"I will be telling you that, Dan, when she's half a mile nearer."
"Ye hinna the toon mirk rubbed out your een yet, Hamish, or ye would ken the bonny spaewife. I've been watchin' her this last three 'bouts."
"Dan, Dan," said I, "do you think of nothing but women and horses?
Have ye never learned the lesson of Joseph?"
"Man, Hamish," says he, with a whimsical smile and a hand at his moustache, "ye should put a' things in their proper order. Horses and weemen noo. It's not a bad thing—a while wi' a lass after the horses are bedded and foddered, but horses first; and as for Joseph"—his smile broadened until I could see his teeth—"if it had been Dauvit the leddy had met on the stair, the meenisters wid never hiv heard a cheep about it. . . .
"It's a fine lesson yon, I aye think, for auld men to be preaching, but deevil a word about their ain youthfu' rants. Ye're a lusty lad yirsel', and there's many a cheery nicht among the lasses wi' petticoats and short-goons, and I'll teach ye hoo tae whistle them oot if ye would leave your books and come raking wi' Dan."
We had unyoked the horses and got astride, and when we came to the gate there was the bonny spaewife carrying a bairn in a tartan shawl. Dan drew up, and I also; so there we stood, the horses in an impatient semi-circle on the road, Dan and I on horseback, and the woman looking up at us.
She had the blackest eyes I ever saw, and hair black and curly as a water-dog's clustered over her head, and the wee rain-drops clung about the curls round her ears and brow. Her nose was delicate and faultless, and her complexion was that born of sun and rain and wind. There seemed a smile to play round her red lips, and a sombreness about her eyes (so that she held mine fixed), until Dan spoke.
"I think, Belle," said he, "you're gettin' bonnier, and if it wasna for the wean I would leave a kiss on your bonny red mouth."
Round the pupils of her black eyes a little ring began to glow, as though a light came from a great distance through darkness, her white teeth bit on her under lip, and she stepped closer to Dan's horse.
"Haud away, woman, haud away, for the love o' your Maker; the stallion canna thole weemen about him."