Already the breath of the day was windlessly hot.
Flushed with her dancing in the sunlight, and with the languor of August in her blood, Oona listened eagerly to the cool sound of the running of Mairg Water.
The next moment she was free of her scanty raiment, and was by the streamside. As she stood among a cluster of yellow irises, the sunlight lay upon the gold of her hair and the glowing ivory-white of her body, and then seemed to spill in yellow fire among the tall blooms about her feet. A faint green glimmer from the emerald iris-sheaths dusked the small white thighs.
A leap like a fawn, and she was in the water. A hundred miniature rainbows gleamed in the dazzle of spray as she splashed to and fro, after she had come to the surface some yards downstream. What joy it was to feel the cool brown water laving her body: to dive and swim like an otter: to float slowly with the current under overhanging foliage, and see the young sedge-warblers in the reeds or among the water-willows, or to look up at the curving boughs of a birch or rowan, deep green against the deep blue! Then the wonder and beauty to rest with outspread arms, and breast against the flow: to stare down into the mirroring depth, and see the flickering feathers of the quicken and the red rowan-berries marvellously real and near, with lovely shadow-birds flitting to and fro among the shadow-branches, and, strangest of all, another white Oona drifting like a phantom through that greenshine underworld!
When she swung round suddenly, and held herself back against the downflow, as an otter half-alarmed will do, it was not because she was drifting too near the "race" just above the cataract. A strange sound came from the Linn, or beyond it. The noise of the water was in her ears, and she could not hear distinctly: but surely that noise was the cry of one in sorrow, and, at any rate, human.
With a swift movement she slid to the bank, caught at a tuft of flowering sedge, and then stood, dripping and all agleam in the sunlight, while with inclined head she listened intently.
Now she could hear more distinctly: certainly some one was by or near the Linn. The noise of the churned waters rose and fell in a long, wavering, unequal sigh; and in one of the downward hushes her keen ears caught tones and even words she fancied she recognised.
She hesitated for a moment as to whether to run back for the handful of clothes she had left upstream, but then bethought her that it was only Nial and no stranger who might throw stones at her as a kelpie—as some boys from the Strath, who at Beltane had been burning small fires and cooking wild-birds' eggs, had done many weeks agone at Nial.14
How often, in her wanderings with Nial, she had bathed, to his wonder and awe at her white beauty, her daring, her skill! As for him, though he loved the running water almost with a passion, nothing would induce him to enter it, except when alone and in the dim light. As a boy he had been as much at home in it as any creature of the river. But once, after he had come to know Oona, and to find in her the one person in the world whose soul did not loom too infinitely remote above his drear loneliness of spirit, he had leaped one dead-calm noon into the water; and there and then, for the first time, realised, in the phantom which swam with him or beneath him, the misshapen ugliness of his body, the savagery of his distorted head and features. From that day he had never entered the stream, save at late dusk or on moonless nights.
So with swift steps, which left small pads of damp upon the rock-ledges, Oona ran toward the great boulder which overhung the cataract.
As she passed the place where, a few hours ago, she had left her foster-father and the woman Anabal, she glanced here and there for any trace of either she might not have seen before. The next moment she caught sight of Nial.
She watched him curiously. What did it mean? she wondered. He was crouching, with his back to her, on the extreme of the ledge overlooking the Kelpie's Pool—that deep caldron which received all that was at last disgorged from the maelstrom of the Linn. His head was bent forward, and sometimes he leaned on his hands, and sometimes swayed backward or sideways.
What startled her more were the strange, wild, barbaric words that Nial was chanting, with thin, hoarse, monotonous wail. What was this rune he chanted? Why did he crouch there, chanting and swaying, swaying and chanting?
Sometimes he ceased for a few moments that crooning, mourning, appealing, inexplicable chant, and appeared to be speaking, and to gesticulate as he spoke.
Fantastic thoughts flashed through the child's brain. Perhaps it was the kelpie who was trying to lure Nial to her arms; or mayhap Nial had seen her, and was putting arosadupon her. She knew that the people of the Strath, and even Murdo the shepherd—in truth, Alan, too, and perhaps Sorcha, though she would not say it—believed that the elf-man was in league with all the mysterious or dreadful creatures of the shadow, from the harmless "guidfolk" of the hill-hollow to the yellow-clad demon-woman who drove her herd of deer and sang her death-song, and to the dark and terrible kelpie who lurked in the deep pool in that wild place beyond the Linn o' Mairg. Or, again, Nial might be uttering some incantation: or be at his old quest, the seeking of his lost soul.
Surely it must be that, she thought, as soundlessly she approached him.
Within the last minute or two a change had come over him. Every now and then he raised his head, often clasping and unclasping his hands, swaying to and fro the while, and speaking or chanting rapidly, with wild, scarce coherent words. He was as one in an ecstasy. Oona, for the first time, feared him. She stood, only a few yards behind him now, and listened.
"Ochan, ochone, arone! and so fair too, and so fair!O white you are as the canna that floats in the breeze,Or as the wool of the young lamb that Murdo found dead in the heather,Or as the breast of Sorcha, or as Oona, little Oona!O, O, arone, arone, Death of me, Woe!Oh, white too and fair, and I black as the wet peats,Black and ugly, so that even the deer know,And Fior and Donn and all the dogsThink me no more than a sheep, than the kye, ochan, ochone!But oh, it's dead you are and drowned, Anam, my Soul!And it's there you lie ... grey and still ... with ... and you laugh at me, maybe ...And it may be you are the shadow only that will go if I leap at you!... and hair like mine thick with dew ...Or ... the kelpie ...And true it was, with the fēē-ach, and the feannag, and the corbie,The corbie, the hoodie-craw, and the raven!"
"Ochan, ochone, arone! and so fair too, and so fair!O white you are as the canna that floats in the breeze,Or as the wool of the young lamb that Murdo found dead in the heather,Or as the breast of Sorcha, or as Oona, little Oona!O, O, arone, arone, Death of me, Woe!Oh, white too and fair, and I black as the wet peats,Black and ugly, so that even the deer know,And Fior and Donn and all the dogsThink me no more than a sheep, than the kye, ochan, ochone!But oh, it's dead you are and drowned, Anam, my Soul!And it's there you lie ... grey and still ... with ... and you laugh at me, maybe ...And it may be you are the shadow only that will go if I leap at you!... and hair like mine thick with dew ...Or ... the kelpie ...And true it was, with the fēē-ach, and the feannag, and the corbie,The corbie, the hoodie-craw, and the raven!"
"Ochan, ochone, arone! and so fair too, and so fair!
O white you are as the canna that floats in the breeze,
Or as the wool of the young lamb that Murdo found dead in the heather,
Or as the breast of Sorcha, or as Oona, little Oona!
O, O, arone, arone, Death of me, Woe!
Oh, white too and fair, and I black as the wet peats,
Black and ugly, so that even the deer know,
And Fior and Donn and all the dogs
Think me no more than a sheep, than the kye, ochan, ochone!
But oh, it's dead you are and drowned, Anam, my Soul!
And it's there you lie ... grey and still ... with ... and you laugh at me, maybe ...
And it may be you are the shadow only that will go if I leap at you!
... and hair like mine thick with dew ...
Or ... the kelpie ...
And true it was, with the fēē-ach, and the feannag, and the corbie,
The corbie, the hoodie-craw, and the raven!"
At these words Oona glanced swiftly to right and left. Nowhere had she heard again the croaking of the raven, and now she could descry neither of Nial's three birds of omen. But just as her gaze was wandering back to the dwarf, she caught sight of thefitheachfurther downstream, perched upon a dead branch near some rocks, and even as she looked she heard its harsh, savagecroak! croak!
"Ay, ay, ròc, Fēē-ach, ròc! Dean rocail, dean rocail!" began Nial again, with a wild gesture....
"Nial! Nial!"
He ceased all movement, all sound, as though smitten into silence. Her fear partially overcome, now that she had gathered from his words that he thought he had found his soul at last, but that it was dead—yet with a dread in her heart because of thethingthat lay there in the pool, whether alive, dead, or asleep, or treacherously assuming life—she called again, and more loudly:
"Nial! Nial!"
Slowly he looked round. A bewildered terror in his eyes waned. It was only Oona.
"Nial, Nial-mo-ghràidh, what is it?"
"Hush, mo-mùirnean," he muttered, beckoning to her to creep close to him. The slight breeze that had sprung up for its brief life crept along the stream, and whispered along the grass and in the hot-smelling fern. The murmurous sound of it made the child glance apprehensively behind her. She dreaded the elfin footsteps that folk said could be heard at times near Nial.
"What is it, dear Nial?"
"Ssh!Hush! Come here: look! ... look!" he whispered.
Gently she stole beside him, leaned over the ledge, and stared down into the pool. A mere breath of the breeze ruffled the surface, and all she could see was a dark mass with a dusky white splatch, looming shadowily through the amber water, and strangely distorted by the silver shimmer caused by the wind-eddy, which came and went round the circuit of the pool like a baffled bird.
"What is it? Who is it? What is it, Nial?"
"Hush, do not speak so loud! It is my soul."
"Your soul, Nial?"
"Ay, true. Sure it is my soul. All night I was in the woods, and I heard atap-tappinggoing ever before me, and at dawn it led me down by the Mairg, and then the spirit flew away before me, and theannir-choillewas just like a woodpecker! And when it flew up by the Linn, I...."
"Whisper louder, Nial! I can't hear."
"When it flew up by the Linn, I saw it change into a curlew, and it wheeled over the Linn and calledcian-cian-cianalas, and then I was afraid, though the annir-choille that was like a woodpecker had made hope to me of finding my soul."
"Who is the annir-choille, Nial?"
He gloomed at her silently. Then in a constrained voice, and with averted eyes:
"How should I know? I know nothing. I am Nial."
"But what have you been told?"
"They call her the wood-maid—the tree-maid."
"Ah-h!... and Nial...."
"But when I came near, the curlew flew away. Then it was that I looked into the pool. And then, and then it was, Oona-mo-rùn, that I saw my soul lying here—big as a man's soul should be, and with a face as white as yours; ay, a fair, good body like Alan's, an' with clothes on, too—dark, beautiful clothes; an' the hands of him that moved about were white; an' ... oh, Oona-birdeen, lookyounow, and see if it is not as I say!"
The awed child stared into the brown depths, where the surface was still ruffled silvery here and there, with a glinting, glancing shimmer that made all things below shiftily uncertain.
"Do you see it, Oona?" cried an eager whisper at her ear.
"Ay, sure."
"Oona, Oona, is it dead? Oona, birdeen, Oona-mo-gràidh, it may—itmay be living! O Oona, the white soul o' me—white as you, my fawn!"
The blue eyes glanced up from the pool, and at the speaker. She looked at him, then downward again.
"Nial!"
"Yes ... yes, Oona ..."
"The wood-maid has been playing with you."
"No, no, no—that is not a true word on your lips!"
"Sure, a true thing it is. Look, Nial; see how big it is. The white face of it is yonder by the salmon-hole, and one foot is moving against the rock below us!"
"And what of that! Sure, it is a beautiful soul, dead or alive; and big as a man's should be, and fair and white and strong!"
"Nial ... Nial ... it may be alive, for I see its hands moving ... but ... but"—and here tears came into the child's eyes, and her voice shook with sorrow for her hapless friend—"but ... oh, Nial ... so big a soul will never be able to creep intoyourbody ... for you are small, dear, small, and—and ... an' thenitis so big and strong!"
Alas, the pity of it! Never once had Nial thought of this; never had he dreamed that so large a soul could not get into his dwarfish, misshapen frame.
He stared in wild amaze, first at Oona, then at the drowned thing in the water—his soul, or a phantom, or a body, or mayhap the kelpie, he knew not which, now—then at Oona again. A fierce pain was in his eyes. He bit his lip, in the way he did whenever Màm-Gorm struck him—a thing that had not been for months past. A little rivulet of blood trickled into his thin matted beard, tangled and twisted this way and that like a goat's.
"Nial! Nial!" moaned Oona pitifully.
"Ay, it is true ... that is a true thing that you will be saying, Oona. Sure, it would need to be a soul as small as your own that would do for poor Nial."
"No, no, Nial!" cried the child comfortingly, "bigger than mine,really, really—yes, and ... and ... fatter!"
A sob shook his heavy frame. Oh, the long seeking, and the near goal, and the bitter futile finding! Still, Oona's sympathy was sweet. Dear birdeen that she was, to say he would have a bigger soul than hers, bigger and fatter too! But, no, he thought—no, better to have one the same as Oona's, for all he was so much older and bigger and stronger than she was.
"Ah, Oona-mùirnean, if I could only find my soul at all—anywhere, anywhere!"
"But youwillfind it, Nial! Youwillfind it! Sorcha told me that you aresureto find it. Never mind what they say down there in the Strath. What dotheyknow about souls? And ... and ... Nial!"
"Yes, my birdeen."
"If ... if ... youcan'tfind your soul anywhere—and all this summer we'll go seeking, seeking, for it, till we have listened at every tree in the forest and on the mountain-side—if youcan'tfind it anywhere,I am going to marry you!"
Nial looked at the child bewildered. He knew little of what marriage was, save that in the Strath two married people lived in one house, and that the woman was called by the name of her man, and that they were sadder, and led duller lives—so at least it seemed to him. Sure, it would be for pleasure that he and Oona should have a cot of their own, though he, and she too for that, preferred the pinewood; and a thing for laughter that she, the bit birdeen Oona, should be called Bean Nial!
"Why would you be marrying poor Nial, Oona my doo?"
"Because you would then have half my soul. Yes,yes, Nial! don't shake your head like that; Iknowyou would. Sorcha told me it was in the Book."
For the moment the outcast forgot what lay in the pool. Of three things he stood ever in awe. First, Torcall Cameron, the man of men. Second, the Book, which was a mystery, and held all thesiansandrosads, all the spells and incantations in the world, and, as he had heard, was full of "living words," though never had he, being soulless, seen any coming or going to it, like bees, where it lay on the shelf above Torcall's bed. Third, the inscrutable powers which worked somewhere, somehow, behind Torcall, before which even he, Màm-Gorm, was, almost incredible though it seemed, as mist before the wind.
When, therefore, he heard Oona speak of the Book, his awe held him for a moment spellbound. Never had he so much as dreamed that his name was even mentioned there at all. The wonder, the mystery of it, almost took his breath away. What an ill thing, then, that word of the preaching-man he had met once in the Strath, who had told him, in answer to his asking, that he, Nial, could have no name in the Book of Life, because he was unbaptised, and a godless heathen, and a soulless elf-man at that! And now—now—Sorcha had seen his name in the Book—ay, and not in any poor, small Strath Bible, but in the greatBioballthat was Torcall Cameron's own, up at Màm-Gorm, on the hillside of Iolair!
But of that mystery he was to hear no more then and there. A cry had come from Oona, a cry of such terror, with moan upon moan, that his heart within him was as a flame in a windy place.
What had happened to the child? Was there a spell upon her? he wondered; wasthatdown there in truth no other than the treacherous, quiet-seeming, murderous kelpie!
He saw that she was shivering all over; that her body was as pallid as her white face.
Not a word came from her. She kneeled forward, staring stonily into the pool.
"Oona! Oona!" he whispered chokingly, terrified beyond further power of speech. Without averting her gaze, she slowly raised an arm and pointed at what had hitherto been but a blurred figure at the bottom of the water. The arm, the pointing hand, remained thus, as though paralysed.
Nial bent over the ledge. The slight breeze had now passed. Not a breath shook the feather-leaf of a rowan. The sunflood poured out of the east upon the shimmering land. Though but an hour after sunrise, the heat palpitated. For the first time that morning there was no wind-eddy upon the pool. The brown water was as lucid as a mirror.
The thing—corpse, or soul, or kelpie—had begun to move. It was slowly rising to the surface.
He shuddered. This, then, was the cause of Oona's fear. Yet, even as this thought passed through his brain, he knew that there was some other reason for the frozen agony of the child.
The body ascended gradually, face downward, the arms trailing stiffly beneath it. One foot was still caught by the weeds, which had caught it as in a net. With a slow gyration the corpse swung round, face upward. The weed-thrall gave way. The drowned rose with outstretched arms.
Oona shrieked, then sank back, cowering, and covered her eyes with her hands. Nial! Nial neither thought nor felt; he was stunned by a blank, bewildering amaze.
For what he saw, and what Oona had seen, was the drowned body and the dead face of ... Torcall Cameron!
In the awful, throbbing silence, broken only by the turmoil of the Linn and by the incessant moaning of the child, the dwarf stared as at some horrible impossibility.
Itcouldnot be! Màm-Gorm, of all men in the world! Màm-Gorm, the great, strong, stern man of the hills! no, no, no—sure, it could not be! Moreover, as he knew, Màm-Gorm never left the hillside; in all the time he had known him, he had never come nigh the Linn o' Mairg, nor even near Mairg Water, and how could he be there? And would not Oona for sure have seen him that very morning in his own bed belike? Besides ...Màm-Gorm... it was as though the preaching-man were to cry out, "There is no God!"
At his ear he heard a moaning whisper: "It is my doing; it is my doing."
"Oona, Oona-lassie, is it mad that you will be!"
"O Nial, Nial, Nial! it is of me, this thing! Ay, sure—ay, sure! O arone! arone! it was I who left him sleeping nigh the Linn last night, thinking to make peace between him and the woman Anabal that is Alan's mother! And oh, oh, she has gone away in the gloaming not seeing him, and he will be for going home when he wakes, and will be callingOona, Oona, Oona, and I not be hearing him, for I was away in the wood, with the fear upon me! And then he will be moving through the dark, and—and—O Nial,Nial!He is drowned, drowned, and the water is on him because ofme! Nial! Nial!"
The child swayed to and fro in her passionate grief. A new fear came upon Nial: that she might throw herself into the pool, to be drowned even as her foster-father was.
But at that moment both were hushed into staring silence.
Slowly the corpse began to sink again. Down, down it went, leaning forward more and more, till it seemed as though it were standing upright on some unseen ledge of rock. Then, gradually, it revolved further, till once more it hung suspended in the depths, face downward, and with stiff arms adroop beneath.
Without further gyration, motionlessly it seemed, the body sank, till it became blurred, obscure, shapeless. Then there was no more of it than a black shadow far down in the brown depths.
Oona rose to her full height. She gave a long sigh, one short, choking sob. Her eyes stared unwaveringly at nothing; the nails of her fingers cut the small clenched hands. The raven on the dead branch beyond the pool, that had been croaking monotonously ever since she had first heard it, became suddenly still.
Nial rose too. He knew, without word from her, without thought even, what she meant to do.
"Oona!"
She did not glance round, but he saw her throat quiver.
"My birdeen, my birdeen, ah, my bonnie wee fawn! Come back, come back! Sure, it is not him at all! It is the kelpie, Oona, it is the kelpie!" When the words came from her, hushed and strange, he knew that she knew the truth.
"I will be going ... now."
"Oona! come ..."—then in a flash his arms were about her as she leaped, and with an effort that nearly hurled both into the pool he swung her back to the ledge.
There she lay on the grass-covered rock, white and still. Nial bent over her, moaning, trembling, moaning.
An hour later, Murdo the shepherd, coming down from the mountain, and going by the Linn o' Mairg, so as to reach Inverglas by the west side of the Strath, heard a wild barking of his dogs. Through the heat-haze he stared indifferently, then curiously, at two stooping figures.
He approached the pool slowly. The dogs were silent. One had stopped, and was sniffing and staring, the other whined at his feet.
Yes, he was right, he muttered; it was Nial ...and Oona! But what did it mean?
Both sat silently by the Kelpie's Pool. The wild, fantastic, shrunken figure of Nial was black against the light. He seemed as though rapt, spellbound. The child was naked, her shoulder reddening under the flame of the sun. He could see her strained, streaming eyes.
His heart beat quick with a vague fear as he moved toward them. He stopped, when Oona's low, irregular sobbing was audible.
Beside him the collies crouched, whining.
Nial looked round, rose, and touched Oona. She, too, rose; her sobbing breath ceasing.
"Màm-Gorm is dead," said Nial simply; "he is dead—there."
In a brief space, Murdo learned what Nial could tell him. For all his shepherd-eyes, he could discern nothing in the pool but a vague blur of darkness far down.
What was he to do? He could not think, with these two staring at him there. He whispered to Nial that he would be back shortly, that he was going upstream to where Oona's clothes were; adding that when he brought them back Nial was to lead the little lass away, take her home, find and tell Sorcha.
When, some minutes later, Murdo returned with the small bundle, he saw that the child was weary with heat and fatigue, as well as with what she had endured. There would be no trouble with her.
And indeed, when once she was in her scanty garb again, Oona went without a word. Nial whispered that he would be back as soon as he could; and would bring the grey horse with him.
The last Murdo saw of them was a momentary glimpse as they disappeared among the bracken, under the pines. The elf-man was carrying the sleeping Oona in his strong crooked arms.
The shepherd, who had betrayed no emotion as yet, stood staring into the pool. A mist came into his eyes, and one or two tears rolled down his furrowed face. A grim satisfaction moved into his mind, along with his dull pain; for now he remembered how his father, who had been shepherd on Màm-Gorm of Iolair before him, had had "the sight" of this very happening. The old man had been laughed at in the Strath; though, by the waterside, he had thrice seen Màm-Gorm's wraith rise out of the Kelpie's Pool.Nowthe foolish folk down there would not be laughing.
After a time he bethought himself that Nial might not be back for long. It was nigh upon noon, and he wished to get the body away as soon as might be. It was now he remembered that Nial could not tell Sorcha, for he had met her and Alan going after the kye to the hill-pastures. This was well, meanwhile.
At the Ford of Ardoch there was an old boat not used for years past, save by himself, by Sorcha, or by Alan. In it were fishing-poles, a rope, and other things of his and Alan's. They would serve now, he muttered. So once more the gaunt, plaided shepherd strode upstream, mumbling, as he went, through his red tangled beard, and with his wild hill-eyes shining with the thoughts of life and death that were slowly filling his brain; thoughts, memories, superstitious fears, and vague, strange phantasma rising from the dull ache of sorrow.
To his ears the most familiar of sounds, the bleating of ewes and lambs, came down from the mountain as a lamentable cry. That night there would be dread in his heart, because of the lonely hillside, and the wide darkness, and the wraith that would be moving through that darkness.
Soon he found what he wanted, and speedily returned. At first he thought he would need help, but after a time he decided to do what he could himself. To one of the long poles he fastened his shepherd staff, with its strong curved cromak.
The sweat poured from his face with heat and weariness long before he succeeded, at last, in getting a grip of the corpse. But, undaunted by failure after failure, and these even after he had first caught hold, he raised it slowly to the shelving ledge which ran out a few feet below the surface. The rest was easy. He slipped the rope over the feet, arms, and waist; then slid the body along the slippery ledge, and so with a rush to the face of the pool, and thence to a wide cranny in the rock beside him.
Sure, there was no mistake. Màm-Gorm himself, in truth; for all he was so quiet and pale, with the dark brown out of his face now, and all the stern, brooding life of the man no more than an already nigh-forgotten idle song.
So this was the end of Torcall Cameron of Màm-Gorm. There had been none prouder and more aloof than he in all Strath Iolair. Ay, he was a proud man. And now there was an end of it all. Sure, it was a bitter ending. God save us the dark hour of it. Ay, the dull knock and the muffled voice that come soon or late, in the mirk of day or night, at the soul-gate of each of us—Torcall mhic Diarmid had heard them.... Thus, over and over, variously, yet ever on the same lines, Murdo revolved in his mind the passing of Màm-Gorm.
At last, to his satisfaction, he heard the peculiar cry which Nial was wont to give as a signal. Then followed the trampling of a horse: finally both appeared, coming along a stony path in the forest that in winter was a clattering watercourse.
It did not take long for the two to lift the body on to the small, shaggy white horse, and there to secure it; with the white face staring blankly up at the blue sky, the open eyes fronting with unwinking gaze the pitiless glare of the sun. While they worked, Nial told how he had carried Oona home, and laid her on Sorcha's bed, sound asleep and warm. He had feared to leave her there all alone, lest she waked, or lest evil came to her "out of the shadow"; but he did what he could, and that was to take down the great Book from the shelf by the bed where Torcall Cameron would sleep never again, and lay it at the lassie's feet. Then he had gone out to the kailyard, and let Donn the collie leave her two pups awhile, and had given her a shawl of Sorcha's to smell, and then had sent her up the mountain to seek for Màm-Gorm's daughter, wherever she might be with the sheep and kye.
As soon as all was ready, the crossing of the Mairg Water was done at the Ford, and then the ascent begun to Ardoch-beag. Murdo stalked in front, the rope-bridle looped over his arm; Raoilt, the white mare, staggered and stumbled after him up the craggy path. Then came Nial, his shape not more fantastic than the shadow which waxed and waned mockingly before him, as he toiled upward, with bent head and tear-wet, quivering face. Finally, lagging some yards behind, limped Murdo's two collies.
The August heat-wave silenced every bird on the hillside. Not even the grouse cluttered. Far away, in a marshy place, there was a drumming of snipe.
The air was heavy with the smell of honey-ooze from the pale ling and the purple bell-heather. Now and again there was the sharp twang in it of the bog-myrtle, sweltering in the sunglow.
The thin dust rose from the path, or even from the face of the granite rocks. The shadows of the wayfarers lay pale-blue against the hill road, when the path widened into it. The dogs crawled, panting, their long tongues lolling like quivering, bloody snakes. Nial wearily wagged his shaggy peaked head to and fro: at times, too, he let his great swollen tongue fall half out of his mouth, as though to cool the thirst of it against the parched air. Poor Raoilt sweated at every pore of her body, while dark streaks of wet ran down her flanks. Murdo showed less fatigue; but his weather-brown face had become deep red, and about his moist brow a haze of midges hovered. Quiet and cool, one only: cool and quiet, the rider on the white horse, for all that his face was as baked clay in the yellow glare, that his staring eyes were upon the whirling disc of flame in the zenith.
With a sigh of relief Murdo saw at last the cottage of the Gilchrists, sole house on the easter side of Tornideon.
Not a word had he said hitherto to Nial as to the taking of the corpse to Ardoch-beag. If the dwarf had thought of a destination at all, apart from Màm-Gorm, it was doubtless of the minister's house, which lay three miles beyond Ardoch-beag, at the far end of Inverglas.
But suddenly he waked to the knowledge that Murdo was off the road, and on the path leading to the byres of the widow Anabal.
What was the meaning of it? he asked; but Murdo would not hear. As they stopped at the ring-stone, between the byre and the cottage, he went up to the shepherd.
"Why will you be doing this thing, Murdo MacMurdo?" he demanded.
At first the man gloomed upon him, then he smiled grimly.
"Wait."
Having said this, Murdo strode to the doorway of the cot. He knocked; there was no answer. He knocked again; again no answer. Then he opened the door. He did not expect to see Alan, but he was sure the woman Anabal would be in. There was no trace of her. The bed had not been slept in. The peats were black in the fireplace. Yet, strange to say, an open Bible lay on the low deal table, and on the near page was a pair of horn spectacles.
It was very strange. Well, he would search everywhere, both but and ben, out-houses and byre and stable.
There was not even a dog about the place.
He returned to Nial, downcast.
"There is a spell upon this place, Nial-of-the-woods. I wish we had not come."
"Why did you come?"
"This, man, this—this—is why!" he muttered savagely, and as he spoke he drew from his pocket a gold ring.
"That is one reason, Nial-of-the-woods! Look you, I found that ring in a crevice in the rocks on the further left side of the Linn o' Mairg. Look you again, I know the ring. Do you see these letters? Ah, well, you can't read, poor elfin-creature that you are; but I'll tell them to you. They areF. G.andA. G.And now will you be knowing whatF. G.andA. G.are for? They are for Fergus Gilchrist and Anabal Gilchrist—and this ring here, that I found by the Linn o' Mairg, is the wedding-ring of Anabal Gilchrist!"
The outcast stared, vaguely impressed, but without understanding what Murdo was driving at. The man saw he was puzzled, so with a rough gesture he pulled him over to the near flank of the mare. "And here, you poor fool—to Himself be the praise, for this and that!—is the other reason. Look atthat!"
What he pointed to was a long tress of grey hair, grey-streaked brown hair, firmly clutched in the right hand of the dead man.
A glimmering of Murdo's meaning came into Nial's mind. He glanced at the shepherd, appalled.
"Ay," whispered the latter, divining his thought: "sure, that there is nothing else but a tress of the hair of the woman Anabal. And you be telling me, Nial, if you can, what Anabal Gilchrist was doing last night or to-day afore dawn, that she should leave her golden wedding-ring lying by the Linn-side, and that a tress of her hair—and there is none like it, no, none o' that witchy grey-brown, in all the Strath—should be held even now in the death-grip o' Torcall Cameron o' Màm-Gorm?"
"And that is why you have come here, with ... with ...him?"
"That is why."
The two looked at each other. A fierce anger and lust of revenge burned in the heart of the shepherd. To Nial everything was simply a horrible, incomprehensible mystery. But Murdo knew something, perhaps more than anyone else, of what had lain between Torcall Cameron and Anabal Gilchrist; whatever the outcast knew, or vaguely surmised, was too deep down in his mind now to swim up into remembrance.
It was Nial who broke the silence.
"What of Alan?"
"The curse is upon him too—to the Stones be it said!"
"He will be far up on the north side of Tornideon ... or with Sorcha on Iolair."
"The woman must have fled. Or ... ah, for sure, that thought was never coming to me. Nial, my man, you never thought o' that, did you? You never thought that perhaps there weretwobodies down there in the pool! Ay, for sure, for sure: Màm-Gorm was not the man to die alone!"
"Perhaps ... Murdo, perhaps it was ... perhaps it was ...hewho...."
The words failed. The gaunt shepherd looked down at the speaker, frowning darkly.
"May be, may be," he muttered at last. "If I thoughtthat, I would be letting him lie in his own house. Nial, see that no word o' this gets upon your lips if you meet anyone. No one must thinkthat. No one in the Strath must think an evil thing o' Màm-Gorm."
Once more Murdo left, and made a diligent search everywhere. When he came back, he was muttering constantly, with a wild look in his eyes.
"Did you hearthat?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.
"That? What? I heard nothing."
"Did ye not hear some one in the shadow ayont the byre crying,Cian! Cian! Cianalas! Dubhachas!"15
"No, no," murmured Nial, trembling; "I saw the shadow of a bird on the grassy place yonder, and a cry like thebinn fheadag."
"Ay, the feadag, the feadag, but no flying bird, for 'twas a wraith playing the dark song of the dead on the shadowy feadag that no man has ever seen, though there be those who hear it ... God save us!"
Nial shuddered. It might be so, he thought. He believed he had seen a plover only, had heard no more than the wailing cry of a plover; but doubtless Murdoknew.
The shepherd stood staring at him gloomily. At last he spoke:
"This is a dark thing, Nial, my man. There is no light upon it to me whatever. But it will be looking to me as though I should go down to the Pool again, and be seeing ifsheis theretoo. And if not, then I must seek out Alan upon the hill. Do you think this thing too?"
Nial shook his head despondently; he could think neither one way nor another. Màm-Gorm lay there dead—white, stiff, staring up to the sun. He knewthat.
"Ah, poor fool that you are," Murdo went on, pityingly, and as though talking to himself; "sure, I need not be asking you. How can a soulless thing o' the woods think? wi' a head like an addled egg, and a poor bit body withouten a spirit in it, as all decent folk have. Well, well, 'tis Himself has the good reason, praise be His! And now, Nial, I will be doing this thing. I told you the Book lay open on the table in there. Well, I will be for going by whatever the word is that is on my sight when I first look. If it tell me to go into Inverglas, and speak of this evil day, then it is going there I will be; if it tell me to go and seek in the Pool, well, I will be going there; and whatever I see, it will be the way for me. If I am to speak, it is speaking I will be; if I am to be silent, it is silent I will be."
And with that the shepherd turned, moved slowly away, and entered the cottage for the third time.
Where would he look? he wondered, when he stood by the table and stared down upon the open Gaelic Bible. Sure, he would accept the sign in the sentence across which Anabal's spectacles lay.
He stooped, and with pointing finger read slowly and with difficulty, word by word:
"Cuir, a Thighearna, faire air mo bheul; gléidh dorus mo bhilean!""Set, O Lord, a watch before my mouth; keep the door of my lips!"
"Cuir, a Thighearna, faire air mo bheul; gléidh dorus mo bhilean!"
"Set, O Lord, a watch before my mouth; keep the door of my lips!"
"That will be enough," he muttered with bated breath, and went out. As he approached the horse, Nial saw that he had found the "wisdom." Vaguely he wondered if Murdo had noticed any "living words"—mysterious phrase that ever perplexed, and sometimes terrified him.
"Nial, I have found the word. It is not for me to go into the Strath with news of the dead. The Book said, "Keep a watch before the mouth, keep the door of the lips." You understand...? Ay, sure: poor, faithful creature that loved Màm-Gorm; ay, an' that Màm-Gorm, too, loved as much as Donn or Fior or any o' the dogs, wise beasties.... Well, I will be going now, down to the Pool: then, one way or the other, I will be looking for Alan Gilchrist. An' it is for you to wait here, Nial, lest he, or any other, come. We'll put the mare and ... and ... Màm-Gorm ... into the byre just now. And you wait, you will be minding!"
In silence Raoilt, with her rigid burden, was led into the hot gloom of the byre. Then the door was partially closed, for there was no fastening to it, and Murdo made ready to go.
"Leave me one o' the dogs," said Nial sullenly.
"And for why?"
"I will not be staying here alone, in this treeless, foreign place, Murdo MacMurdo: no, that I won't, unless you will be leaving me one of the dogs."
The shepherd grunted surlily, for the collies were his best friends, and good company. But if so to be, then so to be. He would take Braon and leave Luath. It was safer, at such a time, to be alone with a dog than a bitch; for bitches were known often to be in league with demons and evil spirits. As for Nial, not being human himself, there would be less risk. Now that he noticed it, there was a red glare in Luath's eyes, and the bitch moved about in a strange way. For sure he would take Braon.
The time went wearily for the watcher at Ardoch-beag. The sweltering heat made him long doubly for the green forest that was his home. He did not dare enter that lonely house. Who or what might be sitting there, or standing looking at him from the inner room? Neither could he venture into the byre, though, but for her awful burden, he would rather have the company of the mare Raoilt than of the bitch Luath.
For a long while he sat in the shadow of a dyke that was the south side of the winter sheepfold. But he grew more and more uneasy as time passed. What if Murdo did not come back till after nightfall?
He rose and stared about him. Where was Luath? He could not see the collie anywhere. He had noticed her trotting idly up the steep bend of the road beyond the cottage.
"Ah, there she is," he muttered, as he saw a shadow flit bluely across the blinding way. But what was the matter with the beast? She came along at a swift, slinking run, her tail skiffing the ground between her feet. As she passed, she gave him a furtive glance. The upper lip, taut, just showed a glimmer of white fangs.
"Luath! Luath! Luath!"
But the collie would pay no heed; or, rather, she paid this heed, that she broke into a race, and flew down the road to the Ford till she was no more than a black blur beyond a whirling eddy of dust.
This was the last straw. Nial gave one look more all around him. Then he listened at the byre, to hear if Raoilt were munching at her hay. What if Màm-Gorm should get tired of being dead, and should dismount, and, rigid and white, step out into the sunlight! The thought made him shiver, for all the blazing heat.
Silently as his shadow, he was out upon the road. Suddenly the whim took him to go the other way rather than by the path he and the others had come. Below Cnoc-Ruadh the road dipped for a bit; and there was a sheep-path from it that would lead him down to the ford of Ath-na-chaorach, whence he would soon be in Iolair forest again.
But no Ford of the Sheep did Nial see that day.
For after he had reached the summit of the road at that part, to the westward of Ardoch-beag, he saw a sight that brought the heart suffocatingly to his mouth. It was this, then, that had made Luath slink swiftly away, with curled lip and bristling fell?
There, as though carven in stone, sat the woman Anabal, rigid and motionless as the thing that was in the byre. She was on the extreme verge of Cnoc-Ruadh, where a double ledge runs out from the great boulder which overhangs the Strath, and whence for nigh upon a score of miles the eye can follow the course of Mairg Water.
At the far end a heat-haze obscured mountain-flank and bracken-slope, and birk-shaw—all save the extreme summits of the hills, purple-grey shadows against the gleaming sky. Nearer, in the north strath, the smoke of many cots, sheilings, and bothan rose in their perpendicular or spiral columns of pale blue mist.
From where Nial stood he could see her face. It was as wan and awful as that of the dead man in the byre, but he saw that the eyes lived. The woman sat dumb, blind, oblivious of the flaming heat, her gaze fixed, unwavering. Fire burned in them, a fire that would never be quenched till the day of the grave.
He could not tell whether she was alive or dead, whether a woman or a wraith. But he noted the long, tangled locks of hair which hung over her shoulder, brown hair streaked with grey, like the tress that the dead man still clutched in his right hand.
It was a thing to flee from. One desire only possessed him now, to reach the safe green quietudes of the pine-forest once more. There all was familiar; there he could evade man or wraith.
And so he, too, left that solitude where, once again, Torcall and Anabal were nigh one to another, and not knowing it.
How could he know—none but God knew—that in the woman's ears was the roar of the Linn forever? that the laughter of a kelpie wrought her ever to an excruciating terror? Dumb, motionless, staring unwaveringly: so was she at the flame-red setting, as she had been since the first blaze had lightened along the peaks of the east.
It was within an hour of nightfall when, from the verge of the forest below Màm-Gorm, Nial caught sight of the kye coming down from the hill-pastures. He could not see Sorcha, but he knew she must be there; probably with Alan, who for days past had been wont to depute his own shepherding on Tornideon to a herd-laddie who lived with an old drover just beyond the Pass of the Eagles.
Nial had already been up at the farm. Oona lay where he had left her, and was still in the same profound and, but for her low breathing, deathlike slumber. Thence he had wandered back to the forest, thinking that he would descend toward the Linn o' Mairg, and see if Murdo were still there in his quest for Anabal. He had scarce entered the pine-glades when, happening to glance backward, he saw the cows coming home.
Sure enough, in a few minutes Sorcha appeared: and, as he had surmised, Alan with her. They walked together, his arm about her waist, while slowly they followed the leisurely kye. As they came nearer, Nial heard Sorcha singing one of her many milking songs. Often he had heard her sing that which now came rippling down the heather, and he could have given her word for word for it.