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Belle had slipped out as the old woman was speaking, and now came back with her tartan bundle; and when Betty had left the room the gipsy took from the shawl a wean that cried so lustily that it wakened the heir to all Nourn. As the women whispered and crooned over the bairns, their cries resounded through the house, and made it no place for men-folk.
Margaret, the Flower of Nourn, was there often and none to gainsay her, for Bryde did not long keep his love a secret, but bearded the Laird, and won, for all that the old man opened the business with a great sternness.
Ires "flags." Costly apparel. Nourn was home to me in my holidays and vacations from the college, and here I was back again for good, having become Magister Artium and well acquainted with the plane-stanes and glaber of the town of Glasgow back again to the green countryside on my uncle's land of Nourn, concerned more about horses and cattle beasts than with the Arts, and with enough siller left me by my parents to be able to follow my inclinations.
"I have been in many places," said he, "but I am not remembering so bonny a place as this." Would it be pleasing you to hear that when we came to the Big House, Bryde left me standing, and went through the wood behind the stackyard and stood on the knowe and looked at the window where the Flower of Nourn slept. "Now," said he after that, "I will go to my mother."
Ay, well, we were in bed, Bell and me, when the Laird o' Nourn whistled low outside. 'The devil take ye, Kate, Bell would be crying, 'he'll be in, for there was only divots in the window in the bochan.
My uncle the Laird of Nourn, as he was called had married kind of late, a common habit where the years bring strength and not eld; and Dan, his brother Ewan the soldier's son, had been at Nourn since he could creep, being early left an orphan. On the Sunday after the coming of Belle the gipsy I lay long abed.
"It will just be that when our forefathers would be among the hill sat night, many and many's the time the evil one would be coming to them and speaking, and sometimes he would be coming in the form of a black dog, like the Black Hound o' Nourn, wi' a red tongue lolling from his mouth, and sometimes he would be a wild cat louping among the rocks, hissing and spitting wi' his eyes lowin', and the old wise ones in the far glen found the power in the unknown places in the hills, and they said to the young hunters and warriors, 'Aye be carrying steel, for steel will sever all bargains, but a skein-dubh is the best to be carrying in the hills, for a devil will not come near the black-hefted knife wi' a strong bright blade no," and Neil Crubach smiled, and looked among the red embers for his dreams.
It is after the dark wet days of winter that the sun comes again, bringing greenness to the world and joy into the voices of birds, and so came happiness to Bryde and Margaret in the old house of Nourn, for Hugh could not thole his native place for many years, and indeed did great things in America.
"He is a fine lad; you will go, my lass," said the Laird, for blood was more to him than a stroke left-handed across a shield, and that day she rode with Hugh and me Margaret, the Flower of Nourn. Tall she was and limber like a lance, her eyes like blue forget-me-nots that grow by the burn mhor, fearless and daring, with long black lashes.
And when her mother would be rattling among the plates on the dresser, Dan would be bending over and speaking to the lass, and looking into her eyes, and the gruff old father saying never a word, and the two sons arguing where it was that Dan had jumped the Nourn burn when the bridge was carried away with the big spate.
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