第36章

"God bless my soul!" said Maclise in an undertone. "He is himself once more."

He might well exclaim, for it was a new Allan that came striding up the high road, with head lifted, and with the proud swing of a Highland chieftain.

"Hello, old man!" he shouted, catching sight of Martin and running towards him with hands outstretched, "You are welcome"--he grasped his hands and held them fast--"you are welcome to this Glen, and to me welcome as Heaven to a Hell-bound soul."

"Maclise," he cried, turning to the master, "this letter," waving it in his hand, "is like a reprieve to a man on the scaffold."

Maclise stood gazing in amazement at him.

"They accused me of crime!"

"Of crime, Mr. Allan?" Maclise stiffened in haughty surprise.

"Yes, of base crime!"

"But this letter completely clears him," cried Martin eagerly.

Maclise turned upon him with swift scorn, "There was no need, for anyone in this Glen whatever." The Highlander's face was pale, and in his light blue eyes gleamed a fierce light.

Martin flashed a look upon the girl standing so proudly erect beside her brother, and reflecting in her face and eyes the sentiments of the schoolmaster.

"By Jove! I believe you," cried Martin with conviction, "it is not needed here, but--but there are others, you know."

"Others?" said the Highlander with fine scorn, "and what difference?"

The Glen folk needed no clearing of their chief, and the rest of the world mattered not.

"But there was myself," said Allan. "Now it is gone, Maclise, and I can give my hand once more without fear or shame."

Maclise took the offered hand almost with reverence, and, removing his bonnet from his head, said in a voice, deep and vibrating with emotion, "Neffer will a man of the Glen count it anything but honour to take thiss hand."

"Thank you, Maclise," cried Allan, keeping his grip of the master's hand. "Now you can tell the Glen."

"You will not be going to leave us now?" said Maclise eagerly.

"Yes, I shall go, Maclise, but," with a proud lift of his head, "tell them I am coming back again."

And with that message Maclise went to the Glen. From cot to cot and from lip to lip the message sped, that Mr. Allan was himself again, and that, though on the morrow's morn he was leaving the Glen, he himself had promised that he would return.

That evening, as the gloaming deepened, the people of the Glen gathered, as was their wont, at their cottage doors to listen to old piper Macpherson as he marched up and down the highroad. This night, it was observed, he no longer played that most heart-breaking of all Scottish laments, "Lochaber No More." He had passed up to the no less heart-thrilling, but less heartbreaking, "Macrimmon's Lament." In a pause in Macpherson's wailing notes there floated down over the Glen the sound of the pipes up at the big House.

"Bless my soul! whisht, man!" cried Betsy Macpherson to her spouse.

"Listen yonder!" For the first time in months they heard the sound of Allan's pipes.

"It is himself," whispered the women to each other, and waited.

Down the long avenue of ragged firs, and down the highroad, came young Mr. Allan, in all the gallant splendour of his piper's garb, and the tune he played was no lament, but the blood-stirring "Gathering of the Gordons." As he came opposite to Macpherson's cottage he gave the signal for the old piper, and down the highroad stepped the two of them together, till they passed beyond the farthest cottage. Then back again they swung, and this time it was to the "Cock of the North," that their tartans swayed and their bonnets nodded. Thus, not with woe and lamentation, but with good hope and gallant cheer, young Mr. Allan took his leave of the Glen Cuagh Oir.