Fair day in the town, and cattle roved about the street, bellowing, the red and shaggy fellows of the moors, mourning in Gaelic accent and with mild large eyes pondering on the mysteries of change. Behind them went the children, beating them lightly on the flanks with hazel wands, imagining themselves travellers over the markets of the world, and others, the older ones, the bolder ones, went from shop to shop for farings, eating, as they went, the parley-man and carvey-cake of the Fair day. Farmers and shepherds gossiped and bargained on the footpaths or on the grass before the New Inns; the Abercrombie clattered with convivial glass and sometimes rose the chorus to a noisy ditty of Lorn. Old Brooks, with his academy shut for holiday, stood at the Church corner with a pocket full of halfpence for his bairns, and a little silver in his vest for the naughty ones he had thrashed with the ferule and grieved for. “To be good and clever is to be lucky enough,” he said; “I must be kind to my poor dunces.” Some of them, he saw, went with his gift straight to Marget Maclean’s. “Ah,” he said, smiling to himself, “they’re after the novelles! I wish Virgil was so much the favourite, or even the Grammarian.”

All in the pleasant sunshine the people walked abroad on the plain-stones; a piper of the company of Boboon the wanderer, with but two drones to his instrument, played the old rant of the clan as Duke George went past on a thoroughbred horse.

“Do you hear yon?” asked the Paymaster, opening the parlour window to let in that mountain strain his brother loved so truly.

The Cornal cocked an ear, drew down shaggy brows on his attention, and studied, musingly, the tune that hummed from the reeds below.

“‘Baile Inneraora’!” said he. “I wish it was ‘Bundle and Go.’ That’s the tune now for Colin Campbell, for old Colin Campbell, for poor Colin Campbell who once was young and wealthy. I’ve seen the day that rant would set something stirring here “—and he struck a bony hand upon his breast “Now there’s not a move”—and he searched still with fingers above his heart. “Not a move! There’s only a clod inside where once there was a bird.”

He stood with his head a little to the side, listening to the piper till the tune died, half accomplished, at a tavern door. Then the children and the bellowing kine had the world to themselves again. The sound of carriage wheels came from the Cross, and of the children calling loud for bridal bowl-money.

“What’s that?” asked the Cornal, waking from his reverie; and his brother put his head out at the window. He drew back at once with his face exceeding crimson.

“What is’t?” said the Cornal, seeing his hesitation.

“A honeymoon pair,” said the brother, and fumbled noisily with the newspaper he had in his hand.

“Poor creatures! And who is it? Though I never get over the door you’ll tell me nothing.”

The Paymaster answered shortly. “It’s the pair from Maam,” said he, and back to his paper again.

Up to his brow the Cornal put a trembling hand and seemed amazed and startled. Then he recollected, and a sad smile came to his visage. “Not a clod altogether yet!” said he, half to himself and half to his brother. “I felt the flutter of a wing. But it’s not your grief or mine this time, Jock; it’s your poor recruit’s.”

“He’s down in Miss Mary’s room, and that’s the place for the like of him.”

“Is it?” said the Cornal. “Dugald understood him best of any of us; he saw this coming, and I mind that he grieved for the fellow.”

“He’s grieving plenty for himself, and let him!” said the Paymaster, setting aside his journal. “Look what he dropped from his pocket this morning. Peggy thought it was mine and she took it to me. Mine! Fancy that! I’m jalousing she was making a joke of me.” He produced, as he spoke, a scrap of paper with some verses on it and handed it to his brother.

The Cornal held the document far from his failing eyes and perused the writing. It was the first of those heart-wrung fancies that went to the making of the volume that lies before me as I write—the familiar lament for the lost “Maid of the Moor” that shepherds still are singing on his native hills.

“A ballant!” said he, wondering, and with some contempt.

“That’s just what it is,” said his brother. “There was never the like broke out in this family before, I’m glad to say.”

The Cornal screwed his lips firmly. “It’s what I would call going altogether too far,” he said. “I’m feared your recruit will affront us again. A song, now! did you ever know the like of it? I’ll not put up with it! Did you say he was down with Miss Mary?”

“I saw her laying the corner of the table,” said the Paymaster, “and I’ll warrant it was not to feed herself at this time of day.”

The Cornal looked again at the verses, clearing his eyes with his hand, as if he might happily be mistaken. But no, there were the foolish lines, and some sentiments most unmanly frank of love and idleness among the moor and heather. He growled; he frowned below his shaggy brows: “Come down this instant and put an end to it,” said he.

“He’s with Mary,” his brother reminded him, hesitating.

“I don’t care a curse if he was with the Duke,” said the Cornal. “I’ll end this carry-on in an honest and industrious family.”

He led the way downstairs, the Paymaster following softly, both in their slippers. Noiselessly they pushed open the door of Miss Mary’s room and gazed within. She and her darling were looking over the window at the tumultuous crowd of children scrambling for Young Islay’s bowl-money scattered by Black Duncan in the golden syver sand. Miss Mary in that position could not but have her arm about his waist, and her hand unconsciously caressed the rough home-spun of his jacket. The brothers, unobserved, stood silent in the doorway.

“That’s the end of it!” said Gilian bitterly, as he came wholly into the room. His face, shone on by the sun that struck above the tall lands opposite from fiery clouds, was white to the lips. Miss Mary looked up into his eyes, mourning in her very inmost for his torture.

“I would say ‘fair wind to her,’ my dear, and a good riddance,” said she, and yet without conviction in her tone.

“I will say ‘fair wind’ readily,” he answered, “but I cannot be forgetting. I know she likes—she loves me still.”

Miss Mary showed her pity in her face, but nothing at all had she to say.

“You are not doubting it, are you?” he cried eagerly; and, still unnoticed in the doorway, the Paymaster grimaced his contempt, but his brother, touched by some influence inexplicable, put the poem in his pocket and delayed the entry.

“Are you doubting?” again cried the lad, determined on his answer but dreading a denial.

“It is not your bowl-money the bairns are gathering at the Cross,” said Miss Mary simply.

“True,” he acknowledged; “but she went because she must. She loves me still, I’m telling you; she has my heather at her heart!”

Miss Mary understood. She looked at her dreamer and stifled a sigh. Then she saw her brothers in the doorway, silent, and her hand went down and met his and fondled it for his assurance as on the day he first stood, the frightened stranger, on that floor, and she had sheltered his shyness in the folds of her bombazine gown.

THE END