I sat and read and read until the room grew dark. When I stopped I found that Angus Macayre was standing in the dimness at the foot of the ladder. He looked up at me and I down at him. For a few moments we were both quite still.
“It is the tale of Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm you are reading?” he said, at last.
“And Wee Brown Elspeth, who was fought for and killed,” I added, slowly.
Angus nodded his head with a sad face. “It was the only way for a father,” he said. “A hound of hell was Ian. Such men were savage beasts in those days, not human.”
I touched the manuscript with my hand questioningly. “Did this fall at the back there by accident,” I asked, “or did you hide it?”
“I did,” he answered. “It was no tale for a young thing to read. I have hidden many from you. You were always poking about in corners, Ysobel.”
Then I sat and thought over past memories for a while and the shadows in the room deepened.
“Why,” I said, laggingly, after the silence—“why did I call the child who used to play with me ‘Wee Brown Elspeth’?”
“It was your own fancy,” was his reply. “I used to wonder myself; but I made up my mind that you had heard some of the maids talking and the name had caught your ear. That would be a child’s way.”
I put my forehead in my hands and thought again. So many years had passed! I had been little more than a baby; the whole thing seemed like a half-forgotten dream when I tried to recall it—but I seemed to dimly remember strange things.