hen--with the sweat on her brow--she gave the hint I speak of, the hint
of the war's end and the end of MacCailein Mor.

"Wry-mouths, wry-mouths!" said she; "I see the heather above the myrtle
on Lhinne-side, and MacCailein's head on a post."

That was all.

It is a story you will find in no books, and yet a story that has been
told sometime or other by every fireside of the shire--not before the
prophecy was fulfilled but after, when we were loosed from our bonded
word. For there and then we took oath on steel to tell no one of the
woman's saying till the fulness of time should justify or disgrace the
same.

Though I took oath on this melancholy business like the rest, there was
one occasion, but a day or two after, that I almost broke my pledged
word, and that to the lady who disturbed my Sunday worship and gave me
so much reflection on the hunting-road. Her father, as I have said, came
up often on a Saturday and supped his curds-and-cream and grew cheery
over a Dutch bottle with my father, and one day, as luck had it, Betty
honoured our poor doorstep. She came so far, perhaps, because our men
and women were at work on the field I mention, whose second crop of
grass they were airing for the winter byres--a custom brought to the
glen from foreign parts, and with much to recommend it.

I had such a trepidation at her presence that I had almost fled on some
poor excuse to the hill; but the Provost, who perhaps had made sundry
calls in the bye-going at houses farther down the glen, and was in a
mellow humour, jerked a finger over his shoulder towards the girl as she
stood hesitating in the hall after a few words with my father and me,
and said, "I've brought you a good harvester here, Colin, and she'll
give you a day's darg for a kiss."

I stammered a stupid comment that the wage would be well earned on so
warm a day, and could have choked, the next moment, at my rusticity.

Mistress Betty coloured and bit her lip.

"Look at the hussy!" said her father again, laughing with heaving
shoulders. "'Where shall we go to-day on our rounds?' said I; 'Where but
to Elrigmore,' said she; 'I have not seen Colin for an age!' Yet I'll
warrant you thought the cunning jade shy of a gentleman soldier! Ah,
those kirtles, those kirtles! I'll give you a word of wisdom, sir, you
never learned in Glascow Hie Street nor in the army."

I looked helplessly after the girl, who had fled, incontinent, to the
women at work in the field.