They had seen Tonald
dance before, but this was different, for it was not
Tonald McKenzie alone who danced before them, but the
incarnate spirit of the Highlands, the unconquerable,
dauntless, lawless Highlands, with its purple hills and
treacherous caverns that fling defiance at the world and
fear not man nor devil.
Tonald finished with a leap as nimble as that with which
a cat springs on its victim while the company watched
spellbound. He slipped away into a corner and would dance
no more that night.
When twelve o'clock came, the dancing was over, and with
the smell of coffee and the rattle of dishes in the
kitchen it was not hard to persuade big John Kennedy to
sing.
Big John lived alone in a little shanty in the hills,
and the prospect of a good square meal was a pleasant
one to the lonely fellow who had been his own cook so
long. Big John lived among the Crofters, whose methods
of cooking were simple in the extreme, and from them he
had picked up strange ways of housekeeping. He ate out
of the frying pan; he milked the cow in the porridge pot,
and only took what he needed for each meal, reasoning
that she had a better way of keeping it than he had. Big
John had departed almost entirely from "white man's ways,"
and lived a wild life free from the demands of society.
His ability to "call off" at dances was the one tie that
bound him to the Canadian people on the plain.
"Oh, I can't sing," John said sheepishly, when they
urged him.
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