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"I saw Black Duncan and the girl, but not the others," answered Gilian, all at once forgetting that some caution was needed here. Up more straightly sat the Cornal, and fixed him with a stern eye. "Oh, ay!" said he; "she was in the story too, and you fancied you might hide her. I would not wonder now but you had been in the vessel yourself."
"I know 'Ben Dorain," said Gilian timidly, "and I think I could tell just the way you felt when you heard the man singing it in a foreign place." "Come away, then, my twelve-year-old warlock," said the Cornal, mockingly, yet wondering too. "This is a real oddity," said the General, drawing his chair a little nearer the boy.
The lines dashed to her brow; when she spoke it was in a cold constrained accent utterly different from that the boy had grown accustomed to. "It is the oe from Ladyfield," she explained. "He'll be making a noise in the house," said the Cornal with a touch of annoyance. "I cannot stand boys; he'll break things, I'm sure. When is he going away?"
To sit with old people over an austere table with no flowers on it because of the day, and see the Paymaster snuff above his tepid second day's broth, and hear the Cornal snort because the mince-collops his toothless-ness demanded on other days of the week were not available to-day, would be, somehow, to bring a sordid, unable, drab and weary world close up on a vision of joy and beauty.
It was the first time he had heard its evening clamour, that, however far it might search up the glens, never reached Lady-field, so deep among the hills, and he had no more than recovered from the bewildering influence of its unexpected alarm when the foot of the Paymaster sounded heavily on the stair. "You're here at last," said the Cornal, without looking at him.
The Cornal looked him deeply in the eyes, caught him by the ear, and with a twist made him wince, pushed him on the shoulders and made his knees bend. Then he released him with a flout of contempt. "Man! Jock's the daft recruiter," he said coarsely with an oath. "What's this but a clerk? There's not the spirit in the boy to make a drummer of him. There's no stuff for sogering here."
She drove before the wind and went on Ealan Dubh, and sunk, and that was all." The story, as he told it, was as bald of interest as if it were a page from an old almanack. "What came of the men?" said the Cornal. "The loss of the Jean does not amount to muckle; there was not a plank of her first timbers left in her." "They got ashore in the small boat," said Gilian.
I mind at Toulouse " "And Gilian was down at the Waterfoot and saw it all," she broke in upon the reminiscence. "Was he, faith?" said the Cornal. "I like my tales at first hand. Tell us all about it, laddie; what vessel was she?" He wheeled his chair about as he spoke, and roused himself to attention. It was a curious group, too much like his old court-martial to be altogether to the boy's taste.
"Revenge!" said the General, a flash jumping to his eyes, then dying away. "I would not have said that, Colin; I would not have said that. It is the phrase of a rough, quarrelsome young soldier, and we are elders who should be long by with it." "Anyhow," said the Cornal, "here's the makings of a hero."
"O Dugald, Dugald, you know none of the children of this town ever annoyed the Major; it is only the keelies from the low-country who do so. And this is not the boy to make a mock of any old gentleman, I am sure." "I know he'll make a noise and start me when I am thinking," said the Cornal, still troubled.
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