Deep Moat Grange. Crockett Samuel Rutherford

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СКАЧАТЬ as the gipsy folk call it, and from hedge to hemlock, and from lowly bracken to tall Queen o' the Meadow, the silver threads were stretched taut like the cordage of some sea-going ship. The dew shone silver clear on ilka silken strand, and the blobs o' it were like pearls and diamonds in the morning sun.

      "And aye the longer I stood the wilder the bairn ran and skipped lightfoot as a fairy herself. 'Bonnie – bonnie – oh, bonnie!' she cried, clapping her hands and laughing, 'see mither, mither, are they no unco bonnie?'

      "Then, by the side of the beck, as if, being wearied with travel, she had set her down to take a drink of the caller burn water, I saw a woman sit. She was beneath a bush of hazel, and her head was resting tired-like on her hand. So, being back there in the shadow, I had not noticed her at the first, being taken up, as was small wonder, with the sight of that bonnie yellow-haired bairn flichtering here and there like a butterfly in the sun.

      "Then the wee lass saw me and ran whatever she could to me. She took my hand and syne looked up in my face as trustful-like as if she ha' kenned me all her days.

      "'Here woman,' she cried, 'come and wake my minnie to me, for I canna. She winna hearken when her wee Elsie speaks to her.'

      "Hand in hand we went up to the poor thing, and even as I went a great fear gripped me by the heart. For the woman sat still, even when my step must have sounded in her ear. I laid my hand on her, and, as I am a living woman, she was clay cauld. The bairn looked ever up into my face.

      "'Can you no waken my mither, either?' she said wistfully.

      "'No,' said I. 'No, my puir, wee lassie!' For truth to tell, I kenned not what to say.

      "'Will minnie never waken?' she asked again, bright as a button.

      "'I fear not, bonnie lassie,' said I, and the tear was in my eye.

      "Then the elf clapped her hands and danced like a yellow butterfly over the lea.

      "'Then she willna greet any more! She willna be hungry any more. She will never need bite o' meat nor thread o' claes for ever and ever mair.' She lilted the words almost as if she had been singing a tune. 'She will be richt pleased, my minnie. For, oh, she grat sair and often! She carried me in her arms till her ain feet were hurted and she could gang nae farther. Late yestreen she sat doon here to wash them, and I sat, too, and after that she cuddled me in her airms. Are ye no richt glad for my minnie?'

      "I telled her that I was glad, for naught less would satisfy her, though even as I spak the words the sob rose in my throat.

      "And as we stood there, looking at the woman sitting with her face on her hands, what should happen but that the auld miser should come hirpling to the door, and there, too, looking over his shoulder, was Daft Jeremy, that the village bairns were wont to cry at and call the 'Mounster.'

      "'What hae ye there, Nance Edgar?' the old man cried, shaking his stick at me; 'keep away from my door with your doxies and changeling bairns.'"

      "But I was civil to him for his age's sake, and also because of the witless man that was looking over his shoulder. For it is not good to cross such as the Lord has smitten in their understanding, and so do my own folk never.

      "'It is a woman, Laird Stennis,' quoth I, 'that hath set herself down to die by your burnside.'

      "'Die,' cried he, with a queer scream most like a frighted hen flying down off the baulks, 'what word is that to speak? A woman dead by my burnside – what richt had she there? Who has taken such a liberty with Hobby Stennis?'

      "'Nay, that you can come and see for yourself,' said I, a little nettled at the carle's hardness of heart. So the auld miser, bent and stiff, came hirpling barehead down the path, and behind him, looking most uncanny, danced Daft Jeremy, combing his hair with a weaver's heckle and muttering to himself. The morning sunshine fell fair on this strange couple, and when she saw him the little maid let go my hand and ran to Laird Stennis. She would have taken his hand, but he pushed her off. Whereat, she being affronted, the witch caught at his stick and pulled it away from him before he could resist. Then she gat astride and played horses with it on the green grass of the burnside dell. It was like an incantation.

      "But without heeding her the old man went to the woman, and, lifting up her head, looked steadfastly in her face.

      "'God in his heaven be merciful,' he cried, 'it is my daughter Bell!'

      "Then the 'mounster' laughed loud and long, and wrapping his 'heckle' in a wisp of paper, he played a tune upon it with his mouth, dancing round and crying, 'There's her right for ye – ye said she hadna a right, Laird Stennis! Ye were that hard ye refused the woman room to die at your dykeside. But Bell has come hame to claim her own. Coffin and clay – coffin and clay! Sax foot of clean kirkyard sods! Faith, I wish a' Daft Jeremy's enemies had the same, nae mair and nae less. But it's as weel as it is, Laird Stennis – for Jeremy cannot be doing with grown women about the noose o' Breckonside. And it's him that has the say now, ye ken!'

      "But the old man answered nothing, good or ill. He only stood and looked down at his daughter, muttering to himself words that sounded like 'Bell has comed hame… My bairn has comed back to me at the last!'

      "So in time the miser buried his daughter decently, and took the little lass hame to him to bring up. But when this came to be talked of in the countryside, there was a well-to-do woman in Dumfries toon, a Mistress Comly or Comline, that was some kin to Bell Stennis through her mother, and when she heard o' the bit bairn shut up in that lonesome house with only a miser and a daft man, she had heart pity on her, and as soon as she had shut her shop one Saturday afternoon, off she set to Breckonside in a pony cart that she used to bring her goods up from the port quay.

      "It was but a coldrife welcome she gat at the white house of Breckonside, but sorrow a bit Margaret Comline cared for that. She tied up her sonsy beast, that was, like herself, fat as pats of butter, to the yettpost of the miser's garden. And when he came to the door himself, she did not take a couple of minutes in telling the auld runt her business, plump and plain.

      "'I hae comed to ask ye to put away that daft man,' she said, 'and get a decent woman for a house-keeper, Laird Stennis.'

      "'Meanin' yourself, Margar't Comline,' interrupted the miser, with a cunning smirk. He had shut the door in her face, and was conducting negotiations through a crack.

      "'Me be your housekeeper!' cried the visitor, 'me that is a ratepayer and a well-considered indweller in the burgh o' Dumfries. Man, I would not cross your doorstep though ye were Provost. But I hear that ye hae this bit bairn in the hoose, and a lassie bairn, too (that's full cousin's daughter to myself). I have come to tell ye that it is neither Christian nor decent to bring up the wee thing but and ben wi' a kenned ill-doer like Daft Jeremy, that has twice been tried for his life for the shedding of blood!'

      "From behind the closed inner door of the cothouse there came a high-pitched angry cry that garred the very blood run chill as ice in Margaret Comline's veins. I mean that the thought of it did afterwards. For at the time she just looked about her to see that Donald, her pony, was not far away, and that the road was clear to the light market cart in case that she had to make a break for it. She had eke a sturdy staff in her hand, that the loons of the port kenned bravely the weight of.

      "It was the voice of the man-wanting-wit, crying out to be at her, that she heard.

      "'She has ta'en from me my guid name,' his words reached her through the very stone and lime of the house, 'and she wad take the bonnie siller oot of the black chest that you and Jeremy keep so carefully. Gie the woman the bit lassie bairn, Laird Stennis, and let her travel. For less will not serve her, and forbye a bairn is only an expense and an eating up СКАЧАТЬ