Blair Collection > Celtic monthly > Volume 5, 1897

THE CELTIC MONTH! A'.
22:5
Fioui that niglit laii !MacN<rill, Duncan Grant,
and I were sworn friends.
But it was just the year after that Ian took
the fever, that made him as silly as a bairn,
after a long tight with the trouble. It was an
ill sight to see the big man brought so low, and
the end came one night when we were sitting in
his garret-room together. He would always be
speaking about the white sands, and the clachan
at Caisteal St. Clair, and in the wandering talk
we could hear that he was often naming the
name of the woman that had laughed at his love.
The bitterness of his heart died aw-ay, and the
old love that was so deep came back to life
again the nearer he got to the end. It was a
waesome sight to see the man dying in such an
evil-sroelling den, like a rat in a hole, when he
was crying like a lost liairn for the white sands
where the winds were blowing caller from the
sea at that very moment.
" Coil . . are ye there ] "
"Aye, do ye not know me, Ian ("
" Coll, you will take me back to Barra
the white sands and the Caisteal
away . . Mairi, Mairi . . why — did
laugh . . () Mairi . . the white sands ! '
At the turning of the night, when the dawn-
light was stealing in at the window of the
garret, we both heard the rattle, and Duncan
turned to go for the .salt. Bv'the time he was
far
ye—
THE WlllTK SA.NUS OF B.\RUA.
at the bed-side again, Ian was dead, and the
last words that he whispered were, ^1 Thiijlieam'
losa glac mo spiorad .' For he was a good man,
with all his bitter ways, and he knew the Book.
Then Duncan threw open the door, and
stopped the ticking of the clock. And the dead
man, whom the cruel laugh of a w-oman had
driven away from home, lay in the dim garret
with the guttered candle flickering near him,
and the smile of a bairn on his face.
Three days after, Ian MacNeill was carried
on board the steamer at Greenock, for his last
journey. Duncan and I were taking him home.
The sailors laid him down slowly on the deck,
below one of the life-boats, and the rough shell
was wrapped round in a black tarpaulin. There
he lay for three nights and three days. In the
darkness, when the great steamer was plunging
through the rough seas, and sending the phos-
jihorous Hying from her bows, we stood and
watched : the first night it was a waesome task :
and you might have seen a strange light playing
below the life-boat on the deck, where the
tarpaulin was being washed by the sjjray from
the breaking seas.
The dawn-light rose behind the Paps of Jura,
where the morning mists were lying in great
bands like the shrouds of the night : on and on
past .the music-haunted Golonsay : and further
north by Fiunary, lying basking in the sun :