I knew she had come to play with me, and we went together to my house among the bushes of broom and gorse and played happily. But before we began I saw her stand and look wonderingly at the dark-red stain on the embroideries on her childish breast. It was as if she were asking herself how it came there and could not understand. Then she picked a fern and a bunch of the thick-growing bluebells and put them in her girdle in such a way that they hid its ugliness.
I did not really know how long she stayed. I only knew that we were happy, and that, though her way of playing was in some ways different from mine, I loved it and her. Presently the mist lifted and the sun shone, and we were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden in a room in a castle because something strange was going to happen which we were not told about. She ran behind a big gorse bush and did not come back. When I ran to look for her she was nowhere. I could not find her, and I went back to Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled.
“Where did she go?” I asked them, turning my head from side to side.
They were looking at me strangely, and both of them were pale. Jean was trembling a little.
“Who was she, Ysobel?” she said.
“The little girl the men brought to play with me,” I answered, still looking about me.
“The big one on the black horse put her down—the big one with the star here.” I touched my forehead where the queer scar had been.
For a minute Angus forgot himself. Years later he told me.
“Dark Malcolm of the Glen,” he broke out. “Wee Brown Elspeth.”
“But she is white—quite white!” I said.