Page:Stevenson and Quiller-Couch - St Ives .djvu/384

 "A coarse moarnin'. Ye'll be from Leadburn, I'm thinkin'?" "Put it at Peebles," said I, making shift to pull the shawl close about my damning finery.

"Peebles!" he said reflectively. "I've ne'er ventured so far as Peebles. I've contemplated it! But I was none sure whether I would like it when I got there. See here: I recommend ye no to be lazin' ower the meat, gin ye'd drap in for the fun. A'm full late, mysel'?"

He passed on. What could it mean? We hearkened after his tread. Before it died away, I sprang and caught Flora by the hand.

"Listen ! Heavens above us, what is that?"

"It sounds to me like Gow's version of The Caledonian Hunt's Delight,on a brass band."

Jealous powers! Had Olympus conspired to ridicule our love, that we must exchange our parting vows to the public strains of The Caledonian Hunt's Delight, in Gow's version and a semitone flat? For three seconds Flora and I (in the words of a later British bard) looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent. Then she darted to the path, and gazed along it down the hill.

"We must run, Anne. There are more coming!"

We left the scattered relics of breakfast, and, taking hands, scurried along the path northwards. A few yards, and with a sharp turn it led us out of the cutting and upon the open hillside. And here we pulled up together with a gasp.

Right beneath us lay a green meadow, dotted with a crowd of two or three hundred people; and over the nucleus of this gathering, where it condensed into a black swarm, as of bees, there floated, not only the dispiriting music of The Caledonian Hunt's Delight, but an object of size and shape suggesting the Genie escaped from the