Part 15 (1/2)
Shot looked very sad. He did not know what to make of it all. He whined impatiently. Then he licked Archie's wet face and touched Kenneth under the arm with his nose, as some dogs have a way of doing.
”Poor Shot!” said Kenneth. ”You too have lost a faithful friend.”
Together, after this, they took their way down the hill.
A short, crisp, and gentlemanly letter came to Kenneth two days after this. It was from Jessie's father.
”My daughter has spoken much about you,” said this epistle, ”and quite induced me to take an interest in your welfare. The situation of under-ghillie at my Highland shooting-box is vacant. I have much pleasure in placing it at your disposal. You will be good enough therefore to enter on your duties on Monday next, etc, etc.”
Kenneth's cheek burned like a glowing peat. He tore the letter in fragments, and threw them in the fire.
”Mother,” he cried, ”dear mother, it needed but this! I shall leave the glen. I go to seek our fortune--your fortune, mother, and my own. I shall return in a few years as wealthy mayhap as the proud Saxon who now offers me the position of under-ghillie. Mother, it is best I should go.”
I pa.s.s over the parting between the mother and her boy.
With his flute in his pocket, with no other wealth except a few s.h.i.+llings and his Bible, Kenneth McAlpine turned his back on the glen, and went away out into the wide, wide world to seek his fortune.
For years, if not for ever, he bade farewell to his Highland home and all he held so dear.
End of Book First.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
FOR AULD LANG SYNE.
”We twa have paddled in the burn Frae mornin' sun till dine.
But seas between us broad hae rolled Since the days o' auld lang syne.”
Burns.
Scene: Landscape, seascape, and cloudscape.
A more lovely view than that which met the eye of a stranger, who had seated himself on Cotago Cliff this evening, it was never surely the lot of mortal man to behold. It was on the northern sh.o.r.es of South America, and many miles to the eastward of Venezuela Gulf.
Far down beneath him lay the white villas and flat-roofed houses of a town embosomed in foliage, which looked unnaturally green against their snowy walls. To the right, and more immediately below the spot where the stranger sat under the shade of trees, that towered far up into the sky, was a long, low, solitary-looking beach, with the waves breaking on it with a soft musical sighing sound; it was as if the great ocean were sinking to slumber, and this was the sound of his breathing.
The sun was low down in the west, in a purple haze, which his beams could hardly pierce, but all above was a glory which is indescribable, the larger clouds silver-edged, the smaller clouds encircled with radiant golden light, with higher up flakes and streaks of crimson. And all this beauty of colouring was reflected from the sea itself, and gave a tinge even to the wavelets that rippled on the silver sands.
It was very quiet and still up here where the stranger sat. The birds had already sought shelter for the night; well they knew that the sunset would be followed by speedy darkness. Sometimes there would be a rustle among the foliage, which the stranger heeded not. He knew it was but some gigantic and harmless lizard, looking for its prey.
”I must be going back to my hotel,” he said to himself at last. He talked half aloud; there was no human ear to listen.
”I must be going home, but what a pity to leave so charming a place! I do not know which to admire the most, the grand towering tree-clad hills, the sea, or the forest around me.
”Hullo!” he added, ”yonder round the point comes a little skiff. How quickly and well he rows! He must be a Britisher. No arms of lazy South American ever impelled a boat as he does his. Going to the hotel, I suppose. No, he seems coming straight to the beach beneath me. Hark!
a song.”