Читать книгу Collected Works (Historical Novel) - D. K. Broster - Страница 48

“My want to go home,” said little Keith, sighing. The two children were now standing, a few yards from the verge, looking over the Loch of the Eagle, where the fringeing birches were beginning to yellow, and the quiet water was expecting the sunset.

Donald took no notice of this plaint; his eyes were intently fixed on something up on the red-brown slopes of Meall Achadh on the far side—was it a stag?

“Father not here,” began the smaller boy once more, rather wistfully. “Go home to Mother now, Donald?”

“All in good time,” said Master Donald in a lordly fashion. “Sit down again, if you are tired.”

“Not tired,” retorted little Keith, but his mouth began to droop. “Want to go home—Luath goned!” He tugged at the hand which held him.

“Be quiet!” exclaimed his brother impatiently, intent on the distant stag—if stag it were. He loosed his hold of Keith’s hand, and, putting down the claymore hilt, used both his own to shade his eyes, remembering the thrill, the rather awful thrill, of coming once upon an eight-pointer which severe weather had brought down almost to the house. This object was certainly moving; now a birch-tree by the loch-side blocked his view of it. Donald himself moved a little farther to the left to avoid the birch branches, almost as breathless as if he had really been stalking the beast. But in a minute or two he could see no further sign of it on the distant hill-side, and came back to his actual surroundings to find that his small brother was no longer beside him, but had trotted out to the very brink of the loch, in a place where Donald had always been told that the water was as deep as a kirk.

“Keith, come back at once!” he shouted in dismay. “You know that you are not to go there!”

And then he missed the claymore hilt which he had laid down a yard or so away; and crying, “How dare you take my sword!” flung himself after the truant.

But before he could reach it the small figure had turned an exultant face. “My got yours toy!” And then he had it no longer, for with all his childish might he had thrown it from him into the water. There was a delightful splash. “It’s away!” announced Keithie, laughing gleefully.

Donald stood there arrested, his rosy face gone white as paper. For despite the small strength which had thrown the thing, the irreplaceable relic was indeed ‘away’ . . . and since the loch was so deep there, and he could not swim. . . . Then the hot Highland blood came surging back to his heart, and, blind with a child’s unthinking rage, he pounced on the malefactor. One furious push, and he had sent his three-year-old brother to join the claymore hilt in the place where Loch na h-Iolaire was as deep as a kirk.