, "But--but I will be coming with you," she
cried, "or surely you will be forgetting to halter him, or letting him
run off and leave me," and as those two with the proud little horse
moved to the inn, I saw her look up at the boy with all her heart in
her eyes and her lips smiling a little pitifully.

"Do you think I would be caring, Bryde, if he ran off--if you were left
with me?"

Ah, she was brave in her loving, was the Flower of Nourn.

Mirren McKinnon, that was once Mirren Stuart, was dowie that day, and
her eyes red with greeting, for her son had gone to the sea, as his
father had long ago. "I will be missing his step," she said softly,
"when my man is on the hill," but Ronny would not be listening.

"It will make a man of the lad," said he; "there's something clean and
fine about the sea."

Bryde had sold his beasts well, and it was his pleasure to be showing
Margaret the bonniest foals, rough-haired and tousled as they were, and
Hugh and me would be passing judgment. There was a mob of mares and
foals and yearlings gathered in one place, and the mainland dealers
bargaining with the farmers--always on the point of fighting by their
way of it, and laughing to scorn the offered prices, as you will see to
this day when folks are dealing in horse.

And as we stood a little way off, a great burly red-faced man--a
Lowland dealer, strong as a tree, and a wit in a coarse way--turned his
round drink-reddened eyes on us a time or two, and whispered behind his
hand to his cronies, and I heard the titter of Dol Beag's laughing as
Hugh pointed to a bonny yearling colt, and we stepped away, but not so
far that I heard the dealer's words.

"Ou ay," says he, looking at Bryde, "Dan's is he? I've heard tell o'
him, but whitna queen is't that's lookin' at him like a motherless
foal?"

At that Bryde put Margaret in my hands. His face was like a devil's
and his teeth showed as though his mouth were dry. To Hugh he gave one
word. "Stop!" said he, and the word was a snarl.

Never another word he spoke, but leapt among the bargainers, and slid
through the great flailing arms of the bucolic wit, and his right hand
sank into the man's red throat. I see him still, his left hand behind
the man's back, the shoulders raised, all the lithe length of him as he
stood on his toes, his eyes like blue flame. I saw him shake his enemy
as a dog shakes a rabbit. The great red face took a blae colour--the
tongue protruded from his m