Kitabı oku: «The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories», sayfa 8

Jean made the pack of the coming father as routh as a magic cave. “That father of yours, darling, what a many wonderful things he will bring! I see him on the road. Stots, and cows with milk brimming from the udders, and a pet sheep for his caileag bheag; pretty gold and silver things, and brooches and shining stuff. That father of yours! Hurry, father, hurry! Jingling things, and wee fairy-men, and bells to ring for you, m’ eudail; pretty glasses and dishes to play with, and – O my darling! my darling!”

The bairn’s face lost the deep red spots; her little mouth slacked and fell; her eyes shut on the sight of the fine things her poor mother made for her out of a rich and willing mind.

Jean lifted her and put her on the bed, and ran with a gutting-knife to where Mally the dappled one lay at the back.

“I must be doing it!” said the woman, and she bled the brute as they do in the poor years in Lorn, and took the cogie of blood into the house to make a pudding of. The last handful of meal in the girael went into the pot with the warm blood, and she was stirring it with a spoon over the fire when the child cluttered at the throat.

Jean turned about with a cry, and at the minute a bagpipe’s lilting came over the glassy bay from Stron Point.

It was Clan Campbell back from the wars, the heroes! clouted about the heads and with stains on their red waistcoats that were thicker than wine makes. Dol’ Dubh played the old port, sweet and jaunty, at the head of them; the Cornal and the Major snuffed the herrings and said, “Here’s our own place, sure enough! See the smoke from our own peats! And the fine cock of the cap on Dunchuach!”

On the Lowlands road the town emptied itself, and the folks ran fast and furious – the boys first, the young women next, and the old folks peching behind. But if the town was up on the warriors soon, the Duke himself was before it. He saw the first of the Company from the Castle, and he was in the saddle for all his threescore, like a boy, and down like the wind to Boshang Gate.

“Halt!” cried the Cornal to his men, and Dol’ Dubh’s bag emptied itself with a grant.

“Tha sibh an sol! You are here, cousin,” said the Duke. “Proud am I to see you and our good lads. They did the old trick well!”

“They did that, MacCailein. The stuff’s aye to the fore.”

“It’s in the blood, man. We have’t in us, high or low. I have but one thing to vex me.”

“Name it, cousin.”

“Well ye ken, Cornai. It’s that I had not been with you to see the last crushing Clan Campbell may need to give to an asp’s head.”

“It was a good ploy missed, I’ll not deny.”

“What about the Tearlach one? Well plucked, they are telling me?”

“As foolish a lad as ever put tartan on hip, my lord! Frenchy, Frenchy, MacCailein! all outside and no cognisance. Yourself or any of your forebears at the head of his clans could have scoured all Albainn of Geordie’s Low-Country red-coats, and yet there were only six thousand true Gaels in all the fellow’s corps.”

“To read my letters, you would think the whole North was on fire!”

“A bantam’s crow, cousin. Clan Campbell itself could have thrawed the neck of it at any time up to Dunedin.”

“They made a fair stand, did they not?

“Uch! Poor eno’ – indeed it was not what you would call a coward’s tulzie either.”

“Well, well, that’s over, lads I I am proud of my clan and town. Slochd a Chubair gu bragh! Stack your guns in the arm-room, see your wives and bairns, and come up-by to the Castle for the heroes’ bite and sup. Who’s that with the white cockade in his bonnet? Is’t Rob Donn?”

“It is Rob Donn, cousin, with a bit of the ribbon contrivance for the diversion of his bairn. He tore it from the bonnet of the seventh man he put an end to.”

“There’s luck in the number, any way, though it was a dear plaything. March!” Down the road, with their friends hanging about them, and the boys carrying guns and knapsacks, went the men for the town, and Rob Donn left the company as it passed near his own door.

“Faith! ‘tis a poor enough home-coming, without wife or bairn to meet one,” said he, as he pushed in the door.

“Wife! wife!” he cried ben among the peat-reek, “there’s never a stot, but here’s the cockade for the little one!”

A FINE PAIR OF SHOES

THE beginnings of things are to be well considered – we have all a little of that art; but to end well and wisely is the gift of few. Hunters and herds on the corri and the hill – they are at the simple end of life, and ken the need for the task complete. The stag must be gralloched ere ye brag of him, the drove must be at the market ere ye say anything of the honesty of the glens ye pass through.

And what I like best about our own Gaels is their habit of bringing the work of a day or the work of a lifetime to what (in their own notions) is an end round and polished.

When our women die, they do it with something of a daintiness. Their dead-clothes are in the awmrie; I have seen them with the cakes toasted and the board set for their funerals. Travelling wide on unfriendly foreign roads, living by sword or wit, you know that our men, the poorest among them, with an empty sporran, kept the buttons of their duds of good silver, to pay, if need be, for something more than a gangrel’s burial. I like to think of him in story who, at his end in bed, made the folk trick him out in gallant style with tartan, targe, brogue, and bonnet, and the sword in his hand.

“A Gaelic gentleman,” said he, “should come to his journey’s end somewhat snod and well-put-on.” And his son played “Cha till mi tuilidh” (“I return no more”) on the bag-pipe by his firm command.

It is not even in this unco undertaking of Death that the polish must be put on the task (though poor’s the creature who dies clumsily); it should be the same with every task of a day.

And so Baldi Crom, making a fine pair of shoes on a day in Carnus, put the best skill of his fingers to every stitch. He had been working at them since the command came in the morning, and now it was the mouth of night, and on one of them the finest of the fine sewing was still to do. About the place there was nobody but the old man, for he was the last, in a way, of the old stock of Carnus (now a larach of low lintels, and the nettle over all); and he was without woman to put caschrom to his soil or hip to a creel of peats. And so he lived on the brae of Camus – that same far up and lonely in the long glen.

“They’ll be the best I ever put brog in,” said he, looking fondly at the fine work, the yellow thread standing out on the toes, patterned like a leaf of the whortleberry, set about with the serpent-work of the old crosses. Bite nor sap, kail nor crowdie, did he taste all day. Working in the light of his open door, he could see, if he had the notion, the whole glen rolled out before him, brimming with sun, crossed in the heat of the day by deer from Dalavich seeking for the woods of Loch Finne; the blue reek of the townships at the far end might have cheered him with the thought that life was in sight though his house was lonely. But crouped over the lap-stone, he made love to his work, heeding nothing else but the sewing of the fine pair of shoes.

It was the night before the town market. Droves of bellowing cattle – heifers, stots, and stirks – were going down the glen from Port Sonachan, cropping hurried mouthfuls by the way as they went and as the dogs would let them. And three Benderloch drovers came off the road and into Baldi Crom’s house, after the night was down on the glen and he had the cruisie lighted. They sat them down round the fire in the middle of the floor and ate bannocks and cheese.

“How’s thy family, ‘Illeasbuig?” said a drover, stirring up the peat as if he were at his own door-end. Down on the roadside the cattle, black and yellow, crushed the sappy grass and mourned in bellows for their lost fields.

“Splendid! splendid!” said the old man, double over his shoes, fondling them with the fingers of a mother on a first baby. The light was low in the cruisie, for the oil was well down, and the fire and the cruisie made a ring of light that could scarcely slip over the backs of the men sitting round the peats. A goat scratched his head but-and-ben against the wattles; in corners the darkness was brown and thick.

“I hear Cailen’s in the Low-country, but what has come of Tormaid?” said one, with knee-breeches, and hose of coarse worsted.

The old man gave a quick start, and the lapstone fell from his knees, the shoe he was at with it. He bent over and felt like a blind man for them on the floor before he made answer.

“Tormaid, my gallant son! Ye have not heard of him lately, then?”

“Never a word, ‘Illeasbuig. People on the going foot, like drovers, hear all the world’s gossip but the sgeuls of their own sgireachd. We have been far North since Martinmas: for us there must be many a story to tell ‘twixt here and Inneraora. A stout lad and pretty, Tormaid too, as ever went to the beginning of fortune! Where might he be enow?”

“Here and there, friend, here and there! A restless scamp, a wanderer, but with parts. Had he not the smart style at the game of camanachi? He was namely for it in many places.”

“As neat a player as ever took shinty in hand, master! I have the name of a fair player myself, but that much I’ll allow your lad. Is he to the West side, or farther off?”

“Farther off, friend. The pipes now – have you heard him as a player on the chanter?”

“As a piper, ‘Illeasbuig! His like was not in three shires. I have heard him at reel and march, but these were not his fancy: for him the piobaireachds that scholarly ones play!”

“My gallant boy!” said Baldi Crom, rubbing soft on the shoe with the palm of a hand.

“Once upon a time,” said the drover, “we were on our way to a Lowland Tryst. Down Glen Falloch a Soccach man and I heard him fill the nightfall with the ‘Bhoilich’ of Morar, with the brag of a whole clan in his warbling. He knew piping, the fellow with me, and the tear came to his cheek, thinking of the old days and the old ploys among the dirks and sgians.”

“There was never the beat of him,” said the shoemaker.

“Throughither a bit – ”

“But good, good at heart, man! With a better chance of fortune he might be holding his head to-day as high as the best of them.” The drovers looked at each other with a meaning that was not for the eyes of the old man; but he had small chance of seeing it, for he was throng at his fine pair of shoes.

“He had a name for many arts,” said the man with coarse hose, “but they were not the arts that give a lad settlement and put money in his purse.”

“The hot young head, man! He would have cured,” said the old man, sewing hard. “Think of it,” said he: “was ever a more humoursome fellow to walk a glen with? His songs, his stories, his fast jump at one’s meaning, and his trick of leaving all about him in a good key with themselves and him. Did ever one ask a Saxon shilling from his purse that it was not a cheery gift if the purse held it?”

“True, indeed!” said the drovers, eating bannocks and cheese.

“‘Twixt heaven and hell,” said the fellow with the coarse hose, “is but a spang. It’s so easy for some folk to deserve the one gate – so many their gifts – that the cock-sureness leaves them careless, and they wander into the wrong place.”

“You were speaking?” said Baldi, a little angry, though he heard but half.

“I said thy son was a fellow of many gifts,” answered the drover, in a confusion.

“He had no unfriends that I ken of,” said the old man, busy at the shoes; “young or old, man or woman.”

“Especially woman,” put in another drover, wrinkling at the eyes.

“I’ve had five sons: three in the King’s service, and one in the Low-country; here’s my young wanderer, and he was – he is – the jewel of them all!”

“You hear of him sometimes?”

“I heard of him and from him this very day,” said Baldi, busy at the brogues, white and drawn at the face and shaking at the lips. “I have worked at these shoes since morning, and little time is there to put bye on them, for at Inneraora town must they be before breakfast. Solomon Carrier, passing at three, gives me a cry and takes them.”

“They’re a fine pair of shoes.”

“Fine indeed; the finest of the fine! They’re for a particular one.”

“Duke John himself, perhaps?”

“No, man; a particular one, and were they not his in time a sorry man was I. They’re the best Baldi Crom ever put leather on.”

Till the turn of the night the drovers slept in their plaids, their cattle steaming out-by in the dark, munching the coarse grass selvedge, breathing heavy. And when the men and their beasts went in the darkness of the morning, Baldi Crom was still throng at his fine pair of shoes.

“I’m late, I’m surely late,” said he, toiling hard, but with no sloven-work, at his task.

The rain had come with the morning, and was threshing out-by on peat and thatch. Inside, the fire died, and the cruisie gave warnings that its oil was low, but Baldi Crom was too throng on the end of his task to notice. And at last his house dropped into darkness.

“Tormaid! Tormaid! my little hero – I’m sore feared you’ll die without shoes after all,” cried the old man, staggering to the door for daylight. He had the door but opened when he fell, a helpless lump, on the clay floor. The rain slanted on his grey hairs and spat on a fine shoe.

Far down the good long glen the drovers were tramping after their cattle, and the dun morning was just before them when they got to the gate of Inneraora. Here there was a great to-do, for the kind gallows stood stark before the Arches. Round about it were the townspeople waiting for a hanging.

“Who is’t, and what is’t for?” asked the drover with the knee-breeches and the coarse hose, pushing into the crowd.

“Tormaid, the son of the Carnus cobbler,” said a woman with a plaid over her head. “He killed a man in a brawl at Braleckan and raped his purse. Little enough to put tow to a pretty lad’s neck for, sure enough!” “Stand clear there!” cried a sharp voice, and the hangman and his friend came to the scaffold’s foot with a lad in front of them, his hands shackled behind his back. He was a strong straight lad, if anything overly dour in the look, and he wore a good coat and tiews, but neither boot nor bonnet. Under the beam he put back his shoulders with a jerk and looked at the folk below, then over at Dunchuach with the mist above the fort like smoke.

“They might have given him a pair of old baucbels, if no better, to die in,” said the drover in the woman’s ear.

“Ochanoch! and they might!” she said. “The darling! He lost his shoes in swimming Duglas Water to get clear, and they say he sent yesterday to his father for a pair, but they’re not come. Queer, indeed, is that, for ‘twas the brag of the folks he came of that they aye died with a good pair of shoon on their feet!”

CASTLE DARK

YOU know Castle Dark, women?

“Well, we know the same, just man and blind!”

And you, my lads?

“None better, Paruig Dali; morning and night, in the moon and in the full white day!”

Then of Castle Dark is my story. Is the cruisie alight on the rafter? More peats, little one, on the fire.

Once upon a time Castle Dark was a place of gentility and stirring days. You have heard it, – you know it; now it is like a deer’s skull in Wood Mamore, empty, eyeless, sounding to the whistling wind, but blackened instead of bleached in the threshing rains. When the day shines and the sun coaxes the drowsy mists from the levels by the river, that noble house that was brisks up and grey-whitens, minding maybe of merry times; the softest smirr of rain – and the scowl comes to corbie-stone and gable; black, black grow the stones of old ancient Castle Dark! Little one, m’ eudail, put the door to, and the sneck down.

“True for you, Paruig Dali; you know the place as if you had seen it.”

With eyes Paruig Dali has never seen it. But my friends tell me what they know, and beyond I have learned of myself. Up the river-side, many a time I pass to the place and over its low dykes, dry-stone, broken and crumbling to the heel. The moss is soft on the little roads, so narrow and so without end, winding round the land; the nettle cocks him right braggardly over the old home of bush and flower, poisoning the air. Where the lady dozed in her shady seat below the alder-tree, looking out between half-shut eyes at the proud Highlands – loch, glen, and mountain – is but a root rotten, and hacked by the woodman’s whittle. A tangle of wild wood, bracken, and weed smothers the rich gardens of Castle Dark.

“It is so, it is so, Paruig Dali, blind man, prince among splendid pipers and storied men!”

And to stand on the broad clanging steps that lifted from the hunting-road to the great door – that is a thinking man’s trial. To me, then, will be coming graveyard airs, yellow and vexatious, searching eager through my bones for this old man’s last weakness. “Thou sturdy dog!” will they be saying, “some day, some day! Look at this strong tower!” With an ear to the gap on the side of the empty ditch, I can hear the hollowness of the house rumbling with pains, racked at cabar and corner-stone, the thought and the song gone clean away. There is no window, then, that has not a complaint of its own; no loop-hole, no vent, no grassy chimney that the blind fellow cannot hear the pipe of. Straight into the heart’s core of Castle Dark looks the sun; the deep tolbooth of the old reivers and the bed-chamber of the maid are open wide to the night and to the star!

“Ochan! ochan!”

You that only ken the castle in common day or night and plain man’s weather have but little notion of its wonders. It was there, and black and hollow, ere ever you were born, or Paruig Dali. To see Castle Dark one must take the Blue Barge and venture on two trips.

“The Blue Barge, just man?”

That same. The birlinn ghorm, the galley of fairy Lorn. It lies in the sunlight on the bay, or the moonlight in certain weathers, and twelve of the handsomest sit on the seats with the oars in their hands, the red shirt bulging over the kilt-belt. At the stem of the barge is the chair of the visitor. Gentle or semple, ‘tis the same boat and crew, and the same cushioned chair, for all that make the jaunt to Castle Dark. My story is of two trips a man made by Barge Blue up the river to the white stairs.

He roved round the Lowlands road on a fine summer day, and out on the sands among the running salt threads of ebb tide. Among the shells, his eyes (as it might be) fell on the castle, and he had a notion to make the trip to it by a new road. Loudly he piped to sea. If loudly he piped, keen was the hearing, for yonder came the galley of fairy Lorn, the twelve red-shirts swinging merry at the oars and chanting a Skye iorram.

“Here’s an exploit!” said the man of my story. “There’s dignity in yon craft, or less than red-shirts was the wearing of the scamps who row her.”

The loch curled like a feather before her and frothed far behind, and soon her nose ran high on the sand. No word was said, but the first pair of rowers let out a carved plank, and the fellow of my story went over it and behind to the chair with the cushioned seat.

“To the castle?” asked the captain (as it might be), in the way of one who speaks a master, and Adventurer said, “Castle be it.” The barge was pushed off the sand, the oars fell on the water, and she curved into the river-mouth.

When Adventurer reached the bridge, it was before the time of war, and the country from end to end sat quiet, free, and honest. Our folks lived the clean out-by life of shepherds and early risers. Round these hills, the woods – the big green woods – were trembling with bird and beast, and the two glens were crowded with warm homes – every door open, and the cattle untethered on the hill. Summer found the folks like ourselves here, far up on sappy levels among the hills, but their sheilings more their own than ours are, with never a reiver nor a broken clan in all the land. Good stout roads and dry went down the passes to Castle Dark from all airts of Albainn – roads for knight and horse, but free and safe for the gentlest girl ever so lonely. By sea came gabberts of far France with wine and drink; by land the carriers brought rich cloths, spices, and Italian swords such as never were before or since. I made a small piobaireachd once on such a blade; if you put me over my pipes, I —

“Later the pipes, Paruig Dali, the best player in the world! to thy story this time.” Is the cup to my right or left? Blessings! The Castle and Barge were my story.

Up and on, then, under the bridge, went Adventurer and his company of twelve, and he trailed white fingers over the low side of the boat, the tide warm like new milk. Under the long arch he held up his head and whooped gaily, like the boy he was in another dream, and Mactallamh laughed back from behind the smell of lime-drop and crotal hanging to the stones. Then into the sun again, on the wide flat river, with the fields sloping down on each hand, nodding to the lip with rush and flower.

“Faith and here’s fortune!” said Adventurer. “Such a day for sailing and sights was never before.”

And the Blue Barge met nor stone nor stay, but ever the twelve fine lads swinging cheerily at the oars, till they came to the white stairs.

Off the boat and up the clanging steps went Adventurer as bold as Eachan, and the bushes waving soft on every side. The gravel crunched to his foot – the white round gravel of Cantyre; kennelled hounds cried warning from the ditch-side; round him were the scenting flowers and the feeling of the little roads winding so without end all about the garden.

“Queer is this!” said he, feeling the grass-edge with his feet and fingering the leaves. “Here, surely, is weed nor nettle, but the trim bush and the swinging rose. The gardeners have been busy in the gardens of old ancient Castle Dark!”

When he came to the ditch, the drawbrig was down. To the warm airs of the day the windows, high and low, were open; a look of throng life was over the house, and in-by some one plucked angrily at the strings of a harp. Reek rose lazy and blue over the chimneys, the smell of roasting meats and rich broths hung on the air.

Under a tree got Adventurer and deep in thought. And soon the harping came to an end. A girl stepped to the bridge and over into the garden. She took to the left by the butter-house and into My Lady’s Canter, lined with foreign trees. Along the wide far road came a man to meet her, good-shaped, in fine clothes, tartan trews fitting close on leg and haunch, and a leather jacket held at the middle by a crioslach.

Under his tree stood Adventurer as they passed back, and close beside him the courtier pushed the hilt of a small-sword to his back and took the woman in his arms.

“Then if ye must ken,” said he, shamefacedly, “I am for the road to-morrow.”

The girl – ripe and full, not over-tall, well balanced, her hair waved back from over brown eyes, gathered in a knot and breaking to a curl on the nape of the neck like a wave on the shell-white shore – got hot at the skin, and a foot drummed the gravel in an ill temper.

“For yon silly cause again?” she asked, her lips thinning over her teeth.

“For the old cause,” said he; “my father’s, my dead brothers’, my clan’s, ours for a hundred years. Do not lightly the cause, my dear; it may be your children’s yet.”

“You never go with my will,” quo’ the girl again. “Here am I, far from a household of cheery sisters, so lonely, so lonely! Oh! Morag and Aoirig, and the young ones! were I back among them from this brave tomb!”

“Tomb, sweet!”

“Tomb said I, and tomb is it!” cried the woman, in a storm. “Who is here to sing with me and comfort me in the misty mornings, to hearten me when you are at wood or hill? The dreary woods, the dreary, dreary shore – they give me the gloom! My God, what a grey day!”

(And yet, by my troth, ‘twas a sunny day by the feel of it, and the birds were chirming on every tree!)

The gentleman put his hands on the girl’s shoulder and looked deep in her eyes, thinking hard for a wee, and biting at his low lip in a nervous way.

“At night,” said he, “I speak to you of chase and the country-side’s gossip. We have sometimes neighbours in our house as now, – old Askaig’s goodwife and the Nun from Inishail – a good woman and pious.”

Up went the lady’s head, and she laughed bitter and long.

“My good husband,” she said, in a weary way, “you are like all that wear trews; you have never trained your tracking but to woodcraft, or else you had found the wild-kit in a woman’s heart.”

“There’s my love, girl, and I think you love – ”

“Tuts, man! I talked not of that. Love is – love, while it lasts, and ye brag of Askaig’s wife and the Nun (good Lord!), and the old harridans your cousins from Lochow!”

“‘Tis but a tirrivie of yours, my dear,” said the man, kindly, kissing her on the teeth, and she with her hands behind her back. “Tomorrow the saddle, Sir Claymore, and the south country! Hark ye, sweet, I’ll fetch back the most darling thing woman ever dreamt of.”

“What might his name be?” asked the girl, laughing, but still with a bitterness, and the two went round to the ditch-brig and in-by.

Adventurer heard the little fine airs coming from the west, coiling, full of sap-smell, crooning in turret and among the grassy gable-tops, and piping into the empty windows.

‘Twas a summer’s end when he went on the next jaunt, a hot night and hung with dripping stars. The loch crawled in from a black waste of sorrow and strange hills, and swished on the shore, trailing among the wreck with the hiss of fingers through ribbons of silk. My dears, my dears! the gloom of hidden seas in night and lonely places! ‘Tis that dauntens me. I will be standing sometimes at the night’s down-fall over above the bay, and hearkening to the grinding of the salt wash on rock and gravel, and never a sound of hope or merriment in all that weary song. You that have seeing may ken the meaning of it; never for Paruig Dali but wonder and the heavy heart!

“‘Tis our thought a thousand times, just man; we are the stour that wind and water make the clod of! You spoke of a second jaunt?”

As ye say. It was in winter; and the morning —

“Winter, said ye, Paruig Dali? ‘Twas summer and night before.”

Winter I said, and winter it was, before faoilteach, and the edge of the morning. The fellow of my sgeul, more than a twelvemonth older, went to the breast wall and cried on Barge Blue that’s ever waiting for the sailor who’s for sailing on fairy seas.

In she came, with her twelve red-shirts tugging bravely at the oars, and the nose of her ripping the salt bree. Out, too, the carved plank, made, I’ll warrant, by the Norwegian fellow who fashioned the Black Bed of MacArtair, and over it to the cushioned seat Adventurer!

The little waves blobbed and bubbled at the boat’s shoulders; she put under the arch and up the cold river to the white stairs.

It was the middle and bloodiest time of all our wars. The glens behind were harried, and their cattle were bellowing in strange fields. Widows grat on the brae-sides and starved with their bairns for the bere and oat that were burned. But Adventurer found a castle full of company, the rich scum of water-side lairds and Lowland gentry, dicing and drinking in the best hall of Castle Dark. Their lands were black, their homes levelled, or their way out of the country – if they were Lowland – was barred by jealous clans. So there they were, drinking the reddest and eating the fattest – a wanton crew, among them George Mor, namely for women and wine and gentlemanly sword-play.

They had been at the cartes after supper. Wine lay on the table in rings and rivers. The curtains were across the window, and the candles guttered in the sconces. Debauched airs flaffed abroad in the room. At the head of the board, with her hair falling out of the knot, the lady of the house dovered in her chair, her head against George Mor’s shoulder, and him sleeping fast with his chin on his vest. Two company girls from the house in the forest slept forward on the table, their heads on the thick of their arms, and on either hand of them the lairds and foreigners. Of the company but two were awake, playing at bord-dubh, small eyed, oozing with drink. But they slept by-and-by like the lave, and sleep had a hold of Castle Dark through and through.

Adventurer heard the cock crow away at the gean-tree park.

One of the girls, stirring in her sleep, touched a glass with her elbow, and it fell on its side, the dark wine splashing over the table, crawling to the edge, thudding in heavy drops on the shoe of the mistress of the house, who drew back her foot without waking. But her moving started up the man at her ear. He looked at her face, kissed her on the hair, and got to his feet with no noise. A sour smile curdled his face when he looked about the room, drunken and yellow-sick in the guttering candlelight.

Stretching himself, he made for the window and pulled back the curtain.

The mountain looked in on the wastrel company, with a black and blaming scowl – the mountain set in blackness at the foot, but its brow touching the first of a cold day.

Tree and bush stood like wraiths all about the garden, the river cried high and snell. George Mor turned and looked at the room and its sleeping company like corpses propped in chairs, in the light of candle and daybreak.

The smell of the drunken chamber fogged at the back of his throat. He laughed in a kind of bitter way, the lace shaking at his neck and wrist-bands: then his humour changed, and he rued the night and his merry life.

“I wish I was yont this cursed country,” said he to himself, shivering with cold. “‘Tis these folk lead me a pretty spring, and had George Mor better luck of his company he was a decent man. And yet – and yet – who’s George Mor to be better than his neighbours? As grow the fir-trees, some of them crooked and some of them straight, and we are the way the winds would have us!”

He was standing in the window yet, deep in the morning’s grief, running his fingers among his curls.