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LOVE'S HISTORY.
Love, the baby,
Toddled out to pluck a flower;
One said, "No, sir;" one said, "Maybe,
At the evening hour!"
Love, the boy,
Joined the boys and girls at play;
But he left them half his joy
Ere the close of day.
Love, the youth,
Roamed the country, lightning-laden;
But he hurt himself, and, sooth,
Many a man and maiden!
Love, the man,
Sought a service all about;
But he would not take their plan,
So they cast him out.
Love, the aged,
Walking, bowed, the shadeless miles,
Bead a volume many-paged,
Full of tears and smiles.
Love, the weary,
Tottered down the shelving road:
At its foot, lo, night the starry
Meeting him from God!
"Love, the holy!"
Sang a music in her dome,
Sang it softly, sang it slowly,
"--Love is coming home!"
Ere the week was out, there stood above the dead stag a growing
cairn, to this day called Carn a' cabrach mor. It took ten men with
levers to roll one of the boulders at its base. Men still cast
stones upon it as they pass.
The next morning came a note to the cottage, in which Sercombe
thanked the Macruadh for changing his mind, and said that, although
he was indeed glad to have secured such a splendid head, he would
certainly have stalked another deer, had he known the chief set such
store by the one in question.
It was handed to Alister as he sat at his second breakfast with his
mother and Ian: even in winter he was out of the house by six
o'clock, to set his men to work, and take his own share. He read to
the end of the first page with curling lip; the moment he turned the
leaf, he sprang from his seat with an exclamation that startled his
mother.
"The hound!--I beg my good dogs' pardon, one and all!" he cried.
"--Look at this, Ian! See what comes of taking your advice!"
"My dear fellow, I gave you no advice that had the least regard to
the consequence of following it! That was the one thing you had
nothing to do with."
"READA," insisted Alister, as he pranced about the room. "No, don't
read the letter; it's not worth, reading. Look at the paper in it."
Ian looked, and saw a cheque for ten pounds. He burst into loud
laughter.
"Poor Ruadh's horns! they're hardly so long as their owner's ears!"
he said.
"I told you so!" cried the chief.
"No, Alister! You never suspected such a donkey!"
"What is it all about?" asked the mother.
"The wretch who shot Ruadh," replied Alister, "--to whom I gave his
head, all to please Ian,--"
"Alister!" said Ian.
The chief understood, and retracted.
"--no, not to please Ian, but to do what Ian showed me was right:--I
believe it was my duty!--I hope it was!--here's the murdering fellow
sends me a cheque for ten pounds!--I told you, Ian, he offered me
ten pounds over the dead body!"
"I daresay the poor fellow was sorely puzzled what to do, and
appealed to everybody in the house for advice!"
"You take the cheque to represent the combined wisdom of the New
House?"
"You must have puzzled them all!" persisted Ian. "How could people
with no principle beyond that of keeping to a bargain, understand
you otherwise! First, you perform an action such persons think
degrading: you carry a fellow's bag for a shilling, and then himself
for nothing! Next, in the very fury of indignation with a man for
killing the finest stag in the country on your meadow, you carry him
home the head with your own hands! It all comes of that unlucky
divine motion of yours to do good that good may come! That shilling
of Mistress Conal's is at the root of it all!"
Ian laughed again, and right heartily. The chief was too angry to
enter into the humour of the thing.
"Upon my word, Ian, it is too bad of you! What ARE you laughing at?
It would become you better to tell me what I am to do! Am I free to
break the rascal's bones?"
"Assuredly not, after that affair with the bag!"
"Oh, damn the bag!--I beg your pardon, mother."
"Am I to believe my ears, Alister?"
"What does it matter, mother? What harm can it do the bag? I wished
no evil to any creature!"
"It was the more foolish."
"I grant it, mother. But you don't know what a relief it is
sometimes to swear a little!--You are quite wrong, Ian; it all comes
of giving him the head!"
"You wish you had not given it him?"
"No!" growled Alister, as from a pent volcano.
"You will break my ears, Alister!" cried the mother, unable to keep
from laughing at the wrath in which he went straining through the
room.
"Think of it," insisted Ian: "a man like could not think otherwise
without a revolution of his whole being to which the change of the
leopard's spots would he nothing.--What you meant, after all, was
not cordiality; it was only generosity; to which his response, his
countercheck friendly, was an order for ten pounds!--All is right
between you!"
"Now, really, Ian, you must not go on teasing your elder brother
so!" said the mother.
Alister laughed, and ceased fuming. "But I must answer the brute!"
he said. "What am I to say to him?"
"That you are much obliged," replied Ian, "and will have the cheque
framed and hung in the hall."
"Come, come! no more of that!"
"Well, then, let me answer the letter."
"That is just what I wanted!"
Ian sat down at his mother's table, and this is what he wrote.
"Dear sir,--My brother desires me to return the cheque which you
unhappily thought it right to send him. Humanity is subject to
mistake, but I am sorry for the individual who could so
misunderstand his courtesy. I have the honour to remain, sir, your
obedient servant, Ian Macruadh."
As Ian guessed, the matter had been openly discussed at the New
House; and the money was sent with the approval of all except the
two young ladies. They had seen the young men in circumstances more
favourable to the understanding of them by ordinary people.
"Why didn't the chief write himself?" said Christian.
"Oh," replied Sercombe, "his little brother had been to school, and
could write better!"
Christina and Mercy exchanged glances.
"I will tell you," Mercy said, "why Mr. lau answered the note: the
chief had done with you!"
"Or," suggested Christina, "the chief was in such a rage that he
would write nothing but a challenge."
"I wish to goodness he had! It would have given me the chance of
giving the clodhopper a lesson."
"For sending you the finest stag's head and horns in the country!"
remarked Mercy.
"I shot the stag! Perhaps you don't believe I shot him!"
"Indeed I do! No one else would have done it. The chief would have
died sooner!"
"I'm sick of your chief!" said Christian. "A pretty chief without a
penny to bless himself! A chief, and glad of the job of carrying a
carpet-bag! You'll be calling him MY LORD, next!"
"He may at least write BARONET after his name when he pleases,"
returned Mercy.
"Why don't he then? A likely story!"
"Because," answered Christina, "both his father and himself were
ashamed of how the first baronet got his title. It had to do with
the sale of a part of the property, and they counted the land the
clan's as well as the chief's. They regarded it as an act of
treachery to put the clan in the power of a stranger, and the chief
looks on the title as a brand of shame."
"I don't question the treachery," said Christian. "A highlander is
treacherous."
Christina had asked a friend in Glasgow to find out for her anything
known among the lawyers concerning the Macruadhs, and what she had
just recounted was a part of the information she had thereby
received.
Thenceforward silence covered the whole transaction. Sercombe
neither returned the head, sent an apology, nor recognized the gift.
That he had shot the stag was enough!
But these things wrought shaping the idea of the brothers in the
minds of the sisters, and they were beginning to feel a strange
confidence in them, such as they had never had in men before. A
curious little halo began to shimmer about the heads of the young
men in the picture-gallery of the girls' fancy. Not the less,
however, did they regard them as enthusiasts, unfitted to this
world, incapable of self-protection, too good to live--in a word,
unpractical! Because a man would live according to the laws of his
being as well as of his body, obeying simple, imperative, essential
human necessity, his fellows forsooth call him UNPRACTICAL! Of the
idiotic delusions of the children of this world, that of being
practical is one of the most ludicrous.
Here is a translation, made by Ian, of one of Alister's Gaelic
songs.
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