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Updated: June 23, 2025
Gilian waited his punishment with more wonderment than fear. What could be said to him for a misadventure? He had done no harm except to cause an hour or two of apprehension, and if he had been with one whose company was forbidden it had never been forbidden to him. "It's a fine carry-on this," said the Cornal, breaking the silence. "Ay, it's a fine carry-on."
He saw no reason to stay his confidences, and the Cornal was waiting expectingly on him. "An odd rumour up the way; I heard it first from that gabbling man Spencer at the Inns. It was that a young gentleman of our acquaintance might have had a hand in the affair. I could not say at the first whether the notion vexed or pleased me, but I assured him of the stupidity of it."
"Halt!" he cried; the drum and fife ceased, the arms grounded, the soldiers clamoured for their billets. Over the hill of Strone the morning paled, out of the gloom the phantom body came a corps most human, thirsty, hungry, travel-strained. Gilian ran home and found the household awake but unconscious of the great doings in the town. "What!" cried the Cornal, when he heard the news.
"What what was the Cornal saying to you?" at last she queried, busying herself as she spoke with some uncalled-for kitchen office to show the indifference of her question. "Oh, he was not angry," said Gilian, thinking that might satisfy. "I did not think he would be," she said. Then in a little again, reluctantly: "But what was he talking about?" The boy fobbed it off again.
Gilian hesitated, with his illusion shattered, and, all unnerved, broke for the second time into tears. "Look at that!" cried Miss Mary pitifully, herself weeping; "you are frightening the poor laddie out of his wits," and she soothed Gilian with numerous Gaelic endearments. "Tuts! never mind me," said the Cornal, rising and coming forward to clap the boy on the head for the very first time.
Sit down, sit down!" he went on sharply, as if he had of a sudden found something to reproach himself with in any complacent recognition of this child's images. "You are not canny; how old are you?" Gilian was trembling and parched at the lips now, awake to the enormity of his forwardness. "I am twelve," he repeated. "It is a cursed lie," said the Cornal hotly; "you're a hundred; don't tell me!"
The Captain seems to have given up his notion of the army for him." "You can lead a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What's to be made of him? Here's he sixteen or thereabouts, and just a bairn over lesson-books at every chance." Brooks smiled wistfully. "It is not the lesson-books, Cornal, not the lesson-books exactly.
I thought I would never get to the vessel. I thought she would be upset every moment, and I could not keep from thinking of myself hanging on to the keel and my fingers slipping in weariness." "A little less thinking and more speed with your boat would be welcome," said the Cornal impatiently. "I'm sick sorry for them, waiting there on a wreck with so slow a rescue coming to them."
"I do?" she answered a little impatiently, but not without a kindly sense of laughter as at a child "Bees and midges, late things like ourselves. You are not going to tell me they are your fairies." "They are, of course they are," he protested, laughing. "At least a second ago I could have sworn they were the same that gave me my dread on the night the Cornal met us.
Are you hearing me, Cornal?" he pressed, eager to compel something for the youth whose days were being wasted. "Speak to Miss Mary," was all the Cornal would say. "I have nothing to do with him, and John's heedless now, for he knows his plan for the army is useless." The dominie shook his head. "Man!" he cried. "I cannot even tell of his truancy there, for her heart's wrapped up in the youth.
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