Then the dark Pict shut his eyes for a moment, and thought what to do. He thought that the King would kill him and his son when he had their secret; and he thought of the mead which had the power of wafting the Picts to the Land of Pleasant Dreams.
From the bonny bells of heather,
They brewed a drink langsyne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in blessed swound
For days and days together,
In their dwellings underground.
When he had thought with his eyes shut, the Pict said that he could not tell the secret while his son lived, because of the shame he would feel that his own flesh and blood should know him a traitor. He said this because he believed they would kill the boy quickly without torture; and the old man was right, for they bound his son hand and foot, and flung him out to sea. "Now tell us the secret," they said. But the Pict only laughed and answered, "Now I will not tell, because there is nothing more you can do to hurt me." So they killed him quickly too, in their rage, and the secret of the heather ale died with him.
Though he liked the story, the obstinate man argued that the last of the Picts were not really killed in this or any other way; that they had slowly died out as a race, and had married with the Scots, leaving a strain of their blood in the land to this day. "You know," he said, "that Somerled of the Isles married a Pictish princess, and so there's Pictish blood in the veins of the MacDonalds, in your veins and in mine, though I'm of cottage birth, and you are of the castle."
"I know that story of Somerled," I answered, "and how, hero though he was, he got his princess by a fraud. It makes Kim seem more human."
"I wonder if his princess thought so?" said Somerled the Second.
"Why, of course she did," I answered him as if I were in her confidence.
When I was in Carlisle, and proud of my English birth, I used to like reading about the great battle of the Solway Moss, where two hundred English horsemen killed or took prisoners more than a thousand Scots they'd chased into the bog; but now I've forgotten everything except that I'm a Scottish lass; and though I'm of the Highlands, and these were Lowland men, I don't, as I did, love to dwell upon the raid of the Solway Moss. Still, I could not get it out of my head, and while I pictured it, as I have to do most things, whether I wish or no, I saw a bridge—a fine stone bridge, flung like the span of a petrified rainbow across a small stream.
"That must be the Sark!" I gasped. "And we've come—we've come to the border!"
"Good lass, to divine it!" said he. And how I liked his calling me a good lass—it was better than princess!