The McBrides | Page 5

best that tells the bonniest lees, or speaks them fairest. Na, na, ma
lad, nae peety. I'm watchin' a man that has tied their strings and kissed
their bonny ankles, when he should have let them dry his sweat wi'

their hair an' his feet wi' their braws.[2] Oh, why, why," she kind of
wailed--"why will the King aye gang the cadger's road, and ken himsel'
a king, and the cadger a cadger." The horse, panting and grunting at
every breath, had breenged to the knowe on the roadside, and still the
knotted rein fell; and then with a mighty plunge he reared up, balanced
an instant on hind-legs, and then crashed backwards and lay, and I felt
my heart give a mighty beat as Dan sprang on the brute's head and lay
there, horse and man done.
"Come, you," snarled the man, as though he spoke to a dog; and the girl
went to him.
"Quate the brute," said he, "for he's trimmlin' sair, and I like his temper
a' the better for no' bein' broken."
"Ay, I'll quate the brute, easy as I wid yoursel'."
You may think you know a man till something happens, and you find
him a stranger, and so I found, for at her words the man sprang to his
feet as she soothed the horse.
"Say ye so," said he, and took her by the shoulder--"say ye so. I've
broken many a horse afore this ane, and, Belle, I'll break you," and I
watched the swarthy flush rise on the girl's face, and looked at the
man's eyes and saw the reason of it.
"Wheest, lad, wheest," she cried; "let me go to the wean."
"Wean--ye never had a wean. . . ."
And then she did a queer thing. She bent her dark head till I could not
see her eyes, but only the smooth eyelids and dark lashes, and she put
her little brown hand over the man's eyes and stood a picture of
humility, with a sad little smile on her face.
"Don't break me . . . yet," she murmured, and I saw Dan kiss her hand
as she slid it down over his lips, and her face brightened like a flower in
sunlight.

And there were the horses, rugging at the hedge where I had tethered
them; and Chieftain on his feet, shaky and foam-flecked, and trembling
at his knees; and the gipsy lass's wean greetin' at the hedge foot, with
one wee bare arm clear of the shawl, seeming to beckon all the world to
its aid.
And Belle the gipsy lass lifted the child and wrapped her in the shawl,
and took the road in front of us. I had mind of Belle when she was the
bonniest lass among a wheen of black-avised Eastern folk, that camped
for many's the year on the ground of Scaurdale, where my uncle's
friend, John o' Scaurdale, farmed land; but I was not prepared for her
strange powers on horse, or for the beauty of her, and I think Dan was
of my way of thinking also, for at the stable door says he: "I think,
Hamish, a fee from John o' Scaurdale would not be such a bad thing
with a lass like Belle to be seeing in the gloaming."
[1] Ires--"flags."
[2] Costly apparel.
CHAPTER II.
MAKES SOME MENTION OF ONE JOCK McGILP, AND TELLS
HOW BELLE BROUGHT THE WEAN IN THE TARTAN SHAWL
INTO THE HOUSE OF NOURN.
Nourn was home to me in my holidays and vacations from the college,
and here I was back again for good, having become Magister Artium
and well acquainted with the plane-stanes and glaber of the town of
Glasgow--back again to the green countryside on my uncle's land of
Nourn, concerned more about horses and cattle beasts than with the
Arts, and with enough siller left me by my parents to be able to follow
my inclinations.
My uncle--the Laird of Nourn, as he was called--had married kind of
late, a common habit where the years bring strength and not eld; and
Dan, his brother Ewan the soldier's son, had been at Nourn since he
could creep, being early left an orphan.

On the Sunday after the coming of Belle the gipsy I lay long abed. In
those days my cousin Dan and I made a practice of sleeping above the
horses, "to be near them," as Dan said; but for myself I aye thought it
would be that he might the easier slip out at night, and in again in the
morning, and nobody the wiser.
In the years I would be at the college Dan had become airt and pairt of
every wildness in the countryside, and in these times every man with
red blood in him was concerned with