Part 6

The stranger had a merry laugh--not the roar of a Finne fisherman--and a curions way of hitching the shoulders, and the laugh and the shoulder-hitch were his answer for Marseli.

“You'll be a king in the sea--in your own place--or a prince maybe,” said the girl, twisting rushes in her hand.

The man gave a little start and got red at the face.

“Who in God's name said so?” asked he, looking over her shoulder deep into the little birch-wood, and then uneasy round about him.

“I guessed it,” said Marseli. “The kings of the land-fairies are by-ordinar big, and the dagger is ever on their hips.”

“Well, indeed,” said the little fellow, “to say I was king were a bravado, but I would not be just denying that I might be Prince.”

And that way their friendship began.

At the mouth of many nights when the fishing-boats were off at the fishing, or sometimes even by day when her father and her two brothers were chasing the signs of sea-pig and scart far down on Tarbert, Marseli would meet her fairy friend in a cunning place at the Black-water-foot, where the sea puts its arms well around a dainty waist of lost land. Here one can see Loch Finne from Ardno to Strathlachlan: in front lift the long lazy Cowal hills, and behind is Auchnabreac wood full of deer and birds. Nowadays the Duke has his road round about this cunning fine place, but then it lay forgotten among whins that never wanted bloom, and thick, soft, salty grass. Two plantings of tall trees kept the wind off, and the centre of it beaked in warm suns. It was like a garden standing out upon the sea, cut off from the throng road at all tides by a cluster of salt pools and an elbow of the Duglas Water.

Here the Sea-Fairy was always waiting for the girl, walking up and down in one or other of the tree clumps. He had doffed his fine clothes after their first meeting for plain ones, and came douce and soberly, but aye with a small sword on his thigh.

The girl knew the folly of it; but tomorrow was always to be the last of it, and every day brought new wonders to her. He fetched her rings once, of cunning make, studded with, stones that tickled the eye in a way the cairngorm and the Cromalt pearl could never come up to.

She would finger them as if they were the first blaeberries of a season and she was feared to spoil their bloom, and in a rapture the Sea-Fairy would watch the sparkle of eyes that were far before the jewels.

“Do your folk wear these?” she asked.

“Now and then,” he would say, “now and then. Ours is a strange family: to-day we may have the best and the richest that is going, to-morrow who so poor, without a dud to our backs and a mob crying for our heads?”

“_Ochanorie!_ They are the lovely rings any way.”

“They might be better; they would need to be much better, my dear, to be good enough for you.”

“For me!”

“They're yours--for a kiss or two,” and he put out an arm to wind round the girl's waist.

Marseli drew back and put up her chin and down her brows.

“'_Stad!_” she cried. “We ken the worth of fairy gifts in these parts. Your rings are, likely enough, but chuckie-stones if I could but see them. Take them back, I must be going home.”

The little man took the jewels with a hot face and a laugh.

“Troth,” he said, “and the same fal-fals have done a lover's business with more credit to them before this. There are dames in France who would give their souls for them--and the one they belong to.”

“You have travelled?” said Marseli. “Of course a sea-fairy-”

“Can travel as he likes. You are not far wrong, my dear. Well, well, I ken France! O France, France! round and about the cold world, where's your equal?”

His eyes filled with tears, and the broad-cloth on his breast heaved stormily, and Marseli saw that here was some sad thinking.

“Tell me of Fairydom,” said she, to change him off so dull a key.

“'Tis the same, the same. France and fairyland, 'tis the same, self-same, madame,” said the sea-prince, with a hand on his heart and a bow.

He started to tell her of rich and rolling fields, flat and juicy, waving to the wind; of country houses lost and drowned among flowers. “And all the roads lead one way,” said he, “to a great and sparkling town. Rain or shine, there is comfort, and there is the happy heart! The windows open on the laughing lanes, and the girls lean out and look after us, who prance by on our horses. There is the hollow hearty hoof-beat on the causey stones; in the halls the tables gleam with silver and gold; the round red apples roll over the platter among the slim-stemmed wine-beakers. It is the time of soft talk and the head full of gallant thoughts. Then there are the nights warm and soft, when the open doors let out the laughing and the gliding of silk-shooned feet, and the airs come in heavy with the scent of breckan and tree!”

“On my word,” said Marseli, “but it's like a girl's dream!”

“You may say it, black-eyes, _mo chridhe!_ The wonder is that folk can be found to live so far astray from it. Let me tell you of the castles.” And he told Marseli of women sighing at the harp for far-wandered ones, or sewing banners of gold. Trumpets and drums and the tall chevaliers going briskly by with the jingle of sword on heel on the highway to wars, every chevalier his love and a girl's hands warm upon his heart.

That night Marseli went early abed to wander in fairydom.

Next day the sea-gentleman had with him a curious harp that was not altogether a harp, and was hung over the neck by a ribbon.

“What hast here?” asked Marseli.

“A salve for a sore heart, lass! I can play on it some old tunes, and by the magic of it I'm back in my father's home and unafeared.”

He drew his white fingers over the strings and made a thin twittering of music sweeter than comes from the _clarsach_-strings, but foreign and uncanny. To Marseli it brought notions of far-off affairs, half sweet, half sad, like the edges of dreams and the moods that come on one in loneliness and strange places, and one tune he played was a tune she had heard the French traffickers sing in the bay in the slack seasons.

“Let me sing you a song,” said he, “all for yourself.”

“You are bard?” she said, with a pleased face.

He said nothing, but touched on the curious harp, and sang to the girl's eyes, to the spark of them and the dance of them and the deep thought lurking in their corners, to her lips crimson like the rowan and curled with pride, to the set of breast and shoulder, and the voice melting on the tongue.

It was all in the tune and the player's looks, for the words were fairy to the girl, but so plain the story, her face burned, and her eyes filled with a rare confusion.

“'Tis the enchantment of fairydom,” said she. “Am not I the _oinseach_ to listen? I'll warrant yon have sung the same to many a poor girl in all airts of the world?”

The little one laughed and up with the shoulders. “On my sword,” quo' he, “I could be content to sing to you and France for all my time. Wilt come with a poor Prince on a Prince's honour?”

He kissed her with hot lips; his breath was in her hair; enchantment fell on her like a plaid, but she tore herself away and ran home, his craving following at her heels.

That night Marseli's brothers came to knives with the French traffickers, and the morning saw the black-avised ones sailing out over-sea for home. Back to French Foreland they came no more, and Finne-side took to its own brewing for lack of the red wine of France.

That, too, was the last of the Sea-Fairy.

Marseli went to the Water-foot and waited, high tide and low; she cried the old child tune and she redded her hair, but never again the little man with the dainty clothes, and the sword upon his thigh.

SHUDDERMAN SOLDIER

BEYOND the Beannan is the Bog of the Fairy-Maid, and a stone-put farther is the knowe where Shudderman Soldier died in the snow. He was a half-wit who was wise enough in one thing, for he knew the heart of a maid, and the proof of it came in the poor year, when the glen gathered its com in boats, and the potato-shaws were black when they burst the ground, and the catechist's horse came home by Dhuloch-side to a widow that reckoned on no empty saddle. And this is the story.

“_Ho, ho, suas e!_” said the nor' wind, and the snow, and the black frost, as they galloped down Glenaora like a leash of strong dogs. It was there was the pretty business! The Salachary hills lost their sink and swell in the great drifts that swirled on them in the night; the dumb white swathes made a cold harvest on the flats of Kilmune; the frost gripped tight at the throats of the burns, and turned the Salmon-Leap to a stack of silver lances. A cold world it was, sure enough, at the mouth of day! The bloodshot sun looked over Ben Ime for a little, and that was the last of him. The sheep lay in the shoulder of the hill with the drift many a crook's-length above them, and the cock-of-the-mountain and the white grouse, driven on the blast, met death with a blind shock against the edge of the larch-wood.

Up from Lochow, where Kames looks over to Cruachan, and Cruachan cocks his grey cap against Lorn, a foolish lad came that day for a tryst that was made by a wanton maid unthinking. Half-way over the hill he slipped on the edge of a drift, and a sore wound in the side he got against a splinter of the blue stone of the Quey's Rock; but he pushed on, with the blood oozing through his cut vest. Yet, in spite of himself, he slept beyond the Bog of the Fairy-Maid. _Mo-thruaigh! mo-thruaigh!_

The Fairy-Maid came and covered him up close and warm with a white blanket that needs no posting, and sang the soft tune a man hears but once, and kissed him on the beard as he slept in the drift--and his name had been Ellar Ban.

Round by the king's good highroad came Solomon the carrier with his cart, and many a time he thought of turning between Carnus and Kilmune. But he was of the stuff of Clan Coll, and his mare was Proud Maisie. He had a boll of meal from Portinsherrich, from the son of a widow woman who was hungry in Inneraora and waiting for that same.

“No Ellar here yet!” he said at Kilmune when he asked, and they told him. “Then there's a story to tell, for if he's not here, he's not at Karnes, and his grave's on the grey mountain.”

Later came Luath, the collie of Ellar, slinking through the snow wet and weary, and without wind enough for barking. 'Twas as good as the man's ghost.

The shepherds came in from the fanks, and over from the curling at Carlonan, to go on a search.

Long Duncan of Drimfem, the slim swarthy champion, was there before them. He was a pretty man--the like never tied a shoe in Glenaora--and he was the real one who had Mairi's eye, which the dead fellow thought had the laugh only for him. But, lord! a young man with a good name with the shinty and the _clachneart_ has other things to think of than the whims of women, and Donacha never noticed.

“We'll go up and see about it--about him at once, Main,” he said, sick-sorry for the girl. All the rest stood round pitying, because her kists were said to be full of her own spinning for the day that was not to be.

Mairi took him to the other side of the peat-stack, and spoke with a red face.

“Is it any use your going till the snow's off the hill, Drimfem?” she said, biting at the corner of her brattie, and not looking the man in the face.

“_Dhia gleiih sinn!_ it's who knows when the white'll be off the snouts of these hills, and we can't wait till---- I thought it would ease your mind.” And Donacha looked at the maid stupid enough. For a woman with her heart on the hill, cold, she was mighty queer on it.

“Yes, yes; but it's dangerous for you to go up, and the showers so heavy yet. It's not twenty finger-lengths you can see in front of you, and you might go into the bog.”

“Is't the bog I would be thinking of, Main? It's little fear there is of that, for here is the man that has been on Salachary when the mist was like smoke, as well as when the spittle froze in my mouth. Oh, I'm not the one to talk; but where's the other like me?”

Mairi choked. “But, Dona---- but, Drimfem, it's dead Ellar must be; and--and--you have a widow mother to mind.” Donacha looked blank at the maid. She had the sweet face, yon curve of the lip, and the soft turn of the neck of all Arthur's children, ripe of the cheek, with tossed hair like a fairy of the lake, and the quirk of the eye that never left a plain man at ease if he was under the threescore. There were knives out in the glen for many a worse one.

It was the lee of the peat-stack they stood in, and the falling flakes left for a while without a shroud a drop of crimson at the girl's feet. She was gripping tight at her left wrist under the cover of her apron till the nails cut the flesh. There was the stress of a dumb bard's sorrow in her face; her heart was in her eyes, if there had been a woman to see it; but Drimfern missed it, for he had no mind of the dance at the last Old New Year, or the ploy at the sheep-dipping, or the nuts they cracked on the hot peats at Hallowe'en.

The girl saw he was bound to go. He was as restless as if the snow was a swarm of _seangans_. She had not two drops of blood in her lips, but she tried to laugh as she took something out from a pocket and half held it out to him. He did not understand at first, for if he was smart on the _caman_ ball, 'twas slow in the ways of women he was.

“It's daft I am. I don't know what it is, Donacha, but I had a dream that wasn't canny last night, and I'm afraid, I'm afraid,” said the poor girl. “I was going to give you----”

Drimfern could not get the meaning of the laugh, strained as it was. He thought the maid's reason was wandering.

She had, whatever it was--a square piece of cloth of a woman's sewing--into the man's hand before he knew what she would be after; and when his fingers closed on it, she would have given a king's gold to get it back. But the Tullich lads, and the Paymaster's shepherd from Lecknamban, with Dol' Splendid and Francie Ro, in their plaids, and with their crooks, came round the gable-end. Luath, who knew Glenaora as well as he knew Creag Cranda, was with them, and away they went for the hill. All that Donacha the blind one said, as he put the sewing in his pocket to look at again, was, “Blessing with thee!” for all the world like a man for the fair.

Still the nor' wind, and the snow, and the dark frost said “_Suas e!_” running down the glen like the strong dogs on the peching deer; and the men were not a hundred yards away from the potato-pit when they were ghosts that went out altogether, without a sound, like Drimendorran's Grey Dame in the Red Forester's story.

A white face on a plump neck stood the sting of the storm dourly, though the goodwife said it would kill her out there, and the father cried “Shame!” on her sorrow, and her a maiden. “Where's the decency of you?” says he, fierce-like; “if it was a widow you were this day you couldn't show your heart more.” And into the house he went and supped two cogies of brose, and swore at the _sgalag_ for noticing that his cheeks were wet.

When the searchers would be high on the hill Shudderman came on the maid. He was a wizened, daft old one, always in a tinker Fencible's tartan trews and scarlet doublet. He would pucker his bare brown face like a foreign Italian, and whistle continually. The whistle was on his face when he came on the girl standing behind the byre, looking up with a corpse's whiteness where the Beannan should be.

“Te-he! Lord! but we're cunning,” said the soldier. “It's a pity about Ellar, is it not, white darling?”

Mairi saw nothing, but swallowed a sob. Was this thing to know her secret, when the wise old women of the glen never guessed it? There was something that troubled her in his look.

The wee creature put his shoulder against the peats, and shoved each hand up the other sleeve of his doublet, while he whistled soft, and cunningly looked at the maid. The cords of her neck were working, and her breast heaved sore, but she kept her teeth tight together.

“Ay, ay, it's an awful thing, and him so fond, too,” he went on; and his face was nothing but a handful of wrinkles and peat-smoke. It was a bigger ploy for the fool than a good dinner.

“What--who--who are you talking about, you poor _amadan?_” cried Mairi, desperately.

“Och, it's yourself that'll know. They're saying over at Tullich and upbye at Miss Jean's, Accurach, that it's a bonny pair you would make, you and Ellar. Yonnat Yalla says he was the first Lochow man ever she saw that would go a mile out of his way for a lass, and I saw him once come the roundabout road by Cladich because it was too easy to meet you coming the short cut over the hill. Oh! there's no doubt he was fond, fond, and-”

“_Amadan!_” cried the maid, with no canny light in her eyes.

“Hoots! You're not angry with me, darling. I ken, I ken. Of course Drimfern's the swanky lad too, but it's not very safe this night on yon same hill. There's the Bog of the Fairy-Maid that never was frozen yet, and there's the Quey's Rock, and--te-he! I wouldn't give much for some of them not coming back any more than poor Ellar. It's namely that Drimfem got the bad eye from the Glenurchy woman come Martinmas next because of his taking up with her cousin-german's girl, Morag Callum.”

“Yon _spàgachd_ doll, indeed!”

“God, I do not know about that! but they're telling me he had her up at all the reels at Baldy Geepie's wedding, whatever, and it's a Maclean tartan frock she got for the same--I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Lies, lies, lies,” said the girl to herself her lips dry, her hands and feet restless to do some crazy thing to kill the pain in her heart.

She was a little helpless bird in the hands of the silly one.

He was bursting himself inside with laughing, that couldn't be seen for the snow and the cracks on his face.

“But it's not marriages nor tartan you'll be thinking on, Mairi, with your own lad up there stiff. Let Morag have Drimfem----”

“You and your Morag! Shudderman, if it was not the crazy one you were, you would see that a man like Donacha Drimfern would have no dealings with the breed of MacCallum, tinker children of the sixty fools.”

“Fools here or fools there, look at them in the castle at Duntroon! And Drimfern is----”

“Drimfern again! Who's thinking of Drimfern, the mother's big pet, the soft, soft creature, the poor thing that's daft about the shinty and the games--and--and---- Go inbye, haverer, and----oh, my heart, my heart!”

“Cripple Callum,” whistled the daft wee one; and faith it was the great sport he was having! The flame sparkled in the lass's eyes; she stamped furiously in the snow. She could have gone into the house, but the Shudderman would follow, and the devil was in him, and she might just as well tell her story at the cross-roads as risk. So she stayed.

“Come in this minute, O foolish one!” her mother came to the door and craved; but no.

The wee _bodach_ took a wee pipe from his big poke and started at the smoking. When his match went out the dark was almost flat on the glen, and a night-hag complained with a wean's cry in the planting beyond the burn. At each draw of the pipe the eyes of the soldier glinted like a ferret's, and like any ferret's they were watching. He put in a word between-while that stabbed the poor thing's heart, about the shame of love in maids uncourted, and the cruelty of maids that cast love-looks for mischief. There were some old havers about himself here and there among the words: of a woman who changed her mind and went to another man's bed and board; of sport up the glen, and burials beyond; and Ellar Ban's widow mother, and the carry-on of Drimfem and the Glenurchy woman's cousin-german's girl. And it was all ravelled, like the old story Loch Finne comes up on the shore to tell when the moon's on Sithean Sluaidhe.

The girl was sobbing sore. “Man!” she said at last, “give me the peace of a night till we know what is.” The _amadan_ laughed at her, and went shauchling down to the cotter's, and Mairi went in out of the darkness.

The hours passed and passed, and the same leash of strong dogs were scouring like fury down Glenaora, and the moon looked a little through a hole, and was sickly at the sight, and went by in a hurry. A collie's bark in the night came to the house where the people waited round the peats, and “Oh, my heart!” said poor Mairi.

The father took the tin lantern with the holes in it, and they all went out to the house-end. The lantern-light stuck long needles in the night as it swung on the goodman's finger, and the byre and the shed and the peat-stack danced into the world and out of it, and the clouds were only an arm's-length overhead.

The men were coming down the brae in the smother of snow, carrying something in a plaid. The dog was done with its barking, and there was no more sound from the coming ones than if they were ghosts. Like enough to ghosts they looked. No one said a word till the goodman spoke.

“You have him there?” he said.

“Ay, _beatmachi leis!_ all that there is of him,” said the Paymaster's man; and they took it but an' ben, where Mairi's mother had the white dambrod cloth she had meant for herself, when her own time came, on the table.

“It's poor Ellar, indeed,” said the goodman, noticing the fair beard.

“Where's Donacha? where's Drimfern?” cried Mairi, who had pulled herself together and come in from the byre-end, where she had waited to see if there was none of the watchers behind.

The Paymaster's man was leaning against the press-door, with a face like the clay; Dol' Splendid was putting a story in the _sgalag's_ ear; the Tullich men were very busy on it taking the snow off their boots. Outside the wind had the sorry song of the curlew.

“Me-the-day! it's the story of this there is to tell,” at last said Francie Ro, with a shake of the head. “Poor Drimfern----”

“Drimfem--ay, where's Drimfem in all the world?” said the goodman, with a start. He was standing before his girl to keep her from seeing the thing on the table till the wife had the boots covered. It was the face of a _cailleach_ of threescore Mairi had.

“It's God knows! We were taking Ellar there down, turn about resting. It was a cruel business, for the drifts. There's blood on his side where he fell somewhere, and Drimfern had to put a clout on it to keep the blood off his plaid. That's Drimfern's plaid. When Donacha's second turn was over up at the bog, we couldn't get a bit of him. He's as lost as the deer the Duke shot, and we looked and whistled for hours.” The maid gave a wee turn to the door, shivered, and fell like a clod at her mother's feet.

“Look at yon, now! Am not I the poor father altogether?” said the old man with a soft lip to his friends. “Who would think, and her so healthy, and not married to Ellar, that she would be so much put about? You'll excuse it in her, lads, I know, for she's not twenty till the dipping-time, and the mother maybe spoiled her.”

“Och, well,” said the Splendid one, twisting his bonnet uneasy in his hands, “I've seen them daft enough over a living lad, and it's no great wonder when this one's dead.” They took the maid beyond to the big room by the kitchen, and a good mother's morning for Drimfern was set by the men. They had a glass before going home, and when they were gone the _bochdans_ came in the deep hollow of the night and rattled the windows and shook the door-sneck; but what cared yon long white thing on the goodwife's dambrod tablecloth?

At the mouth of day there was one woman with a gnawing breast looking about the glen-foot among the snow for the Shudder-man soldier. She found him snedding the shaft of a shinny-stick at the Stronmagachan Gate, and whistling as if it was six weeks south of Whitsunday and the woods piping in the heat.