunk, and was soon fast aslape.
How long this lasted, I don’t know; but I was suddenly awoke by feeling a cowld, clammy hand passing over my face, and whin I opened my pay-pers, judge of my dread whin I saw the lank spectre I had been making a joke of standing by my side. Bedad! if Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was stuck in my throat, I couldn’t have felt more nearly choked. The crature, whatever it was, seemed as tall as the manemast, and as thin as a rasher of wind.
Every hair on my head sprang up, and my eyes seemed starting out of their sockets to meet those of the ghost, which were as big as saucers, and were fixed on mine with a look that seemed to go through and through them, and come out at the back of my head.
I tried to cry out, but I couldn’t; but if my tongue couldn’t chatter, my teeth could. If the big skeleton’s bones had been put in an empty cask, and well shuck up by a couple of strong min, they couldn’t have made a bigger noise than my jaws did.
I tried my hardest to remimber and reharse a prayer; but sorrow the taste of one would come into my head. Shure, everything dacent was frightened clane out of it. The only good thing I could call to mind was what my mother taught me to say before males. I thought that was better than nothing, so I whispered out, while I was shivering with the fear that was upon me, “For what I am going to recave, may the Lord make me truly thankful!”
Whin I had done, the ghost’s jaws moved, and, in a voice so hoarse and hollow, that it might have come from the bottom of a churchyard vault, half-moaned, half-groaned, “It’s grace you’re saying, you imperint young blaggard!”
“It is,” says I, trimbling all over. “That is, if it’s not displasing to your honour’s lordship.”
“That depinds,” says he, “upon what you are going to give me to ate after it.”
“Ate!” says I. “Why, thin, be good to us! can you ate?”
“Thry me,” says he, “and you’ll see whether I can or not; and make haste, for my time’s short! I must go down agin almost immadiately, and it isn’t the bit or sup I’ve had for near onto five days; and by rason of that, although I was a strong man once, it’s nearly gone I am!”
“Gone where?” I asked.
“To my grave,” says he.
“Bad cess to them, whoever they were, that ought to have done it, and didn’t! Haven’t they buried you yet?” I inquired.
“What would they bury me for?” says he.
“It’s customary with corpses where I come from,” I answered.
“I come from the same place,” says he. “They are bad enough there, in all conscience – more particularly, by the same token, the middlemen, tithe-proctors, and excisemen; but they didn’t bury live min in my time,” says he.
“But they did dead ones,” says I.
“Of coorse,” he assented. “And it’s you that will have to bury me mighty soon, unless – ”
“Unless what?” I demanded, in a bigger fright than ever at the thought of having to turn sexton to a sperrit.
“Well, unless you give me something to ate and drink,” says he.
“Take all there is in that locker,” says I, “and welcome – and be off out of this.”
“Don’t say it agin,” says he; and he opened the locker, and walked into the cook’s store like a shark that had been kaping a six weeks’ fast.
It was wonderful to see how the tears stood in the poor ghost’s eyes, how his jaws worked, and his throat swelled, as he swallowed mouthful after mouthful, the bigness of a big man’s fist. In a few minutes he turned to me, and said, “Take my blessing for this, Phil!”
I was startled to hear the ghost call me by my own name; but as I didn’t want to encourage him to kape on visiting terms, I thought it wouldn’t do to let him become too familiar, so I said, mighty stiff like, “Fill yourself, honest spirit, as much as you plase, but don’t be Phil-ing me – I don’t like such freedom on a short acquaintance – and you are no friend of mine,” says I.
“I was onct,” he replied.
“When?” asked I.
“When we were in the ould counthry,” says he. “When you tuck the purse from me for Mary Sheean, and promised to spake the last words I spoke to her.”
When I heard him say that, all my ould fears came over me fifty times stronger than ever, for hadn’t I broken my promise to O’Rourke? And I could see now, from the family likeness, this was his spirit; and instead of telling her all he said, only given half his message to poor Mary!
“Oh, be me sowl, good ghost!” says I.
“If I’m a ghost, I’m – ”
He made a long pause, so I spoke.
“Never mind what,” says I. “I don’t want to axe any post-mortem questions – ”
“Blest!” says he.
“That’s a great relief entirely,” says I. “But if you are blessed, I’m no fit company for you; so never mind your manners – don’t stay to bid me good-by, but go at onct!”
“You don’t want me to stay?” says he.
“I don’t,” I replied.
“You are more changed than I am,” he added.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” says I, “seeing the sort of company I am in.”
“Do you find fault with my company?” asked he.
“I do,” says I.
“And you wish me to go – down below again?”
“As soon as convanient,” says I.
“Well, Philip Donavan,” says he, “aither I or you are mortially changed.”
“It’s you,” says I. “My turn hasn’t come yet, but it will, all in good time.”
“Phil Donavan, do you know who you are spaking to?”
“Faix I do, to my sorrow!” says I; “to Miles O’Rourke’s ghost!”
“Miles O’Rourke’s ghost!” says he.
“Dickens a doubt of it!” says I. “Didn’t I see his body lying stark and dead, wid the blood welling out in gallons from his heart?”
“It wasn’t my heart, man alive – it was my shoulder; and shure it was the loss of that same that made me faint! Take a hould of my hand, if you doubt me! There’s little left of it but skin and bone; but it’s human still!”
It was moightily against my own wish, – and wid a cowld shiver running down my back, I did as he asked; but whin I did catch a hould of his fist, ghost or no ghost, he nearly made mine into a jelly wid the squeeze he gave it.
“Murther alive!” says I.
“Hould your whist! Remember, I’m a ghost!” says he.
“That’s thrue for you!” says I; “and you must continue one for the rest of the voyage, or maybe you will be trated as something worse!”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“A stowaway!” says I. “The skipper’s a good man enough; but if he discovers you, the way he’ll sarve you will be awful!”
“What will he do?” inquired he.
“Give you thirty-nine and land you!” says I.
“Land me where?”
“In the middle of the say!” says I.
“Murther!” says he.
“Moighty like it,” says I; “but he’ll do it!”
“I’d have to give up the ghost then!” says he.
“You would, in airnest!” I tould him. “But you mustn’t do it yet. Tell me how you come on boord?”
“I will,” says he. “When the boys found me, I had only a flesh wound, and had fainted from loss of blood. They got a car, and smuggled me down to Cork. I had scarcely set my fut on deck, as the peelers came rowing up the side. When the order was given to muster all hands, I made my way to the hould, and hid myself in the straw in an empty crate in the darkest corner of the place. The men searched pretty closely, but, as good luck would have it, they passed by my hiding-place.”
“You must go back to it. But now, Miles O’Rourke, answer me one question, and, as you are a man, answer it truly!”
“What is it?”
“Did you kill the agint?”
Wake as was O’Rourke, he stood grandly up; the ould honest, proud look came into his pale, wasted, but still handsome face; and pointing his long, thin finger to heaven, he said, in a deep, low tone, the earnestness of which I shall never forget to my dying day, “As I hope for justice some day here, and mercy hereafter, I did not!”
The hug I gave him would have broken many a strong man’s ribs, let alone a ghost’s; but I couldn’t help it. Bedad, if I had been a Roosian bear itself, that hug would have been a credit to me.
“What on earth am I to do?” asked Miles.
“Anything you plase,” says I, “whin you get there! But you are on the water now, worse luck – and that’s what bothers me. I wouldn’t give a thrawneen for your life, if you are discovered and recognised as Miles O’Rourke. There’s two hundred pounds reward offered for you, and the evidence seems pretty strong against you.”
“How would they know me?” says he. “You didn’t – and no wonder! Shure whin I came on boord I weighed fourteen stone; and now, ten stone in the one scale would pitch me up to the ceiling out of the other!”
“That’s thrue enough,” says I; “but you must bear in mind I tuck you for somebody else’s ghost, and didn’t make any allowance for the starving you have had, which, particularly as a stowaway, they would be sure to do. But now you must get back to the hould. I’ll contrive to drop half my rations and a trifle of grog down every day – see Mary, and consult with her. Shure, one woman’s wit is worth a dozen men’s in a case like this.”
“But – ” says he.
“Hush!” says I; “I hear futsteps. We are in a tight place now! There’s only one chance for us: I’m aslape, and you’re a ghost again!”
I fell back in my bunk, and began snoring like a porker wid the influenzey, just as the door opened, and the ould nagur poked in his black woolly mop.
Miles stood up to his full height, and raised his hands above his head, as if he was going to pounce upon him.
The poor cook, terrified beyond measure, fell down as flat as a flounder on his face, shrieking out at the top of his voice, “The ghost! – the ghost!”
O’Rourke stepped over his body, and hurried back to his hiding-place, unseen by the bewildered sailors.
I pretended to awake from a sound slape, and had the pleasure of hearing the toughest yarn that ever was spun, from Sam, in which he gave a soul-thrilling description of his encounter and hand-to-hand fight with the dreadful apparition.
I saw Mary the next morning, and broke the news of O’Rourke’s being on board as gently as I could. Our plans were soon laid. By the time we came to an anchor off New York, I contrived to drop, unseen by any one, a bundle, containing a suit of O’Rourke’s clothes, shaving materials, and a small looking-glass, down the hold.
When the passengers were paraded, the police-officer, who had remained on board, was too much engaged reading the following description of a supposed murderer to pay much attention to pretty Mary Sheean, or the poor, pale, stooping invalid she was supporting.
“Two hundred pounds reward for the apprehension of Miles O’Rourke. Description. – Florid face, curling brown hair, large and muscular limbs, finely developed chest. Height, about six feet; weight, rather under fourteen stone.”
Unlike as the half-starved wreck was to what he had been when he came on boord, I was in an agony of fear, until I saw Mary safely landed on the Battery, convulsively grasping the hand of the Ship’s Ghost.
“Yes, Paddy,” says the doctor, “that’s all very cheerful and entertaining, but decidedly unscientific, and you didn’t tell us how you got here.”
“Not he!” said Scudds, growling; “I thought it war going to be a real ghost.”
“I say, look at him!” said Bostock.
But nobody would stop to look at him; the men shuffling off once more – all but the doctor and myself – as that figure regularly melted away before our eyes – body, bones, clothes, everything; and at the end of five minutes there was nothing there but a little dust and some clear ice.
“It’s very wonderful!” the doctor said; “but it won’t do. We must find another, take him up carefully, and not thaw him out, but get him back to Hull in his ice, like a glass case.”
“Come back, lads; the Irishman’s gone,” I said; and they came back slowly; and we had to set up the tent in a fresh place, and, while we did it, the doctor found another body, and set us to work to get it out.
We got this one out capitally; the ice running like in a grain; and after six hours’ hard work, there lay the body, like an ornament in a glass paper-weight, and the doctor was delighted.
About two hours after, as we were all sitting together in the tent, we heard a sharp crack, and started; but the doctor said it was only the ice splitting with the heat of the sun; and so it proved, for five minutes after, in came a gaunt, weird-looking figure, with a strange stare in his glimmering, grey eyes; a wild toss in his long yellow hair and beard, both of which were dashed with patches of white, that looked as though the colour had changed by damp or mildew, or the bitter, searching cold. With such a dreamy, far-off gaze, he looked beyond the men who sat opposite, that they turned involuntarily and glanced over their shoulders, as though they expected to see something uncanny peering at them from behind. His long limbs and wiry frame, together with this strange, eerie expression, give him the air of some old viking or marauding Jute come to life again, and ready to recite a Norse rune, or to repeat a mystic saga of the deep, impenetrable North.
“Eh,” he said, “I was just thinkin’ a bit aboot the time when I went wi’ Captain Parry to his expedition.”
“Why, you weren’t with Captain Parry?” said the doctor.
“It’s aboot mysel’ I meant to tel ye, if ye’ll no’ be so clever wi’ contradictin’, and I say once more – (here he glowered into space, as though he saw something a long way off) – I was thinking about a man I met wi’ in about eighty-two degrees o’ latitude, when I was out wi’ Captain Parry on the third expedition of the Hecla, in 1827, at which time I was no more than forty year old.”
“Forty in 1827!” said the doctor. “Why, how old do you make yourself?”
“I’ll no mak’ mysel’ any age; but let us – no’ to be particular to a year or so – put me down at seventy-six or seventy-eight.”
“Ho! ho! ho!” laughed Scudds. “Why, man, you’re not above fifty.”
“Weel, if ye maun tell my story yersels – maybe ye’ll gi’e me leave to turn in, or light my pipe. I’ll no’ speak if ye’ve no wish to hear; but now I mind that I’m eighty-four year old last Thursday was a week, for I was four-and-twenty when I first had ten years’ sleep at Slievochan.”
The man’s eyes were fixed on space, as though he saw all that he was about to narrate going on in some strange way in the dim distance; and except an occasional grunt of interest, a deep-drawn breath, or the refilling and relighting of a pipe, all was still as he went on.
Chapter Four.
The Scotch Sailor’s Yarn
All about Slievochan, there was no lassie like Maggie Miller. Her father was a kind o’ overlooker to the Laird o’ Taggart, and so was reckoned weel-to-do. He was an elder o’ the kirk, too, mind ye, and had a farm o’ his ain – or what was called a farm, though it was no mair than might be a sma’ holding, with a kye or twa, and fowls and live-stock, and a bit o’ pasture, and eneugh to butter the bannocks and give a flavour to the parritch; so that he was called a weel-to-do man. I doubt if any of ye know Slievochan; and it’s no deal likely ye would, for it’s but a by-place where, down to the village, a few fisher-bodies live; and up beyant the hills an’ the cliff is the sma’ farmers and the laird’s folk, with just the kirk an’ the bit shops, and beyond that the kirk itself, weel out o’ sight o’ the little whusky shop; and beyant the widow Gillespie’s “Herrin’ Boat Inn,” where our fishers go at times, when they ha’e drunk out the ale at their own place, “The Coil,” or, maybe, tasted a runnel o’ hollands or brandy, that has no paid the exciseman, or got the King’s mark upo’ it.
For there’s strange ways amang the fisherfolk? and between them and the village is a wide difference; though you’ll mind that some o’ the bodies wi’ a boat o’ their ain and a cottage that’s as well keepit as they that was built by the laird himsel’ – and perhaps a store o’ claes and linen, and household goods, and a bit o’ siller put by at interest – may hold up their heads even wi’ men like Donald Miller, or may speer a word to the minister, or even ask him to taste a glass of eau-de-vie, when he gaes doon for pastoral veesitation. But, hoot! I’m clavering o’ the old place as it was above fifty years ago, when I was workin’ wi’ my uncle, Ivan Dhu, and my Aunt Tibby sat at the door, knit, knit, knitting, as she watched for our comin’ hame, and went in to make the parritch or skim the sheep’s-head broth, directly the jib o’ the Robert Bruce cocked over the ridge, and came tackin’ round the Ness o’ Slievochan, with uncle and me looking to the tackle and the gear, and my braw young cousin Rab at the tiller, wi’ his bonnie fair face an’ clustering curls, all blowing in the breeze that lifted us out o’ the surf, and sent us in with a whistle an’ a swirl, till the keel was ready to grate upon the beach. Rab was only eighteen, and we were great friends – though I was an orphan bairn, and Uncle Ivan had taken me and brought me up – so that his boy might have been jealous, but there was no jealousy in him. Uncle was a bachelor when I first went to him, a little raw lad, from Inverness, and I’d learnt to manage a boat and do fisherman’s work before Rab came, so that I grew to be a strapping lad, and was able to teach him in his turn. We loved each other weel, Rab and I; and quiet Auntie Tibbie used to sit knitting, and watch us both with a smile; and silent Uncle Ivan, with his great limbs, and dark face, and black locks – though he gave me to know that Rab would have the boat one day, if not a bigger one or two – would grip my hand and say, “Stick to the laddie, if aught suld happen, Sandy; for if ye’re no my son, ye’re next to him, and not much further frae my heart.”
Weel – but about Maggie Miller! Her father, you observe, was a man o’ some substance, and one trusted by the laird; so that the minister, and the bailie o’ the nearest town, an’ Mrs Gillespie, an’ the farmers all, ca’d him Mister; and my Uncle Ivan, who had his pounds away in the bank, ca’d him Mister, too, and would send me or Rab up with a creel o’ fish when we had a fine take, now and then; so that we were on a footing of visitors; and Maggie would stand and laugh and talk with me, and would gie Rab a blink, and a rose-blush, and a smile that made us all laugh taegither, till I used to wonder why it was that I wasn’t one of Maggie’s lovers – of which she had three already, not counting Rab, who was two years younger than she, and, of course, was lookin’ at her as a boy of eighteen always looks at a girl of twenty, too shy to speak, and too much in love to keep silent, and so talking to anybody who’ll listen to him, which in Rab’s case was me.
It wasn’t much in my mind that the boy loved her, but someway I’d got used to thinking of him and her at the same time; and many a time I’ve brought her home some trifle that I got from one of the coastmen – when they brought in a runlet or two of spirits, or lace, and tabacker – some French gewgaw or a handkerchief; and a good deal of my spare money went that way, for Uncle Ivan kept us pretty short of spending. It was like giving it to Rab, I thought; but yet I noticed once or twice that the boy looked serious when I showed him anything to give to Maggie, though I often asked him if he’d give it to her himself.
Maybe I’d ha’ been less easy if there had seemed to me more than a lad’s liking and a lassie’s pleasure, that meant little of lasting; for there were two men, if not three, hankering about Donald Miller’s house such times as they could make excuse to gae there, an’ one o’ them made believe often enough, for he was head keeper to the laird on some shootin’s that lay an hour’s stout walking from Slievaloch; an’ now it was a couple o’ rabbits for Mistress Miller, or a word or twa with Donald about the bit cover for game beyond the big house; but a’ the time he sat an’ smoked his tabacker, or took a sup o’ parritch or sowans, or a dish o’ herrin’, he’d have an eye to Maggie. An evil eye it was, too, for he was a lowerin’ carl, and ’twas said that he was more poacher than keeper; while some folk (and I was one) knew well that there was anither business brought him round toward Slievaloch. I shame to say it, but at that time – ye ken I speak of nigh sixty year ago – there was a smoke to be seen coming out frae a neuk i’ the hills at a wild place where there seemed to be naething but granite and bracken, and a shanty or two, for shelter to the men quarrying the granite. But it wasna frae the huts that the smoke rose. A good two mile awa’ there was a stone cottie, more like a cave, as though it had been burrowed out by wind and water, and got closed in wi’ boulders o’ rock, and covered with earth and broom, so that naebody could see how it led by a hole i’ the prong o’ the hill to just sic anither hut, and neither of the twa to be seen, except by goin’ o’er the hill-side. In this second one there was a fire smoulderin’ under a furnace, and a’ the place dark and smoky, and fu’ o’ the reek o’ sma’-still whisky, that had nae paid the king’s duty; an’ on a cowhide i’ the corner crouched auld Birnie, as blear and withered as a dried haddie, waitin’ for his wife to come trudgin’ back wi’ silver shillin’s and the empty leather bottle of twa gallons that she’d carried out full i’ the mornin’, under her lang, patched cloak, or hid awa’ in the loose kindlin’ wood at the bottom o’ the ricketin’ cart. It was suspected that Rory Smith, the keeper, was in league wi’ auld Birnie in this sma’ still, and that both he an’ the o’erseer o’ the quarrymen – a Welsh body o’ the name o’ Preece – knew weel enough what went wi’ the whisky. The two men were as unlike as a raven and an owl; Smith bein’ suspectit of half gipsy blood – though few men daur say so to his face, for he’d a heavy hand an’ a look in his face that boded mischief – while Preece was a slow, heavy-eyed, quiet body, short an’ square-built, and wi’ a still tongue an’ decent, careful ways, that yet kept his rough men in order, and got him speech of the tradefolk at the village where he lodged such times as he wasna’ up at the quarry.
These were the twa that went each in his own fashion to visit Donald Miller, and to cast an eye on Maggie; but neither o’ them could boast of much encouragement, least of all the keeper, who saw that the lassie shrank from him, and would hae no word to say when he tried to win her wi’ owches, an’ fairin’s, an’ even costlier gifs frae Edinbro’ itsel’, which she refused, sayin’ he maun keep them till he foun’ a lassie o’ his ain. Preece thought it mare prudent to wait till Smith was out o’ the way; an’ both of them, as I foun’ out after long years, were jealous o’ me for seemin’ to find mair favour wi’ Maggie, an’ carryin’ her the little presents that I told ye of, though never a word o’ love-making passed my lips; and perhaps baith o’ us thought more o’ my cousin Rab than o’ each other, though had it nae been for Rab, mind ye, I’ll no say that there’d been so clear a stage for the other twa if Maggie had been as winsome when I went to pay my respects to her parents, and laughed wi’ her at the door.
Weel, it was just on one o’ the occasions when I was on my way to the house, one evening in the airly summer, carrying with me a gaudy necklace o’ shining beads that I’d bought of a packman at Farmer Nicol’s shearin’, whaur I’d been the day before. I’d shown the toy to my step-mother, and uncle, and to Rab too, and had asked him to take it to Maggie himsel’; but he put me off, sayin’ that he’d rather not be amang them that was gi’en and gi’en sma’ things, for he’d gied her the best o’ himsel’ a’reedy. It was, maybe, to ponder over these words that I took the way up the steep bye-path that led up the beach, an’ so zig-zag along the cliff’s edge. There was a sort o’ neuk beside a turn o’ this path, where was a big stane, that one might sit upon, and so lose sight o’ everything but the distant sea an’ the beach below, to which the rocks shelved down, rugged an’ bare in places, an’ in others wi’ a toss an’ tangle o’ weed and brushwood, where there was a hollow in the face of the cliff.
There I sat, an’ sat, and felt all strange an’ drowsy, dreamin’ about Rab an’ Maggie, but not rightly thinking o’ anything; but holding in my hand the bauble that I had taken out o’ my pocket to look at. Night was comin’ down quick out at sea, and the mist was creepin’ over the hills, when I heard a man’s footstep on the path, and stood up to see who came.
No need to look twice; ’twas Rory Smith, the keeper, trampling quick and heavy, and with a heavy cudgel in his clenched hands – a murderous look in his eyes.