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Updated: June 19, 2025
"Things were going from bad to worse with the lass he lost, and her man aye at the bottle, and sometimes she would be finding him lookin' at the wean and cursing, so what does she do but get word to the old Laird o' Scaurdale, who was fond o' her and a just man. I'll wager ye, he did not hang long in irons.
Belle had the wean wrapped in the cloak the servant had provided and was croonin' ower it, and the body-servant was waitin' for orders, and there stood Dan and the Laird as though loath to part, and them on business that might mean worse than burnin' stackyards. And it came to me that Scaurdale was not the man to be cherishing any tinker's whelp, not even if he had fair claim to.
It was that day that Helen came to the moor house, and among us, with word from John of Scaurdale for Dan to be coming to see him, and I saw that the very sight of her made a difference; for the face of Hugh flushed as he stood to greet her, and Margaret took to the talking in a vivacious manner that was not like her. And Dan had many words for his visitor.
And Hugh gloomed and laughed by turns, and had an air of patronage to his cousin that was hurtful for me to be seeing in him. Hugh and Margaret were stopping at Scaurdale, but when the moon was well up Bryde was for the road. At that there was an outcry, for he was the soul of the place.
"Och, I will have been singing every love-song I was remembering since I left the gate at Scaurdale." And we made a great "to-do" about it, and we were not any the better maybe for what we drank to his luck, and the lass's luck; and on the hill-road home he was at the singing again. "She is a fine lass, Hamish my wife that will be; is she no'?" "A fine lass."
But never a word did I get from Dan for many's the day about Belle, or McGilp, or Scaurdale we talked of horses and sheep, until the coming of Neil Beg. Courting, clandestine courtship. Sheepfold. We were at common work enough, Dan and me, in the Blair Mhor when the night clouds were banking behind the Blackhill to swoop down on the fast flying winter afternoon.
And as I made my way home, I thought of that little whimpering wean in the crook of Scaurdale's arm, and wondered how she would fare on board the Gull, for by Dan's word I kent McGilp had shone the flare away seaward. Scaurdale, it seemed, would be hiding the wean in fair earnest now, and McGilp I kent would whiles be on the French coast.
And the old Laird of Scaurdale made the lassies keep their faces lowered, for he would be a bluff hearty man, with little false modesty in him, if indeed he would be having any of any kind. "There is nothing," says he, "will be taming a lass like skelping a wean, or curing him o' the hives, and it's weans I will be wanting about the place," says he.
Kate Dol Beag, as ye ken, was a lass at her service at Scaurdale, a bonny dark ruddy lass and keen for the marrying, and the lad she had her eye on was the serving-man, McCook. And when these two were in the stackyard at Scaurdale and well hidden behind the ricks on the next night, she yoked on him.
There was a day too when Hugh McBride and Helen came a-riding on the moors, and the thought came to me that both were a little sobered, and the lass had not the same gaiety about her; but I was thinking maybe she would be anxious about the Laird of Scaurdale, for there was word that he would not be keeping so very well of late.
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