Chapter 17

My first thought on leaving the scene of this combat was to let the dead otter lie where it had fallen; but I remembered that young Thora Kinlay had once in my hearing expressed a wish to have an otter's skin, of which to make a pair of gloves, and I determined to make use of the animal I had killed. But I could not carry both the otter and my poor Selta, whom I had already determined to lay to rest in the sea, and my only course was to strip the otter of its skin then and there. This I did with help of my pocketknife, and in spite of the heavy rain that poured in streams down my back.

You will imagine the physical discomforts of my further journey. The ground was marshy and sodden, and I sank deep into it at every step I took. My clothing was wet through and through, and my dog, which I carried over my shoulder, was a burden so heavy and inconvenient that only my love for my late companion and respect for her lifeless body gave me sufficient strength to bear it for so great a distance. And then the rain fell incessantly, and the wind was full in my face.

Carver Kinlay's farm of Crua Breck was on my way to my uncle's, and I thought I would stay there a few moments as I passed, to leave the otter skin for Thora, and maybe get shelter and a drink of warm milk. But not till I was almost at the door did I remember about my recent fight with Tom.

In its exposed position on the bleak hillside the farmstead felt the full force of the gale as it beat in fury against the front of the house. The rain and the salt spray from the sea pelted upon the windows, and laid low all Thora's flowers in the little garden. The large fuchsia bush, which in summertime dangled its drooping blossoms in rich profusion, seemed the only plant capable of withstanding the rough blast; and the great gaunt jaws of the Greenland whale, that formed an archway at the gate, trembled in the tempest.

I went up to the door, and opening it stood within the shelter of the porch for a while, and heard someone reading aloud. Soon I gathered courage enough to approach the inner door, and look through its little window into the room. A rousing fire of peats and dried heather was blazing on the hearth, around which the family were gathered in a half circle. In an armchair, with a open book on his knee, sat Carver himself. By his side sat his wife knitting a stocking, the firelight glinting on her fair hair. Near to her were a ploughman and a herd boy, also a young woman who did the light field work on the farm and milked the cows, made butter, and helped in the house. Tom sat by the fire opposite his father, and I could see that he was polishing with a piece of leather one of his silver coins. Thora, whose silken hair and beautiful face I regarded with greater satisfaction than any other feature of this group, sat apart from the others, as though she did not care, or had not been invited, to draw her stool nearer to the warmth.

Carver Kinlay, black bearded and hoarse of voice, was reading aloud to his family, and seemed to be expecting from them an attention to the Holy Word which he certainly did not sincerely give to it himself. When he came to the end of a passage which he considered required expounding, he would take off his reading spectacles and wipe them with a corner of his wife's white apron.

"Now, I have explained many times before about this, bairns," he was saying as he looked towards Thora and Tom. "It is a rule, a golden rule, that the merest child might understand. Nothing can be more beautiful or more important, and it just contains these few words: 'Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you.' Now keep this precept in mind, all of you, for ye canna misunderstand it. But, just to make the thing clear--

"Never mind the cat, Thora; just pay attention to the lesson--

"Just to make the thing clear, let us suppose an example. Now, then, supposin', for instance, that Thora here saw a basin full o' milk with thick cream on the top o' it, and that her teeth were watering for just one lick. She ought to say to herself: 'Now, here's a basin full o' good cream; I'd like fine to take one lick of it. But it's the cream for making the butter of. Now, supposin' I was your mother, how would I like my daughter Thora to come and--'"

"Oh! Look, look!" cried Thora, "pussy's tail's burnin'!"

"Confound you, Thora!" exclaimed her father, angered at this interruption. "Can you not pay attention, and let pussy mind her own tail? I say, if you were your mother, how would you like your daughter Thora to lick the cream?"

"Tut, goodman!" interposed Mrs. Kinlay, "what does the lass ken about being a mother? Go on with the reading."

"Odd, goodwife, I'm but supposin' the thing; and the plainer it is the better, and the easier to understand. However, what verse was it, Thora?"

"It was the fourteenth you left off at," said Thora.

"Aweel, then, the fifteenth: 'Now, when he'--Odd, but I think we read that before."

"Nay, you didna read it before, father, for it was the fourteenth verse you left off at."

"Nay, I'm sure it couldn't be that, for I remember readin' 'Now, when he,' before."

"But I'm sure, father, ye're wrong," persisted Thora. "Look you if the fourteenth doesn't end with 'people,' and 'people' was the last word you read."

"'People, people!'" said Carver, searching for the place. "Odd, lassie, I see no 'people.' There's one verse that ends with 'people,' but it's not the fourteenth. It had been that, ye silly lass, instead o' the fourteenth."

"Well, well, goodman, what dos't matter what verse you left off at," said his wife. "A good tale's none the worse of being told twice."

"Nay, but," said Thora, "just look for fun and see what the fourteenth verse ends with."

"Fun, lassie! fun!" exclaimed Carver, as though he was seriously shocked. "Would you speak o' fun and the Holy Scripture lying open before you?"

"O, but, father, I had no mind. A body canna aye be minding. Look and see not for fun, then."

"Tut, tut!" said the mother, becoming impatient, "can you not begin at the fifteenth verse? What dos't matter if ye read it before?"

"Aweel, then, the fifteenth verse, 'Now, when he'"--

"Listen, father!" cried Thora, again interrupting, "did you not hear something?"

"Well did I hear something, and I hear it yet--the rain pelting on the window. I'm sure you've heard it this two hours and more."

"Nay, but it was like something twirling at the handle of the door."

"You hear things nobody else hears, Thora. Who could be at the door on a day like this? You just think you hear things. I was sure 'people' was not the last word."

Carver listened, however, for a time. The rain beat harder than ever on the windows, and from the neighbouring cliffs came the sound of the waves like a rumbling of distant thunder. But as he looked up from his book I knocked gently on the door.

"Who's there?" he asked in a gruff tone that had in it no echo of charity.

Thora rose from her seat and came towards the door, where I stood in a stream of water that ran from my wet clothes.

"Oh, Halcro!" she exclaimed as she looked down at my cold, bare feet and saw the blood issuing from the wound in my ankle. "Oh, Halcro, what has happened?" and she opened wide the door to admit me.

"What does the lad want here?" asked Carver.

I had never been asked such a question before. I had been accustomed to go about the island all my boyhood, and to walk in at any door I came to with the assurance that no person would question me as to what I wanted. At length, without going further than the threshold, I said:

"I was thinking you would give me shelter for a short time on a day like this."

"On a day like this," replied he, "none but a fool would think of travelling; and if it's shelter you're seeking here, young Ericson, I say no!" and the unfeeling "No" was echoed by all the others in the room, with one exception. That exception was Thora.

I saw the girl's hands quickly clench when she heard this unkind dismissal, and in her blue eyes the tears welled up and stole gently down her fair cheeks.

I felt that the "No" could be easily withstood, but the tears in Thora's eyes overcame me. I gave her a look of thanks, closed the door behind me, and again faced the storm, first going round to the back of the house to take up in my arms the body of my poor dog. I hung up the otter's skin on a hook in the byre, where I believed Thora would discover it, and so make what use of it she might.

I carried the dog still further, however. Taking it down to a small creek that gave entrance to the seashore, I came to a rock that was washed by the deep waters, and here I tied a large stone around Selta's neck and silently lowered the body into the sea, where the great waves of the Atlantic murmured a solemn requiem.

Then, regaining the top of the cliff, I stood for a time looking seaward, where the curling waves swept in from the west and dashed with terrible strength against the hard rocks of granite. There was no sail to be seen as far as my sight could penetrate through the driving rain mists; but I knew that the storm would be fatal to many a brave fisherman and sailor, and many a strong-built ship.

My sad thoughts and the noise of the breakers so much absorbed me that I felt conscious of nothing so much as my utter loneliness. But as I stood there in my wretchedness, suddenly a hand was laid gently on my shoulder, and I looked round, to see Thora at my side, with a great cloak thrown about her, and her hair streaming in the wind.

"Halcro," she said, "it is not this way I can see you turned from my father's door in the rain and the wind, and with that wound in your foot. Pm sorry he spoke to you like that, for I'm sure you'll be tired and weary.

"I have brought you some oatcake--see. Eat it, while I mend your foot."

Then she knelt down before me on the wet, mossy rock, took a piece of clean linen from under the cloak that covered her, and wiped clean my wound. With her fingers she gently drew over the torn skin, and taking another piece of white cloth bandaged it neatly round my ankle.

While she was so employed I informed her of my fight with the otter and the loss of my dog, and her gentle sympathy was sweet to my troubled spirit. And then I told her where she might find the otter's skin, and how she should make use of it.

"There, now," she said, putting a pin through the bandage and rising to her feet, "that will serve till you get home."

"It's real kind of you to do this for me, Thora," I said, touched by the girl's tenderness, "and I will not forget this. No, not as long as I live;" and I think there was a tremor in my voice--at least I felt what I said.

"But," I continued, "what will they say to you at Crua Breck, if they hear you have done this thing?"

"Halcro, I have done nothing but what I have been told to do. Before you knocked at the door, my father was saying we should aye 'do as we'd be done by.' In that I have obeyed him. But I must run back now, or they will miss me. See you give care to the foot. Fare ye well!"

And with that she hastened back to the farm, leaving me to ponder over her manner of applying that golden rule which her father had, while teaching it, so grievously failed to practise.

I made my way onward to Lyndardy--sadly, it is true, but with a strange new feeling in my heart for this blue-eyed maiden who, in defiance of her family, had helped me in my weariness and distress.

A short distance from the place where Thora left me, I came to the ruined cottage of Inganess. As I approached I heard a click-clicking noise, by which I surmised there was some person within the ruined walls. A dog came out to meet me at the door, wagging its tail in welcome. It was the very counterpart of my own dead Selta, and I knew well whom to expect in the cottage even before I entered.

Seated on the floor under shelter of a part of the roof that had not fallen in, was an old man, with locks of silver hair appearing under his blue bonnet, and hanging with a curl about his neck. The clicking sound I had heard proceeded from a flint and the back of a knife, with which the old man was endeavouring to strike a light to kindle the little pile of faded heather that lay in a corner. When I looked in he raised his eyes and said with surprise:

"Ah! Halcro, lad. Travelling on a day like this? Why, ye're as wet as myself. But come in, come in here. It's a poor house; but ye're real welcome. And where's your dog?"

I was downcast at this question, for it was this same old man before me--this Colin Lothian, the wandering beggar--who had given Selta to me, and the dog that was with him was Selta's brother.

"Colin," I asked, when I had told him of my dog's death, "why is it you come to this poor place for shelter when every house in the Mainland is open to you? Why do you not go to my uncle's at Lyndardy?"

"Weel, ye see, lad, I dinna mind where I gang. One place is as good as another, and this is very well in a shower of rain. I was west at Crua Breck when the rain came on sae heavy; and I hae been here these twa hours tryin' to strike a light, but ye see the tinder's wet--

"Try you if ye can do it, lad;" and the old man handed me the flint.

"Aweel, then," he continued, "I opened the door at Crua Breck, just as I would open any door in Orkney, be it rich or poor. But wad they let me in, think ye? Na, na. Carver was sittin' yonder, as he aye does on the rainy days, when there's nae gettin' aboot the farm, preachin' away before a bonnie fire. But the auld hypocrite wouldna let me in. What cares he for the Holy Word? If it werena for his goodwife, he'd never open the Scriptures. Ay, but it's a lang while he'll be preachin' any good into yon blackguard son o' his. There's not a house of harder hearts in all the Mainland than Crua Breck. They all take after Carver; ilka body o' them, except peerie Thora."

"Yes," I said feelingly, "Thora's kinder than all the rest."

"Kinder! Ay is she. She's no' like ane o' the same family. I mind ae stormy night in the last winter, when Carver had shut the door in my face, Thora cam' after me and, 'Colin,' says she, 'come away here, and I'll gie ye a bed in the byre;' and with that she took me in among the kine and gied me some oaten bannocks and a flagon o' warm milk. And then she made up a bed upon the hay, wi' a good warm plaid to wrap mysel' in. 'See there, now, Colin,' says she. 'Rest ye here, and I'll let ye out before my father rises i' the mornin'.' Now wasna that kindness for ye, Halcro?"

"Ay, Colin, that was just like wee Thora."

Whilst Colin was telling me these things I was busy trying to kindle the fire; but try as I would, it could not be done.

"Oh, never mind the fire, Colin!" I said. "Just come along wi' me to my uncle's farm at Lyndardy. Ye'll get good shelter and food there. That's far better than staying in this ruined place."

So the old man got up on his feet, and we walked together to the farm.

My sister Jessie, who frequently came up to Lyndardy to stay over the Sabbath, was in the kitchen when we arrived, and while we were drying our clothes before the fire she got some good warm broth ready for us, and some new-made scones.

Over our meal I told Jessie of my adventure with the otter, and the death of my dog. She wanted to dress my ankle again, but Thora had bound it up so skilfully that there was nothing more to be done.

"I wonder that the otter should bite you like that, Halcro," Jessie said. "Why, I thought the old viking's stone was to save ye frae the like o' that!"

I had myself wondered at the same circumstance.

"Ah! but, Jessie," I said, suddenly comforting myself with an excuse for the apparent failure of the charm, "Mr. Drever didna tell me that the stone would be o' any use against such a beast as an otter."

"No, I ken that. But did he not say it would protect ye from all harm? Surely an otter shouldna be left out o' the reckoning."

But here Colin Lothian, to whom the virtues of the viking's talisman had been explained, suggested that I perhaps needed to have some secret communication with the stone in my own mind--that I perhaps needed to think of the charm at the very moment of danger, and to call upon it for aid. He had heard of such things, he said.

This explanation appeared to me very reasonable, and with the suggestion in my mind I determined, should I ever have another opportunity, to put it in practice.

Such an opportunity presented itself sooner than I could have expected.