Patsy, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [spiritual books to read .TXT] 📗

round the point into Loch Ryan. The _Good Intent_ might therefore discharge her cargo in peace, and the boats were ready on the beach of the Water Cave to put the Inch Ryan refugees in charge of the pack horses which were to carry the stuff inland, distributing as they went.
The lads were riotous to be off, and Stair had to exercise his authority, backed by Godfrey McCulloch's experience and influence over the eastern men, to keep them quiet in the cove till the time should come for the _Good Intent_ to cast anchor in the bay.
The chastisement of the Rathlin man had cowed the wildest spirits, and, still more than the fear of Stair, the acquiescence of the company in the justice of the punishment. Nevertheless, those in the cave were restless and uneasy, setting their heads out to sniff the salt of the sea beneath, and craning their necks through the spy-hole to watch the sand-pipers wheeling as if dancing new-fangled waltzes, or probing the sands after little shellfish and sea worms, never getting in each other's way, but each working quietly along, like a minister in his own parish.
Stair Garland was lost in admiration of the glory of the sea and sand at sunset. The crying of the island curlews coming down each in long plane flight eased his mind. _Willy-wha_--_willy-wha!_ they called in long diminuendo, before they settled.
Presently the mist began to rise out of the hollows and hung out over the sea from Inch Ryan to the mainland crags like the stretched awning of a tent. Stair gave the lads leave to go on the balcony while he himself started on a tour of inspection. He would have liked to take Godfrey McCulloch with him. But he knew that his own following would be jealous and resent his passing them over, so he contented himself with saying, "Attend to what Godfrey says, boys. He has seen more than all of us put together. Fergus" (this to his elder brother), "knock the heads of any men who make a noise. No one shall come with us to-night who does not obey now!"
Stair went out by the little passage, spoken of in other chronicles, which opened into the inner towers of the ancient castle of the Herons. He found himself among rugged, heathy ground, the hollow palm of the island, now suffused with milky opalescence, for the sun was setting. Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer uniform of the golden plover, but he heard their softly wistful cries everywhere.
And as the mist shifted and flowed everywhere more and more were revealed, doing sentry duty each on his tussock of bent-grass, while behind his mate effaced herself upon her four eggs or led her little flock into the deepest of the growing heather and among the white meadows of cotton-grass which blew about them, more downy than even the youngest nestling.
Stair made his way to the most easterly point of the isle--that nearest to the Burnfoot Bay. Already the fog was bunching and billowing uneasily. He noted that it was losing its steady, even pour over the island. "It will lift," he muttered.
And from far away there came the sound of a schooner's mainsail being brought down as her head came to the wind, the plunge of an anchor, and then, through a gap in the gloom, the tall, bare mast of a ship in the direction of the new house of Abbey Burnfoot.
"The _Good Intent_!" he muttered. "She must be very sure of herself to come to anchor like that. Still that is Captain Penman's business. If he can discharge his cargo, I can put it out of harm's way. We shall have two hundred lads on the beach by midnight, and whatever force they may bring against us, we can go through them with the strong hand!"


CHAPTER V
PATSY'S CONFESSIONS
Patsy had said nothing at home about her race over the moors to save the Glenanmays lads from the press-gang, and when her Uncle Julian, having talked to Captain Laurence, approached her on the subject, my lady replied that she was at the Bothy of Blairmore to help her friend Jean Garland.
"And where was Jean when the 'press' found you there alone?" said Julian Wemyss, smiling.
"She was outside, keeping watch for her brothers," said Patsy, looking at him with bright, clear eyes that could not be other than truthful.
But Uncle Julian had had much experience, and he only smiled more knowingly than ever.
"And the famous costume which so witched the men of war?" he asked.
"Oh, that," said Patsy, "I had to run, and you can't run fast in a frieze coat with many capes!"
"No." Uncle Julian nodded his head; "sandals cross-gartered, a bathing dress and a sash! I would that I had been one of His Majesty's officers to see you."
"I shall dress up for you some time," affirmed Patsy soothingly, "if you will give me the yellow sandals for my very own."
"Ah," said Uncle Julian, "of that I am not sure. They recall something which makes them precious to me."
The girl clasped her hands delightedly.
"Oh, a story at last," she cried, nestling against him. "I shall not tell a soul. You shall see how I can keep a secret."
"But I shall see still better if I do not tell it you!"
"Oh, how abominable of you, Uncle Julian! And I thought you loved me."
"The yellow sandals remind me of a time when I was young--young as you, and a great deal more foolish!"
"But they are a girl's sandals, Uncle Julian--you said so yourself when you lent them to me."
"Indeed, both of them would hardly cover a man's foot!"
"Who was she? Oh, where did you meet her? Did you love her very much?"
"I met her on a little coasting boat belonging to her father, on which I had taken passage from Chios to Smyrna. She knew no English. I knew only one sentence of modern Greek, and I was not sure of the meaning even of that. So I had to be careful. I had it from a poem which was making a noise at the time."
"Oh, _I_ know," cried Patsy, "Louis is always saying it over to me: _Zoe mou, sas agapo!_ What does it mean?"
"That I did not know at the time, but I know what I meant the words to mean."
"Was she _very_ lovely?"
"Very," said Uncle Julian. "I see you want a description, but I can only indicate. She had great dark eyes into which every sort of languid delight seemed to have been melted and concentrated, and eyelashes like the fringed awnings of a tent. When she lowered them they swept the ground, and when she lifted them it was slowly, as if their very weight fought against her will!"
"Oh-o-o-h!" said Patsy, feeling with her fingers, "I have regular scrubs. You won't ever love me when you think of her, Uncle Julian."
"I might," he answered, "if you had only the yellow sandals--"
"No, no, tell me about her! What did you say to her?"
"I said '_Zoe mou_' half a dozen times, sitting closer to her every time. I spoke lower and lower, till the last '_Zoe mou_' was whispered into her ear.
"Then I risked the other part, '_sas agapo_'--and expected a box on the ear, or perhaps an appeal to her father, but instead she turned and kissed me!"
"Hurrah, Uncle Julian, I'm sure so should I--if any one had the sense to talk to me like that, low and in my ear (that tickles anyway) and in an unknown tongue."
"But you see the point was that the tongue was not unknown to her. She was a Greek girl and--"
"But what, after all, _did_ it mean? She told you afterwards, of course."
"Well," said Uncle Julian, meditating, "not exactly. I found out. I had said, '_Zoe_ mine, I love you!"
"But what does '_Zoe_' mean?"
"My life!"
"Life of mine, I love you!" Patsy repeated, trying various tones. "Uncle Julian, you must have made love like an archangel. Without knowing it, you had said about all that there was to say, and changing your voice like that--oh, I do wish I had been that girl. I don't wonder you don't want to give me the yellow sandals. I should not even have lent them for five minutes. You must not. I shall bring them back to you. It would be a sacrilege!"
"No," said Uncle Julian, "you are the brightest thing in my world, the likest the Greek girl and all the young things I once loved. It is your turn now, you small, black-headed Pictish woman!"
"I am not 'small.' I am taller than you, Uncle Julian!"
"I daresay, but you are slim as a willow branch. I could take you up between my finger and thumb."
"If you could catch me, Uncle Julian; but, see--you could not!"
With a swift spring she threw herself out of the low French window and stood on the lawn, ready poised for flight.
A brightness came into her uncle's eyes.
"I have known many and learned much," he thought, "but I have missed the best."
"Come, Uncle," she said, tapping the grass with her shoe, "I can't run as well as in kilt and sandals, or like the girl who played ball on the sands, but I can beat you--yes, I could run in circles about you!"
"I know, I know, you swallow!" proclaimed an admiring uncle. "But the day is past when I ran after agreeable young women. Generally they have to pocket their pride and come to see me--you do every day, you know!"
"Yes," said Patsy, "but do not think it is to see you, even if you are my mother's brother--"
"Half-brother--"
"My mother's brother, I say," persisted Patsy. "It is because you teach me to speak French and to read Latin books, and the mathematic (though that I love not so well), and also chiefly because you lend me many books to read up in dull old Cairn Ferris."
"Do not blaspheme the habitation of your fathers," said Julian Wemyss. "Here is a house all ready for you when you marry. If it were not for the table of affinities in the beginning of the Bible, and if I were twenty years younger, I should ask you myself!"
"Oh," said Patsy, "that would be splendid. You are far the nicest man and the most interesting I ever talked to. Don't ask me, for I should say 'yes' in a minute."
* * * * *
Usually Patsy Ferris and her father had not much to say to one another.
"Good morning, daughter!" quoth Adam, coming in from his early inspection; "whither away with such skip-jack grace, habited in yellow and black like a wasp?"
"I have done my work, father," Patsy would answer. "I promised to go help Jean at Glenanmays. The lads are all in the heather and the maids have to do the heavy work of the field."
"But not you--I cannot have you handling the hoe and rake like a field worker!"
"No, no, father; Jean is always indoors or at the dairy."
Adam Ferris looked thoughtful and his dark brows drew together. He detested the press-gang and all it meant to the young men of the parish.
"I could send over a man or two, but my grieve or I