"I suppose her father and mother were very angry, and so he took her
away from St. Ives altogether, and came back here to Scotland. Just at
that time his father died, and left our farm to him. So my father gave
up fishing, and brought mother here, but I had not been born long
before mother died, so you see I never knew her. My father did not
remain unmarried long: the second time he married a Scotswoman, and I
hate the Scotch."
"Why?" asked Graham.
"Oh, well, my father says that the Cornish people are wild and
imaginative, and my stepmother hasn't any imagination. Years ago I
used to read Burns's poems and Sir Walter Scott's stories, but mother
took the books from me. She says a farmer's daughter has no time for
poetry and romance, but I love it all the same. That is why I am only
happy when I am out on the moors alone."
A few minutes later a lonely farmhouse appeared to view. It was little
more than a cottage, and Graham judged that the farm consisted of only
about fifty acres of stony and barren land.
"Good night," she said presently, "and thank you for helping me with
the kine."
"Perhaps I shall be seeing you again," said the young man. "I am sure
I shall come round this way in the hope that you may be visible." And
he laughed almost nervously as he spoke. The girl had appealed to him.
She seemed to him like a flower in the wilderness, and aroused all the
romance of his nature.
She shook her head. "No," she said, "you will never see me again."
"At least you will tell me your name?" said Graham; "why, do you know,
we have been nearly an hour together? I am called Douglas Graham."
"And my name is Jean Lindsay," she said, looking at him shyly; "not
that it matters much, for if you are staying with the Grahams you will
be a gentleman."
"And do you go to fetch the cattle home every night?" he asked eagerly;
but she did not answer him. A hard-featured woman came up to the
farmyard gate as he spoke, while Jean silently, and with an almost
sullen look on her face, drove the cattle into the yard. He lifted his
cap and passed on.
"Who is yon?" asked the woman in a harsh, strident voice.
"I do not know," replied the girl; "he helped me with the cattle, that
is all."
Douglas Graham climbed the hill which lay between him and his
relative's house with a strange feeling at his heart. Somehow life
seemed different, and the picture of this black-eyed girl remained with
him. "I should like to see her again," he said, as presently he came
up to the gates which led to the house; "yes, and I will, too!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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