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Many's the house she has saved with that same Hielan' pony, for Gilchrist, a game lad among gangers, canna keep anything from Mirren, and here she is among the heather wi' word o' treachery, and d'ye ken who she will be doing it for?" "No," said I, "except this McKinnon ye spoke of."
Strike, God of Battle, and the raging sea, strike and spare not the wicked, for Thy servant will have waited long." Gilchrist, who was now the head of the gangers and preventives, turned on his pillow after Dol Beag had crept out. "Ay, Mirren Stuart," said he, "Mirren Stuart that rade the Uist pony and laughed at me in my young days maybe, Mirren, ye will come to my door yet my back door."
And suppose it were not cant, but was something unutterably real, something that I ought to know, and must know some day, if I were ever to get to Heaven! I did not like it. My Uncle Drummond and Flora, and Mr Keith, and this old Mirren, and I thought Helen Raeburn and Mr Cameron, all belonged this new sort of people. The one who did not seem to belong them was Angus.
And their whole talk was of daft-like dances, and bridge, and absurdities. If they had been my daughters I would have whipped them for their affected manners. And when I think of their grandmother! A decent woman was Mirren Somerville. She lived with her father in that ivy-covered cottage at our gates, and she did sewing for me before she married Banks. She wasn't young when she married.
"Man," said Ronny, "when I took my leave o' ye at the Quay I just thought yon day would see it settled between Mirren and me, once and for all, and I'll no' be denying a queer happy feeling, for I felt I could be conquering everything that day; but maybe it was because o' the siller I had in my spluchan to be giving to my old mother, for if the want o' it will not be making a lad miserable, the having o' it will aye keep his spirits up.
"'You will have managed to bring him to his senses at last, Mirren dear, said she; and then I found that these two had been having the great confabs when I would be away, and my wife has told me since, when she was new-fangled wi' me, and very loving, that she would just be going there to be listening to my mother's stories about me, when I would be a wean; and although I will be telling her that the things I am remembering most are the skelpings I would be getting, she just will be laughing at me.
"Imphm," says Dan; "imphm, Hamish, as Aul' Nick said when his mouth was fu'. Yon's Finlay's beast, and I'm thinkin' o' a' Finlay's lassies, there's just wan wid bother her noddle tae come here away, and that's Mirren; but wae's me," said he, with his droll smile, "she's set her cap at the excise-man, they tell me."
"Well, when the lassies, Mirren's sisters, were by wi' teasing us, I sat down to a meal in Finlay's kitchen, and when I rose on my legs to be going, my lass flung a shawl round her, and wondrous bonny she was in that shawl, and we left by the back road to be seeing my mother, and the lassies flung bachles at us 'for luck. And although Mirren was not out o' my sight in the house, yet I will be quite sure they kent we were for the marrying, for I got a glimpse o' Peggy, a rollicking tomboy o' a lass, rubbing herself against Mirren's shawl and crying, 'It's me that will be going off next.
"Is He with you, Mirren dear?" I could not imagine how Flora thought Mirren was to know that. But she answered, with a light in those bright eyes, "Ay, my doo. `His left haun is under my heid, and His richt haun doth embrace me." I sat and listened in wonder. It all sounded so strange. Yet Flora seemed to understand.
On asking grannie whether Mirren and Archie were her only children she answered, 'There are two biding with the Lord. After listening to what they told me of how they came to Canada, of what Mirren and Archie had done for them, my heart swelled in thanking God that filial piety still cast luster on humanity.
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