again to Lommio, and drew Catel was left behind, for being him down to the sea. Near morning she left him, and he slept a troubled sleep. neither Basque, Breton, or Bigauden, one place was as another to her. She was a sea-wise maid who knew and loved only the moors and the sea, and she felt little need of other companionship. To her door came Lommic, mazed with his visions, empty, and heavy with sleep. "I am hungry," he said simply as Catel stood at her open door. The sun was an hour high when he awakened. About him the yellow dunes marched down to the sea. The tiny valleys between the dunes were scantily sown with coarse herbage and flowering thorn. Lommic arose from his sandy bed and shook himself sluggishly, not noticing that the wrinkled sea was dazzling blue, or that a fleet of white clouds moved majestically overhead. Hunger sent him wandering without smouldering hearth, and put settled purpose. Instinctively he followed the indented shores of the sea. Over the dunes curled a thin wisp of blue smoke. It came from a tiny cabin thrown up with wreckage and thatch in the lee of a hill of drifting sand. Beyond the cabin the foreshore rose rapidly to a crumbling cliff, where the hungry sea had eaten the moor away. In the cabin Catel Zévédé lived alone, daughter of a Basque cagot and his woman of the Bigaudens. Zévédé, the pariah, outcast by his carpenter's craft in the Basque Provinces, was no more than sea wrack cast up on the beaches of Morbihan. Where he drifted ashore he remained until the sea took him again. His woman, who disliked all Bretons as much as they mistrusted her, wandered away westward toward CombritTréméoc to join her own people after the death of her man. VOL. CCXVIII.—NO. MCCCXIX. She turned back into the windowless shelter, stirred up the fire of driftwood on the a black iron pot on the coals. Thereafter Lommic ate generously, a hunch of bread in his hand, a basin of steaming broth of fish and potatoes on his knees. He forgot to thank Catel for her hospitality. An hour after the meal was finished, the while he sat on a rude bench at the door staring out toward the distant horizon, he wandered away without looking backward. Once in the morning, as Catel climbed to the water pool on the moor, she saw Lommic at a distance, running aimlessly, throwing his hands over his head. In the evening she saw a black figure crouched at the edge of the cliff motionless against the red bars of sunset When the sun was high again the next morning, turning from some simple task in the cabin, she saw the fool's shadow falling athwart the door. He looked at her dumbly, twisting his thick red hands. As he P 2 "You are Lommic the Piper?" she asked wistfully. should you Why Ahès ?" ask, ate the food which she gave for Lommic over the moor, him, she came out and stood and presently saw him going beside him. down to the sea. She did not approach him, but only watched from a distance as again he crouched on the cliff, motionless, gazing seaward. Patient as a waiting animal the girl remained hidden in the dewdamp gorse while sunset faded, dusk shadowed the moor, and a thin moon swung upward floating among blowing misty clouds. "I saw you once at a fair in Kerimor," Catel replied without understanding his question. Perhaps, now, you would play for me here? 66 He took the flageolet from his pocket, screwed the two halves together, and raised it to his lips. 66 Stop!" cried Catel with her hands over her ears. After an interval, while Lommic looked at her beneath lowered brows, she said, "When I heard you playing the biniou in Kerimor, the people were dancing. There was joy in that music, and then I wanted to dance. Now your music frightens me." "It is a song of the damned, Ahès. Very well you should know it." Now Catel saw for a certainty that all his wits were scattered on the wind. In her there was a great pity for Lommic the Fool. He was sad and suffering, and she wanted to comfort him without knowing at all what to say or to do. Soon, without saying anything further, he left the cabin and went away between the dunes. The thoughts of Catel did not cease to trouble her. Late in the afternoon when she had gathered driftwood from the beach and finished work in her little garden, she sought Catel crept closer. Lommic was muttering and singing low to himself. Some of the words could be heard, but they meant nothing to the girl. "Ahès, enchantress, mistress of dark sea-ways, Beautiful, cruel, cold as the crawling Crying and calling ever over Ker-ys, -Ahès, how long?" Suddenly the shadow that was Lommic arose in place. Catel saw two arms like the vanes of a windmill threshing against the sky, heard a shuddering cry "I see! I hear! I follow, Ahès!" The fool dashed forward before Catel could move. She saw him poised for a moment at the edge of the cliff. He flung himself outward. There was no sound. The girl dropped her heavy skirts as she ran. Below, pallid against the black water, there was a swirl of foam. Catel knew that there was no rock at that place. She leaped, curving downward swift as a cormorant. The water closed over her. As she came up beneath Lommic she clutched at him. Struggling together, they sank until Catel felt weedslimed rock beneath her feet, and her breath burst in bubbles from her straining lungs. The ebb and suck of the retreating tide drifted them outward. Rising, the girl had one glimpse of the receding line of surf at I the base of the cliff. Close to I her own face in the dim light she saw the contorted face of the fool. A hand closed on her hair, dragging her head beneath the wave again. Sinking, she grasped Lommic by the throat with both strong hands. She did not relax that firm grip until she felt his struggling body grow limp beside her. When the two heads appeared at the surface again, the fool floated heavily. Catel's hand was entangled in his towsled hair. She turned on her back, I and swam strongly and surely toward the sandy beach where the dunes fell away to the sea. When Lommic opened his eyes he was prone on the earthen floor of Catel's cabin. He was wrapped in a blanket. Fire gleamed on the hearth. Catel stooped over him. She had put on a dry skirt, but her blouse clung damply to her splendid body. She had twisted her dark hair in gleaming wet masses about her head. "Ahès!" he muttered. "I am not Ahès, whoever the hussy may be !" she said sharply. "I am Catel Zévédé. And you are a fool for all that you are a fine poet. Trouble enough you have given me !" When she had prepared hot broth for him to drink, she told him, "Now, you will go to sleep before the fire here, and let me hear no more from you until morning." Obediently Lommic slept. That night not even in his dreams did the enchantress visit him. Toward noon, her pail being empty, Catel must go up to the water pool on the moor. She sat Lommic down on the bench beside the door. "Sit there," she said, "until I return. And if you move from that bench, I shall be after you with a thick stick at your back." Lommic sat as though chained to that bench until Catel released him. On the third day, at dusk, wearing his own dried garments again, he took his flageolet from a pocket, wiped it carefully on his knees, breathed through the tubes before screwing the parts together. Catel sat in the doorway. Before them was the murmurous sea. Over their heads late homing gulls rose and fell on the seaward breeze. The first few notes of the music Catel recognised as the weird and terrible song of the drowned damned. She snatched the flageolet from Lommic's hand. "Make other music," she over his shoulder. Perhaps Lommic has forgotten that time of darkness before the sea closed over him. Certainly now no one hears anything further of the history of Princess Ahès. That ballad is one that Catel has strictly for bidden. cried, or I shall take this biniou on a gay silken ribbon plaything away from you!" Lommic cried out in dismay. "Very well, then," said Catel, returning the flageolet. "But play something gay." A moment later she added, looking out toward the opal sea, "The world is too beautiful . . . She did not know how to finish the thought that was in her. "The world is beautiful," Lommic repeated, looking at the girl, his amber eyes misty wide with dumb obedience and unquestioning devotion. There is no more of this story except that now, as Lommic and Catel attend fairs, feasts, and weddings together, Catel pockets the money which Lommic earns by his musicmaking. The people of the parish of Kerimor often thought that they granted a favour in permitting Lommic the Fool to make their music for them. Now, when they dance they pay, and Catel drives a hard bargain. When Catel is present no one would dare to call her man Lommic the Fool. Now, in truth, he wears a brave green jacket, good leather shoes on his feet, and he slings the "One must have some one to care for," she told Father Mathieu, the priest, when, just at first, he offered certain objections to the celebration of a sacrament which Catel proposed to him. "He belongs to me, for I saved him. He is my poet; he tells me all that I feel but can never say. All men are fools from what I have seen of them, but he is less foolish than others. To them, their fields; to us the clouds over the moors and the wind over the sea. As we are content with each other, so will the good God be content with us." It was the longest speech any one had ever heard from Catel, that silent maid. The priest was convinced by it. Indeed, he saw in the miracle of Lommic's healing a direct answer to his suppliant prayers. GEORGE BUCHANAN. BY REV. J. A. NAIRN, LITT.D. (OXON. ET CANTAB.). THE revival of interest in the Stewarts, the most gifted, and the most unhappy, of our native dynasties, has led to a renewed study of the works of George Buchanan, who taught Latin to Mary, Queen of Scots, and to her son, James Sixth of Scotland and First of Great Britain. Buchanan's fame once stood high. His abilities as a Latinist, as a poet, and historian won the applause of such men as Roger Ascham and Philip Sidney in the sixteenth century; Milton, Cowley, and Dryden in the seventeenth; and Dr Johnson in the eighteenth century. What would you have said," a Scotsman once asked Dr Johnson, "had Buchanan been an Englishman?" "Why, sir," replied Johnson, "I would not have said, had he been an Englishman, what I will say of him as a Scotsman, that he was the only man of genius whom his country ever produced." life of a wandering scholar of the sixteenth century. He was born near the village of Killearn in of Killearn in Stirlingshire, within sight of Ben Lomond, Ben Venue, Ben Ledi, and other monarchs of the Western Highlands. Not far away is the district subsequently associated with the exploits of Rob Roy. Buchanan's father was of Celtic descent, connected nected with the family of Lennox. His mother, Agnes Heriot, came of a family of considerable importance in the county of Haddington. Those who are curious in such matters may trace back to this blending of the Celtic and the Teutonic stocks the combination of quick temper and of shrewdness which is to be witnessed through Buchanan's life. His true affinities were with his father's people; and his sympathy with the Highlanders is often shown in his writings, especially in his longest and most ambitious work, the History of Scotland.' Buchanan is not unworthy Buchanan's father died in of this high commendation. middle age, leaving to his But, before considering the posi- widow the task of educating tion which he occupies in the a family of five sons and three estimation of scholars, it will daughters. George, who was be convenient to give some the third son, attended school account of his life the typical first at Killearn, afterwards at 1 There are several biographies of Buchanan. That by Dr Macmillan has been of most use to me. |
