第62章

"Get the line on it," said Mack quietly. The measuring line showed one hundred and eleven and a half feet. The boys crowded round him, exclaiming, cheering, patting him on the back. Mack received the congratulations in silence, then, turning to Cameron, said very earnestly:

"Man! yon's as easy as eating butter. You have done me a good turn to-day."

"Oh, that's nothing, Mack," said Cameron, who was more pleased than any of them. "You got the swing perfectly that time. You can put twenty feet to that throw. One hundred and eleven feet! Why, I can beat that myself."

"Man alive! Do you tell me now!" said Mack in amazement, running his eyes over Cameron's lean muscular body.

"I have done it often when I was in shape."

"Oh, rats!" said Perkins with a laugh. "Where was that?"

Cameron flushed a deep red, then turned pale, but kept silent.

"I believe you, my boy," said Mack with emphasis and facing sharply upon Perkins, "and if ever I do a big throw I will owe it to you."

"Oh, come off!" said Perkins, again laughing scornfully. "There are others that know the swing besides Scotty here. What you have got you owe to no one but yourself, Mack."

"If I beat the man McGee next week," said Mack quietly, "it will be from what I learned to-night, and I know what I am saying. Man! it's a lucky thing we found you. But that will do for just now.

Come along to the barn. Hooray for the pipes and the lassies!

They are worth all the hammers in the world!" And, putting his arm through Cameron's, he led the way to the barn, followed by the others.

"If Scotty could only hoe turnips and tie wheat as well as he can play the pipes and throw the hammer," said Perkins to the others as they followed in the rear, "I guess he'd soon have us all leaning against the fence to dry."

"He will, too, some day," said Tim, whose indignation at Perkins overcame the shyness which usually kept him silent in the presence of older men.

"Hello, Timmy! What are you chipping in for?" said Perkins, reaching for the boy's coat collar. "He thinks this Scotty is the whole works, and he is great too--at showing people how to do things."

"I hear he showed Tim how to hoe turnips," said one of the boys slyly. The laugh that followed showed that the story of Tim's triumph over the champion had gone abroad.

"Oh, rot!" said Perkins angrily. "Tim's got a little too perky because I let him get ahead of me one night in a drill of turnips."

"Yeh done yer best, didn't he, Webster?" cried Tim with indignation.

"Well, he certainly was making some pretty big gashes in them drills," said Webster slowly.

"Oh, get out!" replied Perkins. "Though all the same Tim's quite a turnip-hoer," he conceded. "Hello! There's quite a crowd in the barn, Danny. I wish I had my store clothes on."

At this a girl came running to meet them.

"Come on, Danny! Tune up. I can hardly keep my heels on my boots."

"Oh, you'll not be wanting my little fiddle after you have heard Cameron on the pipes, Isa."

"Never you fear that, Danny," replied Isa, catching him by the arm and hurrying him onward.

"Wait a minute. I want you to meet Mr. Cameron," said Danny.

"Come away, then," replied Isa. "I am dying to get done with it and get the fiddle going."

But Cameron was in the meantime engaged, for Mack was busy introducing him to a bevy of girls who stood at one corner of the barn floor.

"My! but he's a braw lad!" said Isa gayly, as she watched Cameron making his bows.

"Yes, he is that," replied Danny with enthusiastic admiration, "and a hammer-thrower, too, he is."

"What! yon stripling?"

"You may say it. He can beat Mack there."

"Mack!" cried Isa, with scorn. "It's just big lies you are telling me."

"Indeed, he has beaten Mack's best throw many a time."

"And how do you know?" exclaimed Isa.

"He said so himself."

"Ah ha!" said Isa scornfully. "He is good at blowing his own horn whatever, and I don't believe he can beat Mack--and I don't like him a bit," she continued, her dark eyes flashing and the red colour glowing in her full round cheek.

"Come, Isa!" cried Mack, catching sight of her in the dim light.

"Come here, I want Mr. Cameron to meet you."

"How do you do?" said the girl, giving Cameron her hand and glancing saucily into his face. "I hear you are a piper and a hammer-thrower and altogether a wonderful man."

"A wonderfully lucky man, to have the pleasure of meeting you," said Cameron, glancing boldly back at her.

"And I am sure you can dance the fling," continued Isa. "All the Highlanders do."

"Not all," said Cameron. "But with certain partners all Highlanders would love to try."

"Oh aye," with a soft Highland accent that warmed Cameron's blood.

"I see you have the tongue. Come away, Danny, now, strike up, or I will go on without you." And the girl kilted her skirts and began a reel, and as Mack's eyes followed her every step there was no mistaking their expression. To Mack there was only one girl in the barn, or in all the world for that matter, and that was the leal-hearted, light-footed, black-eyed Isa MacKenzie. Bonnie she was, and that she well knew, the belle of the whole township, driving the men to distraction and for all that holding the love of her own sex as well. But her heart was still her own, or at least she thought it was, for all big Mack Murray's open and simple-hearted adoration, and she was ready for a frolic with any man who could give her word for word or dance with her the Highland reel.

With the courtesy of a true gentleman, Danny led off with his fiddle till they had all got thoroughly into the spirit and swing of the frolic, and then, putting his instrument back into its bag, he declared that they were all tired of it and were waiting for the pipes.

"Not a bit of it!" cried Isa. "But we will give you a rest, Danny, and besides I want to dance a reel with you myself--though Mr. Cameron is not bad," she added, with a little bow to Cameron, with whom she had just finished a reel.