In a long while she cried, proud and piteous—
"Bring me the messenger; he will have his father's gift for my son." And the lilt of joy in her voice made me think shame to be a man at all. Silently the messenger came, his eyes on the ground, and kneeled, and at that they were at it in their own Gaelic, and Belle raised the wean a little, and I saw his face wrinkled and red, and his blue staring eyes. And the man laid a long blue blade across the bed, and the little groping fingers of the child fluttered a moment, and then closed on the hilt, and when I lifted the gleaming snake-like sword, from the hilt scroll with a tinkling fell a ring, and it fell on the bosom of the mother—and she lay and smiled.
* * * * * *
But I made a safe place for that sword and scabbard (for the messenger gave that last into my hands), and for many nights in my dreams the little dimpled hand fluttered and closed on the hilt.
CHAPTER XVI.
I HAVE SOME TALK WITH McGILP IN McKINNON'S KITCHEN.
In the gloaming I left the sheiling, and took my way through the hill, as we say, for McKinnon's house by the glen on the road to Birrican, and the first of that road is just plain guessing, but after, maybe, a mile there rises up the Mulloch Mhor, the big peak of the Island, and with that, a little to a man's left hand, the road to the sea is easy. There is a road crossing that way that you'll still see running in through the Planting above the Letter, and through by the Little Clearing, and joining the road to the castle.
To the left of me I could hear the kye at the Bothanairidh, where there was a common grazing, for by this time it was well to have the beasts away from the steadings, because there was no great fencing in these days, and the weans would be put to the herding, out on the hillside. You'll see yet the wee turf byres where the kye were milked, and the founds of the bochans where the old folk had their summer, with the hens and beasts about them. And many's the story I could be telling about these summer quarters when the lassies and old wives would be at the spinning.
All the glen on the right of me was a McBride place, but you will not get that name there any more now, and nothing belonging to them but the trees, old and straggling, that they would be planting long ago, and the furs on the side of the hill where they had rigs about, and lazy-beds.
There were not many houses on the shore in these days, except maybe at a place they would be calling Clamperton, not very far from McKelvie's Inn.