"A red-faced man and very clean," says he, "and his face shining like a wean's. Och, he might be wan of the Elect but for the glint in the eyes o' him and free wi' the bottle—a great performer with the bottle."
"Would he be leaving any word?" said I, for I would be wearying to come at the man's business.
"He kind o' let on tae some knowledge o' a place McEilin's Locker or that," says Tam. "Ye would be expected there the night. I am minding he would be calling himself McNeilage—the mother o' him was Sassenach."
"Would he be speaking o' the Gull?" said I.
"No, man, but a party told me," said the old rascal, "a party told me that the skiffs were below Bealach an sgadan before the moon was up, and Tam is thinking that there will be some fine, fine water on the mainland side before the morning—afore the more-nin," says he.
There was a strange thumping at my ribs when I had the garron at the door, and would be tramping the long yellow straw from his forefeet, and I led him out of the yard and we were on the shoulder of the black hill when the moon was beginning to go down. And now there were no thoughts of ghosts or bawkins in my head, and I would be laughing when the moor-birds would be rising with a quick whirring of wings under the horse's feet in the heather. At a long loping canter we crossed the peat hags, and slithered into the valley on the other side and made the burn. I mind I stood the horse in the burn to his knees, and he cooled a little, and then started to be pawing at the water, and snoring at it glinting past his legs, and tinkling and laughing down the glen. The heather was dark and withered, and at the banks of the stream I am seeing yet the long tufts of white grass, like an old man's beard, shaking with a dry rustle, and there was the sparkle of the last of the moon making a granite boulder gleam into jewel points, and then we made our way to the Locker. I was not very sure of the place, but I made the three long whistles on my fingers that the boys will be using when there is help needed. From the hillside I got the answer, clear and piercing like a shepherd's, and then all would be silent except for the swishing of the heather and the thumping at the ribs of me, for I would be sure now that Bryde was in the Locker on some mad ploy. When I was come near the entrance I dismounted and left the beast loose, for I kent he would make his way home to his stable. As I was clambering up the last of it, a voice came to me.
"Oh man, Hamish, hurry," and it was not the voice of Bryde, but I kent the voice, and the eagerness of it and the gladness.
"Dan," I cried, "och, Dan," and after that I am not remembering. How I came to be sitting in the Locker with Dan beside me, and the smoke eddying up, and the droll-shaped pond and the queer carving all there, as it would be yon daft night twenty years ago, I am not remembering.
But there was Dan McBride with a sabre slash from his ear to the point of his chin, and a proud set to his head, and a way of bending from his hips like a man reared in the saddle. A great martial moustache curled at the corners of his mouth. Dan McBride that was away for twenty years, and mair. He was arrayed in some outlandish soldier rig, with great boots and prodigious spurs.
"The lass," says he at the first go-off, "what came o' the lass that will be my wife?" says he, with a great breath. "Is all things right with Belle?"