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"He'll answer for himself, for here he comes," replied Maitland, looking out of the window, whence the person in question was seen approaching the house, mounted on the smallest and shaggiest of Shetland ponies, and his legs, encased in top-boots, almost dragging along the ground, though he managed, by a succession of sudden jerks, to lift them up so as to avoid the numerous inequalities of the way.
He tells me they have passed a great deal of their time on shore; but not a word does he say about meeting any ladies. Perhaps they are scarce in those wild regions? I have heard of Shetland shawls and Shetland ponies. Are there any Shetland ladies, I wonder?" "GUIDE! Where are we?" "I can't say for certain." "Have you lost your way?" The guide looks slowly all round him, and then looks at me.
From the men they learned the news of the Crimean War, and the discovery of the remains of Franklin's party a thousand miles south of the places they had explored. Next day they gained Upernavik in safety, after eighty-four days' travelling; in the open air all the time. In Upernavik they remained until the 6th of September, and then embarked for the Shetland Isles.
Twice a week she would drive over, and the cart would not do for her, for she hired a gig from Angus Whitehead, whose farm lay over the hill. And it was seldom that she went without bringing something back for one or other of us. It was a wooden pipe for my father, or a Shetland plaid for my mother, or a book for me, or a brass collar for Rob the collie. There was never a woman more free-handed.
Holland lies at a great distance from the seas to which herrings are known principally to resort, and can, therefore, carry on that fishery only in decked vessels, which can carry water and provisions sufficient for a voyage to a distant sea; but the Hebrides, or Western Islands, the islands of Shetland, and the northern and north-western coasts of Scotland, the countries in whose neighbourhood the herring fishery is principally carried on, are everywhere intersected by arms of the sea, which run up a considerable way into the land, and which, in the language of the country, are called sea-lochs.
"The marquis is believed, at Lunnasting, at all events, to have inherited the estates which should rightly have belonged to the son of Don Hernan Escalante, the husband of the Lady Hilda of Lunnasting, as she is called in Shetland, the daughter of Sir Marcus Wardhill.
One day, after we had left the Shetland Islands, and it wore toward the end of the voyage, and we began to talk of where we might best land and call on men to rise for Hakon, the elder lady, Thoralf's wife, had been talking to me, and I think my mind had wandered a little as I watched Gerda, who was on the after deck with Bertric and Dalfin.
Then "Pompey," a venerable nag, took his place; and though he had nothing to say, he held out his spavined leg, which dramatic posture excited the utmost enthusiasm of the audience. "Fanny Shetland," the property of a lady, tried to damage the meeting by saying that horses had no wrongs. She said, "Just look at my embroidered blanket. I never go out when the weather is bad.
At midnight both men stood up. "The tide serves," said Liot, softly, holding out his hand. And Paul clasped it and answered: "God be with thee, Liot." "We shall meet no more in this life, Paul." "Then I tryst thee for the next life; that will be a good meeting. Fare thee well. God keep thee!" "And thee also." "Then we shall be well kept, both of us." That was the last of Shetland for Liot Borson.
You must hear her story, for, wonderful to say, she lived to tell it; and I know those who saw her safe and sound in her Shetland home, and heard it from her own lips. But she had been to Norway meanwhile, a much longer voyage than to Lerwick.
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