“It is a pity Angus cannot be more particular in his predictions,” observed the young man flippantly, breaking off a sprig of bogmyrtle and smelling it. “Well?”
“You know that I would put the hair of my head under your feet,” went on Lachlan MacMartin passionately. “Now on the island yonder there lives a heron—not a pair, but one only——”
The young chieftain laid a damp but forcible hand on his arm. “I will not have it, Lachlan, do you hear?” he said in English. “I’ll not allow that bird to be shot!”
But Lachlan continued to pour out Gaelic. “Eoghain, marrow of my heart, ask me for the blood out of my veins, but do not ask me to let the heron live now that my father has seen this thing! It is a bird of ill omen—one to be living there alone, and to be spying when you are swimming; and if it is not a bòchdan, as I have sometimes thought, it may be a witch. Indeed, if I had one, I would do better to put a silver bullet——”
“Stop!” said the marrow of his heart peremptorily. “If my father Angus has any warning to give me, he can tell it into my own ear, but I will not have that heron shot, whatever he saw! What do you suppose the poor bird can do to me? Bring your piece here and unload it.”
Out of the juniper bush and the heather Lachlan, rising, pulled the fowling-piece, and, very slowly and reluctantly, removed the priming and the charge.
“Yet it is an evil bird,” he muttered between his teeth. “You must know that it is unlucky to meet a heron when one sets out on a journey.”
“Yes,” broke in Ewen Cameron impatiently, “in the same way that it is unlucky to meet a sheep or a pig—or a snake or a rat or a mouse, unless you kill them—or a hare, or a fox, or a woman, or a flat-footed man . . . and I know not what besides! Give me the gun.” He examined it and laid it down. “Now, Lachlan, as you have not yet promised to respect my wishes in this matter, and a gun is easily reloaded, you shall swear on the iron to obey me—and that quickly, for I am getting cold.”
Startled, the Highlander looked at his young chieftain to see whether he were serious when he suggested the taking of so great and inviolable an oath. But, unable from his expression to be sure, and being blindly, fanatically devoted to him, he obediently drew his dirk from its sheath, and was about to raise it to his lips to kiss it when his foster-brother caught his arm.
“No, I was jesting, Lachlan. And . . . you do not keep your biodag very clean!”