"Ye'll be seeing," says I.
And then again, "I had to have a crack wi' ye, Hamish, before I could be doing anything; it's no' canny coming in on folk after a matter o' twenty years."
All that night we sat before a fire with no other light, and many a time I would be thinking of the Killer dying in there in the dark, and the dog beside him; the Nameless Man was not in Dan's mind, but the length of the night.
"Belle and the boy—'a likely lad,' ye say. Hoch, he'll come hame,
Hamish, never fear—the lasses will be taking him hame at his age."
And when we were stretched before the red glow of the fire he would still be at the talking, and the last I am minding was his voice.
"I will have lain beside the fire on the battlefield and seen the eyes o' the wolves glowering through the lowes, Hamish; but, man, it was a king to this weary waiting, a king to this."
CHAPTER XXVI.
A WEDDING ON THE DOORSTEP.
It was at the drakes' dridd that Dan roused me, and we left McAllan's Locker behind us with its gruesome keepers, and came down the hillside to the burn. I mind that there was a raven above us in the morning air, and his vindictive croak-croak was the only living sound that came to us as we marched.
At the burn I saw the track of the garron where he had crossed in the night, and at the burnside Dan stopped.