Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-13.pdf/573

572 from above what it had itself generated of its own poverty from below. To the mind's eye of Malcolm, the little hump on the sand was heaved to the stars, higher than ever Roman tomb or Egyptian pyramid, in silent appeal to the sweet heavens, a dumb prayer for pity, a visible groan for the resurrection of the body. For a few minutes he sat as still as the prostrate laird.

But bethinking himself that his grandfather would not go to bed until he went back, also that the laird was in no danger, as the tide was now receding, he resolved to go and get the old man to bed, and then return. For somehow he felt in his heart that he ought not to leave him alone. He could not enter into his strife to aid him, or come near him in any closer way than watching by his side until his morning dawned, or at least the waters of his flood assuaged, yet what he could he must: he would wake with him in his conflict.

He rose and ran for the bored craig, through which lay the straight line to his abandoned boots.

As he approached the rock, he heard the voices of Lord Lossie and Lady Florimel, who, although the one had not yet verified her being, the other had almost ruined his, were nevertheless enjoying the same thing, the sweetness of the night, together. Not hearing Malcolm's approach, they went on talking, and as he was passing swiftly through the bore, he heard these words from the marquis—

"The world's an ill-baked cake, Flory, and all that a—woman, at least, can do, is to cut as large a piece of it as possible, for immediate use."

The remark being a general one, Malcolm cannot be much blamed if he stood with one foot lifted to hear Florimel's reply.

"If it 's an ill-baked one, papa," she returned, "I think it would be better to cut as small a piece of it as will serve for immediate use."

Malcolm was delighted with her answer, never thinking whether it came from her head or her heart, for the two were at one in himself.

As soon as he appeared on the other side of the rock, the marquis challenged him:

"Who goes there?" he said.

"Malcolm MacPhail, my lord."

"You rascal!" said his lordship, good-humoredly; "you've been listening!'

"No muckle, my lord. I hard but a word apiece. An' I maun say my leddy had the best o' the loagic."

"My leddy generally has, I suspect," laughed the marquis. "How long have you been in the rock there?"

"No ae meenute, my lord. I flang aff my butes to rin efter a freen', an' that's hoo ye didna hear me come up. I'm gaein' efter them noo, to gang home i' them. Guid-nicht, my lord. Guid-nicht, my leddy."

He turned and pursued his way; but Florimel's face glimmering through the night, went with him as he ran.

He told his grandfather how he had left the mad laird lying on his face on the sands between the bored craig and the rocks of the promontory, and said he would like to go back to him.

"He 'll pe hafing a fit, poor man!" said Duncan. "—Yes, my son, you must co to him, and do your pest for him. After such an honor as we'fe had this day, we mustn't pe forgetting our poor neighbors. Will you pe taking him a trop of uisgebeatha?"

"He taks naething o' that kin'," said Malcolm.

He could not tell him that the madman, as men called him, lay wrestling in prayer with the Father of lights. The old highlander was not irreverent, but the thing would have been unintelligible to him. He could readily have believed that the supposed lunatic might be favored beyond ordinary mortals; that at that very moment, lost in his fit, he might be rapt in a vision of the future—a wave of time, far off as yet from the souls of other men, even now rolling over his; but that a soul should seek after vital content by contact with its Maker, was an idea belonging to a region which, in the highlander's being, lay as yet an unwatered desert, an undiscovered land, whence even no faintest odor had been wafted