"Do you think I would be caring, Bryde, if he ran off—if you were left with me?"
Ah, she was brave in her loving, was the Flower of Nourn.
Mirren McKinnon, that was once Mirren Stuart, was dowie that day, and her eyes red with greeting, for her son had gone to the sea, as his father had long ago. "I will be missing his step," she said softly, "when my man is on the hill," but Ronny would not be listening.
"It will make a man of the lad," said he; "there's something clean and fine about the sea."
Bryde had sold his beasts well, and it was his pleasure to be showing Margaret the bonniest foals, rough-haired and tousled as they were, and Hugh and me would be passing judgment. There was a mob of mares and foals and yearlings gathered in one place, and the mainland dealers bargaining with the farmers—always on the point of fighting by their way of it, and laughing to scorn the offered prices, as you will see to this day when folks are dealing in horse.
And as we stood a little way off, a great burly red-faced man—a Lowland dealer, strong as a tree, and a wit in a coarse way—turned his round drink-reddened eyes on us a time or two, and whispered behind his hand to his cronies, and I heard the titter of Dol Beag's laughing as Hugh pointed to a bonny yearling colt, and we stepped away, but not so far that I heard the dealer's words.
"Ou ay," says he, looking at Bryde, "Dan's is he? I've heard tell o' him, but whitna queen is't that's lookin' at him like a motherless foal?"
At that Bryde put Margaret in my hands. His face was like a devil's and his teeth showed as though his mouth were dry. To Hugh he gave one word. "Stop!" said he, and the word was a snarl.
Never another word he spoke, but leapt among the bargainers, and slid through the great flailing arms of the bucolic wit, and his right hand sank into the man's red throat. I see him still, his left hand behind the man's back, the shoulders raised, all the lithe length of him as he stood on his toes, his eyes like blue flame. I saw him shake his enemy as a dog shakes a rabbit. The great red face took a blae colour—the tongue protruded from his mouth and the eyes stared wildly. Men would have dragged Bryde off, but he hissed a "begone" through clenched teeth (it was a word of his mother), and they fell back as from a sword-stroke.
"Go down, go down, ye beast, if ye never come up," he girned, and flung the man from him to the earth, where he lay.