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Updated: June 1, 2025
In some vision of the night he had visited that piteous home which memory builds, and where only in sleep we walk. Whom had he seen there? What message had he received? This he never told. He had been "spoken to." Tallisker was not the man to smile at any such confidence. He saw no reason why God's messengers should not meet his children in the border-land of dreams.
"How steadfast they are, how familiar with forgotten years! How small we are beside them!" "I don't think so," said Tallisker stoutly. "Mountains are naething to men. How small is Sinai when the man Moses stands upon it!" Then they were at the Keep garden. Helen pulled a handful of white and golden asters, and the laird, who had seen them coming, opened the door wide to welcome them. Alas! Alas!
Every night, then, the laird looked a moment into the dominie's face, and always the dominie shook his head. Ah, life has silences that are far more pathetic than death's. One night Crawford said, almost in a whisper, "He'll be dead, Tallisker." And Tallisker answered promptly, "He'll come hame, laird." No other words about Colin passed between the two men in four years.
He was half angry to see all the interest centred on the packet. The little fishing cobble was making, in his opinion, a far more sensible struggle for existence. She was managing her small resources with desperate skill. "Tallisker," said the laird, "you stay here with these men. Rory and I are going half a mile up the coast.
The dominie had felt certain that Colin would answer his letter in person, but after a long silence he received it back again. Colin had left Rome, and left no trace behind him. The laird knew that Tallisker had written, and he too had been hoping and expecting. But he received the news of his son's disappearance without remark.
"I'll send them out in Read & Murray's best ships. I'll gie each head o' a family what you think right, Tallisker, and I'll put £100 in your hands for special cases o' help. And you will speak to the men and their wives for me, for it is a thing I canna bear to do." But the men too listened eagerly to the proposition.
Then the old man proudly and fondly kissed Hope Crawford too, and he clasped the little lad in his arms. He was well pleased that Hope had thought it worth while to minister to his comfort, and let him learn how to know her fairly. "But it was your doing, Tallisker, I ken it was; it has your mark on it." And he grasped his old friend's hand with a very hearty grip. "Not altogether, laird.
There was a great feast for them in the clachan that night, but it was a sombre meeting, and the dominie's cheerful words of advice and comfort formed its gayest feature. The next day was calm and clear. The women and children were safely on board soon after noon, and about four o'clock the long boats left the shore full of men. Tallisker was in the front one.
"Too many words on a spoiled subject." "I must say one mair, though. There is a little lad, a bonnie, brave, bit fellow, your ain grandson, Crawford." "An American Crawford!" And the laird laughed bitterly. "A foreigner! an alien! a Crawford born in England! Guid-night, Tallisker! We'll drop the subject, an it please you." Tallisker let it drop.
He wandered up and down wringing his hands, and crying out at intervals like a man in mortal agony. Helen lay in a stupor while the fever burned her young life away. She muttered constantly the word "Colin;" and Tallisker, though he had no hope that Colin would ever reach his sister, wrote for the young laird. Just before the last she became clearly, almost radiantly conscious.
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