"I thought ye'd be coming, Marcella," he said, looking at her with mournful brown eyes that recalled Hoodie's. "Jock's wife's made ye a seed cake to eat the day, and anither tae pack in yer grip. She says if ye'll pit it intill a bit tin an' fasten it doon tight it'll maybe keep till ye're at Australia. But I'm thenkin' she doesna rightly ken whaur Australia is on the map."
"Oh, Wullie," cried Marcella, flinging herself down on the ground beside him. "I feel as if I can't bear it all. Hoodie killed, and going to be eaten, Jean going to Perth to live, and Aunt Janet all alone in the old farm, living with the rats."
"Ye're awa' yersel', Marcella, mind," said Wullie gravely.
"Wullie, I wish I could explain. I don't want to go, really, but if I don't I'm so afraid I'll get frozen up and dead. Oh, and acid drops," she added frantically.
"Eh?" he asked.
"Oh, that's nothing. Only something I was thinking," she said quickly. "But I've got to go; only I hate to think of things being uprooted here."
"Then dinna think aboot it. I knew ye'd be awa' afore long. It's in ye, juist as it's in the birds. But ye'll come flying back like they do."
"Oh, Wullie, do you think I shall?" she pleaded, watching him as he stroked his beard and looked out across the sea.
"Ye'll be back, Marcella. Very glad ye'll be tae come back, an' ye'll find me here, juist the same. Things change little. It takes millions of years to change everything save folk's spirits. I'll never change, till His hand straightens me oot some day for a buryin'. But ye'll be changed, Marcella, like Lashnagar—things will have cropped out in ye, and things will have walked over ye."
Wullie's words comforted her, gave her a sense of security as she sat at his side toasting fish for the last time and eating the cake that somehow did not taste quite so good as usual. As she said good-bye to him before she went the round of the village bidding everyone good-bye, something impelled her to kiss his brown cheek. The last she saw of him was his bent figure silhouetted in the doorway of the hut with a fire glow behind it, and the setting sun shining on his eyes that were bright with tears.