st wish, Neil, mo ghaoil, that you would be more lame, for
my mother will be seeing us too soon, and I want aye to stay here.'"
Neil was just thinking aloud.

"A year, just a wee year, with her smiling at her spinning, and
running to meet me in the far fields to be carried home--ay, she would
be calling my arms 'home,'--and when we would be ceilidhing she would
be saying, 'Neil, it will be time your lass was "home," and her eyes
would be laughing at me, and no one else would be knowing at all.'

"A year, a wee year, and she lay like a white flower, still and cold,
and all my love could not make her hear.

"And I sat by her silent spinning-wheel and waited till she should come
back night by night; I forgot the old kirkyard, for how would the earth
be keeping my love from coming to me, and as I sat came my old mother,
and she was wise and gentle to her lame son.

"'My son, if you would be lying behind the wee hill when the moon is
young, maybe you would be forgiving your old mother'--for when she was
sad she blamed herself for the fall that left me lame, even when I
laughed and made nothing of it in her hearing.

"Behind the wee hill I lay when the moon was young and the grass was
cool on my brow, and I would be hearing the breathings of the hills in
the silence as they slept, and the moon sailed behind a black cloud and
all the world was dark, and I heard a great laughing in the dark near
me like diamonds and pearls sparkling, so wee was the sound and so
bright the laughing, and then the moon sailed out clear silver in a
blue sky, and there were all the Wee Folk at their games on the short
turf. Bravely, bravely were they dressed in their green coats, and
near me, sitting and looking with longing eyes I saw my own love, and
she was looking down a wee, wee track in the grass, but it seemed to me
hundreds of miles. And my love cried and waved as she looked down the
path, and I heard her laughing, my own love, and then, 'Hurry fast,
Neil, and take me home'; and again I heard her laughing joyously, and
then in the track of grass, away and away, I saw a-coming one that
halted on his foot, and he was away and away, but my love clapped her
hands, and ran down the path with her arms stretched out to be carried
home, and I saw all the Wee Folk run to welcome the one that halted on
his foot, and I knew that the path that they were travelling so fast
was just Time, and slowly, slowly only can Neil Crubach march, but she
is r