Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/417

Rh said Malcolm to himself. But to Florimel he replied, "If your ladyship should wish to keep Kelpie, you will have to keep me too, for not a creature else will she let near her."

"And, pray, tell me what use, then, can I make of such an animal?" said Florimel.

"Your ladyship, I should imagine, will want a groom to attend you when you are out on horseback, and the groom will want a horse; and here am I and Kelpie," answered Malcolm.

Florimel laughed. "I see," she said. "You contrive I shall have a horse nobody can manage but yourself." She rather liked the idea of a groom so mounted, and had too much well-justified faith in Malcolm to anticipate dangerous results.

"My lady," said Malcolm, appealing to her knowledge of his character to secure credit, for he was about to use his last means of persuasion — and as he spoke in his eagerness he relapsed into his mother-tongue — "My lady, did I ever tell ye a lee?"

"Certainly not, Malcolm, so far as I know. Indeed, I am certain you never did," answered Florimel, looking up at him in a dominant yet kindly way.

"Then," continued Malcolm, "I'll tell your ladyship something that you may find hard to believe, and yet is as true as that I loved your ladyship's father. Your ladyship knows he had a kindness for me?"

"I do know it," answered Florimel gently, moved by the tone of Malcolm's voice and the expression of his countenance.

"Then I make bold to tell your ladyship that on his death-bed your father desired me to do my best for you — took my word that I would be your ladyship's true servant."

"Is it so, indeed, Malcolm?" returned Florimel with a serious wonder in her tone, and looked him in the face with an earnest gaze. She had loved her father, and it sounded in her ears almost like a message from the tomb.

"It's as true as I stan' here, my leddy," said Malcolm.

Florimel was silent for a moment. Then she said, "How is it that only now you come to tell me?"

"Your father never desired me to tell you, my lady; only he never imagined you would want to part with me, I suppose. But when you did not care to keep me, and never said a word to me when you went away, I could not tell how to do as I had promised him. It wasn't that one hour I forgot his wish, but that I feared to presume; for if I should displease your ladyship my chance was gone. So I kept about Lossie House as long as I could, hoping to see my way to some plan or other. But when at length Mr. Craithie turned me away, what was I to do but come to your ladyship? And if your ladyship will let things be as before — in the way of service I mean — I canna doobt, my leddy, but it 'll be pleesant i' the sicht o' yer father whanever he may come to ken o' 't, my lady."

Florimel gave him a strange, half-startled look. Hardly more than once since her father's funeral had she heard him alluded to, and now this fisher-lad spoke of him as if he were still at Lossie House.

Malcolm understood the look. "Ye mean, my leddy — I ken what ye mean," he said. "I canna help it. For to lo'e onything is to ken 't immortal. He's livin' to me, my lady."

Florimel continued staring, and still said nothing.

I sometimes think that the present belief in mortality is nothing but the almost universal although unsuspected unbelief in immortality grown vocal and articulate.

But Malcolm gathered courage and went on. "An' what for no, my leddy?" he said, floundering no more in English, but soaring on the clumsy wings of his mother-dialect. "Didna he turn his face to the licht afore he dee'd? an' Him 'at rase frae the deid said 'at whaever believed in Him sud never dee. Sae we maun believe 'at he's livin', for gien we dinna believe what He says, what are we to believe, my leddy?"

Florimel continued yet a moment looking him fixedly in the face. The thought did arise that perhaps he had lost his reason, but she could not look at him thus and even imagine it. She remembered how strange he had always been, and for a moment had a glimmering idea that in this young man's friendship she possessed an incorruptible treasure. The calm, truthful, believing, almost for the moment enthusiastic, expression of the young fisherman's face wrought upon her with a strangely quieting influence. It was as if one spoke to her out of a region of existence of which she had never even heard, but in whose reality she was compelled to believe because of the sound of the voice that came from it.

Malcolm seldom made the mistake of stamping into the earth any seeds of truth he might cast on it: he knew when to say no more, and for a time neither spoke. But now, for all the coolness of her upper 