“Not clean?” exclaimed its owner, lowering the formidable, hiltless blade. Then he bit his lip. “Dhia gleidh sinn! you are right—how came that rust there?”
“Rust? It is blood!” Ewen took it from him by its black handle of interlaced design and ran a finger down it. “No, I am wrong; it was only the early sun on the steel.”
For the weapon lay across his palm, spotless and shining, the whole foot and a half of it.
The dark Lachlan had turned very pale. “Give it to me, Mac ’ic Ailein, and let me throw it into the loch. It is not well to keep it if we both saw . . . what we saw.”
“No,” said his master with more composure, “it is a good dirk, and too old a friend for that—and what I imagined can only have been some memory of the times when it has gralloched a deer for us two.” He gave it back. “We are neither of us taibhsear like your father. I forbid you to throw it away. Nor are you to shoot that heron—do you hear?”
If his young chief was not, Lachlan MacMartin was plainly shaken by what had happened. He thrust the dirk deep into the heather as though to cleanse it before he returned it to the sheath. “I hear,” he muttered.
“Then see that you remember!” Shivering slightly, the young man sprang to his feet. “Now, as you have forced me to land on this side of the loch, Lachlan, I shall dive off the creag ruadh. A score of times have I meant to do it, but I have never been sure if there were enough water below. So, if a water-horse gets me, you will know whose was the fault of it!” And laughing, disregarding entirely his foster-brother’s protests, which went so far as the laying of a detaining hand on his bare shoulder, he slid down the bank, ran along the narrow strip of sand below it, and disappeared round a bend of the shore. A moment or two later his white figure was seen clambering up the heather-clad side of the red crag which gave the whole property its name. A pause, then he shot down towards the lake in the perfect dive of the athlete; and the water received him with scarcely a splash.
“The cross of Christ be upon us!” murmured Lachlan, shutting his eyes; and, though he was no Papist, he signed himself. When he opened them the beloved head had reappeared safely, and he watched it till the island once more hid it from his view.
Still tingling with his dive, Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, when he had reached the other side of the little island, suddenly ceased swimming and, turning on his back, gave himself to floating and meditation. He was just six-and-twenty and very happy, for the sun was shining, and he felt full of vigour, and the water was like cold silk about him, and when he went in to breakfast there would be Alison, fresh as the morning, to greet him—a foretaste of the mornings to come when they would greet each other earlier than that. For their marriage contract was even now in his desk at Ardroy awaiting signature, and the Chief of Clan Cameron, Lochiel himself, Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh, Ewen’s near kinsman by marriage as well as his overlord, was coming to-morrow from his house of Achnacarry on Loch Arkaig to witness it.