"Do you hear this?" she cried, and her hand on Gilian's shoulder; "a vessel's sunk on the Ealan Dubh."

"I knew there would be tales to tell of this," said the General. "The wind came too close on the frost. I mind at Toulouse----"

"And Gilian was down at the Waterfoot and saw it all," she broke in upon the reminiscence.

"Was he, faith?" said the Cornal. "I like my tales at first hand. Tell us all about it, laddie; what vessel was she?"

He wheeled his chair about as he spoke, and roused himself to attention.

It was a curious group, too much like his old court-martial to be altogether to the boy's taste. For Miss Mary stood behind him, with an air of proud possession of him that was disquieting, and the two men seemed to expect from him some very exciting history indeed.

"Well, well!" said the Cornal, drumming with his fingers on his chair-arm impatiently, "you're in no great hurry with your budget. What vessel was it?"

"It was the _Jean_," said Gilian, bracing himself up for a plunge.

"Ye seem to be a wondrous lot mixed up with the fortunes of that particular ship," said the Cornal sourly. "What way did it happen?"

"She was in the mouth of the river," said Gilian, "and the spate of the river brought down the wooden bridge at Clonary. I saw it coming, and I cried to them, and Black Duncan cast off, leaving boat and tiller. She drove before the wind and went on Ealan Dubh, and sunk, and--that was all."

The story, as he told it, was as bald of interest as if it were a page from an old almanack.

"What came of the men?" said the Cornal. "The loss of the _Jean_ does not amount to muckle; there was not a plank of her first timbers left in her."

"They got ash.o.r.e in the small boat," said Gilian.

"Which was left behind, I think you said at first," said the Cornal, annoyed at some apparent link a missing in the chain of circ.u.mstance.

"If the boat was left behind as well as the tiller--I think you mentioned the tiller--how did they get ash.o.r.e in it? Did you see them get ash.o.r.e?"

"I saw Black Duncan and the girl, but not the others," answered Gilian, all at once forgetting that some caution was needed here.

Up more straightly sat the Cornal, and fixed him with a stern eye.

"Oh, ay!" said he; "she was in the story too, and you fancied you might hide her. I would not wonder now but you had been in the vessel yourself."

Gilian was abashed at his own inadvertence, but he hastened to explain that he was on the sh.o.r.e watching the vessel when she struck.

"But you were on the vessel some time?" said the Cornal, detecting some reservation.

"Oh, Colin, Colin, I wonder at you!" cried Miss Mary, now in arms for her favourite, and utterly heedless of the frown her brother threw at her for her interference. "You treat the boy as if he was a vagabond and--"

"--Vagabond or no vagabond," said the Cornal, "he was where he should not be. I'm wanting but the truth from him, and that, it seems, is not very easy to get."

"You are not just at all," she protested. Then she went over and whispered something in his ear. His whole look changed; where had been suspicion came something of open admiration, but he gave it no expression on his tongue.

"Take your time, Gilian," said he; "tell us how the small boat got to the vessel."

"The boy went down to the river mouth," said Gilian, "and--"

"--The boy?" said the Cornal. "Well, if you must be putting it that idiotic way, you must; anyway, we're waiting on the story."

"--The boy went down to the river mouth and got into the small boat.

She was half full of water and he baled her as well as he could with his bonnet, then pushed her off! She went up and down like a cork, and he was terrified. He thought when he went in first she would be heavy to row, but he found the lightness of her was the fearful thing. The wind slapped like a big open hand, and the water would scoop out on either side--"

"Take it easy, man, take it easy; slow march," said the Cornal. For Gilian had run into his narrative in one of his transports and the words could not come fast enough to his lips to keep up with his imagination.

His face was quivering with the emotions appropriate to the chronicle.

"--Then I put out the oar astern----"

"--Humph! _You_ did; that's a little more sensible way of putting it."

"I put the oar astern," said Gilian, never hearing the comment, but carried away by his illusion; "and the wind carried us up the way of Ealan Dubh. Sometimes the big waves would try to pull the oar from my hands, wanting fair play between their brothers and the ship. ('Havers!'

muttered the Cornal.) And the spindrift struck me in the eyes like hands full of sand. I thought I would never get to the vessel. I thought she would be upset every moment, and I could not keep from thinking of myself hanging on to the keel and my fingers slipping in weariness."

"A little less thinking and more speed with your boat would be welcome,"

said the Cornal impatiently. "I'm sick sorry for them, waiting there on a wreck with so slow a rescue coming to them."

Gilian hesitated, with his illusion shattered, and, all unnerved, broke for the second time into tears.

"Look at that!" cried Miss Mary pitifully, herself weeping; "you are frightening the poor laddie out of his wits," and she soothed Gilian with numerous Gaelic endearments.

"Tuts! never mind me," said the Cornal, rising and coming forward to clap the boy on the head for the very first time. "I think we can guess the rest of the story. Can we not guess the rest of the story, Dugald?"

The General sat bewildered, the only one out of the secret, into which Miss Mary's whisper to the Cornal has not brought him.

"I am not good at guessing," said he; "a man at my time likes everything straight forward." And there was a little irritation in his tone.

"It's only this, Dugald," said his brother, "that here's a pluckier young fellow than we thought, and good prospects yet for a soger in the family. I never gave Jock credit for discretion, but, faith, he seems to have gone with a keen eye to the market for once in his life! If it was not for Gilian here, Turner was wanting a daughter this day; we could hardly have hit on a finer revenge."

"Revenge!" said the General, a flash jumping to his eyes, then dying away. "I would not have said that, Colin; I would not have said that. It is the phrase of a rough, quarrelsome young soldier, and we are elders who should be long by with it."

"Anyhow," said the Cornal, "here's the makings of a hero." And he beamed almost with affection on Gilian, now in a stupor at the complexity his day's doings had brought him to.

The Paymaster's rattan sounded on the stair, and "Here's John," said his sister. "He'll be very pleased, I'm sure."

It was anything but a pleased man who entered the room, his face puffed and red and his eyes searching around for his boy. He pointed a shaking finger at him.

"What, in G.o.d's name, do you mean by this?" he asked vaguely.

"Don't speak to the boy in that fashion," said the Cornal in a surprising new paternal key. "If he has been in mischief he has got out of it by a touch of the valiant--"

"Valiant!" cried the Paymaster with a sneer. "He made an a.s.s of himself at the Waterfoot, and his stupidity would have let three or four people drown if Young Islay, a callant better than himself had not put out a boat and rescued them. The town's ringing with it."

The scar on the Cornal's face turned almost black. "Is that true that my brother says?" said he.

Gilian searched in a reeling head for some answer he could not find; his parched lips could not have uttered it, even if he had found it, so he nodded.

"Put me to my bed, somebody," said the General, breaking in suddenly on the shock of the moment, and staggering to one side a little as he spoke. "Put me to my bed, somebody. I am getting too old to understand!"