And Gilchrist—if Ronny had only kent—Gilchrist and his men shifted a little among the bushes, and old Dol Beag was there among them trembling a little and his mouth praying.
John McCook came close to Bryde McBride, and pointed to the very place where the gangers were lying waiting.
"Would there be something moving there among the bushes?" said he.
"A sheep maybe," said Bryde.
"I am wishing I had the dogs with me," said John.
There were silent figures of women, with shawls tight about their shoulders, and they looked a little fearfully to the dark places.
Margaret was in her first sleep and dreaming, and it was a daft dream, and her lips curled softly and parted a little, for in her dreams Bryde would be knocking and knocking at her door.
"I am just thinking this," she was saying to her dreaming self, "because he would be tormenting me to be kissing him again," and she opened her arms and her lips pouted, and then again came the knocking, low at the first of it, and then growing louder, until at last she became broad awake, and there would be only a little moonlight in her room.
"Who is it?" she said, standing a little fearfully behind her door, and her heart beating.
"Let me in; oh, let me in," she could hear a woman's voice, and opened the door, and a lass flung herself inside.