"I would be loving that place!" she cried.
"There would be the house-building. By a stream the house would be, where there would be fishing, and the byres and the stables and the dykes to be building, and you would be loving to see the little foals near to you, and the young calves in the joy of living, running daftlike races in the sunshine."
"Bryde, is it not the land of the Ever Young you will be showing me?"
"It is a young land, a land for strong youth. I could be getting ground there," said he, "in that far America; but would you not be vexed when the years went by—vexed at the strange faces, and yearning for the cold splash of the sea in summer, and the green of the waving bracken, the purple of the hills, and the sound of voices that you would be knowing?"
"Would I not be having you, Bryde? Is there anything I could be wishing for more than that? I am loving that land, and," she whispered, snuggling her head close to his side, "when we are grown old and our—our—children gone from us, maybe if you would be wearying for this place, we could be coming back and lying down yonder," said she, pointing to the old kirk, "among our folk."
"There would maybe be some of the boys here coming with us,—Angus McKinnon and Guy Hamilton and Pate Currie," says Bryde, "and we could be talking of this place and remembering it when it would be New Year, and telling the old stories again."
"Do you know who I think will be coming?" cried Margaret. "I am thinking Hamish will be coming too."
When they rose to leave the place—and they were loath to leave—the face of Margaret was changed; there was a glamour of joy over her, and her eyes were not seeing very well, but rather looking away into that happy future, and she clung to Bryde.
"Will I be too happy?" she whispered fearfully, and made the sign that wards off the spirit of evil. "Bryde, we will not be telling this for a wee while,—I am to be holding my happiness in my hands, holding it to my heart, and nobody knowing."
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