Gilian The Dreamer

easant weather, with a warm wind from the west, full of wholesome dryness for the soil that was still clogged with the rains of spring. It filled the wood of Kincregg

e ears of Kilmalieu for numberless generations, those voices everlasting but unheard by the quiet folk sleeping snug and sound among the clods. Sun shines there and rain falls on it till it soaks to the very bones of the old Parson, first to lie there, and in sun or rain there grow the laurel-bushes that have the smell of death, and the gay flowers cluster in a profusion found nowhere else in the parish except it be in the garden of the Duke. The lily nods in the wind,

earth thudded on the lid, the spades patted the mould, the people moved off, and he was standing yet, listening to the bird that shook a song of passionate melody from its little throat as it becked upon a table tombs

the Sheriff, and Donacha Breck his story, told a hundred times before, of Long Dan MacIntyre, who never came up past the New Bridge, except at the tail of a funeral, for fear the weight should some day bring the massiv

f his shirt and the box-pleated frills that were dressed very snodly and cunningly by Bell Macniven, who had been in

cer, of the New Inn, who was a citizen of London and anxious to make his

" asked the Fiscal, pl

ncer, "it is very genteel an

rned and paused and fix

ions? You are a poor Sassenach person, I daresay, and do not know that my people have be

icacy of this kind perhaps, but he had the heart, and it was he, as they came in front of the glee'd gun that

e asked. "And where is he to stay

if he had been shot, an

d at Ladyfield to lock up the house till Whitsunday. I'm putting the poor boy out

he had to convince himself he was not getting old and round-backed. "

his nose with much noise in a Barcelona silk handkerchief. All the way before them the crowd went straggling down in blacks with as much hurry as the look of the thing would permit, to reach the schoolhouse where the Paymaster had laid out the last service of meat and drink for the mourners. The tide was out; a sandy beach strewn with stones and clumps of seaweed gave its saline odour to the air;

he way. Though the Paymaster cried he was not heard, so he walked back and up to the boy while the others went on their way to the sc

the hateful things whenever he found himself alone, and he was listening with a rapt and inexpressive face

sked the Paymaster in Gaelic, struck that

to the nape of his neck and sta

e, turning and looking at th

llant too. Are there no curlews about Ladyfield that you should be in such a wonder at this one? Just a plain, long-nebbed

t does it say?" he asked: "it is calling, calling, calling, and no one will answer

ive you dinner. Did you ever taste rhubarb tart with cream to it? I have seen you making umbre

d note of the bird that still cried over the field. Then the Paymaster swore a fie

e out of the glen, and what's the wonder of it, born and bred among stir

king couple-dawn and the declining day, Spring and ripe Autumn, illusion and an elderly half-pay officer in a stock and a brown scratch wig upon a head that would harbour no more the dreams, the poign

l, "is not Old Mars getti

erful difference on him this year back ever since he had his little bit towt. That's a nice looking boy

very sad in the spectacle, sir, of an old gentleman with plenty of the world in his

s and stories in the piping of a fowl. Oh! no, he had been a bluff, hearty, hungry boy, hot-headed, red-legged, short-kilted, stirring, a bit of a bully, a loud talker, a dour lad with his head and his

leep to-night?" he asked him, still speaking the Gael

aster with the sounds and sights of nature by the way, the thrust of the bracken crook between the crannies of the Duke's dykes, the gummy buds of the limes and chestnuts, t

ilian was in a dream far off from the elderly companion and the smoking shore; his spirit floated over the glen and sometimes farther still, among the hill gorges that were always so full of mystery to him, or fa

s confusion by the boy's indifference; "the truth is we are shutting up Ladyfield for a little. You could

, even yet getting no gr

ing to stay?" asked t

know," sa

to himself as if it were a song, and into the Crosshouses past the tanned women standing with their hands rolled up in their aprons, and up to Jean Clerk's door. He rapped loudly with his rattan. He rapped so loudly th

ir of briskness the confusion of her face belied.

by the shoulder, but refused to sit down. He spok

Ladyfield house as

tie and preparing to weep, "and it'll be the las

he key to Camer

n, wondering what

n with something of a pawky humour that those who knew him be

the sheep. I was thinking myself coming down the road there, and this little fellow with me without a friend in the world, that the sky is a damp ceiling sometimes, a

ended to be very busy folding up her plaid, which, as is well known, can only be done neatly with the aid of the teeth and thus demands some co

homeless on so poor an excuse as that? Far-out cousin here or far-out cousin there, he has no k

cted you have a house of your own to take him into; it would be all the better for a young one in it, and you have the money to

ed on his heel to go, but a side glance at Jean Clerk's face

see through you now; you think you'll get him put off on me. I suppos

ild starving, and I'll not deny I put him in your way, because I never knew a Campbell of Kiels, one of the old bold race, who had no

r relations about the countryside. As if I had not plenty of poor fr

ertain that the boy's future was assured. "It'll be Miss Mary will have the making of him, and I ken

eddum and manly discipline; that's the stuff to make the soldier. The uneasy bed to sleep on, the day's task to be done to the uttermost. I'll make him the smartes

ph. "I'm sure you would sooner take him and make a soldier of him than leave

a herd there and then. And when the door closed behind them Jean Clerk and her sister sat down and wept and laughed in a curious mingling of sorrow and joy-sorrow that the child had to be turned from their