Part 11

The questioning, and yet remote, look in his eyes disconcerted all who looked therein. Old Mary Macbean, the birth-woman, confirmed the general suspicion. The child had no soul, she said: she knew the signs. The Christian baptism and the constant prayers and heed of the minister had preserved or perhaps won a soul to it: but the Cailliach had found her offspring in the woods, and had lured the soul from the body, and had prisoned it in some pine-tree in the depths of the forest. Two or three years passed, and Nial grew more and more deformed, more and more unchildlike. Silent, morose, he was never content save when wandering high on the mountain-slopes, or among the pines, or by Iolair Water as it came swirling down its steep bouldered channels from the Linn o' Mairg. In one thing alone he transcended all the other dwellers in the strath, young or old. He knew every flower and plant and tree, every bird, every creature, and the haunts of all and the life of all, with a surety of knowledge and a profound intimacy that at once astonished the hill-folk and confirmed them in their belief concerning him.

Then there came a summer when he was hardly ever seen at Mr. Morrison's house. He lived like an outcast, and was seldom met save by a mountain shepherd, or by the two highest hill-dwellers, the widow Anabal Gilchrist on Tornideon, and Torcall Cameron of Màm-Gorm on Wester Iolair. Fitting company, it was said; for Anabal and Torcall were not only voluntarily isolated from the folk of the strath, and held themselves strangely aloof, but were at bitter feud the one with the other.

That autumn a band of gypsies came to the strath. Some were brown-skinned and of foreign race; others were of northern blood and birth: a few were Celtic waifs, who had the Gaelic as their familiar speech. When the people of the dust, or the children of the wind, as the Highlanders call these vagrant folk--though commonly by the first designation--moved away again, traceless as is their wont, they took Nial with them. The winter passed, the spring, summer came again, and with the waning of autumn there was still no sign of the changeling. Year after year went by: and the story of Nial, or Nicor the Soulless, as he was often named, became vaguer and vaguer. It was nigh upon fifteen years later that he was seen once more in the strath. No one had heard of his return; no one knew of it except perhaps Torcall Cameron and his daughter Sorcha, or Anabal Gilchrist and her son Alan; when one day Murdo, Màm-Gorm's shepherd, came along the strath with the news that, as he strode through the forest at dawn, he had descried Nial--a ragged, fantastically deformed dwarf, aged in appearance as though he were one of "the other people" who lived in the heart of the hills. He had recognized him in a moment; but had not spoken with him because when he saw the creature it was stealing furtively from pine-bole to pine-bole, and sometimes tapping and listening intently, or muttering.

"And what would that be meaning?" asked every one to whom he told his tale, though there was not one who did not know the answer aforehand.

"It means that he was looking for his soul--for the soul that the Cailliach won out of him and hid for ever in a pine-tree, where neither he nor any one else would be like to find it."

"Until the tree falls, by the hand of man, or by the lightning or the wind," some one would add: but at this Murdo would only shake his head, and say that the _beansìth_ had for sure chosen a tree that neither wind nor flame could easily reach, and that when, after hundreds of years, it would be dying, it would die from within, and so kill the soul that wailed and wept or lay spellbound in misery within.

Thereafter Nial was occasionally seen. Weeks went by: summer passed, and autumn: and it was clear that he had come back to stay, though he never once drew near the house of old Mr. Morrison, nor even sought out his foster-father anywhere, nor held converse with any one save at Màm-Gorm.

He might have been dead or absent, for all the hill-folk knew, had it not been for Sorcha Cameron, who told in the strath, on the rare Sabbaths when she came down from Iolair, how her father gave occasional shelter and frequent food to Nial: and for the confirming of this by Murdo the shepherd, who said that the dwarf for the most part slept in the woods, but as the nights grew colder had begun to take haven either in a cave, or in an old hut on the hillside, or at Torcall Cameron's sheiling.

"And I doubt if he would cross the airidh at all," he added, "were it not for that little wild-fire of a lass, the bit girlie Oona, that Màm-Gorm loves wi' all his heart and soul, an' better than his bonnie Sorcha, for all he leaves her to flit about like a spunkie owre the fèith. For Nial will speak to Oona when he'll not even look at any one else: an' the lassie will be awa' wi' him, an' no man kens the way o't or the whitheraway o' thae twain."

And so that winter went, and then another spring, until the coming of May again: and Nial was once more one of the people of the strath, though hardly ever seen in the valley itself, except by the Linn o' Mairg or by the running water, and then only in the dusk of the morning, or in late gloamings.

II

The foreheads of the hills were bathed in light. Sheer above all rose the aureoled peaks of Ben Iolair and Tornideon. The lyric rapture of the morning made a sound of rejoicing. The bleating of the sheep was more rapid and less plaintive; and when the harsh screams of the great eagle, that had its eyrie far above where the mountain-shoulders almost touch, came echoing down the slopes, they were so mellowed at last as to fall through the leagues of sunsea in sharp cadences.

Mists veiled all the slopes, and hid the strath. The mountains seemed thus to be raimented in white and crowned with living gold. On the heights these mists moved with furtive undulations, with an upward wave which ever and again lifted a great mass of vapour columnarly toward the summits.

Beneath, they lay like suspended snow, or hung as palls: vast draperies of unrevealed day.

Even though the sunflood broke into these cohorts, and here seemed to suck with thirsty flaming tongues, here to plunge in golden billows among shallows of fading shadow, or here with a giant hand withdrew, rent, swept away, dissipated the ever dissolving, ever reforming battalions of rising mist--yet, as the morning advanced, the highland was still swathed.

Sometimes a boulder, at a vast height, would stand disclosed. The wet upon it, from granite boss and yellow lichen, shimmered as though the fairy-folk who weave the rainbows were there at work. A space below would give way to the sudden leap of the hill-wind; and with a rush the sunlight would stream forward. Pine after pine would rear a green banner, from which mist-veils would float, or rise and sway like flags of a marching army. Then the ranks would close in again. Flying columns would converge from right and left; the pine-banners would vanish, as though in the smoke of battle: a mighty swaying mass would sweep upward, absorb the sunbeams and splinter their gleaming lances, till boulder after boulder would be captured and the bastioned heights themselves be environed in the assault.

From the narrow loch at the end of the ravine, in the Pass of the Eagles, came the clamour of wildfowl. Now here, now there, as though a voice swam disembodied in that white sea, the double note of the cuckoo resounded. In a thick sob, the echo of the Linn o' Mairg came heavily at intervals. The muffled noise of Mairg Water crawled through the caverns of the mist.

Though the two mountain-buttresses at the head of the pass are so close that the legend of a stag having taken the intervening space at a bound is not wholly incredible, it was impossible for one hid in the mist on Maol-Gorm of Iolair to see any one or anything on Maol-dubh of Tornideon. But through the mist, here suffused with a pale golden light, was audible on both spurs the bleating of travelling sheep and the barking of a dog, with, now and again, the lowing of cows.

Suddenly a voice rang out, strong, clear, and blithe:

"_Mo rùn geal, dìleas, Dìleas, dìleas, Mo rùn geal, dìleas Nach till thunall!_"

Upon the spring of the last word came back from Iolair a voice as blithe and more sweet, the voice of a woman, with the lilt of a bird in it and all the joy of the sunshine:

"_I go where the sheep go, With the sheep are my feet: I go where the kye go, Their breath is so sweet: O lover who loves me, Art thou half so fleet? Where the sheep climb, the kye go, There shall we meet!_"

There was something so penetratingly sweet and joyous in the song that it stirred every bird on the hillside. The larks rose through the mist till they swam into the sunflood; the linties and shilfas and yellow-yites sent thrilling notes from gorse-bush to gorse-bush and from rowan to rowan. In the birk-shaws, the cries of the merles sounded like shrill flutes.

To and fro went the sweet voices. Now the man's on Tornideon would ring blithely, now the woman's on Iolair respond.

At last, as the cattle moved up the slopes, with the spreading sheep in advance, the shepherding voices fell further apart. Instinct led the kye to the sunlight, for all living things have their joy through the eyes.

"_Sorcha, Sorcha, Sorcha!_" came ringing through the mist: "_Sorcha-mo-ciatach-nio-nag!_"

"_Tha, Ailean-a-ghaolach!_" came back, with a ripple of laughter, the laughter of joy.[3]

[3] "Sorcha, my bonnie lassie," "Yes, Alan, my darling."

"Ah mo cailin geal, mo nighean donn, duit ciat mhor!"

"Duit cíat, no runach!"[4]

[4] "Ah, my fair one, my dark-haired lass, joy be on you!"--"And joy on you, my loved-in-secret."

_Infra_: Domnuill-dubh instead of Donncha-dubh: _i.e._ "should be called Black Donald instead of Black Duncan." It is a play upon words: for "Black Donald" is the Highland colloquialism for Satan.

"The sheep and the kye don't know love, Sorcha, or they would stay here till the mists go, and then we would see each other."

"Let us cry _deasiul_, and turn thrice sunways!"

"Ay; and meanwhile the beasts won't stand still! That evil beast of a bull, Donncha-dhu, who ought to be called Domnuill-dhu, is leading the way over the shoulder of Maol-Gorm. I must go, Sorcha-mo-ghraidh, or never a sheep will I find again; and as for the kye, they'll go smelling the four winds. _Sorcha! Sorcha!_ Can you hear?"

_Hear_ came back in a sweet falling echo, the more remote and aerial because of the mist.

"Come down to-night after the milking, and meet me at the Linn.... Sorcha! I'm going to see Mr. Morrison again!"

"'Tis no use, Alan. But I'll meet you at the Linn in the late gloaming."

"_Sorcha!_"

"_Alan!_"

Then, fainter and fainter, _Sorcha!_... _Alan!_ And at last no response came when Alan Gilchrist cried, with a prolonged echoing call, the name of his _ghaolaiche_, his heart's joy.

Soon thereafter the mists began to disperse.

* * * * *

Alan Gilchrist was at the pool, below the Linn o' Mairg, long before Sorcha Cameron came down from Màm-Gorm, the hill-farm on Iolair, by the circuitous but secluded way through the pine-glades.

For an hour or more he had lain there, dreaming. The first green breath of May was sweet upon the land: already a warmth as of midsummer was in the air. Pleasant it was to lie and dream by the running water.

When he had first reached the Mairg Water, after his fruitless journey to Inverglas, the village of Strath Iolair, he had thrown himself down among the fern, in the shadow of a boulder overlooking the Kelpie's Pool. Angry thoughts were in his mind, because of the minister's refusal to marry Sorcha and himself. It was a bitter thing, he thought, and unjust.

For that noontide, after he had driven the sheep on to the upper pastures upon Tornideon, and had got little Davie Niven, of Clachan-nan-Creag, to herd the sheep for him till moonrise, he had gone down by his home at Ardoch-Beag, itself high on the mountain-side--though he was little there during the summer-pasturing on the hills--to the strath, and so by the road to Inverglas. As he went through the village, there were many who looked at him with glad eyes: for wherever he went Alan found a smile of welcome for him, partly because of the beauty of his tall person and curly yellow hair, which made the strath women call him _Alan-aluinn_, Alan-fair-to-see, but more perhaps of his own smile that was so sweet out of his blue eyes, and for the grave yet winning way of him. His rival, Duncan Robertson, spoke of him contemptuously as "the man for women and children"; but, as others besides Duncan Robertson knew well, the women's-man and the children's-man could also be the best man's-man in the strath when occasion required.

This early afternoon, however, he had no wish to speak with any, and so hurried on, with a visit only to old Morag Niven, Davie the herd-laddie's grandmother. The small, douce, wizened old woman blessed him for what he brought her, and insisted on telling his fortune again by the lines in his hands. Laughingly he assured her she had told it to him so often that he was beginning not to believe in her predictions at all.

"That may be," she exclaimed, half-pettishly: "but it's this I'm telling you, Alan Mac Fergus, and what's more, it's not only the 'vision' of the love that's coming to you, but I've had the 'sight' on the lover too!"

The young man flushed, but answered carelessly:

"Good for you, Mùimé: but sure 'tis a risky thing to be seeing too much."

The old woman stared keenly at him for a moment, and then smiled.

"Well, and will this, then, be like what you have seen in your dreams, if ever a great _oganach_ like you dreams at all:

"_First_: She is beautiful as this May day.

"_Second_: She is tall and graceful as a young pine, and moves like a hind upon the hills, an' no flower sways in the wind more dainty-sweet than she.

"_Third_: She is fair of face, with all the soft skin of her like new milk. But her hair is dark, like the woods at dusk, and fragrant as they.

"_Fourth_: She lives at a mountain-farm, and all her heart is in a man's keeping, and all her beauty is his to love, and she is the tallest, and strongest, and sweetest lass in all the strath or in the big world beyond, and as beautiful as Roscrana that was wife to Fingal of old and mother of Ossian the blind bard--ay, good as Morna, which is the name of a woman that is beloved by all, and fair-to-see as Fiona, which is the name given of old to a bonnie maid, and lovely as Alona, than whom not woman could be lovelier.

"_Fifth_: And the man she loves is a poor misguidit wastrel who lives on a hill opposite to her, and I'm thinkin' his name will be Alan too, Alan this or Alan that.

"_Sixth_: 'Tis Himself only, praise be to Him, who knows who this Morna-Fiona-Alona may be: but in a dream I had, I'm thinkin' her name is Sorcha.

"_And Seventh_" (_this in a relapse from Gaellic into the Lowland tongue_): "I may be a silly auld wife, Alan my man, but I'm na sae blind as ta fail ta see through a split poke, for a' yer havers and blethers!"

With a shamefaced laugh Alan told her she was an old witch, and was sheer doited at that! Then, suddenly stooping and kissing her grey hair, he bade her good-bye, and went on his way.

But it was an ill-faring. Mr. Morrison, the tall, dark-faced minister, gray and lank as an old fox, though a godly man, would have nothing to say to the granting of his request.

"No, no, Alan Gilchrist," he added in parting, and in a not unkindly tone, "'tis no ill-will I am bearing you, my lad. But neither I nor any true minister of God will wed you and Sorcha Cameron, because of the feud between Torcall her father and Anabal your mother, and of the ban laid by him on her, and by her on you."

"So be it, Mr. Morrison; but as for me, I will be putting up with no banning from man or woman--no, not I, nor Sorcha either!"

"That is a wicked thing for you to say. But Sorcha is a good lass if you're not a good lad, and ... and ... the long and short of it is, I can't and won't wed you and her ... no, not though your mother and Sorcha's father were to die, and that I avow here solemnly, to the stones be it said."

And so it was that the young man went away wrathful and indignant. Yet, with every mile of his homeward journey he cared less and less. After all, what did it matter to him or Sorcha? Living remote upon the solitary hills, and rarely seeing the people of the strath, what did it avail whether or no he and she were "blessed" by Mr. Morrison? Well, he had done what he could.

He knew, of course, of the heavy weight of a parental ban; how, with some, it was a command as sacred and inviolable as those of God. But he did not know all that Mr. Morrison knew or surmised: wherein, indeed, was the deeper reason of the refusal.

"The child Oona, the child Oona," muttered the minister as he returned to his house; "why was she sent by Anabal, as soon as might be after birth, to Torcall Cameron? And why was he stricken blind, he there alone on Màm-Gorm, with Marsail, his wife, long dead, and only his daughter, Sorcha, sweet lass, beside him: stricken of God, blind and desolate for all his days thereafter? Alas, too, what of the doom of Fergus, her husband!"

But, lying by the running water of Mairg, Alan, at last oblivious of what had angered him and left in his mind a vague distress, pondered other and dearer things than these.

His heart was full of Sorcha. Already, as indeed for more than a month past, there was upon him that trance of love of which the old Celtic poets speak. Even now he went daily in a dream. Malveen, the widow-mother of Davie the herd-laddie, saw him often as he passed to and fro upon the hillside, as one in a vision, rapt, with shining eyes. At times, too, unknown of either, she caught a glimpse of Alan and Sorcha as they kept tryst in the gloamings. She mothered them with the longing woman's joy in love that had never been hers; they were her dear ones, though rare it was that she had word of either. The youth of youths, the maid of maids: to her at last something more than real and familiar, remote as they were in the glamour that was about them as the Mountain Lovers.

It was in the late gloaming, as she had promised, that Sorcha stole soundlessly from the forest, and was in Alan's arms almost before he knew that the tryst was kept.

III

Volumes of grey-black cloud swept up the flanks of Iolair. The breath of the southwest wind fell moist upon the land. All the wonderful colour of the highland seemed absorbed, as though a sponge had been passed over it. The after-gloom was enhanced by the silence which prevailed, for the thunderous weight in the air hushed the birds. Even the corbies sat sullenly on stone dyke or solitary quicken.

Up at the farm of Màm-Gorm the cloud-skirts went trailing by, sometimes enveloping the whole airidh in a clinging obscurity, and ever and again lifting high above it as though with a spasmodic leap.

A few yards from the door of the low whitewashed house Torcall Cameron stood, his gaunt figure, with its mass of tangled iron-grey hair, thrown into strong relief. Though he grasped a heavy oaken staff, his head was uncovered. From this, Nial inferred that "Màm-Gorm" was not going far: of which he was glad, for there was no one in the house, wild weather was nigh, and it was not a time for a blind man to wander among the hills, with the sheep-paths damp and slippery and often obliterated in the moist peat.

For, though Màm-Gorm thought he was alone, Nial had been his silent companion for an hour past. Sorcha, he knew, was up at the high sheiling on Iolair, with the cows: Oona, he imagined, was either wandering after the sheep with Murdo the shepherd, or was in the forest with Nial, or might be flitting here and there on the slopes like the wild fawn she was. As for Nial, Torcall Cameron rarely gave him a thought. The dwarf was like a faithful collie: to be fed, and given a kindly clap now and then, while his gratitude and devotion were taken for granted.

This rough, stern, blind, and stricken giant was a divine being to the poor child of the woods. In a vague way Nial thought of Màm-Gorm as God: like Màm-Gorm, God could provide, could at rare times be tender and pitiful, could be stern, morose, forbidding, terrible in wrath, of a swift avenging spirit, could strike, bruise, drive forth, kill.

When Sorcha had left at sunrise she knew that her father had the gloom upon him. In vain she looked here and there for Oona. The child had vanished. The platter in which she had her porridge was found under a bench near the rowan at the side of the house--where, indeed, Sorcha had looked for it, as she knew Oona's frequent way of carrying her food out-of-door, and eating it in a hollow below a rock, or under a tree, or even beneath the bench, like a little wild thing.

She had turned, after she had called Fionn and Donn, the dogs, and gone back to the house, and kissed her father. His blind eyes were upon her, though it was not through them that he knew she was troubled. He felt the sweet breath of her upon his brow. It was like the first day of spring when she kissed him, but he did not smile. Before she went away with the cows she found Nial, and bade him keep watch and ward, though without letting himself be seen.

But all morning and noon Torcall Cameron had sat brooding by the peats. At the turn of the day he rose, ate some of the bread and cold porridge which, with a jug of milk, Sorcha had set on the table beside him; then resumed his listless attitude by the fire, into the heart of which he stared with his blank, unwavering eyes.

* * * * *

Nial had grown tired, as a collie will tire if the kye drowse, chewing the cud.

He had wandered far from the airidh, and passed idly through the pines. No more of him might have been seen that day had he not heard Oona singing in the woods. It was in vain that he tried to come upon her. Either she had caught sight of him, and wilfully evaded his quest of her; or she was like a birdeen lured by the dancing sunrays. At the last, he thought of a song she was wont to sing. Across the midst of the high glade where he was, lay the bole of a half-fallen pine. Along this he clambered, till he reached the end boughs, and so out upon a feathery branch which swayed up and down with his weight, as a fir-spray when a cushat alights on it:

"Wild fawn, wild fawn, Hast seen the Green Lady? The merles are singing, The ferns are springing, The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn-- _Green Lady! Green Lady!_ The little leaves whisper from dusk to dawn-- Wild fawn, wild fawn!"

It was a harsh and wild music, that song of Oona on the lips of Nial. Brokenly, too, it came, between gasps of breath, for, as the branch swayed, so the dwarf's excitement grew, and he seized the pine-needles as though they were the mane of a horse, and he were riding from death for life:

"Wild fawn, wild fawn, Hast seen the Green Lady? The bird in the nest, And the child at the breast, They open wide eyes as she comes down the dawn-- The bonnie Green Lady, Bird and child make a whisper of music at dawn-- Wild fawn, wild fawn!"

Suddenly he ceased his fierce ride of the branches. Surely that clear call was from the throat of Oona? Yes, near she was, though invisible. Her song bubbled from her as sunlit water down a brae:

"Wild fawn, wild fawn, Dost thou flee the Green Lady? Her wild flowers will race thee, Her sunbeams will chase thee, Her laughter is singing aloud in the dawn-- O the Green Lady With yellow flowers strewing the ways of the dawn, Wild fawn, wild fawn!"