Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/407

Rh it. was her countenance and manner changed utterly. "Preserve 's a'! Ye're a sicht for sair e'en, Maister MacPhail!" she cried, holding out her hand, which the blind man took as if he saw as well as she. "Come awa' but the hoose. Wow! but ye're walcome!"

"She thanks your own self, Mistress Partan," said Duncan, as he followed her in; "and her heart will pe thanking you for ta coot welcome; and it will pe a long time since she 'll saw you howefer."

"Noo, noo," exclaimed Meg, stopping in the middle of her little kitchen as she was getting a chair for the old man, and turning upon him to revive on the first possible chance what had been a standing quarrel between them, "what can be the rizzon 'at gars ane like you, 'at never saw man or wuman i' yer lang life, the verra meenute ye open your mou' say its lang sin' ye saw me? A mensefu' body like you, Maister MacPhail, sud speyk mair to the p'int."

"Ton't you'll pe preaking her heart with ta one hand while you'll pe clapping her head with ta other," said the piper. "Ton't pe taking her into your house to pe telling her she can't see. Is it that old Tuncan is not a man as much as any woman in ta world, tat you'll pe telling her she can't see? I tell you she can see, and more tan you'll pe think. And I will tell it to you, tere iss a pape in this house, and tere wass pe none when Tuncan she'll co away."

"We a' ken ye hae the second sicht," said Mrs. Findlay, who had not expected such a reply; "an' it was only o' the first I spak. Haith! it wad be 'ill set o' me to anger ye the moment ye come back to yer ain. Sit ye doon there by the chimla-neuk till I mak ye a dish o' tay. Or maybe ye wad prefar a drap o' parritch an' milk? It's no muckle I hae to offer ye, but ye cudna be mair walcome."

As easily appeased as irritated, the old man sat down with a grateful, placid look, and while the tea was drawing, Mrs. Findlay, by judicious questions, gathered from him the story of his adventures.

Unable to rise above the disappointment and chagrin of finding that the boy he loved as his own soul, and had brought up as his own son, was actually the child of a Campbell woman, one of the race to which belonged the murderer of his people in Glenco, and which therefore he hated with an absolute passion of hatred — unable also to endure the terrible schism in his being occasioned by the conflict between horror at the Campbell blood and ineffaceable affection for the youth in whose veins it ran, and who so fully deserved all the love he had lavished upon him — he had concluded to rid himself of all the associations of place and people and event now grown so painful, to make his way back to his native Glenco, and there endure his humiliation as best he might, beheld of the mountains which had beheld the ruin of his race. He would end the few and miserable days of his pilgrimage amid the rushing of the old torrents and the calling of the old winds about the crags and precipices that had hung over his darksome yet blessed childhood. These were still his friends. But he had not gone many days' journey before a farmer found him on the road insensible and took him home. As he recovered, his longing after his boy Malcolm grew until it rose to agony, but he fought with his heart, and believed he had overcome it. The boy was a good boy, he said to himself; the boy had been to him as the son of his own heart; there was no fault to find with him or in him; he was as brave as he was kind, as sincere as he was clever, as strong as he was gentle; he could play on the bagpipes and very nearly talk Gaelic; but his mother was a Campbell, and for that there was no help. To be on loving terms with one in whose veins ran a single drop of the black pollution was a thing no MacDhonuill must dream of. He had lived a man of honor, and he would die a man of honor, hating the Campbells to their last generation. How should the bard of his clan ever talk to his own soul if he knew himself false to the name of his fathers? Hard fate for him. As if it were not enough that he had been doomed to save and rear a child of the brood abominable, he was yet further doomed, worst fate of all, to love the evil thing: he could not tear the lovely youth from his heart. But he could go farther and farther from him.

As soon as he was able he resumed his journey westward, and at length reached his native glen, the wildest spot in all the island. There he found indeed the rush of the torrents and the call of the winds unchanged, but when his soul cried out in its agonies, they went on with the same song that had soothed his childhood: for the heart of the suffering man they had no response. Days passed before he came upon a creature who remembered him, for more than twenty years were 