(Comment and Addition by Hob MacClellan.)

I met my lass Jonita that night by the sheep-fold on the hill. It was not yet sundown, but the spaces of the heavens had slowly grown large and vague. The wind also had gradually died away to a breathing stillness. The scent of the bog-myrtle was in our nostrils, as if the plant itself leaned against our faces.

I had been waiting a long time ere I heard her come, lissomly springing from tuft to tuft of grass and whistling that bonny dance tune, “The Broom o’ the Cowdenknowes.” But even before I looked up I caught the trouble in her tones. She whistled more shrilly than usual, and the liquid fluting of her notes, mellow mostly like those of the blackbird, had now an angry ring.{205}

“What is the matter, Alexander-Jonita?” I cried, e’er I had so much as set eyes on her.

The whistling ceased at my question. She came near, and leaning her elbows on the dyke, she regarded me sternly.

“Then you know something about it?” she said, looking at me between the eyes, her own narrowed till they glinted wintry and keen as the gimlet-tool wherewith the joiner bores his holes.

“Has your father married the dairymaid, or Meg the pony cast a shoe?” I asked of her, with a lightness I did not feel.

“Tut,” she cried, “’tis the matter of your brother, as well you know.”

“What of my brother?”

“Why, our silly Jean has made eyes at him, and let the salt water fall on the breast of his black minister’s coat. And now the calf declares that he loves her!”

I stood up in sharp surprise.

“He no more loves her than—than——”

“Than you love me,” said Alexander-Jonita; “I know—drive on!”

I did not notice her evil-conditioned jibe.

“Why, Jonita, he has all his life been in{206} love with the Lady Mary—the Bull of Earlstoun’s daughter.”

Alexander-Jonita nodded pensively.

“Even so I thought,” she said, “but, as I guess, Mary Gordon has sent him about his business, and so he has been taken with our poor Jean’s puling pussydom. God forgive me that I should say so much of a dying woman.”

“A dying woman!” cried I, “there is nothing the matter with Jean.”

Alexander-Jonita shook her head.

“Jean is not long for this world,” she said, “I bid you remember. Saw you ever the red leap through the white like yon, save when the life burns fast to the ashes and the pulse beats ever more light and weak?”

“And how long hath this thing been afoot?”

“Since the day of your brother’s first preaching, when to save her shoon Jean must needs go barefoot and wash her feet in the burn that slips down by the kirkyard wall.”

“That was the day Quintin first spoke with her, when she gave him her nooning piece of bread to stay his hunger.”

“Aye,” said Alexander-Jonita; “better had{207} he gone hungry all sermon-time than eaten of our Jean’s piece.”

“For shame, Alexander-Jonita!” I cried, “and a double shame to speak thus of a lassie that is, by your own tale, dying on her feet—and your sister forbye. I believe that ye are but jealous!”

She flamed up in sudden anger. If she had had a knife or a pistol in her hand, I believe she would have killed me.

“Get out of our ewe-buchts before I twist your impudent neck, Hob MacClellan!” she cried. “I care not a docken for any man alive—least of all for you and your brother. Yet I thought, from what I heard of his doings at the Presbytery, that he was more of a man than any of you. But now I see that he is feckless and feeble like the rest.”

“Ah, Jonita, you snooded folk tame us all. From David the King to Hob MacClellan there is no man so wise but a woman may tie him in knots about her little finger.”

“I thought better of your brother!” she said more mildly, her anger dying away as suddenly as it had risen, and I think she sighed.

“But not better of me!” I said.{208}

She looked at me with contempt, but yet a contempt mightily pleasant.

“Good e’en to ye, Hob,” she cried. “I was not so far left to myself as to think about you at all!”

And with that she took her light plaid over her arm with a saucyish swirl, and whistling on her dogs, she swung down the hill, carrying, if you please, her shoulders squared and her head in the air like a young conceited birkie going to see his sweetheart.

And then, when the thing became public, what a din there was in the parish of Balmaghie! Only those who know the position of a young minister and the interest in his doings can imagine. It was somewhat thus that the good wives wagged their tongues.

“To marry Jean Gemmell! Aye, juist poor Jean, the shilpit, pewlin’ brat that never did a hand’s turn in her life, indoor or oot! Fegs, a bonny wife she will mak’ to him. Apothecaries’ drugs and red claret wine she maun hae to leeve on. A bonnie penny it will cost him, gin ever she wins to the threshold o’ his manse!

“But she’s no there yet, kimmer! Na—certes no! I mind o’ her mither weel. Jean was her name, too, juist sich anither ‘cloyt’{209}—a feckless, white-faced bury-me-decent, withoot as muckle spirit as wad gar her turn a sow oot o’ the kail-yard. And a’ the kin o’ her were like her—no yin to better anither. There was her uncle Jacob Ahanny a’ the Risk; he keepit in wi’ the Government in the auld Persecution, and when Clavers cam’ to the door and asked him what religion he was o’, he said that the estate had changed hands lately, and that he hadna had time to speer at the new laird. And at that Clavers laughed and laughed, and it wasna often that Jockie Graham did the like. Fegs no, kimmers! But he clappit Jacob on the shooder. ‘Puir craitur,’ quo’ he; ‘ye are no the stuff that rebels are made o’. Na, there’s nocht............