The Eagle Cliff, R. M. Ballantyne [best fiction books to read .txt] 📗

“We are a queer lot, what-ë-ver!” remarked one of the farmers, with a deep sigh and a candid smile, as he looked round the company.

The observation was incontrovertible, if charcoaled faces, lank hair, torn and dripping garments, and a general appearance of drowned-ratiness may be regarded as “queer.”

“My friends,” said the laird, digging the carving fork into a cold turkey, “we are also a hungry lot, if I may judge of others by myself, so let me advise you to fall to. We can’t afford to sit long over our supper in present circumstances. Help yourselves, and make the most of your opportunities.”

“Thank God,” said Giles Jackman, “that we have the opportunity to sit down to sup under a roof at all.”

“Amen to that,” returned the laird; “and thanks to you all, my friends, for the help you have rendered. But for you, this house and all in it would have been burnt to ashes. I never before felt so strongly how true it is that we ‘know not what a day may bring forth.’”

“What you say, sir, is fery true,” remarked a neighbouring small farmer, who had a sycophantish tendency to echo or approve whatever fell from the laird’s lips.

“It is indeed true,” returned his host, wiping the charcoal from his face with a moist handkerchief; “but it is the Word that says it, not I. And is it not strange,” he added, turning with a humorous look to Barret, “that after all these years the influence of Joan of Arc should be still so powerful in the Western Isles? To think that she should set my house on fire in this nineteenth century!”

“I am very glad she did!” suddenly exclaimed Junkie, who, having been pretty well ignored or forgotten by everybody, was plying his knife and fork among the other heroes of the fight in a state of inexpressible felicity.

“You rascal!” exclaimed his father; “you should have been in bed long ago! But why are you so glad that Joan set the house on fire?”

“Because she gave me the chance to save Blackie’s life!” replied Junkie, with supreme contentment.

The company laughed, and continued their meal, but some of them recalled the proverb which states that “the boy is father to the man,” and secretly prophesied a heroic career for Junkie.

Ten months passed away, during which period Allan Gordon retired to his residence in Argyllshire while his mansion in the Western Island was being restored. During the same period Archie produced innumerable hazy photographs of Kinlossie House in a state of conflagration; Eddie painted several good copies of the bad painting into which Milly Moss had introduced a megatherium cow and other specimens of violent perspective; and Junkie underwent a few terrible paroxysms of intense hatred of learning in all its aspects, in which paroxysms he was much consoled by the approval and sympathy of dear little Flo.

During this period, also, Mabberly applied himself to his duties in London, unaffected by the loss of the Fairy, and profoundly interested in the success of his friend Barret, who had devoted himself heart and head to natural history, with a view to making that science his profession, though his having been left a competence by his father rendered a profession unnecessary, from a financial point of view. As for Giles Jackman, that stalwart “Woods-and-Forester” returned to his adopted land, accompanied by the faithful Quin, and busied himself in the activities of his adventurous career, while he sought to commend the religion of Jesus alike to native and European, both by precept and example, proving the great truth that “godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come.” MacRummle, during the same period, spent much time in his study, writing for publication an elaborate treatise on fishing, with a few notes on shooting, in the Western Isles. He was encouraged in this work by a maiden sister who worshipped him, and by the presence of an enormous stuffed eagle in a corner of his study.

One day, towards the close of this period of ten months, a beautiful little woman and a handsome young man might have been seen riding in one of the quiet streets of London. They rode neither on horseback, nor in a carriage, still less in a cab! Their vehicle was a tricycle of the form which has obtained the name of “Sociable.”

“See, this is the corner, Milly,” said the young man. “I told you that one of the very first places I would take you to see after our marriage would be the spot where I had the good fortune to run our mother down. So now I have kept my word. There is the very spot, by the lamp-post, where the sweep stood looking at the thin little old lady so pathetically when I was forced to rise and run away.”

“Oh, John!” exclaimed Milly, pointing with eager looks along the street; “and there is the thin little old lady herself!”

“So it is! Well, coincidences will never cease,” said Barret, as he stepped from the “sociable” and hurried to meet Mrs Moss, who shook her finger and head at him as she pointed to the pavement near the lamp-post.

“I would read you a lecture now, sir,” she said; “but will reserve it, for here is a letter that may interest you.”

It did indeed interest all three of them, as they sat together that afternoon in the sunshine of Milly’s boudoir, for it was a long and well-written epistle from old Molly Donaldson.

We will not venture to weary the reader with all that the good old woman had to say, but it may perhaps be of interest to transcribe the concluding sentence. It ran thus,—“You will be glad to hear that my dear Ivor is doing well. He was married in March to Aggy Anderson, an’ they live in the old cottage beside me. Ivor has put on the blue ribbon. The laird has put it on too, to the surprise o’ everybody. But I think little o’ that. I think more o’ a bit pasteboard that hangs over my son’s mantelpiece, on which he has written wi’ his own hand the blessed words—‘Saved by Grace.’”