ing backwards. . . ."

"Who was it that started these same spells?" says I. "Was it not in
your mind to be trying these havers on Bryde yourself?"

"It was not in my mind that Helen Stockdale should be trying them on
him," said she, "at any rate."

And at my laughing she left me in a pet, but not long after she would
be telling me--

"There is something fine and brave about that woman, too, Hamish," she
would say, "for she would be telling lies to Bryde McBride of what I
had said about his going, and yet she told me all these lies. I could
not be doing that," said Margaret. "No, I could not be owning to a
thing like that--myself."

CHAPTER XXV.

I RIDE AGAIN TO McALLAN'S LOCKER.

There came a weariness of the spirit over me that long dreary winter,
and all nature was there to be seconding my dismal thoughts. For
months never did I awake but my first thought would be, "What is there
not right?" and then I would be remembering that Bryde was not any more
on the moorlands.

It seemed to me that always there was a drizzle of soft rain and a
blanket of cold mist, that would be half hiding the friendly places,
that the very hills were become the abode of strange uncanny beasts
instead of decent ewes and fat wethers, and that the mists would be
hiding the revels of the folk a man does not care to be speaking of.
The trees would be dreary and sad--the sea always grey and gurly and
ochone, the very roads had the look of bareness and emptiness, as
though all a man's friends had marched over them, never to return.

Margaret, the Flower of Nourn, had taken to walking alone in the rain,
under the trees by the burnside, or maybe I would be seeing her on the
shore, and looking to the sea, and her songs were sad--ay, when she
tried to be at her gayest. And once I am minding, when she was with me
on the shore-head watching the men at the wrack-carting--

"I am wondering," said she, dipping her hands in the little waves, "I
am wondering if these little waves will maybe once have swirled under
the forefoot of his ship," and I had not the heart to be giving her a
lesson on physics, and a little understanding of the laws that will be
governing the waves.

And Hugh that was the gallant would be interesting himself in all the
matters of farming, and seldom riding out with his clean stirrups and
polished leathers, and there were times when I was sore put to it to be
keeping my hands off him, because he would be so douc