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Updated: May 26, 2025
"Just look at these, papa did you ever in all your life see anything so beautiful?" She came to a letter, too; which she hastily tore open and read. It was a brief note, in terms of great respect, written by Sir Keith Macleod, and begging Miss White's acceptance of a small parcel of otter-skins, which he hoped might be made into some article of attire.
It is true that Macleod, in showing her over the yacht, seemed to know far too much about tinned meats; and he exhibited with some pride a cunning device for the stowage of soda-water; and he even went the length of explaining to her the capacities of the linen-chest; but then she could not fail to see that, in his eagerness to interest and amuse her, he was as garrulous as a schoolboy showing to his companion a new toy.
"I think, on the whole, I should prefer to go unforgiven." And he hastily rose and left the room. But if Rose Macleod was not free from afflictions of a sentimental nature, her brother Edward was even less so. This young man sorely missed the girlish society which his sister in happier days had constantly drawn about her.
"It is an old air that belonged to Scarba," she said, and then she sang, simply and pathetically enough, the somewhat stiff and cumbrous English translation of the Gaelic words. It was the song of the exiled Mary Macleod, who, sitting on the shores of "sea-worn Mull," looks abroad on the lonely islands of Scarba, and Islay, and Jura, and laments that she is far away from her own home.
Although I had sent word that I was coming home, there was no one to welcome me when I arrived. Nessy MacLeod answered my knock, but instead of opening the door to let me in, she slid out like a cat and closed it behind her. Never had her ungainly figure, her irregular features, and her red head seemed to me so repugnant.
The matter gave rise to much correspondence between the two governments, but happily for the peace of the two countries the American courts acquitted Macleod, as the evidence was clear that he had had nothing to do with the actual seizing of the Caroline; and the authorities at Washington soon afterwards acknowledged their responsibility in such affairs by passing an act directing that subjects of foreign powers, if taken into custody for acts done or committed under the authority of their own government, "the validity or effect whereof depends upon the law of nations, should be discharged."
On the right of Lady Macleod sat the last of her six sons, Keith by name, a tall, sparely built, sinewy young fellow, with a sun-tanned cheek and crisp and curling hair, and with a happy and careless look in his clear eyes and about his mouth that rather blinded one to the firm lines of his face. Glad youth shone there, and the health begotten of hard exposure to wind and weather.
The wind had now risen pretty high, and was against us; but we had four stout rowers, particularly a Macleod, a robust black-haired fellow, half naked, and bare-headed, something between a wild Indian and an English tar. Dr. Johnson sat high, on the stern, like a magnificent Triton.
There was a whole colony on the ground floor of our house who, like my father, could not reconcile themselves to my existence, and the head of them was Aunt Bridget. She had been married, soon after the marriage of my mother, to one Colonel MacLeod, a middle-aged officer on half-pay, a widower, a Belfast Irishman, and a tavern companion of my maternal grandfather.
Strange visions they are; the confused and seething phantasmagoria of a shattered life; himself regarding himself as another figure, and beginning to pity this poor wretch who is not permitted to die. "Poor wretch poor wretch!" he says to himself. "Did they use to call you Macleod; and what is it that has brought you to this?" See now!
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