Kenneth McAlpine Part 15

Shot looked very sad. He did not know what to make of it all. He whined impatiently. Then he licked Archie's wet face and touched Kenneth under the arm with his nose, as some dogs have a way of doing.

"Poor Shot!" said Kenneth. "You too have lost a faithful friend."

Together, after this, they took their way down the hill.

A short, crisp, and gentlemanly letter came to Kenneth two days after this. It was from Jessie's father.

"My daughter has spoken much about you," said this epistle, "and quite induced me to take an interest in your welfare. The situation of under-ghillie at my Highland shooting-box is vacant. I have much pleasure in placing it at your disposal. You will be good enough therefore to enter on your duties on Monday next, etc, etc."

Kenneth's cheek burned like a glowing peat. He tore the letter in fragments, and threw them in the fire.

"Mother," he cried, "dear mother, it needed but this! I shall leave the glen. I go to seek our fortune--your fortune, mother, and my own. I shall return in a few years as wealthy mayhap as the proud Saxon who now offers me the position of under-ghillie. Mother, it is best I should go."

I pa.s.s over the parting between the mother and her boy.

With his flute in his pocket, with no other wealth except a few s.h.i.+llings and his Bible, Kenneth McAlpine turned his back on the glen, and went away out into the wide, wide world to seek his fortune.

For years, if not for ever, he bade farewell to his Highland home and all he held so dear.

End of Book First.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

FOR AULD LANG SYNE.

"We twa have paddled in the burn Frae mornin' sun till dine.

But seas between us broad hae rolled Since the days o' auld lang syne."

Burns.

Scene: Landscape, seascape, and cloudscape.

A more lovely view than that which met the eye of a stranger, who had seated himself on Cotago Cliff this evening, it was never surely the lot of mortal man to behold. It was on the northern sh.o.r.es of South America, and many miles to the eastward of Venezuela Gulf.

Far down beneath him lay the white villas and flat-roofed houses of a town embosomed in foliage, which looked unnaturally green against their snowy walls. To the right, and more immediately below the spot where the stranger sat under the shade of trees, that towered far up into the sky, was a long, low, solitary-looking beach, with the waves breaking on it with a soft musical sighing sound; it was as if the great ocean were sinking to slumber, and this was the sound of his breathing.

The sun was low down in the west, in a purple haze, which his beams could hardly pierce, but all above was a glory which is indescribable, the larger clouds silver-edged, the smaller clouds encircled with radiant golden light, with higher up flakes and streaks of crimson. And all this beauty of colouring was reflected from the sea itself, and gave a tinge even to the wavelets that rippled on the silver sands.

It was very quiet and still up here where the stranger sat. The birds had already sought shelter for the night; well they knew that the sunset would be followed by speedy darkness. Sometimes there would be a rustle among the foliage, which the stranger heeded not. He knew it was but some gigantic and harmless lizard, looking for its prey.

"I must be going back to my hotel," he said to himself at last. He talked half aloud; there was no human ear to listen.

"I must be going home, but what a pity to leave so charming a place! I do not know which to admire the most, the grand towering tree-clad hills, the sea, or the forest around me.

"Hullo!" he added, "yonder round the point comes a little skiff. How quickly and well he rows! He must be a Britisher. No arms of lazy South American ever impelled a boat as he does his. Going to the hotel, I suppose. No, he seems coming straight to the beach beneath me. Hark!

a song."

The rower had drawn in his oars, leaving the little boat to continue its course with the "way" already on her, while he gazed about him. Then, as if impelled to sing by the beauty around him, he trilled forth a verse of a grand old sea song.

"The morn was fair, the sky was clear, No breath came o'er the sea, When Mary left her Highland cot And wandered forth with me.

Though flowers bedecked the mountain side, And fragrance filled the vale, By far the sweetest flower there Was the Rose of Allendale."

Then there was silence once again. The rower rowed more slowly now, but soon he beached his boat, and drew it up, and hid it by drawing it in among the rocks.

The stranger soon afterwards rose to go.

He had not proceeded many yards along the hillside, when, on rounding a gigantic cactus bush, and close beside it, he stood face to face with the oarsman.

The former lifted his hat to bow, but instead of replacing it on his head he dashed it on the ground, and springing forward, seized the other by the hand.

"Archie! Archie McCrane!" he cried; "is it possible you do not know me, that you have forgotten Kenneth McAlpine?"

Poor Archie! for a moment or two he could not speak.

"Man!" he said at last, in deep, musical Doric; "is it possible it is you, Kennie?"

The tears were blinding him, both hearts were full, and they said no more for many seconds, merely standing there under the cactus tree holding each other's hands.

"G.o.d has heard my prayer," said Kenneth at last.

"And mine.

"But how you have altered, Kenneth! How you must have suffered to make you look so old!"

"You forget I _am_ old, twenty-one next birthday; and you are only a year less. But what wind blew _you_ here? I thought, Archie, you had settled down as an engineer on sh.o.r.e."

"Your letters roused a roving spirit in me, Kenneth. I determined to see the world. I took the first appointment I could get. On a Frenchman. I haven't had much luck. We have been wrecked at Domingo, and I came here last night in a boat. But come, tell us your own adventures. I have all your letters by heart, but I must hear more; I must hear everything from your own mouth, my dear brown old man."

Kenneth _was_ brown; there was no mistake about that, very brown, and very tall and manly-looking, and the moustache he wore set off his beauty very much. No, he had not cultivated his moustache. It had cultivated itself.

"Come down to the hotel," said Archie. "I am not poor. We saved everything. It was a most unromantic s.h.i.+pwreck."

"No," replied Kenneth, "not to the hotel to-night. Come up the mountain with me to my cottage."

"Up the mountain?"

"Yes, my lad," said Kenneth, smiling. "Up the mountain. Haven't forgotten how to climb a hill, have you, I say, Archie, boy? for, as brown as I look, I am an invalid."

"What!" cried Archie, in some alarm. "Nothing serious, I sincerely hope."

"Nothing, old man, nothing. But when they left me here six weeks ago, I thought that no power could have saved me. I had yellow-Jack. That's all. I could not have lived in the hotel. Good as it is, it is too low. But come; old Senor Gasco waits supper for me."

Up and up they struggled, arm in arm. Kenneth knew every foot of the pathway through the forest; it was well he did, for night had quite fallen over sea and land, and the stars were glinting above them ere they reached a kind of tableland, and presently stood in front of the rose-covered verandah of a beautiful cottage.