Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/663

Rh not at rest, neither inquired what their purpose might be, nor allowed any conjecture or suspicion concerning it to influence him in his preparations for departure. Not that he had found a new home. Indeed, he had not heartily set about searching for one — in part because, unconsciously to himself, he was buoyed up by the hope he read so clear in the face of his more trusting wife that Malcolm would come, to deliver them. His plan was to leave her and his children with certain friends at Port Gordon: he would not hear of going to the Partans to bring them into trouble. He would himself set out immediately after for the Lewis fishing. Few had gone from Scaurnose or Portlossie. The magnitude of the events that were about to take place, yet more the excitement and interest they occasioned, kept the most of the men at home, and they contented themselves with fishing the waters of the Moray Firth — not without notable success. But what was success with such a tyrant over them as the factor, threatening to harry their nests and turn the sea-birds and their young out of their heritage of rock and sand and shingle? They could not keep house on the waves any more than the gulls. Those who still held their religious assemblies in the cave called the Baillies' Barn met often, read and sang the comminatory Psalms more than any others, and prayed much against the wiles and force of their enemies both temporal and spiritual; while Mr. Crathie went every Sunday to church, grew redder in the nose and hotter in the temper.

Miss Horn was growing more and more uncomfortable concerning events, and dissatisfied with Malcolm. She had not for some time heard from him, and here was his most important duty unattended to — she would not yet say neglected — the well-being of his tenantry left in the hands of an unsympathetic, self-important underling, who was fast losing all the good sense he had once possessed! Were the life and history of all these brave fishermen and their wives and children to be postponed to the pampered feelings of one girl, and that because she was what she had no right to be — namely, his half-sister? said Miss Horn to herself, that bosom friend to whom some people, and those not the worst, say oftener what they do not mean than what they do. She had written to him within the last month a very hot letter indeed, which had afforded no end of amusement to Mrs. Catanach as she sat in his old lodging over the curiosityshop, but, I need hardly say, had not reached Malcolm; and now there was but one night and the best of all the fisher families would have nowhere to lie down. Miss Horn, with Joseph Mair, thought she did well to be angry with Malcolm.

The blind piper had been very restless all day. Questioned again and again by his Mistress Partan as to what was amiss with him, he had given her odd and evasive answers. Every few minutes he got up — even from cleaning her lamp — to go to the shore. He had not far to go to reach it — had but to cross the threshold, and take a few steps through the close, and he was on the road that ran along, the seafront of the village. On the one side were the cottages, scattered and huddled — on the other, the shore and ocean, wide outstretched. He would walk straight across the road until he felt the sand under his feet; there stand for a few moments facing the sea, and, with nostrils distended, breathing deep breaths of the air from the north-east, then turn and walk back to Meg Partan's kitchen and resume his ministration of light. These his sallies were so frequent, and his absences so short, that a more serene temper than hers might have been fretted by them. But there was something about his look and behavior that, while it perplexed, restrained her, and instead of breaking out upon him she eyed him curiously. She had found that it would not do to stare at him. The moment she began to do so he began to fidget, and turned his back to her. It had made her lose her temper for a moment, and declare aloud as her conviction that he was after all an impostor, and saw as well as any of them.

"She has told you so, Mistress Partan, one hundred thousand times," replied Duncan with an odd smile; "and perhaps she will pe see a little petter as any of you, no matter."

Thereupon she murmured to herself, "The cratur' 'ill be seem' something!" and with mingled awe and curiosity sought to lay some restraint upon her unwelcome observation of him.

Thus it went on the whole day, and as the evening approached he grew still more excited. The sun went down and the twilight began, and as the twilight deepened still his excitement grew. Straightway it seemed as if the whole Seaton had come to share in it. Men and women were all out of doors; and, late as it was when the sun set, to judge by the number of bare legs and feet that trotted in and out with a little red flash, with a dull patter-pat on earthen floor and hard road, and 