The Standard Bearer

The mist was rising about the waterside. It lingered in pools and drifts in every meadowy hollow, but the purpling hilltops were clear and bare in the long soft June twilight.

Suddenly a gun went off, as it seemed in my very ear. I sprang a foot into the air, for who on honourable business would discharge a musket in that wild place at such a time.

But ere I had time to think, above me on the ridge a figure stood black against the sky – a girl’s shape it was, slim, tall, erect. She carried something in one hand which trailed on the heather, and a musket was under her arm, muzzle down.

I had not yet recovered my breath when a voice came to me.

“Ah, Hob MacClellan, the ill deil tak’ your courting-jaunts this nicht! For had ye bidden at hame I would have gotten baith o’ the red foxes that have been killing our weakly lambs. As it is, I gat but this.”

And she held up a great dog fox by the brush before throwing the body into a convenient moss-hole.

It was Alexander-Jonita, the lass whom our college-bred Quintin had once called the Diana of Balmaghie. I care not what he called her. Without question she was the finest lass in the countryside. And that I will maintain to this day.

“Are you going home, Jonita?” cried I, for the direction in which she was proceeding led directly away from the house of Drumglass.

“No,” she answered carelessly, “I am biding all night in the upper ‘buchts.’ The foxes have been very troublesome of late, and I am thinning them with the gun. I have the feck of the lambs penned up there.”

“And who is with you to help you?” I asked her in astonishment.

“Only the dogs,” she made answer, shifting the gun from one shoulder to the other.

“But, lassie,” I cried, “ye surely do not sleep out on the hills all your lone like this?”

“And what for no?” she answered sharply. “What sweeter bed than a truss of heather? What safer than with two rough tykes of dogs and a good gun at one’s elbow, with the clear airs blowing over and the sheep lying snugly about the folds?”

“But when it rains,” I went on, still doubtfully.

“Come and see,” she laughed; “we are near the upper ‘buchts’ now!”

Great stone walls of rough hill boulders, uncut and unquarried, rose before me. I saw a couple of rough collies sit guardian one at either side of the little lintelled gate that led within. The warm smell of gathered sheep, ever kindly and welcome to a hill man, saluted my nostrils as I came near. A lamb bleated, and in the quiet I could hear it run pattering to nose its mother.

Alexander-Jonita led me about the great “bucht” to a niche formed by a kind of cairn built into the side of a wall of natural rock. Here a sort of rude shelter had been made with posts driven into the crevices of the rock and roughly covered with turves of heather round the sides of a ten-foot enclosure. The floor was of bare dry rock, but along one side there was arranged a couch of heather tops recently pulled, very soft and elastic. At first I could not see all this quite clearly in the increasing darkness, but after a little, bit by bit the plan of the shelter dawned upon me, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light.

“When it rains,” she said, going back to my question, “I set a post in the middle for a tent pole, spread my plaid over it and fasten it down at the sides with stones.”

“Jonita,” said I, “does your sister never come up hither with you?”

“Who – our Jean!” she cried, astonished, “faith, no! Jean takes better with the inside of a box-bed and the warmth of the peat-grieshoch[11 - Red ashes.] on the hearth! And, indeed, the lass is not over-strong. But as for me, more than the cheeping of the house-mice, I love the chunnering of the wild fowl in their nests and the bleat of the sheep. These are honey and sweetness to me.”

“But, Jonita,” I went on, “surely no girl is strong enough to take shower and wind-buffet night and day on the wild moors like this. Why, you make me ashamed, me that am born and bred to the trade.”

“And what am I?” she asked sharply, “I am over twenty, and yet nothing but an ignorant lass and careless of seeming otherwise. I am not even like my sister Jean that can look and nod as if she understood everything your brother is talking about, knowing all the while naught of the matter. But, at least, I ken the ways of the hills. Feel that!”

She thrust her arm suddenly out to me.

I clasped it in my hands, sitting meantime on a great stone in the angle, while she stood beside me with the dogs on either side of her. It was a smooth, well-rounded arm, cool and delicate of skin, that she gave into my fingers. Her loose sleeve fell back, and if I had dared to follow my desire, I should have set my lips to it, so delightful did the touch of it seem to me. But I refrained me, and presently underneath the satin skin I felt the muscles rise nobly, tense yet easy, clean of curve and spare flesh, moulded alike for strength and suppleness.

“I would not like to pull at the swingle-tree with you, my lass,” said I, “and if it came to a Keltonhill collieshangie I would rather have you on my side than against me.”

And I think she was more pleased at that than if I had told her she was to be a great heiress.

As I waited there on the rough stones of the sheepfold, and looked at the slight figure sitting frankly and easily beside me, thinking, as I knew, no more of the things of love than if she had been a neighbour lad of the hills, a kind of jealous anger came over me.

“Jonita,” said I, “had ye never a sweetheart?”

“A what?” cried Jonita in a tone of as much surprise as if I had asked her if she had ever possessed an elephant.

“A lad that loved you as other maids are loved.”

“I have heard silly boys speak nonsense,” she said, “but I am no byre-lass to be touselled in corners by every night-raker that would come visiting at the Drumglass.”

“Jonita,” I went on, “hath none ever helped you with your sheep on the hill, run when you wanted him, stopped when you told him, come like a collie to your foot when he was called?”

“None, I tell you, has ever sat where you are sitting, Hob MacClellan! And hear ye this, had I thought you a silly ‘cuif’ like the rest, it would have been the short day of December and the long again before I had asked you to view my bower under the rock.”

“I was only asking, Jonita,” said I; “ye ken that ye are the bonniest lass in ten parishes, and to me it seemed a strange thing that ye shouldna hae a lad.”

“Bah,” said she, “lads are like the pebbles in the brook. They are run smooth with many experiences, courting here and flattering there. What care I whether or no this one or that comes chapping at my door? There are plenty more in the brook. Besides, are there not the hills and the winds and the clear stars over all, better and more enduring than a thousand sweethearts?”

“But,” said I, “the day will come, Jonita, when you may be glad of the friend’s voice, the kindly eye, the helping hand, the arm beneath the head – ”

“I did not say that I desired to have no friends,” she said, as it seemed in the darkness, a little shyly.

“Will you let me be your friend?” I said, impulsively, taking her hand.

“I do not know,” said Alexander-Jonita; “I will tell you in the morning. It is over-dark to-night to see your eyes.”

“Can you not believe?” said I. “Have you ever heard that I thus offered friendship to any other maid in all the parish?”

“You might have offered it to twenty and they taken it every one for aught I care. But Alexander-Jonita Gemmell accepts no man’s friendship till she has tried him as a fighter tries a sword.”

“Then try me, Jonita!” I cried, eagerly.

“I will,” said she, promptly; “rise this instant from the place where ye sit, look not upon me, touch me not, say neither good e’en nor yet good-day, but take the straight road and the ready to the manse of Balmaghie.”

The words were scarce out of her mouth when with a leap so quick that the collies had not even time to rise, I was over the dyke and striding across the moss and whinstone-crag towards the house by the waterside, where my brother’s light had long been burning over his books.

I did not so much as look about me till I was on the crest of the hill. Then for a single moment I stood looking back into the clear grey bath of night behind me, where the lass I loved was keeping her watch in the lonely sheepfold.

Yet I was pleased with myself too. For though my dismissal had been so swift and unexpected, I felt that I had not done by any means badly for myself.

At least I could call Alexander-Jonita my friend. And there was never a lad upon all the hills of heather that could do so much.

CHAPTER XX

MUTTERINGS OF STORM

(The Narrative of Quintin MacClellan resumed.)