IV

But, from that day, the gloom lay more heavily on Torcall Cameron even

than of yore. Oona herself could hardly win speech from him. During the

week of fine weather that followed the thunderstorm she was rarely at

Màm-Gorm. The forest held her with its spell, though often she was on

the heights with Murdo when he led the kye to the hill-pastures at

sunrise, or with Sorcha at the milking of the cows at sundown.

During the noons, she sought--alone or with Nial--that white merle of

which Sorcha had told her once, which had haunted her waking and

sleeping dreams ever since. Whoever heard its song would be in fairyland

for a thousand years, though the joy of that would be no more than a

year and a day of mortal time. Whoever saw it might follow its flight,

and for the seer of the white merle there would open wonder after

wonder. The green spirits of the trees would come forth, chanting low

their murmurous rhyme: the souls of the flowers would steal

hand-in-hand, from leaf-covert to leaf-covert, or dance in the golden

light of the sunbeams; the singing of the birds, the crooning of the

cushats, the hum of the wild-bee and the wood-wasp, the voices of all

living things from the low bleat of the fawn to the singing stir of the

gnats by the pool or in the hollows--all would become clear as human

speech, and would be sweet to hear.

Long, long ago, that white merle had flown out of Eden. Its song has

been in the world ever since, though few there are who hear it, knowing

it for what it is, and none who has seen the flash of its white wings

through the green-gloom of the living wood--the sun-splashed,

rain-drenched, mist-girt, storm-beat wood of human life.

But Oona watched for the white shimmer, for the magic song. She looked

everywhere save where the white merle nested--in the fair soul of her;

listened everywhere save where its secret song was--in the music of her

young life in heart and brain. Ah, the sweet song of it!

As for Nial, he crouched for hours at a time, lest by noon or dusk he

might hear or see the magic bird. If only he could catch but a glimpse

of the white merle, sure he would see his lost soul somewhere among the

green spirits who, Oona said, would be seen coming out of the trees

which were their bodies. Neither did _he_ know that there was one place

where it rested often on a spray in its singing flight, a fugitive Hope;

or that notes of its unreachable song pierced the gloom of his bitter

pain.

Sorcha alone, only Sorcha, started at times as though she heard it: and

in her dreams, and in the dreams of Alan, it sang, a white wonder on a

golden bough, in the moonlight.

But for Torcall Cameron in his sorrow there was no white merle. Oona

asked him once what its first notes were like.

"_Bron! bron! mo bron!_" he answered; "mo bron, mo bron, ochone, arone!

Doil-ghios orm'sa, tha mo chridhe briste!"[10]

[10] "Grief, my grief! O grief, my grief, ochone, arone! Sorrow

upon me, my heart is broken!"

Almost every afternoon he went out alone upon the heights, though never

again by the cairn where Marsail lay. Sometimes he would sit on a

boulder, brooding dark; at times Sorcha or Oona would descry him

kneeling in the heather, often with fierce gestures, as he prayed wild

prayers--fragments of which the wind sometimes bore to the listener, who

no more durst approach.

Ever since that day by the cairn Nial had kept out of his way. Not

without reason; for once, as the dwarf lay sleeping in the noon-heat,

under the shadow of a rock, he was suddenly seized in an iron grip.

It was in vain for him to struggle. What he saw in the face of his

captor gave him the courage of desperation.

"Let me go, Màm-Gorm!" he muttered in a voice hoarse with passion. "Let

me go. I am Nial of the woods."

"Ay, Nial of the woods! Spawn of the Evil One! Think you I don't know

you to be the child of the Cailliach? You talk of your lost soul, poor

fool! Your _lost_ soul, you that never had and never will have a soul!"

"Let me go, Màm-Gorm!"

"Let you go! and where will I be letting you go to, you that are no

man, but only an elfish creature of the woods? Was it _you_ that came

out of the grave that day--that day by the cairn?"

"And what will you do, Màm-Gorm?"

"What will I do? What will I do? By the blood on my soul, I will drive a

stake through your body, so that no more shall you haunt the living!"

"Let me go, Torcall Cameron, in the name of God!"

The blind man relaxed his grip a little, which had become like a vice.

The words brought a shock to his heart. He had never heard Nial call him

by his name before: and if he were of demon birth, how could he say "an

ainm an Athar"?

"Let me go, Torcall Cameron, or I will put a _rosad_ upon you, a spell

that no _sian_ of Oona or Sorcha will save you from."

"_You_, you thing of the woods, _you_ put a spell upon _me_: you who had

my bread, and had my fire, and who would have died but for me! Ay, and

you would put a spell upon me! And what would that _rosad_ be like, now,

from you that have never consorted with men, and have learned nothing

save from the lassie Oona?"

"When I was with the children of the wind," Nial began, to be

interrupted at once by his captor, who muttered, "Ah, the gypsies I

forgot"--and grew grave, as with the shadow of a fear.

"When I was with the children of the wind, Màm-Gorm, I learned some

things that even you may not know. And in the woods I have learned that

which no man knows. And if I put the evil upon you, you will die slow,

year by year, from the brain that is behind your eyes to the last bones

of your feet!"

Cameron shuddered.

"It may be so. God forgive me, any way. You have done me no harm. But

look you, Nial of the woods, keep out of my way when I wander

abroad--and let me hear no more of your spells. There: you are free to

go. Yet even now that my hand is off you, I long to make sure that you

are not the thing that came out of the cairn."

With a dark, vengeful face the elf-man moved out of reach; then he

whispered in a slow, meaning way:

"I am going, for I see Marsail coming down the hill from the cairn, and

with her is a man----"

"A man! A man!" shouted Cameron, trembling as in an ague. "Who is the

man? What is he like? Give me your hand, Nial, give me your hand, for

the love of God!"

"He is tall and fair, and dripping wet, with his hair lank about his

head, with the water in it."

Ah, he had his revenge now! Màm-Gorm gave a low moan, and sank to his

knees. There he cowered, muttering incoherently.

"Nial," he whispered hoarsely at last, "Nial, Nial, do they come this

way--Marsail and--and--the man who is dripping wet?"

The dwarf raised his head and stared about him. He was tempted to make

his late tormentor suffer; but the brute heart of the soulless man was

melted because of the agony of one of the lords of life.

"I see no one now, Màm-Gorm."

"No one--_no one_?"

"No."

"Are you sure, Nial?"

"I am sure."

"Give me your hand."

"You will do me no hurt?"

"On my soul!"

Nial slowly advanced, took the outstretched hand in his, and helped the

trembling man to rise.

"Nial, tell me this thing. Have you seen these--these--these _two_

before this?"

"I have never seen the woman."

"Then how do you know it was Marsail, who is dead years and years and

years agone?"

"Is it forgetting you are that when I was a child I saw her body, on the

day of the snow?"

There was a pause, wherein the questioner brooded darkly. At last, in a

low strained voice, he asked:

"Have you ever seen the man?"

"No."

"Do you know who he was?"

"No."

"Can you guess who he was?"

Silence.

"Speak, Nial!"

Silence.

"Speak, Nial, whom I have fathered."

"He was dripping wet, as though--as though----"

"Well?"

"_As though he had fallen into the Linn o' Mairg._"

A savage spasm came into Cameron's face. The nails of his fingers drew

blood in the prisoned hand, which was snatched away as Nial again moved

out of reach.

"I will lay my curse upon you, you evil beast!" Cameron shouted

hoarsely--"Dhonas's a dholas ort!--Bas dunach ort!--Ay, ay, Nial the

Soulless, son of the demon-woman, God against thee and in thy face,

drowning on sea and burning on land, a stake of the whitethorn between

thy heart and the pit of thy belly!"[11]

[11] "_Dhonas's a dholas ort_"--"_Bas dunach ort_": _i.e._ "Evil

and sorrow to you.... A death of woe be yours! God against thee,"

etc.: this dreadful and dreaded anathema runs in the Gaelic--"Dia

ad aghaidh 's ad aodann, bathadh air muir is losgadh air tir,

crogan sgithhich eadar do chridhe 's t' airnean": from which it

will be seen, by those who know Gaelic, that I have not translated

literally either "crogan" or "airnean."

Of the few curses he knew, none seemed to Nial so terrible, so

mysterious, so straight upon life out of Death, as that conveyed by the

two words, "Marbh'asg ort!"

He waited till the fury of the man was spent. Then, frowning darkly,

with his red, bloodshot eyes agleam, he muttered, "_Marbh'asg ort!_...

Your death-wrappings be about you!" So low was his voice that it fell

unheeded.

Cameron turned his sightless eyes upon him. Nial shivered. The blindness

of his king hurt him as a searing pain.

"What was the thing you said, Nial of the brutes?"

With a great effort, the bitter word was slain ere it was spoken. The

voice that came from that wild, fantastic, woodland thing, with its

shaggy peaked head, its faun-like ears, its rude, misshapen body, was

ever harsh as a branch grating in the wind; but now it was gentle. Tears

that were unshed softened it. The grief of the pariah was its

benediction.

"Màm-Gorm, my father, the thing I said was a bitter thing out of Nial

the herd, but this thing that I say to you is by poor Nial of the

brutes, and that is _God preserve you ... ay, gu'n gleidheadh Dia thu,

Torcall-mo-maighstir_!"

And with that the brute turned from the man who had cursed him, and with

slow steps and bent head made his way across the hillside, till he

entered the forest, whence he came not for three days, and where none,

not even Oona, saw him.

It may be that he had heard at last the song of the white merle.

V

So the weeks went till the coming of the season that, because of the

heats and of the drought, is called the month of the hanging of the

dog's mouth.[12]

[12] _Mios crochaidh nan con._ This month is the period from the

middle of July till the middle of August.

Great heat, with many thunders, had prevailed. For nine days at the

beginning of July the rain poured: or ceased, only to let rainbows come

and go upon the gleaming hills. During this time Oona and the blind man

at Màm-Gorm were much together. A change had come upon the child. She

looked at her foster-father often, with a wistful gaze. Something

puzzled her. In the air, some vague trouble moved like a vanishing

shadow. Of Nial she saw little. Now and again she heard his signal in

the forest, and answered it: sometimes, at dawn or dusk, coming upon him

on the hillside, sitting solitary on some isolated boulder, or crouching

by a pool, and staring intently into its depths. But he would not come

across the airidh. No one knew how he lived. Once or twice Murdo the

shepherd gave him to eat: and, every morning and night, Oona put a

small crock of porridge and oatcakes, or other food, in a place where

the vagrant could have it if he willed--and thrice, at least, she found

it empty. On the few moonlit nights she fancied she saw a pale, misty

column of thin smoke rise above the pines.

Still more was she troubled about Sorcha. Her beautiful sister had grown

even lovelier to look upon, but there was a new look in her eyes, a new

hush in her voice. She shepherded on the mountain as one in a trance: as

one in a dream she moved about the house. At night, in her sleep, she

sighed often, and moaned gently: and once, turning and finding Oona by

her, she put her arms round the child, and, sleeping still, whispered,

"_Ah, heart of my heart, joy of my joy!_"

Oona knew that Sorcha and Alan Gilchrist loved each other. She knew,

also, that this was why Alan could never come to Màm-Gorm, for her

foster-father had laid his ban upon their love. But what did this love

mean? What, she pondered vaguely, did this tragic silence, this tragic

yet happy silence hide? "I know now," she said one day to Sorcha at the

coming home of the kye, "I know now why it is that Alan, when he meets

you in the gloaming by the byre or in the hay-shed, or down in the

strath by the Mairg Water, calls you 'Dream.'"

Sorcha was startled, and the beautiful face flushed at the knowledge

that she had been seen at these secret meetings with Alan. Oona's

unconsciousness of any cause of embarrassment, however, reassured her.

"So you have seen us, Oona my flower? Well, see to it that you say

nothing of this to father, or to any one. And, Oona, my bonnie, how do

you know he--Alan--calls me 'Dream': and what do you mean by saying you

know now what that means?"

"I heard him call you so, that moonlight night last week, when you came

hand in hand through the wood. He called you Sunshine, Joy, and then

Dream--and you said that 'Dream' was best, for it was the name he gave

you '_that_ day.' ... Sorcha!"

"Yes, birdeen?"

"What was '_that_ day'?"

The girl turned her face aside, because of the flame in it; but the

flush was in the white neck as well, and the child laughed.

"Ah, it was when he first kissed you!"

"Yes, dear," Sorcha answered, flushing again; "yes, it must have been

then."

"Sorcha, tell me, do you love him very much?"

"Yes. More than I can tell you, my sunbeam. When you are a woman you

will understand."

"When I am a woman I am going to marry Nial."

"Nial!"

"Yes. No one will love him, because he has no soul; but _I_ love him,

and will marry him. Half of my soul will then be his."

"Is that so, then? Sure 'tis a south wind for Nial! And where will you

live, Oona-my-heart?"

"The White Merle will show us the way."

"Ah, I see, it is a fairy tale. Well ... Oona, I will tell you a secret.

_I_ have heard the song of the White Merle!"

The child's eyes grew big with wonder and excitement.

"When? Where? Was it where the old yews are in the Upper Strath?"

"It was now here and now there."

"But when, when?"

"Whenever Alan called me 'Dream,' and the other names, I heard the song

of the White Merle."

"Ah, it is you that I envy! Sorcha, do you think that if Nial called me

beautiful names I should hear it, too?"

"I fear not, dearie ... _not yet_. Perhaps--perhaps if _you_ called

_Nial_ those beautiful names _he_ would hear the song."

"Then I will."

"No, not yet, Bonnikin. You will only harm Nial. But now run away.

Father will be seeking you."

"Ah, and who will be seeking _you_?" cried Oona, as she danced away,

laughing. "Ah, 'tis a good name, _Dream_; for you are always dreaming in

your eyes now, Sorcha!"

* * * * *

Yet day by day thereafter the child laughed less blithely. There was a

shadow about her foster-father. It held her spellbound. Never had she

been so long away from the woods before, never before had she been so

long indoors. She was glad to be with the blind man, and to take his

hand when he went out to stride sometimes for miles along the rough ways

of the hills. She talked much to him about the White Merle, and the

"guid-folk," and the quiet people; sometimes of Nial, and of the strange

things he saw and heard, and how the birds and beasts would come to him,

and how he harmed none, nor they him. Sometimes she asked about the

Cailliach, or about the wind-spirits; or strange questions about the

people of the Strath, glimpses of whom she had occasionally, and for

whom, particularly for the black-garbed minister, she did not conceal

her contempt and dislike. Sometimes she sang; and that was what the

blind man liked best. Once only she spoke of Alan: how she thought that

Christ must be like him, so fair to see was he; how she loved his low

voice, and soft touch, and grave, sweet eyes.

But she saw at once that no good would come out of any mention of that

name. Her foster-father grew moodily taciturn; and when, after a long

silence, he spoke, it was to ask her in a harsh voice if she had ever

broken his command, and climbed the opposite slopes of Tornideon.

"Never, father."

"And have you ever sought the woman Anabal, that is mother of Alan?"

"No."

He seemed satisfied, and asked nothing further. But as for Oona, she

brooded over this more and more, and wondered more and more because of

the ban upon Alan, and because of the feud between Torcall Cameron in

his loneliness on Iolair and Anabal Gilchrist in her loneliness on

Tornideon.

* * * * *

The first day of August came with settled weather, and almost tropic

heat.

All that day Torcall Cameron had been strangely restless. If Oona left

him for more than a few moments, he grew impatient, and then angry.

Again and again she begged him to come into the green shadowy woods, or

even to climb to the Ridge of the Stags on Iolair; but he would not. At

last, weary with the heat and the long blank hours, weary too with

Oona's importunities, and not wholly unwilling to humour her for his own

sake, he let her take his hand and lead him forth at her will.

Sorcha alone knew that, for some reason which she never fathomed, her

father's "black day" was this first day of August. Year after year, his

"dubhachas," his gloom, came upon him with that dawn, so that he would

have word with none. She knew, too, that when the dark day was gone, her

father was better for weeks thereafter, and sometimes smiled and laughed

like other men.

The night before had been an ill passing of July. Murdo, the shepherd,

had come in, his face white. As he had come down the mountain he had

heard a wild and beautiful singing, and had descried a herd of deer

being driven with the wind, keeping close together. He had not seen the

demon-woman, for he had turned his head away, and muttered a _sian_ to

keep the evil of her from coming about him like a snake. But he thought

the wind brought some of the words of her song to him, and they were of

death and the grave. Then, muttering "_Glacar iad's na innleachdan a

dhealbh iad_"--"Let them be taken in the devices they have imagined"--he

had fled. Later, Oona came with a strange story from Nial. He had been

crossing the highland behind Màm-Gorm, and had seen two men and two

women walking silently with bowed heads. One man was tall and dripping

wet, as though he had come out of water, and his lank hair hung adown

his face. The other man was Màm-Gorm himself. The faces of the others he

could not see, but one woman was tall and gaunt, with wild, straggling

grey hair--a woman like Anabal Gilchrist on Tornideon. He heard only one

word spoken, and that was when Màm-Gorm stopped, looked at the house,

and said, "_C'aite am bheil an eilidriom?_"[13]

[13] "Where is the hearse?" _Eilidriom_ (pronounced like

_ā-ee-drēm_, is used in Skye and the isles, rarely if ever on the

mainland. _Snaoimh_ (bier) is the common word, though when a hearse

is actually meant, it is alluded to as the _carbad-mhàrbh_, "the

death-chariot."

"What is an _eilidriom_, Sorcha?" Oona had added. To which her sister

had replied that she did not know, and that she was to say nothing of

this in the house.

"And what then, Oona?"

Nial, the child resumed, had heard no more. But when he turned and

looked toward the strath he saw nine men moving away from Màm-Gorm,

carrying in their midst a long black box. When he glanced back, the four

wayfarers he had seen had disappeared.

Yet, as Sorcha knew, her father had not stirred from the house that day.

Nothing of what Murdo or Nial had seen came to his ears--of that she was

heedful. But suddenly, while they were eating the porridge, Oona asked

her foster-father what an "eilidriom" was.

Cameron sprang to his feet, pale as death, and shaking, with the milk

that he had spilt from the mug in his hand running down his breast as

though his life-blood were pouring from him, white, too, with fear.

"_What is that you say, Oona?_" he cried, hoarsely; "what is that you

say? _Do you see a carbad-mhàrbh--at the door--coming here?_"

"No--no----" murmured the child, terrified.

"Then how do you know that word for it? Who told it to you? I have not

heard it said for years. No man uses it in this country. I have not

heard it since--since Marsail died--and then it was from--from the

people yonder on Tornideon, for Anabal Gilchrist was of the isles."

But here Sorcha had interposed, and said that Oona had picked it up in

some way--in one of the old runes told her by Murdo, no doubt.

For the rest of that night Torcall Cameron only once opened his lips,

and that not at the covering of the peats, or when Sorcha sang one of

the sweet _orain spioradail_ he loved so well, after she had read a

while in the Book of Peace. It was when she came to him after he had

lain down in his bed, and kissed him, and let her flooding tears fall

warm upon his blind, upstaring eyes: then he pulled her head closer, and

whispered, "Sorcha, Sorcha, my soul swims in mist!"

It was a night of beauty, and still. All slept. But toward dawn a voice

arose in the corries. From height to height it went, and the long wail

of it swept past the green airidh of Màm-Gorm and wandered sobbing

through the forest. Then all was still again. The dawn that came soon

after was of pale gold and faintest wild-rose. Peace was in the heaven.

But with that sudden passing wail, so often heard on the mountains when

there is not a cloud in the sky, and when far and near not a branch

sways, and the gnats dance in long columns perpendicularly without

drifting this way or that--with that voice out of the hills, Torcall

awoke.

When Sorcha arose she heard him moaning. Wearily she wondered what this

fateful date meant, this dreaded first day of the eighth month. When she

went to him, he said no other word than this: "I have heard the

lamentable cry of death."

"The cry of death?" she repeated, questioningly.

"Ay, truly, the lamentation of the demon-women mourning for the dead."

* * * * *

So it was that all that day Torcall Cameron had been as a man in an

ill-dream, weary of the long hours, yet dreading the passing of them

into the shadow. So, too, it was that, at the last, he went forth with

Oona.

At first they wandered into the forest, but here Torcall was never at

ease, and so after a time they strolled hand in hand from glade to

glade, till the sound of Mairg Water came soothing-cool through the

heat.

The peace and utter quietude lay as balm upon the weary man. He grew

drowsy at last, as his trouble seemed to lift from him. More than once

he would have stopped, and thrown himself on the ground, content to stir

no further, but Oona urged him to come on to where the river ran through

shelving ledges with a singing sound, and nothing else was to be heard

but the whisper of the silver birches and the thin, green reeds.

The crooning of the cushats was in his ears. Sweet it was to have that

soft touch of sound after the lamentable cry of the hills, that morning

cry now dulled, so that it was there only as a shadow in a darkened

room.

He was glad when the breath of the water came upon his face, and he

could sit down among the bracken and fragrant gale, and do no more than

listen idly to the passage of the water. The whispering water, the

scarce audible susurrus of faintly stirred leaves overhead, the singing

of the gnats, the low incessant croon of the cushats, these were all the

sounds to hear. Not a breath of wind moved in the pinewood, so that it

gave not even that vast, slow suspiration which may be heard in forests

once or twice between sunrise and sundown even on stillest days. All the

birds were still, though few sang even at daybreak in that season of

the young brood. Over the reaches of the water the swallows skimmed,

hawking silently.

An hour passed. Thinking that he slept, and weary of sitting still so

long, Oona rose and slipped away. At first she went to a great yew that

towered near the fringe of the forest, to see if the wood-doves she had

heard crooning there had fallen asleep, for now they no longer made

their croodling moan. Then, having espied them, sitting close with

fluffed plumage and drooping wings as they drowsed in the warm shadow,

she peered here and there for the nest of a shrew-mouse, for often she

had heard thereabouts the patter of the wild-mice in days of drought.

Her quest led her on and on. A sudden splash made her look at the narrow

river. A grilse had leaped half out of the clear amber-brown water, and

missed the dragonfly which had been poising its arrow-flight close to a

wreath of circling foam. The tumult of the linn, a score of yards beyond

her, was pleasant in her ears. She forgot the shrew-mice, and thought

only of the great salmon that Nial declared slept or lay waiting night

and day under a ledge at the bottom of the linn. Yes; she would steal

across the rocks, and creep in among the boulders, and lie along the

lowest ledge that sloped to the seething hollow, whose black depths, and

the deafening noise of whose tumult, had ever an irresistible

fascination for her.

She seemed like a water-sprite herself, as she stood on a high rock at a

place where the ledges sloped sheer into a crevice, at the bottom of

which a snake of brown water writhed through holes and crannies till it

leaped out into a back eddy of the river whence it came. She had plucked

a branch of rowan-berries, some still green or ruddy brown, but others

already kissed into flame by the sun. This she waved slowly to and fro

before her, partly to keep the midges away, partly because the rhythm of

the running water was flowing through her brain, and so along all the

nerves of her body. The sunflood beat full upon her. Her short, ragged,

scanty dress glowed like a chestnut-husk in the sunlight; in the hot

yellow sunshine the tanned skin of her legs and feet gleamed ivory

white. With parted lips and shining eyes she stood intent, transfigured.

Suddenly she started. A look of curiosity, of astonishment, came into

her eyes.

What, she wondered, was that unfamiliar object lying in a ferny hollow

of the rocks which formed the bridge of Mairg Water, whence the stream

fell in a rushing cataract into the Linn? A human figure, clearly; a

woman, too. Who could she be? Was she alive or dead? Was it Sorcha? No.

Could it be one of the fairy-women of whom she had heard so often: the

Cailliach, of whom she had been told so many tales; or that green-clad,

yellow-scarfed, mysterious Bandruidh, the sorceress who won the souls

out of grown men, and whose glance was fateful as a kelpie's? A

kelpie's! Ah, was this indeed not the kelpie of the Linn o' Mairg, lying

there in wait for her! or might it be in truth the kelpie, yet only

asleep there in the great heat? If so, now was the time to espy it, and

perhaps steal or find a hair of its head--which, wound about the third

finger of her left hand, would make her a princess among the secret

people, and enable her to know what no one in the whole strath, or the

greater strath of the world beyond, would know, to see what no one would

see.

These were the thoughts which passed through her mind, while her blue

eyes gazed unwaveringly at the woman, dead or asleep.

At last, slowly, and with careful heed, she drew nearer and nearer. When

still many yards away she recognised the sleeper, whose deep, regular

breathing reassured her. It was Anabal Gilchrist, the mother of Alan,

the woman banned to her and Sorcha by their father as though she were

accursed. True to her word, Oona had never been at Ardoch-beag, the

widow Anabal's farm, but several times she had caught a glimpse of the

solitary woman, and now knew her at the first glance. Once, more than

two years back, she had been luring trout one evening in the Mairg Water

near Ardoch ford; and had been startled by the sudden appearance of a

woman, who had seized her in her arms and kissed her over and over,

sobbing convulsively the while. The woman had drawn her plaid over her

head, and what with this, and the dusk, and her fear, Oona had not time

to discover who it was. Later, she was convinced that it was no other

than the mother of Alan.

When she saw her now before her she stood hesitatingly. She felt drawn

to this sad-faced woman who had once snatched her in the dusk and

covered her face with kisses; but she was still more attracted by the

mystery which enveloped her.

It was only a quarrel, Sorcha had told her; and often she had heard her

sister say that if only her father and Anabal would meet, all might be

explained. In a flash an idea came into the child's mind. The thought

sent the blood leaping from her heart. Her eyes shone.

Two motives impelled Oona. Neither was of itself, but one was

interwrought with the other. The love of mischief, with her innate

audacity and fearlessness, urged her to place her foster-father in the

last place in the world where he would fain be; but, also, something in

her heart pleaded for the quiet bringing together, in that hushed and

beautiful sun-going, of these two bitter haters.

Yes, she would do it, though she knew that her foster-father's wrath

might fall heavily upon her. If--if only Sorcha--no, she did not care,

she would do it. After all, no harm would come of it. She would watch,

and if the woman rose and went away, she would come back and take her

foster-father's hand and lead him home again.

Though the woman slept, overcome with weariness, why was it that a

trouble of deep sorrow still lay upon her face, as the trouble of

waters, even after the sea-wind has died into the blue calm of the air?

The tears were still wet upon the hand that lay across her breast; why

had they fallen? The child stood a while brooding. What did it mean?

Slowly she glanced about her. No one was visible. It was clear that by

the way the woman lay she had not fallen.

At that moment Oona noticed that Torcall had slipped a little, because

of the slope whereon he had lain. Drowsily he was feeling about him for

an easier rest.

Like a hare, as swift and as soundlessly, she made her way to him.

"Rise, father," she whispered; "come further up the stream; it is

pleasanter there."

For nights Torcall Cameron had had little or no sleep.

Weary with these long, long hours; weary with his fasting and his

restless idleness; weary with the windless heat; and, above all, weary

of his own thoughts and of himself, he resigned himself gladly into

Oona's hands.

Even as he walked he swayed. Sleep was so heavy upon him that the roar

of the waters of the Linn came to him no loudlier than as the muffled

song and humming rhythm of the stream itself.

Gently, with her heart beating the while, the child led the blind man to

the place where the woman Anabal, after long weeping, had fallen into

deep slumber. He lay down like a child. The noise of the rushing waters

lulled him, the ancientest, sweetest cradle-song in all the wide green

world. If he heard at all the breathing of the sleeping woman, no other

thought could have come to him than that it was Oona.

She stared down at them with awestruck eyes. What was this unthinkable

terror that shook her like a leaf? For a moment she conquered her fear,

a fear so vague, and of the soul only, that she did not know she was

afraid, though the nerves in her body leaped to the breath of it.

The tears came into her eyes. Yellow was the light that fell upon the

tangled iron-grey hair of the weary sleeper at her feet; yellow as

yellow flowers was the gleam upon the brown-grey tresses of the weary

sleeper by his side.

The hand of the woman moved. Out of the sunglow the arm crept like a

snake, then it lay still in the shadow betwixt the two who slumbered

unheeding.

Oona knew not why she did it, nor even what she did; but with a touch,

light almost as the warm sunbeam itself, she guided the hand of Anabal

toward that of Torcall. As two ships draw together on a calm sea though

far apart, so the hands of these two, who had not spoken one with the

other for weary years, slipped at last side by side. The man stirred a

moment, smiled, and gently clasped the hand in his.

Then, when all was well, Oona shivered with actual dread. What if they

should die so? What if they were already dead? Once more she fought back

this terrifying emotion. How quiet they seemed! Sweet is the grey sleep

of the old.

"_Tha iad rèidha nis_," she sighed rather than whispered; "they are at

peace now."

But now no longer could she stay. Like a fawn, after she had crept back

upon the grassy ledges, she leaped from boulder to boulder. Soon she was

at the verge of the forest. Inexplicable fear drove her like a whip.

Minute after minute passed, and still she fled as though pursued. Nearly

a mile had she gone before she stopped, only to fling herself into the

bracken in a sheltered place, a kind of cave formed by the gigantic

roots of a fallen pine-tree, long years ago wrenched away like a reed

and stricken to the ground. There, sobbing at she knew not what, she

cried herself to sleep at last. When the dark came, her slumber was

unbroken. A solitary moonbeam that made its way through the dense covert

to where she slept lay upon her feet, upon her slow-moving breast, upon

the white flower of her face, upon the outspread tangle of her hair,

which it clothed with fugitive pale gold. No vision of ill disturbed

her. Once only she stirred, as, in dreamland, she thought she heard the

song of the White Merle.