Heather and Snow

'But what'll we du aboot it or we gang? It's the storm may come on again waur nor ever, and mak it impossible to beery her for a month!'

'We cudna carry her hame atween's, Dauvid—think ye?'

'Na, na; it's no as gien it was hersel! And cauld's a fine keeper—better nor a' the embalmin o' the Egyptians! Only I'm fain to hand Steenie ohn seen her again!'

'Weel, lat's hap her i' the bonny white snaw!' said Marion. 'She'll keep there as lang as the snaw keeps, and naething 'ill disturb her till the time comes to lay her awa!'

'That's weel thoucht o'!' answered David. 'Eh, wuman, but it's a bonny beerial compared wi' sic as I hae aften gien comrade and foe alike!'

They went out and chose a spot close by the house where the snow lay deep. There they made a hollow, and pressed the bottom of it down hard. Then they carried out and laid in it the death-frozen dove, and heaped upon her a firm, white, marble-like tomb of heavenly new-fallen snow.

Without re-entering it, they closed the door of Steenie's refuge, and leaving the two deserted houses side by side, made what slow haste they could, with anxious hearts, to their home. The snow was falling softly, for the wind was still asleep.

CHAPTER XXIX

DAVID, MARION, KIRSTY, SNOOTIE, AND WHAT WAS LEFT OF STEENIE

Kirsty saw their shadows darken the wall, and turning from her work at the dresser, ran to the door to meet them.

'God be thankit!' cried David.

Marion gave her daughter one loving look, and entering cast a fearful, questioning glance around the kitchen.

'Whaur's Steenie?' she said.

'He's wi' Phemy, I'm thinkin,' faltered Kirsty.

'Lassie, are ye dementit?' her mother almost screamed. 'We're this minute come frae there!'

'He is wi' Phemy, mother. The Lord canna surely hae pairtit them, gangin in maist haudin hans!'

'Kirsty, I haud ye accoontable for my Steenie!' cried Marion, sinking on a chair, and covering her face with her hands.

'It's the wull o' God 'at's accoontable for him, wuman!' answered David, sitting down beside her, and laying hold of her arm.

She burst into terrible weeping.

'He maun be sair at hame wi' the bonny man!' said Kirsty.

'Lassie,' said David, 'you and me and yer mither, we hae naething left but be better bairns, and gang the fester to the bonny man!—Whaur's what's left o' the laddie, Kirsty?'

'Lyin i' my hoose, as he ca'd it. Mine was i' the yerd, his i' the air, he said. He was awa afore I wan to the kitchen. He had jist killt himsel savin at Phemy, rinnin and fechtin on, upo' the barest chance o' savin her life; and sae whan he set off again to gang til her, no bidin for me, he was that forfouchten 'at he hed a bluid-brak in 's breist, and was jist able, and nae mair, to creep intil the weem oot o' the snaw. He didna like the place, and yet had a kin' o' a notion o' the bonny man bein there whiles. I'm thinkin Snootie maun hae won til him, and run hame for help, for I faund him maist deid upo' the door-step.'

David stooped and patted the dog.

'Na, that cudna be,' he said, 'or he wud never hae left him, I'm thinkin.—Ye're a braw dog,' he went on to the collie, 'and I'm thankfu' yer no lyin wi yer tongue oot!—But guid comes to guid doggies!' he added, fondling the creature, who had risen, and feebly set his paws on his knee.

'And ye left him lyin there! Hoo hed ye the hert, Kirsty?' sobbed the mother reproachfully.

'Mother, he was better aff nor ony ither ane o' 's! I winna say, mother, 'at I lo'ed him sae weel as ye lo'ed him, for maybe that wudna be natur—I dinna ken; and I daurna say 'at I lo'e him as the bonny man lo'es his brithers and sisters a'; but I hae yet to learn hoo to lo'e him better. Onygait, the bonny man wantit him, and he has him! And whan I left him there, it was jist as gien I hield him oot i' my airms and said, "Hae, Lord; tak him: he's yer ain!"'

'Ye're i' the richt, Kirsty, my bonny bairn!' said David. 'Yer mither and me, we was never but pleased wi' onything 'at ever ye did.—Isna that true, Mar'on, my ain wuman?'

'True as his word!' answered the mother, and rose, and went to her room.

David sought the yard, saw that all was right with the beasts, and fed them. Thence he made his way to his workshop over the cart-shed, where in five minutes he constructed, with two poles run through two sacks, a very good stretcher, carrying it to the kitchen, where Kirsty sat motionless, looking into the fire.

'Kirsty,' he said, 'ye're 'maist as strong's a man, and I wudna wullinly ony but oor ain three sels laid finger upo' what's left o' Steenie: are ye up to takin the feet o' 'im to fess him hame? Here's what'll mak it 'maist easy!'

Kirsty rose at once.

'A drappy o' milk, and I'm ready,' she answered. 'Wull ye no tak a moofu' o' whusky yersel' father?'

'Na, na; I want naething,' replied David.

He had not yet learned what Kirsty went through the night before, when he asked her to help him carry the body of her brother home through the snow. Kirsty, however, knew no reason why she should not be as able as her father.

He took the stretcher, and they set out, saying nothing to the mother: she was still in her own room, and they hoped she might fall asleep.

'It min's me o' the women gauin til the sepulchre!' said David. 'Eh, but it maun hae been a sair time til them!—a heap sairer nor this hert-brak here!' 'Ye see they didna ken 'at he wasna deid,' assented Kirsty, 'and we div ken 'at Steenie's no deid! He's maybe walkin aboot wi the bonny man—or maybe jist ristin himsel a wee efter the uprisin! Jist think o' his heid bein a' richt, and his een as clear as the bonny man's ain! Eh, but Steenie maun be in grit glee!'

Thus talking as they went, they reached and entered the earth-house. They found no angels on guard, for Steenie had not to get up again.

David wept the few tears of an old man over the son who had been of no use in the world but the best use—to love and be loved. Then, one at the head and the other at the feet, they brought the body out, and laid it on the bier.

Kirsty went in again, and took Steenie's shoes, tying them in her apron.

'His feet's no sic a weicht noo!' she said, as together they carried their burden home.

The mother met them at the door.

'Eh!' she cried, 'I thoucht the Lord had taen ye baith, and left me my lane 'cause I was sae hard-hertit til him! But noo 'at he 's broucht ye back—and Steenie, what there is o' him, puir bairn!—I s' never say anither word, but jist lat him du as he likes.—There, Lord, I hae dune! Pardon thoo me wha canst.'

They carried the forsaken thing up the stair, and laid it on Kirsty's bed, looking so like and so unlike Steenie asleep. Marion was so exhausted, both mind and body, that her husband insisted on her postponing all further ministration till the morning; but at night Kirsty unclothed the untenanted, and put on it a long white nightgown. When the mother saw it lying thus, she smiled, and wept no more; she knew that the bonny man had taken home his idiot.

CHAPTER XXX

FROM SNOW TO FIRE

My narrative must now go a little way back in time, and a long way from the region of heather and snow, to India in the year of the mutiny. The regiment in which Francis Gordon served, his father's old regiment, had lain for months besieged in a well known city by the native troops, and had begun to know what privation meant, its suffering aggravated by that of not a few women and children. With the other portions of the Company's army there shut up, it had behaved admirably. Danger and sickness, wounds and fatigue, hunger and death, had brought out the best that was in the worst of them: when their country knew how they had fought and endured, she was proud of them. Had their enemies, however, been naked Zulus, they would have taken the place within a week.

Francis Gordon had done his part, and well.

It would be difficult to analyze the effect of tho punishment Kirsty had given him, but its influence was upon him through the whole of the terrible time—none the less beneficent that his response to her stinging blows was indignant rage. I dare hardly speculate what, had she not defended herself so that he could not reach her, he might not have done in the first instinctive motions of natural fury. It is possible that only Kirsty's skill and courage saved him from what he would never have surmounted the shame of—taking revenge on a woman avenging a woman's wrong: from having deserved to be struck by a woman, nothing but repentant shame could save him.

When he came to himself, the first bitterness of the thing over, he could not avoid the conviction, that the playmate of his childhood, whom once he loved best in the world, and who when a girl refused to marry him, had come to despise him, and that righteously. The idea took a firm hold on him, and became his most frequently recurrent thought. The wale of Kirsty's whip served to recall it a good many nights; and long after that had ceased either to smart or show, the thought would return of itself in the night-watches, and was certain to come when he had done anything his conscience called wrong, or his judgment foolish.

The officers of his mess were mostly men of character with ideas better at least than ordinary as to what became a man; and their influence on one by no means of a low, though of an unstable nature, was elevating. It is true that a change into a regiment of jolly, good-mannered, unprincipled men would within a month have brought him to do as they did; and in another month would have quite silenced, for a time at least, his poor little conscience; but he was at present rising. Events had been in his favour; after reaching India, he had no time to be idle; the mutiny broke out, he must bestir himself, and, as I have said, the best in him was called to the front.