Audrey

"'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.