Let the day be ever
so beautiful, the air ever so clear, the shadows give back a sensitive,
luminous darkness that reveals tragedies within itself.
so beautiful, the air ever so clear, the shadows give back a sensitive,
luminous darkness that reveals tragedies within itself.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
"What do you think?
" But the birch peered cautiously
up at the mountain, which hung over it so threateningly that it
seemed as if it could scarcely breathe. "Let us clothe it, in
God's name! " said the birch. And so, though there were but
these three, they undertook to clothe the mountain. The juniper
went first.
When they had gone a little way, they met the heather. The
juniper seemed as though about to go past it. "Nay, take the
heather along," said the fir. And the heather joined them.
Soon it began to glide on before the juniper. "Catch hold of
me," said the heather. The juniper did so, and where there was
only a wee crevice, the heather thrust in a finger, and where it
first had placed a finger, the juniper took hold with its whole
hand. They crawled and crept along, the fir laboring on behind,
the birch also. "This is well worth doing," said the birch.
But the mountain began to ponder on what manner of insig-
nificant objects these might be that were clambering up over it.
And after it had been considering the matter a few hundred
years, it sent a little brook down to inquire. It was yet in the
time of the spring freshets, and the brook stole on until it
reached the heather. "Dear, dear heather, cannot you let me
pass? I am so small. " The heather was very busy; only raised
itself a little and pressed onward. In, under, and onward went
the brook. "Dear, dear juniper, cannot you let me pass? I am
so small. "
The juniper looked sharply at it; but if the heather
had let it pass, why, in all reason, it must do so too. Under it
and onward went the brook; and now came to the spot where
the fir stood puffing on the hill-side. "Dear, dear fir, cannot you
let me pass? I am really so small," said the brook,- and it
kissed the fir's feet and made itself so very sweet. The fir
became bashful at this, and let it pass. But the birch raised itself
before the brook asked it. "Hi, hi, hi! " said the brook, and
grew. "Ha, ha, ha! " said the brook, and grew. "Ho, ho, ho! "
## p. 1979 (#169) ###########################################
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
1979
said the brook, and flung the heather and the juniper and the fir
and the birch flat on their faces and backs, up and down these
great hills.
The mountain sat up for many hundred years mus-
ing on whether it had not smiled a little that day.
It was plain enough: the mountain did not want to be clad.
The heather fretted over this until it grew green again, and
then it started forward. "Fresh courage! " said the heather.
The juniper had half raised itself to look at the heather, and
continued to keep this position, until at length it stood upright.
It scratched its head and set forth again, taking such a vigorous
foothold that it seemed as though the mountain must feel it.
"If you will not have me, then I will have you. ” The fir
crooked its toes a little to find out whether they were whole,
then lifted one foot, found it whole, then the other, which
proved also to be whole, then both of them. It first investi-
gated the ground it had been over, next where it had been
lying, and finally where it should go. After this it began to
wend its way slowly along, and acted just as though it had
never fallen. The birch had become most wretchedly soiled,
but now rose up and made itself tidy. Then they sped onward,
faster and faster, upward and on either side, in sunshine and in
rain. "What in the world can this be? " said the mountain,
all glittering with dew, as the summer sun shone down on it.
The birds sang, the wood-mouse piped, the hare hopped along,
and the ermine hid itself and screamed.
Then the day came when the heather could peep with one eye
over the edge of the mountain. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! "
said the heather, and away it went. "Dear me! what is it the
heather sees? " said the juniper, and moved on until it could
peer up. "Oh dear, oh dear! " it shrieked, and was gone.
"What is the matter with the juniper to-day? " said the fir, and
took long strides onward in the heat of the sun. Soon it could
raise itself on its toes and peep up. "Oh dear! " Branches and
needles stood on end in wonderment. It worked its way forward,
came up, and was gone. "What is it all the others see, and not
I? " said the birch; and lifting well its skirts, it tripped after.
It stretched its whole head up at once. "Oh,-oh! — is not here
a great forest of fir and heather, of juniper and birch, standing
upon the table-land waiting for us? " said the birch; and its
leaves quivered in the sunshine so that the dew trembled. “Ay,
this is what it is to reach the goal! " said the juniper.
## p. 1980 (#170) ###########################################
1980
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
THE FATHER
Copyright 1881 and 1882, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
THE
HE man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and
most influential person in his parish; his name was Thord
Overaas. He appeared in the priest's study one day, tall
and earnest.
"I have gotten a son," said he, "and I wish to present him
for baptism. "
"What shall his name be? "
"Finn,-after my father. "
"And the sponsors ? »
They were mentioned, and proved to be the best men and
women of Thord's relations in the parish.
«
"Is there anything else? " inquired the priest, and looked up.
The peasant hesitated a little.
"I should like very much to have him baptized by himself,"
said he, finally.
"That is to say, on a week-day ? »
"Next Saturday, at twelve o'clock noon. ”
"Is there anything else? " inquired the priest.
"There is nothing else;" and the peasant twirled his cap, as
though he were about to go.
Then the priest rose. "There is yet this, however," said he,
and walking toward Thord, he took him by the hand and looked
gravely into his eyes: "God grant that the child may become a
blessing to you! "
One day sixteen years later, Thord stood once more in the
priest's study.
"Really, you carry your age astonishingly well, Thord," said
the priest; for he saw no change whatever in the man.
"That is because I have no troubles," replied Thord.
To this the priest said nothing, but after a while he asked,
"What is your pleasure this evening? "
"I have come this evening about that son of mine who is to
be confirmed to-morrow. "
"He is a bright boy. "
"I did not wish to pay the priest until I heard what number
the boy would have when he takes his place in church to-
morrow. "
## p. 1981 (#171) ###########################################
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
1981
"He will stand Number One. "
"So I have heard; and here are ten dollars for the priest. ”
"Is there anything else I can do for you? " inquired the priest,
fixing his eyes on Thord.
"There is nothing else. "
Thord went out.
Eight years more rolled by, and then one day a noise was
heard outside of the priest's study, for many men were approach-
ing, and at their head was Thord, who entered first.
The priest looked up and recognized him.
"You come well attended this evening, Thord," said he.
"I am here to request that the banns may be published for
my son: he is about to marry Karen Storliden, daughter of
Gudmund, who stands here beside me. "
"Why, that is the richest girl in the parish. "
"So they say," replied the peasant, stroking back his hair with
one hand.
The priest sat awhile as if in deep thought, then entered the
names in his book, without making any comments, and the men
wrote their signatures underneath. Thord laid three dollars on
the table.
"One is all I am to have," said the priest.
"I know that very well, but he is my only child; I want to
do it handsomely. "
The priest took the money.
"This is now the third time, Thord, that you have come here
on your son's account.
"But now I am through with him," said Thord, and folding
up his pocket-book he said farewell and walked away.
The men slowly followed him.
A fortnight later, the father and son were rowing one calm,
still day, across the lake to Storliden to make arrangements for
the wedding.
"This thwart is not secure," said the son, and stood up to
straighten the seat on which he was sitting.
At the same moment the board he was standing on slipped
from under him; he threw out his arms, uttered a shriek, and
fell overboard.
"Take hold of the oar! " shouted the father, springing to his
feet and holding out the oar.
But when the son had made a couple of efforts he grew stiff.
## p. 1982 (#172) ###########################################
1982
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
"Wait a moment! " cried the father, and began to row toward
his son.
Then the son rolled over on his back, gave his father one long
look, and sank.
Thord could scarcely believe it; he held the boat still, and
stared at the spot where his son had gone down, as though he
must surely come to the surface again. There rose some bubbles,
then some more, and finally one large one that burst; and the
lake lay there as smooth and bright as a mirror again.
For three days and three nights people saw the father rowing
round and round the spot, without taking either food or sleep;
he was dragging the lake for the body of his son. And toward
morning of the third day he found it, and carried it in his arms
up over the hills to his gård.
It might have been about a year from that day, when the
priest, late one autumn evening, heard some one in the passage
outside of the door, carefully trying to find the latch. The priest
opened the door, and in walked a tall, thin man, with bowed
form and white hair. The priest looked long at him before he
recognized him. It was Thord.
"Are you out walking so late? " said the priest, and stood still
in front of him.
"Ah, yes! it is late," said Thord, and took a seat.
The priest sat down also, as though waiting. A long, long
silence followed. At last Thord said:-
"I have something with me that I should like to give to the
poor; I want it to be invested as a legacy in my son's name. "
He rose, laid some money on the table, and sat down again.
The priest counted it.
"It is a great deal of money," said he.
"It is half the price of my gård. I sold it to-day. "
The priest sat long in silence. At last he asked, but gently:
"What do you propose to do now, Thord ? »
"Something better. "
They sat there for awhile, Thord with downcast eyes, the
priest with his eyes fixed on Thord. Presently the priest said.
slowly and softly:-
"I think your son has at last brought you a true blessing. "
"Yes, I think so myself," said Thord, looking up, while two
big tears coursed slowly down his cheeks.
―――――
## p. 1983 (#173) ###########################################
1983
WILLIAM BLACK
(1841-)
N VIEW of Mr. Black's accurate and picturesque descriptions of
natural phenomena, it is interesting to know that of his
varied youthful studies, botany most attracted him, and
that he followed it up as an art pupil in the government schools.
But his bent was rather for journalism than for art or science.
Before he was twenty-one he had written critical essays for a local
newspaper on Ruskin, Carlyle, and Kingsley; and shortly afterward
he wrote a series of sketches, after Christopher North, that at this
early age gave evidence of his peculiar
talent, the artistic use of natural effects
in the development of character, the pathos
of the gray morning or the melancholy of
the evening mist when woven in with
tender episode or tragic occurrence.
WILLIAM BLACK
William Black was born in Glasgow,
Scotland, November 6th, 1841, and received
his early education there. He settled in
London in 1864, and was a special corre-
spondent of the Morning Star in the Franco-
Prussian war, but after about ten years of
the life of a newspaper man, during which
he was an editor of the London News, he
abandoned journalism for novel-writing in 1875. In the intervals of
his work he traveled much, and devoted himself with enthusiasm to
out-door sports, of which he writes with a knowledge that inspires a
certain confidence in the reader. A Scotch skipper once told him he
need never starve, because he could make a living as pilot in the
western Highlands; and the fidelity of his descriptions of northern
Scotland have met with the questionable reward of converting a
poet's haunt into a tourist's camp. Not that Mr. Black's is a game-
keeper's catalogue of the phenomena of forest or stream, or the
poetic way of depicting nature by similes. The fascination of his
writing lies in our conviction that it is the result of minute observa-
tion, with a certain atmospheric quality that makes the picture
alive. More, one is conscious of a sensitive, pathetic thrill in his
writing; these sights and sounds, when they are unobtrusively chron-
icled, are penetrated by a subtle human sympathy, as if the writer
## p. 1984 (#174) ###########################################
1984
WILLIAM BLACK
bent close to the earth and heard the whispers of the flowers and
stones, as well as the murmur of the forest and the roar of the sea.
>
<
He is eminently a popular writer, a vivacious delineator of life
and manners, even when he exhibits his versatility at the cost of
some of his most attractive characteristics. In 'Sunrise' we have a
combination of romance and politics, its motive supplied by the in-
trigues of a wide-spread communistic society. 'Kilmeny is the story
of a painter, Shandon Bells' of a literary man, The Monarch of
Mincing Lane' tells of the London streets, the heroine of 'The Hand-
some Humes' is an actress, the scenes in Briseis' are played in
Athens, Scotland, and England. All these novels have tragic and
exceptional episodes, the humor is broad, as the humor of a pessi-
mist always is, and the reader finds himself laughing at a practical
joke on the heels of a catastrophe. Mr. Black knows his London,
especially the drawing-room aspect of it, and his latest novel is sure
to have the latest touch of fad and fashion, although white heather
does not cease to grow nor deer to be stalked, nor flies to be cast in
Highland waters. We cannot admit that he is exceptionally fortu-
nate in the heroines of these novels, however, for they are perfectly
beautiful and perfectly good, and nature protests against perfection
as a hurt to vanity. Our real favorites are the dark-eyed Queen
Titania, the small imperious person who drives in state in Strange
Adventures of a Phaeton,' and sails with such high courage in White
Wings, and the half-sentimental, half-practical, wholly self-seeking
siren Bonny Leslie in Kilmeny,' who develops into something a
little more than coquettish in the Kitty of Shandon Bells. '
These and half a dozen other novels by Mr. Black entitle him to
his place as a popular novelist; they are alternately gay and sad,
they are spirited and entertaining; certain characters, like the heroine
of 'Sunrise,' cast a bright effulgence over the dark plots of intrigue.
But Mr. Black is at his best as the creator of the special school of
fiction that has Highland scenery and Highland character for its
field. He has many followers and many imitators, but he remains
master on his own ground. The scenes of his most successful
stories, The Princess of Thule,' 'A Daughter of Heth,' 'In Far
Lochaber,' 'Macleod of Dare,' and 'Madcap Violet,' are laid for the
most part in remote rural districts, amid lake and moorland and
mountain wilds of northern Scotland, whose unsophisticated atmo-
sphere is invaded by airs from the outer world only during the brief
season of hunting and fishing.
But the visit of the worldling is long enough to furnish incident
both poetic and tragic; and when he enters the innocent and prim-
itive life of the native, as Lavender entered that of the proud and
beautiful Princess of Thule sailing her boat in the far-off waters of
## p. 1985 (#175) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1985
Skye, or the cruel Gertrude in the grim castle of Dare, he finds all
the potencies of passion and emotion.
The temperament of the Highlander is a melancholy one. The
narrow life, with its isolation and its hardships, makes him pessimistic
and brooding, though endowed with the keen instinct and peculiar
humor of those who are far removed from the artificialities of life.
But Mr. Black ascribes this temperament, not to race or hardship or
isolation, but to the strange sights and sounds of the sea and land
on which he dwells, to the wild nights and fierce sunsets, to the dark
ocean plains that brood over the secrets that lie in their depths.
Under his treatment nature is subjective, and plays the part of
fate. Natural scenery is as the orchestra to a Wagnerian opera. The
shifting of the clouds, the voice of the sea, the scent of the woods,
are made the most important factors in the formation of character.
He whose home is in mountain fastnesses knows the solemn glory
of sunrise and sunset, and has for his heritage the high brave temper
of the warrior, with the melancholy of the poet. The dweller on
tawny sands, where the waves beat lazily on summer afternoons and
where wild winds howl in storm, is of like necessity capricious and
melancholy. The minor key, in which Poe thought all true poetry is
written, is struck in these his earlier novels.
Let the day be ever
so beautiful, the air ever so clear, the shadows give back a sensitive,
luminous darkness that reveals tragedies within itself.
Not that the sentient background, as he has painted it, is to be
confounded with the "sympathy of nature with character" of the
older school, in which hysterical emotion is accentuated by wild wind
storms, and the happiness of lovers by a sunshiny day. But char-
acter, as depicted by him in these early novels, is so far subordinate
to nature that nature assumes moral responsibility. When Macleod
of Dare commits murder and then suicide, we accept it as the result
of climatic influences; and the tranquil-conscienced Hamish, the
would-be homicide, but obeys the call of the winds. Especially in
the delightful romances of Skye, Mr. Black reproduces the actual
speech and manners of the people.
And as romance of motive clothes barren rocks in rich hues and
waste bogland in golden gorse, it does like loving service for homely
characters. The dialect these people talk, without editorial comment,
delights and amuses from its strangeness, and also from the convic-
tion that it is as real as the landscape. They tell wonderful tales of
moor and fen as they tramp the woods or sail on moonlit waters,
and sitting by a peat fire of a stormy night, discuss, between deep
pulls of Scotch whisky, the Erastianism that vitiates modern theol-
ogy.
We must look in the pages of Scott for a more charming
picture of the relation of clansman to chief.
IV-125
## p. 1986 (#176) ###########################################
1986
WILLIAM BLACK
But Mr. Black is his own most formidable rival. He who painted
the sympathetic landscapes of northern Scotland has taught the
reader the subtle distinction between these delicate scenes and those
in which nature's moods are obtrusively chronicled. There are nov-
els by Mr. Black in reading which we exclaim, with the exhausted
young lady at the end of her week's sight-seeing, "What! another
sunset! »
And he set himself a difficult task when he attempted to
draw another character so human and so lovable as the Princess
of Thule, although the reader were ungracious indeed did he not
welcome the beautiful young lady with the kind heart and the
proud, hurt smile, whom he became familiar with through frequent
encounters in the author's other novels. And if Earlscope, who
has a dim sort of kinship with the more vigorous hero of 'Jane
Eyre,' has been succeeded by well-bred young gentlemen who never
smoke in the presence of their female relatives, though they are
master hands at sailing a boat and knocking down obtrusive foreign-
ers, Mr. Black has not since A Daughter of Heth' done so dramatic
a piece of writing as the story of the Earl's death and Coquette's
flight. The "Daughter of Heth," with her friendly simplicity and
innocent wiles, and Madcap Violet, the laughter-loving, deserve per-
haps a kinder fate than a broken heart and an early grave.
But what the novelist Gogol said of himself and his audience fifty
years ago is as true as ever: "Thankless is the task of whoever
ventures to show what passes every moment before his eyes. " When
he is heart-breaking, and therefore exceptional, Mr. Black is most
interesting. A sad ending is not necessarily depressing to the reader.
"There is something," says La Rochefoucauld, "in the misfortunes of
our best friends that doth not displease us. "
In Mr. Black's later novels, the burden of tradition has been too
heavy for him, and he has ended them all happily, as if they were
fairy tales. He chose a more artistic as well as a more faithful part
when they were in keeping with life.
## p. 1987 (#177) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1987
THE END OF MACLEOD OF DARE
"D
UNCAN," said Hamish in a low whisper,- for Macleod had
gone below, and they thought he might be asleep in the
small hushed state-room-"this is a strange-looking day,
is it not? And I am afraid of it in this open bay, with an
anchorage no better than a sheet of paper for an anchorage.
you see now how strange-looking it is? "
Do
Duncan Cameron also spoke in his native tongue, and he
said:
"That is true, Hamish. And it was a day like this there was
when the Solan was sunk at her moorings in Loch Hourn. Do
you remember, Hamish ? And it would be better for us now if
we were in Loch Tua, or Loch-na-Keal, or in the dock that was
built for the steamer at Tiree. I do not like the look of this
day. »
Yet to an ordinary observer it would have seemed that the
chief characteristic of this pale, still day was extreme and set-
tled calm. There was not a breath of wind to ruffle the sur-
face of the sea; but there was a slight glassy swell, and that
only served to show curious opalescent tints under the suffused
light of the sun. There were no clouds; there was only a thin
veil of faint and sultry mist all across the sky: the sun was
invisible, but there was a glare of yellow at one point of the
heavens. A dead calm; but heavy, oppressed, sultry. There
was something in the atmosphere that seemed to weigh on the
chest.
"There was a dream I had this morning," continued Hamish,
in the same low tones. "It was about my little granddaughter
Christina. You know my little Christina, Duncan. And she
said to me, 'What have you done with Sir Keith Macleod?
Why have you not brought him back? He was under your care,
grandfather. ' I did not like that dream. "
"Oh, you are becoming as bad as Sir Keith Macleod himself! "
said the other. "He does not sleep. He talks to himself. You
will become like that if you pay attention to foolish dreams,
Hamish. "
Hamish's quick temper leaped up.
"What do you mean, Duncan Cameron, by saying 'as bad as
Sir Keith Macleod'? You-you come from Ross: perhaps they
## p. 1988 (#178) ###########################################
1988
WILLIAM BLACK
have not good masters there. I tell you there is not any man
in Ross, or in Sutherland either, is as good a master and as
brave a lad as Sir Keith Macleod - not any one, Duncan Cam-
eron! "
"I did not mean anything like that, Hamish," said the other,
humbly. "But there was a breeze this morning. We could have
got over to Loch Tua. Why did we stay here, where there is
no shelter and no anchorage? Do you know what is likely to
come after a day like this? "
"It is your business to be a sailor on board this yacht; it is
not your business to say where she will go," said Hamish.
But all the same the old man was becoming more and more
alarmed at the ugly aspect of this dead calm. The very birds,
instead of stalking among the still pools, or lying buoyant on the
smooth waters, were excitedly calling, and whirring from one
point to another.
"If the equinoctials were to begin now," said Duncan Cam-
eron, "this is a fine place to meet the equinoctials! An open
bay, without shelter; and a ground that is no ground for an
anchorage. It is not two anchors or twenty anchors would hold
in such a ground. "
Macleod appeared: the men were suddenly silent. Without a
word to either of them—and that was not his wont- he passed
to the stern of the yacht. Hamish knew from his manner that
he would not be spoken to. He did not follow him, even with
all this vague dread on his mind.
The day wore on to the afternoon. Macleod, who had been
pacing up and down the deck, suddenly called Hamish. Hamish
came aft at once.
"Hamish," said he, with a strange sort of laugh, "do you
remember this morning, before the light came? Do you re-
member that I asked you about a brass-band that I heard
playing? »
Hamish looked at him, and said with an earnest anxiety:-
"O Sir Keith, you will pay no heed to that!
It is very
common; I have heard them say it is very common. Why, to
hear a brass-band, to be sure! There is nothing more common
than that. And you will not think you are unwell merely be-
cause you think you can hear a brass-band playing! "
"I want you to tell me, Hamish," said he, in the same jesting
way, "whether my eyes have followed the example of my ears,
-
## p. 1989 (#179) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1989
and are playing tricks. Do you think they are bloodshot, with
my lying on deck in the cold? Hamish, what do you see all
around? "
The old man looked at the sky, and the shore, and the sea.
It was a marvelous thing. The world was all enshrouded in a
salmon-colored mist: there was no line of horizon visible between
the sea and the sky.
"It is red, Sir Keith," said Hamish.
And what do you
"Ah! Am I in my senses this time?
think of a red day, Hamish? That is not a usual thing. "
"Oh, Sir Keith, it will be a wild night this night! And we
cannot stay here, with this bad anchorage! "
"And where would you go, Hamish - in a dead calm ? "
Macleod asked, still with a smile on the wan face.
"Where would I go? " said the old man, excitedly. "I — I
will take care of the yacht. But you, Sir Keith; oh! you- you
will go ashore now. Do you know, sir, the sheiling that the
shepherd had ? It is a poor place-oh yes; but Duncan Cam-
eron and I will take some things ashore. And do you not think
we can look after the yacht? She has met the equinoctials
before, if it is the equinoctials that are beginning. She has
met them before; and cannot she meet them now?
Sir Keith, you will go ashore! "
But you,
Macleod burst out laughing, in an odd sort of fashion.
"Do you think I am good at running away when there is any
kind of danger, Hamish? Have you got into the English way?
Would you call me a coward too? Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense,
Hamish! I-why, I am going to drink a glass of the coal-black
wine, and have done with it. I will drink it to the health of
my sweetheart, Hamish! "
•
"Sir Keith," said the old man, beginning to tremble, though
he but half understood the meaning of the scornful mirth, “I
have had charge of you since you were a young lad. "
"Very well! »
"And Lady Macleod will ask of me, 'Such and such a thing
happened: what did you do for my son? ' Then I will say,
'Your ladyship, we were afraid of the equinoctials; and we got
Sir Keith to go ashore; and the next day we went ashore for
him; and now we have brought him back to Castle Dare! '»
"Hamish, Hamish, you are laughing at me! Or you want to
call me a coward? Don't you know I should be afraid of the
## p. 1990 (#180) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1990
Don't you know that
ghost of the shepherd who killed himself?
the English people call me a coward? »
"May their souls dwell in the downmost hall of perdition! "
said Hamish, with his cheeks becoming a gray white; "and every
woman that ever came of the accursed race! "
He looked at the old man for a second, and he gripped his
hand.
"Do not say that, Hamish-that is folly. But you have been
my friend.
My mother will not forget you-it is not the way
of a Macleod to forget- whatever happens to me. "
"Sir Keith! " Hamish cried, "I do not know what you mean!
But you will go ashore before the night? "
"Go ashore? " Macleod answered, with a return to this wild
bantering tone, "when I am going to see my sweetheart? Oh
no! Tell Christina, now! Tell Christina to ask the young Eng-
lish lady to come into the saloon, for I have something to say to
her. Be quick, Hamish! "
Hamish went away; and before long he returned with the
answer that the young English lady was in the saloon. And
now he was no longer haggard and piteous, but joyful, and
there was a strange light in his eyes.
"Sweetheart," said he, "are you waiting for me at last? I
have brought you a long way. Shall we drink a glass now at
the end of the voyage? "
no
"Do you wish to insult me? " said she; but there was
anger in her voice: there was more of fear in her eyes as she
regarded him.
"You have no other message for me than the one you gave
me last night, Gerty? " said he, almost cheerfully. "It is all over,
then? You would go away from me forever? But we will drink
a glass before we go! "
He sprang forward, and caught both her hands in his with the
grip of a vise.
"Do you know what you have done, Gerty? " said he, in a low
voice. "Oh, you have soft, smooth, English ways; and you are
like a rose-leaf; and you are like a queen, whom all people are
glad to serve. But do you know that you have killed a man's
life? And there is no penalty for that in the South, perhaps;
but you are no longer in the South.
And if you have this very
night to drink a glass with me, you will not refuse it?
a glass of the coal-black wine! "
It is only
## p. 1991 (#181) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1991
She struggled back from him, for there was a look in his face
that frightened her. But she had a wonderful self-command.
"Is that the message I was to hear? " said she, coldly.
"Why, sweetheart, are you not glad? Is not that the only
gladness left for you and for me, that we should drink one glass
together, and clasp hands, and say good-by? What else is there
left? What else could come to you and to me? And it may not
be this night, or to-morrow night; but one night I think it will
come; and then, sweetheart, we will have one more glass together,
before the end. "
He went on deck. He called Hamish.
"Hamish," said he, in a grave, matter-of-fact way, "I don't
like the look of this evening. Did you say the sheiling was still
on the island? "
"Oh yes, Sir Keith," said Hamish, with great joy; for he
thought his advice was going to be taken, after all.
"Well, now, you know the gales, when they begin, sometimes
last for two or three or four days; and I will ask you to see
that Christina takes a good store of things to the sheiling before
the darkness comes on. Take plenty of things now, Hamish, and
put them in the sheiling, for I am afraid this is going to be a
wild night. "
Now indeed all the red light had gone away; and as the sun
went down there was nothing but a spectral whiteness over the
sea and the sky; and the atmosphere was so close and sultry
that it seemed to suffocate one. Moreover, there was a dead
calm; if they had wanted to get away from this exposed place,
how could they? They could not get into the gig and pull this
great yacht over to Loch Tua.
It was with a light heart that Hamish set about this thing;
and Christina forthwith filled a hamper with tinned meats, and
bread, and whisky, and what not. And fuel was taken ashore,
too; and candles, and a store of matches. If the gales were
coming on, as appeared likely from this ominous-looking evening,
who could tell how many days and nights the young master-
and the English lady, too, if he desired her company-might not
have to stay ashore, while the men took the chance of the sea
with this yacht, or perhaps seized the occasion of some lull to
make for some place of shelter? There was Loch Tua, and
there was the bay at Bunessan, and there was the little channel
called Polterriv, behind the rocks opposite Iona. Any shelter at
## p. 1992 (#182) ###########################################
1992
WILLIAM BLACK
all was better than this exposed place, with the treacherous
anchorage.
Hamish and Duncan Cameron returned to the yacht.
"Will you go ashore now, Sir Keith? " the old man said.
"Oh no; I am not going ashore yet. It is not yet time to
run away, Hamish. "
He spoke in a friendly and pleasant fashion, though Hamish,
in his increasing alarm, thought it no proper time for jesting.
They hauled the gig up to the davits, however, and again the
yacht lay in dead silence in this little bay.
The evening grew to dusk; the only change visible in the
spectral world of pale yellow-white mist was the appearance in
the sky of a number of small, detached bulbous-looking clouds of
a dusky blue-gray. They had not drifted hither, for there was
no wind. They had only appeared. They were absolutely mo-
tionless. But the heat and the suffocation in this atmosphere
became almost insupportable.
up at the mountain, which hung over it so threateningly that it
seemed as if it could scarcely breathe. "Let us clothe it, in
God's name! " said the birch. And so, though there were but
these three, they undertook to clothe the mountain. The juniper
went first.
When they had gone a little way, they met the heather. The
juniper seemed as though about to go past it. "Nay, take the
heather along," said the fir. And the heather joined them.
Soon it began to glide on before the juniper. "Catch hold of
me," said the heather. The juniper did so, and where there was
only a wee crevice, the heather thrust in a finger, and where it
first had placed a finger, the juniper took hold with its whole
hand. They crawled and crept along, the fir laboring on behind,
the birch also. "This is well worth doing," said the birch.
But the mountain began to ponder on what manner of insig-
nificant objects these might be that were clambering up over it.
And after it had been considering the matter a few hundred
years, it sent a little brook down to inquire. It was yet in the
time of the spring freshets, and the brook stole on until it
reached the heather. "Dear, dear heather, cannot you let me
pass? I am so small. " The heather was very busy; only raised
itself a little and pressed onward. In, under, and onward went
the brook. "Dear, dear juniper, cannot you let me pass? I am
so small. "
The juniper looked sharply at it; but if the heather
had let it pass, why, in all reason, it must do so too. Under it
and onward went the brook; and now came to the spot where
the fir stood puffing on the hill-side. "Dear, dear fir, cannot you
let me pass? I am really so small," said the brook,- and it
kissed the fir's feet and made itself so very sweet. The fir
became bashful at this, and let it pass. But the birch raised itself
before the brook asked it. "Hi, hi, hi! " said the brook, and
grew. "Ha, ha, ha! " said the brook, and grew. "Ho, ho, ho! "
## p. 1979 (#169) ###########################################
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
1979
said the brook, and flung the heather and the juniper and the fir
and the birch flat on their faces and backs, up and down these
great hills.
The mountain sat up for many hundred years mus-
ing on whether it had not smiled a little that day.
It was plain enough: the mountain did not want to be clad.
The heather fretted over this until it grew green again, and
then it started forward. "Fresh courage! " said the heather.
The juniper had half raised itself to look at the heather, and
continued to keep this position, until at length it stood upright.
It scratched its head and set forth again, taking such a vigorous
foothold that it seemed as though the mountain must feel it.
"If you will not have me, then I will have you. ” The fir
crooked its toes a little to find out whether they were whole,
then lifted one foot, found it whole, then the other, which
proved also to be whole, then both of them. It first investi-
gated the ground it had been over, next where it had been
lying, and finally where it should go. After this it began to
wend its way slowly along, and acted just as though it had
never fallen. The birch had become most wretchedly soiled,
but now rose up and made itself tidy. Then they sped onward,
faster and faster, upward and on either side, in sunshine and in
rain. "What in the world can this be? " said the mountain,
all glittering with dew, as the summer sun shone down on it.
The birds sang, the wood-mouse piped, the hare hopped along,
and the ermine hid itself and screamed.
Then the day came when the heather could peep with one eye
over the edge of the mountain. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! "
said the heather, and away it went. "Dear me! what is it the
heather sees? " said the juniper, and moved on until it could
peer up. "Oh dear, oh dear! " it shrieked, and was gone.
"What is the matter with the juniper to-day? " said the fir, and
took long strides onward in the heat of the sun. Soon it could
raise itself on its toes and peep up. "Oh dear! " Branches and
needles stood on end in wonderment. It worked its way forward,
came up, and was gone. "What is it all the others see, and not
I? " said the birch; and lifting well its skirts, it tripped after.
It stretched its whole head up at once. "Oh,-oh! — is not here
a great forest of fir and heather, of juniper and birch, standing
upon the table-land waiting for us? " said the birch; and its
leaves quivered in the sunshine so that the dew trembled. “Ay,
this is what it is to reach the goal! " said the juniper.
## p. 1980 (#170) ###########################################
1980
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
THE FATHER
Copyright 1881 and 1882, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
THE
HE man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and
most influential person in his parish; his name was Thord
Overaas. He appeared in the priest's study one day, tall
and earnest.
"I have gotten a son," said he, "and I wish to present him
for baptism. "
"What shall his name be? "
"Finn,-after my father. "
"And the sponsors ? »
They were mentioned, and proved to be the best men and
women of Thord's relations in the parish.
«
"Is there anything else? " inquired the priest, and looked up.
The peasant hesitated a little.
"I should like very much to have him baptized by himself,"
said he, finally.
"That is to say, on a week-day ? »
"Next Saturday, at twelve o'clock noon. ”
"Is there anything else? " inquired the priest.
"There is nothing else;" and the peasant twirled his cap, as
though he were about to go.
Then the priest rose. "There is yet this, however," said he,
and walking toward Thord, he took him by the hand and looked
gravely into his eyes: "God grant that the child may become a
blessing to you! "
One day sixteen years later, Thord stood once more in the
priest's study.
"Really, you carry your age astonishingly well, Thord," said
the priest; for he saw no change whatever in the man.
"That is because I have no troubles," replied Thord.
To this the priest said nothing, but after a while he asked,
"What is your pleasure this evening? "
"I have come this evening about that son of mine who is to
be confirmed to-morrow. "
"He is a bright boy. "
"I did not wish to pay the priest until I heard what number
the boy would have when he takes his place in church to-
morrow. "
## p. 1981 (#171) ###########################################
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
1981
"He will stand Number One. "
"So I have heard; and here are ten dollars for the priest. ”
"Is there anything else I can do for you? " inquired the priest,
fixing his eyes on Thord.
"There is nothing else. "
Thord went out.
Eight years more rolled by, and then one day a noise was
heard outside of the priest's study, for many men were approach-
ing, and at their head was Thord, who entered first.
The priest looked up and recognized him.
"You come well attended this evening, Thord," said he.
"I am here to request that the banns may be published for
my son: he is about to marry Karen Storliden, daughter of
Gudmund, who stands here beside me. "
"Why, that is the richest girl in the parish. "
"So they say," replied the peasant, stroking back his hair with
one hand.
The priest sat awhile as if in deep thought, then entered the
names in his book, without making any comments, and the men
wrote their signatures underneath. Thord laid three dollars on
the table.
"One is all I am to have," said the priest.
"I know that very well, but he is my only child; I want to
do it handsomely. "
The priest took the money.
"This is now the third time, Thord, that you have come here
on your son's account.
"But now I am through with him," said Thord, and folding
up his pocket-book he said farewell and walked away.
The men slowly followed him.
A fortnight later, the father and son were rowing one calm,
still day, across the lake to Storliden to make arrangements for
the wedding.
"This thwart is not secure," said the son, and stood up to
straighten the seat on which he was sitting.
At the same moment the board he was standing on slipped
from under him; he threw out his arms, uttered a shriek, and
fell overboard.
"Take hold of the oar! " shouted the father, springing to his
feet and holding out the oar.
But when the son had made a couple of efforts he grew stiff.
## p. 1982 (#172) ###########################################
1982
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
"Wait a moment! " cried the father, and began to row toward
his son.
Then the son rolled over on his back, gave his father one long
look, and sank.
Thord could scarcely believe it; he held the boat still, and
stared at the spot where his son had gone down, as though he
must surely come to the surface again. There rose some bubbles,
then some more, and finally one large one that burst; and the
lake lay there as smooth and bright as a mirror again.
For three days and three nights people saw the father rowing
round and round the spot, without taking either food or sleep;
he was dragging the lake for the body of his son. And toward
morning of the third day he found it, and carried it in his arms
up over the hills to his gård.
It might have been about a year from that day, when the
priest, late one autumn evening, heard some one in the passage
outside of the door, carefully trying to find the latch. The priest
opened the door, and in walked a tall, thin man, with bowed
form and white hair. The priest looked long at him before he
recognized him. It was Thord.
"Are you out walking so late? " said the priest, and stood still
in front of him.
"Ah, yes! it is late," said Thord, and took a seat.
The priest sat down also, as though waiting. A long, long
silence followed. At last Thord said:-
"I have something with me that I should like to give to the
poor; I want it to be invested as a legacy in my son's name. "
He rose, laid some money on the table, and sat down again.
The priest counted it.
"It is a great deal of money," said he.
"It is half the price of my gård. I sold it to-day. "
The priest sat long in silence. At last he asked, but gently:
"What do you propose to do now, Thord ? »
"Something better. "
They sat there for awhile, Thord with downcast eyes, the
priest with his eyes fixed on Thord. Presently the priest said.
slowly and softly:-
"I think your son has at last brought you a true blessing. "
"Yes, I think so myself," said Thord, looking up, while two
big tears coursed slowly down his cheeks.
―――――
## p. 1983 (#173) ###########################################
1983
WILLIAM BLACK
(1841-)
N VIEW of Mr. Black's accurate and picturesque descriptions of
natural phenomena, it is interesting to know that of his
varied youthful studies, botany most attracted him, and
that he followed it up as an art pupil in the government schools.
But his bent was rather for journalism than for art or science.
Before he was twenty-one he had written critical essays for a local
newspaper on Ruskin, Carlyle, and Kingsley; and shortly afterward
he wrote a series of sketches, after Christopher North, that at this
early age gave evidence of his peculiar
talent, the artistic use of natural effects
in the development of character, the pathos
of the gray morning or the melancholy of
the evening mist when woven in with
tender episode or tragic occurrence.
WILLIAM BLACK
William Black was born in Glasgow,
Scotland, November 6th, 1841, and received
his early education there. He settled in
London in 1864, and was a special corre-
spondent of the Morning Star in the Franco-
Prussian war, but after about ten years of
the life of a newspaper man, during which
he was an editor of the London News, he
abandoned journalism for novel-writing in 1875. In the intervals of
his work he traveled much, and devoted himself with enthusiasm to
out-door sports, of which he writes with a knowledge that inspires a
certain confidence in the reader. A Scotch skipper once told him he
need never starve, because he could make a living as pilot in the
western Highlands; and the fidelity of his descriptions of northern
Scotland have met with the questionable reward of converting a
poet's haunt into a tourist's camp. Not that Mr. Black's is a game-
keeper's catalogue of the phenomena of forest or stream, or the
poetic way of depicting nature by similes. The fascination of his
writing lies in our conviction that it is the result of minute observa-
tion, with a certain atmospheric quality that makes the picture
alive. More, one is conscious of a sensitive, pathetic thrill in his
writing; these sights and sounds, when they are unobtrusively chron-
icled, are penetrated by a subtle human sympathy, as if the writer
## p. 1984 (#174) ###########################################
1984
WILLIAM BLACK
bent close to the earth and heard the whispers of the flowers and
stones, as well as the murmur of the forest and the roar of the sea.
>
<
He is eminently a popular writer, a vivacious delineator of life
and manners, even when he exhibits his versatility at the cost of
some of his most attractive characteristics. In 'Sunrise' we have a
combination of romance and politics, its motive supplied by the in-
trigues of a wide-spread communistic society. 'Kilmeny is the story
of a painter, Shandon Bells' of a literary man, The Monarch of
Mincing Lane' tells of the London streets, the heroine of 'The Hand-
some Humes' is an actress, the scenes in Briseis' are played in
Athens, Scotland, and England. All these novels have tragic and
exceptional episodes, the humor is broad, as the humor of a pessi-
mist always is, and the reader finds himself laughing at a practical
joke on the heels of a catastrophe. Mr. Black knows his London,
especially the drawing-room aspect of it, and his latest novel is sure
to have the latest touch of fad and fashion, although white heather
does not cease to grow nor deer to be stalked, nor flies to be cast in
Highland waters. We cannot admit that he is exceptionally fortu-
nate in the heroines of these novels, however, for they are perfectly
beautiful and perfectly good, and nature protests against perfection
as a hurt to vanity. Our real favorites are the dark-eyed Queen
Titania, the small imperious person who drives in state in Strange
Adventures of a Phaeton,' and sails with such high courage in White
Wings, and the half-sentimental, half-practical, wholly self-seeking
siren Bonny Leslie in Kilmeny,' who develops into something a
little more than coquettish in the Kitty of Shandon Bells. '
These and half a dozen other novels by Mr. Black entitle him to
his place as a popular novelist; they are alternately gay and sad,
they are spirited and entertaining; certain characters, like the heroine
of 'Sunrise,' cast a bright effulgence over the dark plots of intrigue.
But Mr. Black is at his best as the creator of the special school of
fiction that has Highland scenery and Highland character for its
field. He has many followers and many imitators, but he remains
master on his own ground. The scenes of his most successful
stories, The Princess of Thule,' 'A Daughter of Heth,' 'In Far
Lochaber,' 'Macleod of Dare,' and 'Madcap Violet,' are laid for the
most part in remote rural districts, amid lake and moorland and
mountain wilds of northern Scotland, whose unsophisticated atmo-
sphere is invaded by airs from the outer world only during the brief
season of hunting and fishing.
But the visit of the worldling is long enough to furnish incident
both poetic and tragic; and when he enters the innocent and prim-
itive life of the native, as Lavender entered that of the proud and
beautiful Princess of Thule sailing her boat in the far-off waters of
## p. 1985 (#175) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1985
Skye, or the cruel Gertrude in the grim castle of Dare, he finds all
the potencies of passion and emotion.
The temperament of the Highlander is a melancholy one. The
narrow life, with its isolation and its hardships, makes him pessimistic
and brooding, though endowed with the keen instinct and peculiar
humor of those who are far removed from the artificialities of life.
But Mr. Black ascribes this temperament, not to race or hardship or
isolation, but to the strange sights and sounds of the sea and land
on which he dwells, to the wild nights and fierce sunsets, to the dark
ocean plains that brood over the secrets that lie in their depths.
Under his treatment nature is subjective, and plays the part of
fate. Natural scenery is as the orchestra to a Wagnerian opera. The
shifting of the clouds, the voice of the sea, the scent of the woods,
are made the most important factors in the formation of character.
He whose home is in mountain fastnesses knows the solemn glory
of sunrise and sunset, and has for his heritage the high brave temper
of the warrior, with the melancholy of the poet. The dweller on
tawny sands, where the waves beat lazily on summer afternoons and
where wild winds howl in storm, is of like necessity capricious and
melancholy. The minor key, in which Poe thought all true poetry is
written, is struck in these his earlier novels.
Let the day be ever
so beautiful, the air ever so clear, the shadows give back a sensitive,
luminous darkness that reveals tragedies within itself.
Not that the sentient background, as he has painted it, is to be
confounded with the "sympathy of nature with character" of the
older school, in which hysterical emotion is accentuated by wild wind
storms, and the happiness of lovers by a sunshiny day. But char-
acter, as depicted by him in these early novels, is so far subordinate
to nature that nature assumes moral responsibility. When Macleod
of Dare commits murder and then suicide, we accept it as the result
of climatic influences; and the tranquil-conscienced Hamish, the
would-be homicide, but obeys the call of the winds. Especially in
the delightful romances of Skye, Mr. Black reproduces the actual
speech and manners of the people.
And as romance of motive clothes barren rocks in rich hues and
waste bogland in golden gorse, it does like loving service for homely
characters. The dialect these people talk, without editorial comment,
delights and amuses from its strangeness, and also from the convic-
tion that it is as real as the landscape. They tell wonderful tales of
moor and fen as they tramp the woods or sail on moonlit waters,
and sitting by a peat fire of a stormy night, discuss, between deep
pulls of Scotch whisky, the Erastianism that vitiates modern theol-
ogy.
We must look in the pages of Scott for a more charming
picture of the relation of clansman to chief.
IV-125
## p. 1986 (#176) ###########################################
1986
WILLIAM BLACK
But Mr. Black is his own most formidable rival. He who painted
the sympathetic landscapes of northern Scotland has taught the
reader the subtle distinction between these delicate scenes and those
in which nature's moods are obtrusively chronicled. There are nov-
els by Mr. Black in reading which we exclaim, with the exhausted
young lady at the end of her week's sight-seeing, "What! another
sunset! »
And he set himself a difficult task when he attempted to
draw another character so human and so lovable as the Princess
of Thule, although the reader were ungracious indeed did he not
welcome the beautiful young lady with the kind heart and the
proud, hurt smile, whom he became familiar with through frequent
encounters in the author's other novels. And if Earlscope, who
has a dim sort of kinship with the more vigorous hero of 'Jane
Eyre,' has been succeeded by well-bred young gentlemen who never
smoke in the presence of their female relatives, though they are
master hands at sailing a boat and knocking down obtrusive foreign-
ers, Mr. Black has not since A Daughter of Heth' done so dramatic
a piece of writing as the story of the Earl's death and Coquette's
flight. The "Daughter of Heth," with her friendly simplicity and
innocent wiles, and Madcap Violet, the laughter-loving, deserve per-
haps a kinder fate than a broken heart and an early grave.
But what the novelist Gogol said of himself and his audience fifty
years ago is as true as ever: "Thankless is the task of whoever
ventures to show what passes every moment before his eyes. " When
he is heart-breaking, and therefore exceptional, Mr. Black is most
interesting. A sad ending is not necessarily depressing to the reader.
"There is something," says La Rochefoucauld, "in the misfortunes of
our best friends that doth not displease us. "
In Mr. Black's later novels, the burden of tradition has been too
heavy for him, and he has ended them all happily, as if they were
fairy tales. He chose a more artistic as well as a more faithful part
when they were in keeping with life.
## p. 1987 (#177) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1987
THE END OF MACLEOD OF DARE
"D
UNCAN," said Hamish in a low whisper,- for Macleod had
gone below, and they thought he might be asleep in the
small hushed state-room-"this is a strange-looking day,
is it not? And I am afraid of it in this open bay, with an
anchorage no better than a sheet of paper for an anchorage.
you see now how strange-looking it is? "
Do
Duncan Cameron also spoke in his native tongue, and he
said:
"That is true, Hamish. And it was a day like this there was
when the Solan was sunk at her moorings in Loch Hourn. Do
you remember, Hamish ? And it would be better for us now if
we were in Loch Tua, or Loch-na-Keal, or in the dock that was
built for the steamer at Tiree. I do not like the look of this
day. »
Yet to an ordinary observer it would have seemed that the
chief characteristic of this pale, still day was extreme and set-
tled calm. There was not a breath of wind to ruffle the sur-
face of the sea; but there was a slight glassy swell, and that
only served to show curious opalescent tints under the suffused
light of the sun. There were no clouds; there was only a thin
veil of faint and sultry mist all across the sky: the sun was
invisible, but there was a glare of yellow at one point of the
heavens. A dead calm; but heavy, oppressed, sultry. There
was something in the atmosphere that seemed to weigh on the
chest.
"There was a dream I had this morning," continued Hamish,
in the same low tones. "It was about my little granddaughter
Christina. You know my little Christina, Duncan. And she
said to me, 'What have you done with Sir Keith Macleod?
Why have you not brought him back? He was under your care,
grandfather. ' I did not like that dream. "
"Oh, you are becoming as bad as Sir Keith Macleod himself! "
said the other. "He does not sleep. He talks to himself. You
will become like that if you pay attention to foolish dreams,
Hamish. "
Hamish's quick temper leaped up.
"What do you mean, Duncan Cameron, by saying 'as bad as
Sir Keith Macleod'? You-you come from Ross: perhaps they
## p. 1988 (#178) ###########################################
1988
WILLIAM BLACK
have not good masters there. I tell you there is not any man
in Ross, or in Sutherland either, is as good a master and as
brave a lad as Sir Keith Macleod - not any one, Duncan Cam-
eron! "
"I did not mean anything like that, Hamish," said the other,
humbly. "But there was a breeze this morning. We could have
got over to Loch Tua. Why did we stay here, where there is
no shelter and no anchorage? Do you know what is likely to
come after a day like this? "
"It is your business to be a sailor on board this yacht; it is
not your business to say where she will go," said Hamish.
But all the same the old man was becoming more and more
alarmed at the ugly aspect of this dead calm. The very birds,
instead of stalking among the still pools, or lying buoyant on the
smooth waters, were excitedly calling, and whirring from one
point to another.
"If the equinoctials were to begin now," said Duncan Cam-
eron, "this is a fine place to meet the equinoctials! An open
bay, without shelter; and a ground that is no ground for an
anchorage. It is not two anchors or twenty anchors would hold
in such a ground. "
Macleod appeared: the men were suddenly silent. Without a
word to either of them—and that was not his wont- he passed
to the stern of the yacht. Hamish knew from his manner that
he would not be spoken to. He did not follow him, even with
all this vague dread on his mind.
The day wore on to the afternoon. Macleod, who had been
pacing up and down the deck, suddenly called Hamish. Hamish
came aft at once.
"Hamish," said he, with a strange sort of laugh, "do you
remember this morning, before the light came? Do you re-
member that I asked you about a brass-band that I heard
playing? »
Hamish looked at him, and said with an earnest anxiety:-
"O Sir Keith, you will pay no heed to that!
It is very
common; I have heard them say it is very common. Why, to
hear a brass-band, to be sure! There is nothing more common
than that. And you will not think you are unwell merely be-
cause you think you can hear a brass-band playing! "
"I want you to tell me, Hamish," said he, in the same jesting
way, "whether my eyes have followed the example of my ears,
-
## p. 1989 (#179) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1989
and are playing tricks. Do you think they are bloodshot, with
my lying on deck in the cold? Hamish, what do you see all
around? "
The old man looked at the sky, and the shore, and the sea.
It was a marvelous thing. The world was all enshrouded in a
salmon-colored mist: there was no line of horizon visible between
the sea and the sky.
"It is red, Sir Keith," said Hamish.
And what do you
"Ah! Am I in my senses this time?
think of a red day, Hamish? That is not a usual thing. "
"Oh, Sir Keith, it will be a wild night this night! And we
cannot stay here, with this bad anchorage! "
"And where would you go, Hamish - in a dead calm ? "
Macleod asked, still with a smile on the wan face.
"Where would I go? " said the old man, excitedly. "I — I
will take care of the yacht. But you, Sir Keith; oh! you- you
will go ashore now. Do you know, sir, the sheiling that the
shepherd had ? It is a poor place-oh yes; but Duncan Cam-
eron and I will take some things ashore. And do you not think
we can look after the yacht? She has met the equinoctials
before, if it is the equinoctials that are beginning. She has
met them before; and cannot she meet them now?
Sir Keith, you will go ashore! "
But you,
Macleod burst out laughing, in an odd sort of fashion.
"Do you think I am good at running away when there is any
kind of danger, Hamish? Have you got into the English way?
Would you call me a coward too? Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense,
Hamish! I-why, I am going to drink a glass of the coal-black
wine, and have done with it. I will drink it to the health of
my sweetheart, Hamish! "
•
"Sir Keith," said the old man, beginning to tremble, though
he but half understood the meaning of the scornful mirth, “I
have had charge of you since you were a young lad. "
"Very well! »
"And Lady Macleod will ask of me, 'Such and such a thing
happened: what did you do for my son? ' Then I will say,
'Your ladyship, we were afraid of the equinoctials; and we got
Sir Keith to go ashore; and the next day we went ashore for
him; and now we have brought him back to Castle Dare! '»
"Hamish, Hamish, you are laughing at me! Or you want to
call me a coward? Don't you know I should be afraid of the
## p. 1990 (#180) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1990
Don't you know that
ghost of the shepherd who killed himself?
the English people call me a coward? »
"May their souls dwell in the downmost hall of perdition! "
said Hamish, with his cheeks becoming a gray white; "and every
woman that ever came of the accursed race! "
He looked at the old man for a second, and he gripped his
hand.
"Do not say that, Hamish-that is folly. But you have been
my friend.
My mother will not forget you-it is not the way
of a Macleod to forget- whatever happens to me. "
"Sir Keith! " Hamish cried, "I do not know what you mean!
But you will go ashore before the night? "
"Go ashore? " Macleod answered, with a return to this wild
bantering tone, "when I am going to see my sweetheart? Oh
no! Tell Christina, now! Tell Christina to ask the young Eng-
lish lady to come into the saloon, for I have something to say to
her. Be quick, Hamish! "
Hamish went away; and before long he returned with the
answer that the young English lady was in the saloon. And
now he was no longer haggard and piteous, but joyful, and
there was a strange light in his eyes.
"Sweetheart," said he, "are you waiting for me at last? I
have brought you a long way. Shall we drink a glass now at
the end of the voyage? "
no
"Do you wish to insult me? " said she; but there was
anger in her voice: there was more of fear in her eyes as she
regarded him.
"You have no other message for me than the one you gave
me last night, Gerty? " said he, almost cheerfully. "It is all over,
then? You would go away from me forever? But we will drink
a glass before we go! "
He sprang forward, and caught both her hands in his with the
grip of a vise.
"Do you know what you have done, Gerty? " said he, in a low
voice. "Oh, you have soft, smooth, English ways; and you are
like a rose-leaf; and you are like a queen, whom all people are
glad to serve. But do you know that you have killed a man's
life? And there is no penalty for that in the South, perhaps;
but you are no longer in the South.
And if you have this very
night to drink a glass with me, you will not refuse it?
a glass of the coal-black wine! "
It is only
## p. 1991 (#181) ###########################################
WILLIAM BLACK
1991
She struggled back from him, for there was a look in his face
that frightened her. But she had a wonderful self-command.
"Is that the message I was to hear? " said she, coldly.
"Why, sweetheart, are you not glad? Is not that the only
gladness left for you and for me, that we should drink one glass
together, and clasp hands, and say good-by? What else is there
left? What else could come to you and to me? And it may not
be this night, or to-morrow night; but one night I think it will
come; and then, sweetheart, we will have one more glass together,
before the end. "
He went on deck. He called Hamish.
"Hamish," said he, in a grave, matter-of-fact way, "I don't
like the look of this evening. Did you say the sheiling was still
on the island? "
"Oh yes, Sir Keith," said Hamish, with great joy; for he
thought his advice was going to be taken, after all.
"Well, now, you know the gales, when they begin, sometimes
last for two or three or four days; and I will ask you to see
that Christina takes a good store of things to the sheiling before
the darkness comes on. Take plenty of things now, Hamish, and
put them in the sheiling, for I am afraid this is going to be a
wild night. "
Now indeed all the red light had gone away; and as the sun
went down there was nothing but a spectral whiteness over the
sea and the sky; and the atmosphere was so close and sultry
that it seemed to suffocate one. Moreover, there was a dead
calm; if they had wanted to get away from this exposed place,
how could they? They could not get into the gig and pull this
great yacht over to Loch Tua.
It was with a light heart that Hamish set about this thing;
and Christina forthwith filled a hamper with tinned meats, and
bread, and whisky, and what not. And fuel was taken ashore,
too; and candles, and a store of matches. If the gales were
coming on, as appeared likely from this ominous-looking evening,
who could tell how many days and nights the young master-
and the English lady, too, if he desired her company-might not
have to stay ashore, while the men took the chance of the sea
with this yacht, or perhaps seized the occasion of some lull to
make for some place of shelter? There was Loch Tua, and
there was the bay at Bunessan, and there was the little channel
called Polterriv, behind the rocks opposite Iona. Any shelter at
## p. 1992 (#182) ###########################################
1992
WILLIAM BLACK
all was better than this exposed place, with the treacherous
anchorage.
Hamish and Duncan Cameron returned to the yacht.
"Will you go ashore now, Sir Keith? " the old man said.
"Oh no; I am not going ashore yet. It is not yet time to
run away, Hamish. "
He spoke in a friendly and pleasant fashion, though Hamish,
in his increasing alarm, thought it no proper time for jesting.
They hauled the gig up to the davits, however, and again the
yacht lay in dead silence in this little bay.
The evening grew to dusk; the only change visible in the
spectral world of pale yellow-white mist was the appearance in
the sky of a number of small, detached bulbous-looking clouds of
a dusky blue-gray. They had not drifted hither, for there was
no wind. They had only appeared. They were absolutely mo-
tionless. But the heat and the suffocation in this atmosphere
became almost insupportable.
