Belle would be saying, and Dan, in his big moods, would be answering--

"Have I not held the sword in my hand for twenty years, and what were
weans to me in these days?"

"Very little--I am hoping, Dan," his wife would answer with a straight
dark look, and the beginning of a laugh in her eyes, for always Dan
would be remembering the first boy this wife of his had reared in those
years, and a kind of shame would come over him, and Belle would laugh
for that she had her man back, and her laughter was a thing to gladden
the heart, and Dan would never be tired of hearing it. So the big mood
would pass, and the hard-fighting farmer would be at work again; but
whiles, after the laughing, the old longing, half-fierce look would be
in Belle's eyes, and I kent it was not Dan or Hamish Og she was
thinking of, but her first-born, Bryde.

And as the years wore on there was another thing to be watching in
Belle. She would take the wean in a shawl swathed round her limber
figure, and only the little head of him outside of it, and his eyes
seeing things, like a young bird, and she would walk to the rise where
old John of Scaurdale's man waved the lanthorn to McGilp on the night
when I chased the deer, and there she would stand for long, looking
seaward and crooning to the wean. This she would be doing every night
before the gloaming.

"He will come on yon road," she would sometimes be telling Hamish Og,
and point to the grey sea away to the suthard.

Now these freits are very catchy, and will follow folks that put faith
in them, and there are many such folk to this day; and even Margaret
McBride would always be putting great faith in the crowing of a cock--a
noble fellow he was, of the Scots Grey breed. At the feeding-time
Margaret would be thrang with her white hands in a measure of grain,
and I would be hearing her speaking to the chanticleer. If he would be
crowing once, it was not good, and she would be coaxing him.

"Have you not better word than that?" she would flyte at him at the
second cry; and if the bird would crow the three times, she would be
lavish with the feeding and grow cheerful. And there was a time when
Mistress Helen was with her at this task, and curious at all the
talking.

"If he will cry three times--is it that something happens?" said Helen.

"It will be good news."

"Perhaps a lover comes?"

"I am not to have a man, it seems," says Margaret.

"If my lover comes," murmured Helen softly, wit