Part 19 (1/2)

”You know quite well, Keith,” said his cousin, ”that Hamish is no more a butler than he is captain of the _Umpire_ or clerk of the accounts.

Hamish is simply everybody and everything at Castle Dare. And if you speak of Norman Ogilvie--well, I think it would be more like yourself, Keith, to consult the feelings of an old man rather than the opinions of a young one.”

”You are always on the right side, Janet. Tell Hamish I am very sorry. I meant him no disrespect. And he may call me at one in the morning if he likes. He never looked on me but as a bit of his various machinery for killing things.”

”That is not fair of you, Keith. Old Hamish would give his right hand to save you the scratch of a thorn.”

She went off to cheer the old man, and he turned to his book. But it was not to read it; it was only to stare at the outside of it in an absent sort of way. The fact is, he had found in it the story of a young aid-de-camp who was intrusted with a message to a distant part of the field while a battle was going forward, and who in mere bravado rode across a part of the ground open to the enemy's fire. He came back laughing. He had been hit, he confessed, but he had escaped: and he carelessly shook a drop or two of blood from a flesh wound on his hand.

Suddenly, however, he turned pale, wavered a little, and then fell forward on his horse's neck, a corpse.

Macleod was thinking about this story rather gloomily. But at last he got up with a more cheerful air, and seized his cap.

”And if it is my death-wound I have got,” he was thinking to himself, as he set out for the boat that was waiting for him at the sh.o.r.e, ”I will not cry out too soon.”

CHAPTER XIV.

A FRIEND.

His death-wound! There was but little suggestion of any death-wound about the manner or speech of this light-hearted and frank-spoken fellow who now welcomed his old friend Ogilvie ash.o.r.e. He swung the gun-case into the cart as if it had been a bit of thread. He himself would carry Ogilvie's top-coat over his arm.

”And why have you not come in your hunting tartan?” said he, observing the very precise and correct shooting costume of the young man.

”Not likely,” said Mr. Ogilvie, laughing. ”I don't like walking through clouds with bare knees, with a chance of sitting down on an adder or two. And I'll tell you what it is, Macleod; if the morning is wet, I will not go out stalking, if all the stags in Christendom were there. I know what it is; I have had enough of it in my younger days.”

”My dear fellow,” Macleod said, seriously, ”you must not talk here as if you could do what you liked. It is not what you wish to do, or what you don't wish to do; it is what Hamish orders to have done. Do you think I would dare to tell Hamish what we must do to-morrow?”

”Very well, then, I will see Hamish myself; I dare say he remembers me.”

And he did see Hamish that evening, and it was arranged between them that if the morning looked threatening, they would leave the deer alone, and would merely take the lower-lying moors in the immediate neighborhood of Castle Dare. Hamish took great care to impress on the young man that Macleod had not yet taken a gun in his hand, merely that there should be a decent bit of shooting when his guest arrived.

”And he will say to me, only yesterday,” observed Hamish, confidentially--”it wa.s.s yesterday itself he wa.s.s saying to me, 'Hamish, when Mr. Ogilvie comes here, it will be only six days or seven days he will be able to stop, and you will try to get him two or three stags.

And, Hamish'--this is what he will say to me--'you will pay no heed to me, for I hef plenty of the shooting whatever, from the one year's end to the other year's end, and it is Mr. Ogilvie you will look after.' And you do not mind the rain, sir? It is fine warm clothes you have got on--fine woollen clothes you have, and what harm will a shower do?”

”Oh, I don't mind the rain, so long as I can keep moving--that's the fact, Hamish,” replied Mr. Ogilvie; ”but I don't like lying in wet heather for an hour at a stretch. And I don't care how few birds there are, there will be plenty to keep us walking. So you remember me, after all, Hamish?”

”Oh ay, sir,” said Hamish, with a demure twinkle in his eye. ”I mind fine the time you will fall into the water off the rock in Loch na Keal.”

”There, now,” exclaimed Mr. Ogilvie. ”That is precisely what I don't see the fun of doing, now that I have got to man's estate, and have a wholesome fear of killing myself. Do you think I would lie down now on wet sea-weed, and get slowly soaked through with the rain for a whole hour, on the chance of a seal coming on the other side of the rock? Of course when I tried to get up I was as stiff as a stone. I could not have lifted the rifle if a hundred seals had been there. And it was no wonder at all I slipped down into the water.”

”But the sea-water,” said Hamish, gravely; ”there will no harm come to you of the sea-water.”

”I want to have as little as possible of either sea-water or rain-water,” said Mr. Ogilvie, with decision, ”I believe Macleod is half an otter himself.”

Hamish did not like this, but he only said, respectfully.

”I do not think Sir Keith is afraid of a shower of rain whatever.”

These gloomy antic.i.p.ations were surely uncalled for; for during the whole of the past week the Western Isles had basked in uninterrupted sunlight, with blue skies over the fair blue seas, and a resinous warmth exhaling from the lonely moors. But all the same, next morning broke as if Mr. Ogilvie's forebodings were only too likely to be realized. The sea was leaden-hued and apparently still, though the booming of the Atlantic swell into the great caverns could be heard; Staffa, and Lunga, and the Dutchman were of a dismal black; the brighter colors of Ulva and Colonsay seemed coldly gray and green; and heavy banks of cloud lay along the land, running out to Ru-Treshanish. The noise of the stream rus.h.i.+ng down through the fir-wood close to the castle seemed louder than usual, as if rain had fallen during the night. It was rather cold, too: all that Lady Macleod and Janet could say failed to raise the spirits of their guest.