use, and in a while I saw her with
Bryde, walking step for step with him on the lea he was breaking, and
her hand would sometimes be beside his on the stilt of the plough.

On the home road that day I would be showing her the road we had
travelled that night of the whin-burning, and where in the hills was
McAllan's Locker, and wondering what had come to the Killer, the dead
white man. And I would be minding a story of a dog that howled in the
night and slunk by in the darkness of Lag 'a bheithe, and I wondered if
the Nameless Man had gone to his love that beckoned in the pool, or if
the ravens had got him at the last of it, and if the pigeons built
still away in the cranny of the Locker, and there was a sadness in me.

She had not been speaking, the lass beside me, and her merriness was
all gone, for she was aye merry with Bryde, and at last--

"Hamish," said she, "there is something will happen."

And on top of my own mood I was startled, and the words did not come to
me.

"Am I not the daft lassie?" said she, and started to the singing of
merry airs; but before we saw the rowan-tree that grows on the face of
the black hill, her songs were sad again.

"He will be lonesome away there, Bryde," said she, looking back.

"He will be looking for a lass one of these nights," said I, a little
angry, "and there are bonny lasses here and there, between here and
Scaurdale."

"I am wishing, Hamish, I could be at the herding and the kelp-burning
with the other lasses," said she, looking at me, and there was a little
smile at her lips, and a kind of eagerness I did not understand.

"Do you think Bryde will be looking at these wenches," said I in great
scorn (for I feared he did).

"No, Hamish, no," she cried amidst her laughter, and I understood then.

"Mistress Margaret," said I, "I am not a match for you in wit, it
seems, but since we are agreed he canna just be suited with these
lassies, there will just be two left by your way of it."

"Between here and Scaurdale, Hamish," said she, "it is your own words I
am giving you."

"Bryde is a fine lad," said I, "but he's like to be spoiled, and," said
I, "your mother will have told you he has not even a name." At that
the dull anger I had been choking down most of that day broke over me.
"Damn the whole affair," said I, and dismounted.

When I lifted her from her horse, she was laughing and blinking tears
from her lashes, and she put her arms very tightly about my neck.