"'Brave Derwentwater he is dead;
From his fair body they took the head:
But Mackintosh and his friends are fled,
And they'll set the hat upon another head'"-chanted the Fair View storekeeper, and looked aside at Mistress Truelove
Taberer, spinning in the doorway of her father's house.
Truelove answered naught, but her hands went to and fro, and her eyes were
for her work, not for MacLean, sitting on the doorstep at her feet.
"'And whether they're gone beyond the sea'"-The exile broke off and sighed heavily. Before the two a little yard, all
gay with hollyhocks and roses, sloped down to the wider of the two creeks
between which stretched the Fair View plantation. It was late of a holiday
afternoon. A storm was brewing, darkening all the water, and erecting
above the sweep of woods monstrous towers of gray cloud. There must have
been an echo, for MacLean's sigh came back to him faintly, as became an
echo.
"Is there not peace here, 'beyond the sea'?" said Truelove softly. "Thine
must be a dreadful country, Angus MacLean!"
The Highlander looked at her with kindling eyes. "Now had I the harp of
old Murdoch!" he said.
"'Dear is that land to the east,
Alba of the lakes!
Oh, that I might dwell there forever'"-He turned upon the doorstep, and taking between his fingers the hem of
Truelove's apron fell to plaiting it. "A woman named Deirdre, who lived
before the days of Gillean-na-Tuaidhe, made that song. She was not born in
that land, but it was dear to her because she dwelt there with the man
whom she loved. They went away, and the man was slain; and where he was
buried, there Deirdre cast herself down and died." His voice changed, and
all the melancholy of his race, deep, wild, and tender, looked from his
eyes. "If to-day you found yourself in that loved land, if this parched
grass were brown heather, if it stretched down to a tarn yonder, if that
gray cloud that hath all the seeming of a crag were crag indeed, and
eagles plied between the tarn and it,"--he touched her hand that lay idle
now upon her knee,--"if you came like Deirdre lightly through the heather,
and found me lying here, and found more red than should be in the tartan
of the MacLeans, what would you do, Truelove? What would you cry out,
Truelove? How heavy would be thy heart, Truelove?"
Truelove sat in silence, with her eyes upon the sky above the dream crags.
"How heavy would grow thy heart, Truelove, Truelove?" whispered the
Highlander.