the wall. It sprang up on the seat of a chair at the bedside and disappeared behind the short curtain; whilst the singers, aroused from their preoccupation by the movement of the stealthy creature across the flags, wavered a moment in their tune.
Before a man had time to do more than nudge his neighbour the cat had leaped back into view and made frantically for the door, where it crouched, miaowing and scraping at the threshold.
The verse faltered and fell and a faint breath of disquiet went over the singers; they were dumb as the beadle limped across the kitchen and, drawing back the wisp of hanging stuff, peered into the dark, square space that opened behind it like a mouth. There was a moment’s silence; then he turned to them again!
‘Sing on, lads,’ he said, ‘anither verse’ll anither land her!’
The elders struck up once more. They sang steadily to the end and then stood back with closed books and shuffling feet. The beadle released the terrified cat. The company filed solemnly out, leaving him and Phemie in the kitchen – only two now; that hidden, third presence was gone.
The woman stood by the bed.
‘Aye, she’s awa’,’ she said.
Her sister had been practically dead for the last twelve months, a mere mindless puppet to be fed a little less regularly than the cat, a little more regularly than the hens.
The beadle looked on, silent, as his companion drew the sheet over the dead woman’s face. His legitimate part in the event was to come later. Then he also went out, crossing the small, rapid burn which divided Phemie’s cottage from the road. Under the overhanging weeds it was gurgling loud, for it had rained in the hills and the streams were swelling.
He stood looking up and down the way. Voices were floating to him from the Knowes ‘farm. He had done what he considered was required of him as an official and relaxation was his due. Also it was unthinkable that anything, from a kirk meeting to a pig-killing, should go on without him at Dalmain. He clapped his psalm-book into his pocket and turned towards the Knowes’, for, like the Englishman, he heard the fiddle tuning. He had worn a completely suitable expression at the scene he had just left, and as he drew nearer to the steading it changed with every step; by the time he had kicked the mud from his feet at the threshold of the big barn, which was filling with people from all corners of this and neighbouring parishes, he wore a look of consistent joviality. His long mouth was drawn across his hatchet face and grinned like that of a sly old collie dog.
The barn was roughly decorated with branches of rowan nailed here and there against the walls, and the scarlet berries of the autumn-stricken leaves were like outbreaks of flame. The floor was swept clean and a few stable lanterns were hung from rafters, or set on boxes in the angles of the building; the light from these being so much dispersed that it only served to illuminate such groups as came into the individual radius of each. The greater part of those who stood about waiting for the dancing to begin were dark figures with undistinguishable faces. There was a hum of talk and an occasional burst of laughter and horseplay. At the further end of the place a heavy wooden chair was set upon a stout table. Knowes, the giver of the entertainment, loitered rather sheepishly in the background; he was of no account, though he was a recent bridegroom; for it was his wife’s relationship to the great fiddler who was to preside this evening which shed a glory on his household and turned their house-warming into an event. He was an honest fellow and popular, but the merrymakers had no thought for anyone but Neil.
The position that Neil Gow had made for himself was a remarkable one. There was no community in Perthshire, Angus, or the Mearns, that did not look on him with possessive affection. He played alike at farmhouse dances, at public balls, in villages and bothies, at the houses of lairds and dukes; he met every class and was on terms of friendship with the members of each. He had humour and spirit; and though he was entirely outspoken and used a merry tongue on every rank and denomination among his friends, his wit and good sense and the glamour of a fine personality allowed him to do so without offence. He was accustomed to speak his mind to his great friend and patron, the Duke of Atholl, as well as to his guests. ‘Gang doon to yer suppers, ye daft limmers,’ he had once cried to the dancers at Atholl House, ‘an’ dinna haud me here reelin’ as if hunger an’ drouth were unkent i’ the land!’ Many a poor man knew Neil’s generosity and many a richer one in difficulties; out of his own good fortune he liked to help those less happy than himself. He had an answer for everybody, a hand for all. He was a self-made king whose sceptre was his bow and whose crown was his upright soul and overflowing humanity.
At last the group inside the barn-door dispersed, and Neil, who had been the centre of it, shook himself free and went over, his fiddle under his arm, to the table beside which a long bench was set that he might step up to his place. He would begin to play alone to-night, for his brother Donald, who was his violoncello, had been detained upon their way.
‘Aye, sit doon, twa-three o’ ye, on the tither end o’t,’ he exclaimed to a knot of girls who were watching him with expectant eyes; ‘ye’d nane o’ ye get yer fling wi’ yer lads the nicht, gin a was tae turn tapsalterie!’
They threw themselves simultaneously upon the bench, tittering, and he stepped up on the table, a tall, broad figure in tartan breeches and hose. His hair was parted in the middle and hung straight and iron grey, almost to his great shoulders, and his cheekbones looked even higher than they already were from the shadows cast under them by the lantern swinging above. There was no need for the light, for he carried no music and would have scorned to depend upon it. His marked eyebrows rose from his nose to the line that drew them level along the temples above his bright and fearless eyes. His large, finely cut mouth was shut, his shoulders back, as he surveyed the crowd below him. A subdued murmur rose from it. The company began to arrange itself in pairs. He smiled and stood with his bow hand raised; he was just going to drop it to the strings when Donald Gow came in.
WHEN THE ENGLISHMAN had left the minister to his sermon he made his way slowly to the village. He was in no hurry, for though Laidlaw had stirred a slight curiosity in him about the fiddler, he was principally interested in seeing what it was that this unsophisticated little world, of which he knew nothing, had magnified into a marvel. The thought of it amused him. It was a kindly amusement, for he was a good-hearted man who liked his fellow-creatures as a whole. The rotting leaves were half fallen and their moist scent rose from underfoot, a little acrid, but so much mixed with earth’s composite breath that it was not disagreeable. A robin hopped along at a few yards ‘distance with the trustful inquisitiveness of its kind. The fiddle had begun, but he was too far from it to hear plainly, and it sounded muffled, as though from the interior of some enclosed place. One or two faint lights were showing in cottage windows across the burn. The gurgling voice of the water made him feel drowsy. He was in the humour which makes people lean their folded arms on gates, but he could not do that, for there were no gates here; rough bars thrust across the gaps in unpointed walls were the nearest approach to gates that he could see. How much poorer it all looked than England, and how different! He knew that it was a wilder place over which his cousin had fought, and he thought of the wounded fugitive tramping this comfortless country with the vanished and problematical Moir. He feared, as he had said to Laidlaw, that he was on a wild-goose chase. He felt a stirring of pity in him for the dwellers in this lost, strange backwater; and it seemed no wonder to him that a common fiddler should arouse so much delight, even in a moderately educated man, such as he took Laidlaw to be. As the dusk fell it grew chilly, so he went to the Knowes’ farm and found his way among the stacks to the barn-door. The dancing was now in full swing, so he stood unnoticed by the threshold, looking in.
The lights were flickering in the draught created by the whirl of the reel which was in progress, and men and women of all ages between sixteen and sixty seemed lost to everything but the ecstasy of recurrent rhythm that swayed them. The extraordinary elaboration of steps and the dexterity of feet shod in heavy brogues amazed the Englishman. He could not follow any
