_'Twas Love Meenie he saw, and she walked by the shore,_ _And she sang so sweet and so clear,_ _That the sound of her voice made him see again_ _The dawn of the world appear;_
_And at night he spake to the listening stars_ _And charged them a guard to keep_ _On the hamlet of Inver-Mudal there_ _And the maid in her innocent sleep,_
_Till the years should go by; and they should see_ _Love Meenie take her stand_ _'Mong the maidens around the footstool of God--_ _She gentlest of all the band!_
He tore the leaf out, folded it, and put it in his pocket.
'Another one for the little bookie that's never to be seen,' said he, with a kind of laugh; for indeed he treated himself to a good deal of satire, and would rather have blown his brains out than that the neighbourhood should have known he was writing these verses about Meenie Douglas.
'And hey, Harry, lad!' he called, as he locked the little cupboard again, 'I'm thinking we must be picking up a hare now, if it's for soup for the gentleman's dinner the night. So ye were bauld enough to face an eagle? I doubt, if both his feet had been free, but ye might have had a lift in the air, and seen the heavens and the earth spread out below ye.'
He shouldered his gun and set out again--making his way towards some rockier ground, where he very soon bagged the brace of hares he wanted. He tied their legs together, slung them over his shoulder, and began to descend the mountain again--usually keeping his eye on the minute black speck on the loch, lest there might be occasion again for his telescope.
He took the two hares--they looked remarkably like cats, by the way, for they were almost entirely white--into the inn, and threw them on to the chair in the passage.
'There you are, Nelly, lass,' said he, as the fair-haired Highland maid happened to go by.
'All right,' said she, which was no great thanks.
But Mr. Murray, in the parlour, had heard the keeper's voice.
'Ronald,' he cried, 'come in for a minute, will ye?'
Mr. Murray was a little, wiry, gray-haired, good-natured looking man, who, when Ronald entered the parlour, was seated at the table, and evidently puzzling his brains over a blank sheet of paper that lay before him.
'Your sister Maggie wass here this morning,' the inn-keeper said--still with his eyes fixed upon the paper--'and she wass saying that maybe Meenie--Miss Douglas--would like to come with the others on Monday night--ay, and maybe Mrs. Douglas herself too as well--but they would hef to be asked. And Kott pless me, it is not an easy thing, if you hef to write a letter, and that is more polite than asking--it is not an easy thing, I am sure. Ronald,' he said, raising his eyes and turning round, 'would you tek a message?'