wild troop drew up and waited
behind. The great, lean rider looked at me a moment, and then, lifting
the little girl in his long arms, bent down and set her gently on her
feet on the mossy earth in the mist beside me. I got up to greet her,
and we stood smiling at each other. And in that moment as we stood the
black horse moved forward, the muffled trampling began again, the wild
company swept on its way, and the white mist closed behind it as if it
had never passed.

Of course I know how strange this will seem to people who read it, but
that cannot be helped and does not really matter. It was in that way the
thing happened, and it did not even seem strange to me. Anything might
happen on the moor--anything. And there was the fair little girl with
the eyes like a doe's.

I knew she had come to play with me, and we went together to my house
among the bushes of broom and gorse and played happily. But before we
began I saw her stand and look wonderingly at the dark-red stain on
the embroideries on her childish breast. It was as if she were asking
herself how it came there and could not understand. Then she picked
a fern and a bunch of the thick-growing bluebells and put them in her
girdle in such a way that they hid its ugliness.

I did not really know how long she stayed. I only knew that we were
happy, and that, though her way of playing was in some ways different
from mine, I loved it and her. Presently the mist lifted and the sun
shone, and we were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden in a room in
a castle because something strange was going to happen which we were not
told about. She ran behind a big gorse bush and did not come back. When
I ran to look for her she was nowhere. I could not find her, and I went
back to Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled.

"Where did she go?" I asked them, turning my head from side to side.

They were looking at me strangely, and both of them were pale. Jean was
trembling a little.

"Who was she, Ysobel?" she said.

"The little girl the men brought to play with me," I answered, still
looking about me.

"The big one on the black horse put her down--the big one with the star
here." I touched my forehead where the queer scar had been.

For a minute Angus forgot himself. Years later he told me.

"Dark Malcolm of the Glen," he broke out. "Wee Brown Elspeth."

"But she is white--quite white!" I said.

"Where did she go?"

Jean swept me in her warm, shaking arms and hugged me c