And when I came into the room there was the lass standing very proud with her hand on his brow.
"Is he not a restless boy, our Bryde?" said she, and there was pride and love and tears and laughter in her tones, and she left us together.
"Hamish," said he, "you will not be bringing her here again ever—I will not be strong enough lying here . . ." and then in a lower voice, "My mother has a ring," said he. "I could not be asking her, my mother, and who is there to turn to but you," and I told him of the messenger who came from the Low Countries with Dan's letters and his mother's ring.
"And your baby fist closed on the sword," said I.
"The sword," said he. "Where is my father's gift?"
At that I went to the old byre where the heathen had sat that day, and I digged the cobbles from a corner of a biss close to the trough, and there, wrapped in a sheep's skin in a box, was the sword as I had buried it long ago, and I brought it to Dan's son.
He took it with a kind of joy, and his eyes all lit up.
"My father would be knowing," said he, and drew the blade. "This will clear the tangles."
There were flowers very beautifully let into the blade in thin gold. "Is she not a maiden richly dowered?" said Bryde—"a slim grey maiden, a faithful maiden, who will be lying at my side, and fierce to be defending me?"
Belle hated that sword from the first day, but Bryde had it by him at his bedside always.