lainly coming toward us. I turned my head.

The mist was clearing, and floated about like a thin veil through which
one could see objects. At a short distance above us on the moor I saw
something moving. It was a man who was playing the pipes. It was the
piper, and almost at once I knew him, because it was actually my own
Feargus, stepping proudly through the heather with his step like a stag
on the hills. His head was held high, and his face had a sort of elated
delight in it as if he were enjoying himself and the morning and the
music in a new way. I was so surprised that I rose to my feet and called
to him.

"Feargus!" I cried. "What--"

I knew he heard me, because he turned and looked at me with the most
extraordinary smile. He was usually a rather grave-faced man, but this
smile had a kind of startling triumph in it. He certainly heard me, for
he whipped off his bonnet in a salute which was as triumphant as the
smile. But he did not answer, and actually passed in and out of sight in
the mist.

When I rose Mr. MacNairn had risen, too. When I turned to speak in my
surprise, he had fixed on me his watchful look.

"Imagine its being Feargus at this hour!" I exclaimed. "And why did
he pass by in such a hurry without answering? He must have been to a
wedding and have been up all night. He looked--" I stopped a second and
laughed.

"How did he look?" Mr. MacNairn asked.

"Pale! That won't do--though he certainly didn't look ill." I laughed
again. "I'm laughing because he looked almost like one of the White
People."

"Are you sure it was Feargus?" he said.

"Quite sure. No one else is the least like Feargus. Didn't you see him
yourself?"

"I don't know him as well as you do; and there was the mist," was his
answer. "But he certainly was not one of the White People when I saw him
last night."

I wondered why he looked as he did when he took my hand and drew me down
to my place on the plaid again. He did not let it go when he sat down by
my side. He held it in his own large, handsome one, looking down on it
a moment or so; and then he bent his head and kissed it long and slowly
two or three times.

"Dear little Ysobel!" he said. "Beloved, strange little Ysobel."

"Am I strange!" I said, softly.

"Yes, thank God!" he answered.

I had known that some day when we were at Muircarrie together he would
tell me what his mother had told me--about what we three might have been
to one another. I trembled with happ