"And for mine too," said Gilian.

"That's not so blate, John Hielan'man!" said she again to herself. "And for yours too," she conceded, smiling. "When you find that I have taken it away from there you will know it is for your luck too."

"And it will be at your breast then?" he cried eagerly.

She laughed and blushed and laughed again, most sweetly and most merrily.

"It will be at--at--at my heart," she said.

"Ah," said he, in an instinct of fear that quelled his rapture; "ah, if they take you from me!"

"When I take your heather," said she, "it will be for ever at my heart."

Oh! then that savage moorland was Paradise for the dreamer, and he was a coquette's slave, fettered by a compliment. The afternoon pa.s.sed, for him at least, in a delirium of joy; she, though she never revealed it, was never at a moment's rest from her plans of escape from her folly.

Late in the afternoon she came to a lame conclusion.

"You will go down to the town to-night," she said, "and----"

"And you!" he cried, alarmed at the notion of severance.

"I'll stay here, of course. You'll tell Miss Mary that we--that I am here, and she will tell you what we--what I, must do."

"But--but--" he stammered, dubious of the plan.

"Of course I can go home again to Maam now," she broke in coldly, and she was vexed for the alarm and grief he showed at the alternative.

"I will go; I will go at once," he cried, but first he went far down on Blaraghour for wood for a fire to cheer her loneliness, and the dusk was down on them before he left her.

She gave him her hand at the door, a hand for once with helpless dependence in the clinging and the confidence of it, and he held it long without dissent from her. Never before had she seemed so beautiful or so affable, so necessary to his life. Her trials had paled the colour of her face and her eyes had a hint of tears. Over his shoulder she would now and then cast a glance of apprehension at the falling night and check a shudder of her frame.

"Good-night!" he said.

"Good-night!" she answered, and yet she did not loose her prisoned hand.

He sighed, and brought, in spite of her, an echo from her heart.

Then he drew her suddenly to his arms and scorched her face with lips of fire.

Nan released herself and fled within. The door closed; she dared not make her trial the more intense by seeing the night swallow up her only living link with the human world beyond the vague selvedge of the moor.

And Gilian, till the dawn came over Cruach-an-Lochain, walked by the side of Little Fox Loch, within view of the hut that held his heart.

CHAPTER x.x.xI--DEFIANCE

That there was some unusual agitation in the town Gilian could gather as soon as he had set foot within the Arches in the early morning. It was in the air, it was mustering many women at the well. There they stood in loud and lingering groups, their stoups running over extravagantly while they kept the tap running, unconscious what they were about Or they had a furtive aspect as they whispered in the closes, their ap.r.o.ns wrapping their folded arms. At the door of the New Inns, Mr. Spencer was laying forth a theory of abduction. He had had English experience, he knew life; for the first time since he had come to this place of poor happenings he had found something he could speak upon with authority and an audience to listen with respect What his theory was, Gilian might have heard fully as he pa.s.sed; but he was thinking of other things, and all that came to him were two or three words, and one of the errant sentences was seemingly about himself. That attracted all his attention.

He gave a glance at the people at the door--the inn-keeper, MacGibbon, with an unusual Kilmarnock bonnet on that seemed to have been donned in a hurry; Rixa, in a great perturbation, having just come out of a shandry-dan with which he had been driving up Glen Shira; Major Paul, and Wilson the writer. The inn-keeper, who was the first to see the lad, stopped his speech with confusion and reddened. They gave him a stare and a curt acknowledgment of his pa.s.sage of the time of day as the saying goes, looked after him as he pa.s.sed round Old Islay's corner, and found no words till he was out of sight.

"That puts an end to that notion, at any rate," said the Sheriff, almost pleased to find the Londoner in the wrong with his surmises. And the others smiled at Mr. Spencer as people do who told you so. Two minutes ago they were half inclined to give some credit to the plausibility of his reasoning.

The inn-keeper was visibly disturbed. "Dear me! I have been doing the lad an injustice after all; I could have sworn he was the man in it if it was anybody."

"Pooh!" said Rixa, "the Paymaster's boy! I would as soon expect it of Gillesbeg Aotram."

They went into the hostelry, and Gilian, halfway round the factor's corner, was well-nigh ridden down by Turner on a roan horse spattered on the breast and bridle with the foam of a hard morn's labour. He had scoured the countryside on every outward road, and come early at the dawn to the ferry-house and rapped wildly on the shutter. But nowhere were tidings of his daughter. Gilian felt a traitor to this man as he swept past, seeing nothing, with a face cruel and vengeful, the flanks of his horse streaked with crimson. The people shrunk back in their closes and their shop-doors as he pa.s.sed all covered upon with the fighting pa.s.sion that had been slumbering up the glen since ever he came home from the Peninsula.

It was the breakfast hour in the Paymaster's. Miss Mary was going in with the Book and had but time to whisper welcome to her boy on the step of the door, for the brothers waited and the clock was on the stroke.

Gilian had to follow her without a word of explanation. He was hungry; he welcomed the little respite the taking of food would give him from the telling of a confidence he felt ashamed to share with Miss Mary.

The Paymaster mumbled a blessing upon the vivours, then fed noisily, looking, when he looked at Gilian at all, but at the upper b.u.t.tons of his coat as if through him, and letting not so little as the edge of his gaze fall upon his face. That was a studious contempt, and Gilian knew it, and there were many considerations that made him feel no injury at it. But the Cornal's utter indifference--that sent his eye roaming unrecognising into Gilian's and away again without a spark of recognition--was painful. It would have been an insufferable meal, even in his hunger, but for Miss Mary's presence. The little lady would be smiling to him across the table without any provocation whenever her brothers' eyes were averted, and the faint perfume of a silk shawl she had about her shoulders endowed the air with an odour of domesticity, womanhood, maternity.

For a long time n.o.body spoke, and the pigeons came boldly to the sill of the open window and cooed.

At last said the Paymaster, as if he were resuming a conversation: "I met him out there on horseback; the hunt is still up, I'm thinking."

"Ay?" said the Cornal, as if he gripped the subject and waited the continuance of the narrative.

"He'll have ranged the country, I'm thinking," went on his brother. "I could not but be sorry for the man."

Miss Mary cast upon him a look he seldom got from her, of warmth more than kinship, but she had nothing to say; her voice was long dumb in that parlour where she loved and feared, a woman subjugate to a s.e.x far less worthy than her own and less courageous.

"Humph!" said the Cornal. He felt with nervous inquiry at his ragged chin, inspired for a second by old dreads of untidy morning parades.

"I had one consolation for my bachelordom in him," went on the younger brother, and then he paused confused.

"And what might that be?" asked the Cornal.

"It's that I'm never like to be in the same sc.r.a.pe with a child of mine," he answered, pretending a jocosity that sat ill on him. Then he looked at Miss Mary a little shamefaced for a speech so uncommonly confidential.

The Cornal opened his mouth as if he would laugh, but no sound came.

"I'm minding," said he, speaking slowly and in a m.u.f.fled accent he was beginning to have always; "I'm minding when that same, cast in your face by the gentleman himself, greatly put you about Jock, Jock, I mind you were angry with Turner on that score! And no child to have the same sorrows over! Well--well----" He broke short and for the first time let his eyes rest with any meaning on Gilian sitting at the indulgence of a good morning's appet.i.te.

Miss Mary put about the breakfast dishes with a great hurry to be finished and out of this explosive atmosphere.

"There was an odd rumour--" said the Paymaster. He paused a moment, looking at the inattentive youth opposite him. He saw no reason to stay his confidences, and the Cornal was waiting expectingly on him. "An odd rumour up the way; I heard it first from that gabbling man Spencer at the Inns. It was that a young gentleman of our acquaintance might have had a hand in the affair. I could not say at the first whether the notion vexed or pleased me, but I a.s.sured him of the stupidity of it."

He looked his brother in the eyes, and fixing his attention cunningly dropped a lid to indicate that the young gentleman was beside them.

The Cornal laughed, this time with a sound.

"Lord," he cried. "As if it was possible! You might go far in that quarter for anything of dare-deviltry so likeable. What's more, is the girl daft? Her mother had caprice enough, but to give her her due she took up with men of spirit There was my brother Dugald---- But this one, what did Dugald call him--aye! on his very death-bed? The dreamer, the dreamer! It will hold true! Him, indeed!" And he had no more words for his contempt.

All the time, however, Gilian was luckily more or less separate from his company by many miles of fancy, behind the hills among the lochs watching the uprising of Nan, sharing her loneliness, seeing her feet brush the dew from the scented gall. But the Cornal's allusion brought him to the parlour of his banishment, away from that dear presence. He listened now but said nothing. He feared his very accent would betray his secret.

"I'll tell you what it is," said the Cornal again, "whoever is with her will rue it; mind, I'm telling you. It's like mother like child."

"I'm glad," said the Paymaster, "I had nothing to do with the s.e.x of them." He puffed up as he spoke it; there was an irresistible comedy in the complacence of a man no woman was ever like to run after at his best. His sister looked at him; his brother chuckled noiselessly.