Seven years and seven days went by, and Black Murdo, coming in on an evening after a hard day at the deer, found Silis making the curious wee clothes. He looked at her keen, questioning, and she bleached to the lips.
“So!” said he.
“Just so,” said she, breaking a thread with her teeth, and bending till the peat-flame dyed her neck like wine.
“God, and I'm the stout fellow!” said he, and out he went, down all the way to Portinsherrich, and lusty he was with the ale among the pretty men there.
Weeks chased each other like sheep in a fank, and Silis grew sick at the heart. There's a time for a woman when the word of a woman is sweeter than a harp; but there were only foolish girls at Innistrynich, and coarse men of the sword. So Murdo stayed in from the roes when the time crept close. To see him do the heavy work of the house and carrying in the peats was a sorry sight.
Silis kept dreaming of Finne-side, where she had heard the long wave in the spring of the year when she had gone home on a password to a woman's wedding with Long Coll. The same Long Coll had brothers, and one had put a man's foolish sayings in her ears before ever she met Murdo, she a thin girl like a saugh-wand and not eighteen till Beltane. They called him—no matter—and he had the way with the women. Faith, it's the strange art! It is not looks, nor dancing, nor the good heart, nor wit, but some soft fire of the eye and maybe a song to the bargain. Whatever it was, it had Silis, for all that her goodman Murdo had a man's qualities and honesty extra.
They say, “Cnuic is sluic is Alpeinich, ach cuin a thàinig Artharaich?”(1) in the by-word; but Artharaich had age enough for a taibhsear whatever, for Black Murdo had the Sight.
1 The hills and hollows and Clan Alpine came together, but
when arose Clan Artair?
It's the curious thing to say of a man with all his parts that he should be taibhsear and see visions; for a taibhsear, by all the laws, should be an old fellow with little use for swords or shinny-sticks. But Murdo missed being a full taibhsear by an ell, so the fit had him seldom. He was the seventh son of a mother who died with the brand of a cross on her brow, and she was kin to the Glenurchy Woman. And something crept over him with the days, that put a mist in his eyes when he looked at Silis; but “I'm no real taibhsear,” he said to himself, “and I swear by the black stones it is no cloth. A man with all the Gift might call it a shroud high on her breast, but——”
“Silis, a bhean! shall it be the Skilly Dame of Inneraora?”