"There's McGilp," says Dan. "He aye carries a sail needle in his kep lining, and he'll say it's just to be handy, but it's aye been in the same place. An' what will it be for, Neil Crubach?"
Neil looked up, his blue eyes hazy with dreaming things out of the past. His face was very beautiful, and his body massive and strong, but he halted on his leg, and could walk but lamely.
"Oh," says Neil, with a kindly smile, "you will be knowing that surely, and you a McBride, and reared among the rocks and the bonnie heather.
"It will just be that when our forefathers would be among the hill sat night, many and many's the time the evil one would be coming to them and speaking, and sometimes he would be coming in the form of a black dog, like the Black Hound o' Nourn, wi' a red tongue lolling from his mouth, and sometimes he would be a wild cat louping among the rocks, hissing and spitting wi' his eyes lowin', and the old wise ones in the far glen found the power in the unknown places in the hills, and they said to the young hunters and warriors, 'Aye be carrying steel, for steel will sever all bargains,' but a skein-dubh is the best to be carrying in the hills, for a devil will not come near the black-hefted knife wi' a strong bright blade—no," and Neil Crubach smiled, and looked among the red embers for his dreams.
And then, still looking into the embers, he began to speak in his soft-voiced way—
"They're bonnie wee things, the Wee Folk, and merry as the lambs in
June.
"When my leg would be troubling me sorely in my mind, and me a lad fit to break a man's back, and to fling the great stone from me like a chuckle—ay, in these long-ago days, there was a lass, and, och, she was just to me in my mind like the sun rising from the sea on a summer morning, and I could have taken her away in my own arms, for I would be fierce like my folk, in their hate and their love, and whiles I would be feeling in me the wish to be killing her nearly just to watch her eyes opening like the sky when the white woolly clouds are drifting apart, and among the hills when I wandered I would be dreaming of holding her in my arms, for they would be great arms in these old days; and one day she came, and I told her all that was in my heart, and she said never a word, but just put her white round arms on my shoulder and her head on my breast."
For a long time he was silent, and I saw the servant lassies look at one another, their terrors all forgot in the beauty of his picture, for there was colour in his very tone.
"I would be carrying her in my arms, for was she not but a mountain flower, but when I would have taken her up I saw her eyes with a great pity in them for my lameness, and I felt hell rising in my heart, for were not my folk straight in their limbs, and nimble as goats among the rocks? and then she saw my face, and I think there would be black murder in it, but for myself, not for my white flower, for Neil Crubach I hated when my love looked on this poor limb (it was only a little shorter, but I knew the pride that was in his race).
"Then my love looked into my soul.