In Secret

"You're not worried, are you, Yellow-hair?"

"About the Boche?"

"I meant that."

"No, Kay, I'm not uneasy."

And when the girl had said it she knew that she had meant a little more; she had meant that she felt secure with this particular man beside her.

It was a strange sort of peace that was invading her—an odd courage quite unfamiliar—an effortless pluck that had suddenly become the most natural thing in the world to this girl, who, until then, had clutched her courage desperately in both hands, commended her soul to God, her body to her country's service.

Frightened, she had set out to do this service, knowing perfectly what sort of fate awaited her if she fell among the Boche.

Frightened but resolute she faced the consequences with this companion about whom she knew nothing; in whom she had divined a trace of that true metal which had been so dreadfully tarnished and transmuted.

And now, here in this ancient garden—here in the sun of earliest summer, she had beheld a transfiguration. And still under the spell of it, still thrilled by wonder, she had so utterly believed in it, so ardently accepted it, that she scarcely understood what this transfiguration had also wrought in her. She only felt that she was no longer captain of their fate; that he was now; and she resigned her invisible insignia of rank with an unconscious little sigh that left her pretty lips softly parted.

At that instant he chanced to look up at her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in the world. And she had looked at him out of those golden eyes when he had been less than a mere brute beast…. That was very hard to know and remember …. But it was the price he had to pay—that this fresh, sweet, clean young thing had seen him as he once had been, and that he never could forget what she had looked upon.

"Kay!"

"Yes, Lady Yellow-hair."

"What are you going to do with that rod?"

"Whip Isla for a yellow trout for you."

"Isla?"

"Not our Loch, but the quick water yonder."

"You know," she said, "to a Yankee girl those moors appear rather—rather lonely."

"Forbidding?"

"No; beautiful in their way. But I am in awe of Glenark moors."

He smiled, lingering still to loop on a gossamer leader and a cast of tiny flies.

"Have you—" she began, and smiled nervously.

"A gun?" he inquired coolly. "Yes, I have two strapped up under both arms. But you must come too, Yellow-hair."

"You don't think it best to leave me alone even in your own house?"

"No, I don't think it best."

"I wanted to go with you anyway," she said, picking up a soft hat and pulling it over her golden head.

On the way across Isla bridge and out along the sheep-path they chatted unconcernedly. A faint aromatic odour made the girl aware of broom and whinn and heath.

As they sauntered on along the edge of Isla Water the lapwings rose into flight ahead. Once or twice the feathery whirr of brown grouse startled her. And once, on the edge of cultivated land, a partridge burst from the heather at her very feet—a "Frenchman" with his red legs and gay feathers brilliant in the sun.

Sun and shadow and white cloud, heath and moor and hedge and broad-tilled field alternated as they passed together along the edge of Isla Water and over the road to Isla—the enchanting river—interested in each other's conversation and in the loveliness of the sunny world about them.

High in the blue sky plover called en passant; larks too were on the wing, and throstles and charming feathered things that hid in hedgerows and permitted glimpses of piquant heads and twitching painted tails.

"It is adorable, this country!" Miss Erith confessed. "It steals into your very bones; doesn't it?"

"And the bones still remain Yankee bones," he rejoined. "There's the miracle, Yellow-hair."

"Entirely. You know what I think? The more we love the more loyal we become to our own. I'm really quite serious. Take yourself for example, Kay. You are most ornamental in your kilts and heather-spats, and you are a better Yankee for it. Aren't you?"

"Oh yes, a hopeless Yankee. But that drop of Scotch blood is singing tunes to-day, Yellow-hair."

"Let it sing—God bless it!"

He turned, his youthful face reflecting the slight emotion in her gay voice. Then with a grave smile he set his face straight in front of him and walked on beside her, the dark green pleats of the McKay tartan whipping his bared knees. Clan Morhguinn had no handsomer son; America no son more loyal.

A dragon-fly glittered before them for an instant. Far across the rolling country they caught the faint, silvery flash of Isla hurrying to the sea.

Evelyn Erith stood in the sunny breeze of Isla, her yellow hair dishevelled by the wind, her skirt's edge wet with the spray of waterfalls. The wild rose colour was in her cheeks and the tint of crimson roses on her lips and the glory of the Soleil d'or glimmered on her loosened hair. A confused sense that the passing hour was the happiest in her life possessed her: she looked down at the brace of wet yellow trout on the bog-moss at her feet; she gazed out across the crinkled pool where the Yankee Laird of Isla waded, casting a big tinselled fly for the accidental but inevitable sea-trout always encountered in Isla during the season—always surprising and exciting the angler with emotion forever new.

Over his shoulder he was saying to her: "Sea-trout and grilse don't belong to Isla, but they come occasionally, Lady Yellow-hair."

"Like you and I, Kay—we don't belong here but we come."

"Where the McKay is, the Key of the World lies hidden in his sporran," he laughed back at her over his shoulder where the clan plaid fluttered above the cairngorm.

"Oh, the modesty of this young man! Wherever he takes off his cap he is at home!" she cried.

He only laughed, and she saw the slim line curl, glisten, loop and unroll in the long back cast, re-loop, and straighten out over Isla like a silver spider's floating strand. Then silver leaped to meet silver as the "Doctor" touched water; one keen scream of the reel cut the sunny silence; the rod bent like a bow, staggered in his hand, swept to the surface in a deeper bow, quivered under the tremendous rush of the great fish.

Miss Erith watched the battle from an angle not that of an angler. Her hazel eyes followed McKay where he manoeuvred in midstream with rod and gaff—happily aware of the grace in every unconscious movement of his handsome lean body—the steady, keen poise of head and shoulders, the deft and powerful play of his clean-cut, brown hands.

It came into her mind that he'd look like that on the firing-line some day when his Government was ready to release him from his obscure and terrible mission—the Government that was sending him where such men as he usually perish unobserved, unhonoured, repudiated even by those who send them to accomplish what only the most brave and unselfish dare undertake.

A little cloud cast a momentary shadow across Isla. The sea-trout died then, a quivering limber, metallic shape glittering on the ripples.

In the intense stillness from far across the noon-day world she heard the bells of Banff—a far, sweet reiteration stealing inland on the wind. She had never been so happy in her life.

Swinging back across the moor together, he with slanting rod and weighted creel, she with her wind-blown yellow hair and a bunch of reed at her belt in his honour, both seemed to understand that they had had their hour, and that the hour was ending—almost ended now.

They had remained rather silent. Perhaps grave thoughts of what lay before them beyond the bright moor's edge—beyond the far blue horizon—preoccupied their minds. And each seemed to feel that their play-day was finished—seemed already to feel physically the approach of that increasing darkness shrouding the East—that hellish mist toward which they both were headed—the twilight of the Hun.

Nothing stained the sky above them; a snowy cloud or two drifted up there,—a flight of lapwings now and then—a lone curlew. The long, squat white-washed house with its walled garden reflected in Isla Water glimmered before them in the hollow of the rolling hills.

McKay was softly and thoughtfully whistling the "Lament for Donald"—the lament of CLAN AOIDH—his clan.