The grass was wet with dew when I left the sailor and made my road home, and I mind that I looked away to the suthard for a sail, and there was a queer gladness and a sorrow in me, and a grave doubt about that old woman Mhari nic Cloidh and her havers.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE RAKING BLACK SCHOONER.
I met Belle and Dan with the boy with them at the big stones away below the peat hags where the sea lies open to a man's look, and I took the young boy on my shoulder and laughed at Belle when she would be saying he was too big to be carried, and there was the look of pride in the swarthy face, pride and tenderness, as she stood, her hand on the arm of her man. But Dan kent me better.
"Out with it, Hamish. What good news gars ye giggle like a lass?"
"Man," I said, "have ye no' heard?—McKinnon's son is home, and has word o' Bryde. Betty will be seeing him with this boy in his arms yet. Bryde is coming home."
Belle's hands came to her heart for a little, and then her arms were round Dan like a wild thing.
"Oh, man, man, are you not glad?" she cried—"are you not glad?"
"Glad!" said Dan, and swallowed hard. "Ay, lass, glad is not the word," and then he kept shaking my hand, and looking at me without words, but Belle was afire.
"Hamish," she cried, clinging to me with her daftlike foreign ways, "will you always be bringing me good news till I am old and ugly?"