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Updated: June 17, 2025
"And now it is come true!" said Alister. "What an escape I have had!" "I do not like to hear you say that!" returned Ian. "You have been taken care of all the time. If you had died in the cold, it would not have been because God had forgotten you; you would not have been lost." "I wanted to know," said Mercy, "whether Nature would speak to me. It was of no use! She never came near me!"
He blamed himself much, but Alister thought it might not have been his fault. The same moment he was aware that he did not love her and that he could not turn back. He was ready to do anything, everything in honour; yet felt false inasmuch as he had given her ground for believing that he felt towards her as he could not help seeing she felt towards him.
The half-hour which Alister spent in the silence of his chamber, served him well: a ray as of light polarized entered his soul in its gloom. He returned to Ian, who had been all the time walking up and down the ridge. "You are right, Ian!" he said. "I do love the world! If I were deprived of what I hold, I should doubt God! I fear, oh, I fear, Ian, he is going to take the land from me!"
Alister began to discover that his companion was weary, and his good heart spoke. "Let me carry your gun," he said. "See you damned!" returned Valentine, with an angry laugh. "You fancy your gun protects your bag?" "I do." The same instant the gun was drawn, with swift quiet force, through the loop of his arm from behind.
"It was his duty to capture a poacher! But you did not know he was deaf and dumb!" Alister added, as some excuse. "The deaf makes no difference!" protested Bob. "Hector of the Stags does not fight with his hands like a woman!" "Well, what's done is done!" laughed Sercombe. "It wasn't a bad shot anyhow!" "You have little to plume yourself upon, Mr. Sercombe!" said the chief.
What you meant, after all, was not cordiality; it was only generosity; to which his response, his countercheck friendly, was an order for ten pounds! All is right between you!" "Now, really, Ian, you must not go on teasing your elder brother so!" said the mother. Alister laughed, and ceased fuming. "But I must answer the brute!" he said. "What am I to say to him?"
Peregrine Palmer's land and that of the chief, and had imagined himself safe on the south side of the big burn. Alister gazed speechless for a moment on the slaughtered stag, and heaved a great sigh. "Mr. Sercombe," he said, "I would rather you had shot my best horse! Are you aware, sir, that you are a poacher?"
It was not the less a new bewilderment that it was an unspeakably delightful change from the last. Was he awake or dreaming? Was the dream of his boyhood come true? or was he dreaming it on in manhood? It was come true! The princess was arrived! She was here in his cave to be his own! A great calm and a boundless hope filled the heart of Alister.
For Ian was a born teacher, and found intensest delight, not in imparting knowledge that is a comparatively poor thing but in leading a mind up to see what it was before incapable of seeing. It was part of the same gift that he always knew when he had not succeeded. In Alister he found a wonderful docility crossed indeed with a great pride, against which he fought sturdily.
He had left the village a quarter of the way behind him, when through the darkness he spied something darker yet by the roadside. Going up to it, he found an old woman, half sitting, half standing, with a load of peats in a creel upon her back, unable, apparently, for the moment at least, to proceed. Alister knew at once by her shape and posture who she was.
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