t great love. . . ."

But she was at her wheedling now.

"Will you tell me, Bryde--will you tell me truly?" and she put her lips
to his ear. "I love you, Bryde--did ye not know? Am I not a shameless
lass?"

"There never was maiden like you before, Margaret," said he. "I am
always loving you, always. . . ."

"But tell me," she cried--"tell me," and she put her ear close to his
mouth, and her eyes were closed and a smiling gladness on her face.

"Love you," he cried in a great voice. "The good God will maybe be
knowing the love in my heart for you," and his face was grey with pain,
but at his words she pressed her face to his gently.

"Now," she said, "I will be happy again."

And when I came into the room there was the lass standing very proud
with her hand on his brow.

"Is he not a restless boy, our Bryde?" said she, and there was pride
and love and tears and laughter in her tones, and she left us together.

"Hamish," said he, "you will not be bringing her here again ever--I
will not be strong enough lying here . . ." and then in a lower voice,
"My mother has a ring," said he. "I could not be asking her, my
mother, and who is there to turn to but you," and I told him of the
messenger who came from the Low Countries with Dan's letters and his
mother's ring.

"And your baby fist closed on the sword," said I.

"The sword," said he. "Where is my father's gift?"

At that I went to the old byre where the heathen had sat that day, and
I digged the cobbles from a corner of a biss close to the trough, and
there, wrapped in a sheep's skin in a box, was the sword as I had
buried it long ago, and I brought it to Dan's son.

He took it with a kind of joy, and his eyes all lit up.

"My father would be knowing," said he, and drew the blade. "This will
clear the tangles."

There were flowers very beautifully let into the blade in thin gold.
"Is she not a maiden richly dowered?" said Bryde--"a slim grey maiden,
a faithful maiden, who will be lying at my side, and fierce to be
defending me?"

Belle hated that sword from the first day, but Bryde had it by him at
his bedside always.

There were many folk coming and going these days, and Ronny McKinnon
and McGilp would be sitting with Bryde, and they would have the great
tales of ships and the sea, and whiles Ronny would have his fiddle and
play, and whiles it would be the old stories they would be telling.

There was a day too when Hugh McBride and Helen came