“Life it is, my lad. It's not to dress corpses but to wash weans she's wanted.”
“Ho-chutt!” went the blade back against the brass of the scabbard (for he was duin-uasal who carried it), and the man's face changed.
“Pass!” he said. “I would not stand in a bairn's way to life. Had it been shrouds instead of sweelers, we could have had it out, for a corpse is in no great hurry. But troth it's yourself is the tight one, and I would have liked a bit of the old game.”
“No more than Murdo, red fellow!”
“Murdo! So be't; yet Murdo will give me his dirk for gate-pay, or they'll be saying farther down that Calum, as good a man, kept out of his way.”
The biodag went flying into the grass at Calum's feet, and Murdo went leaping down the glen. It was like stalking deer for the Diarmaids. Here and there he had to go into the river or among the hazel-switches, or crawl on his stomach among the gall.
From Kilmune to Uchdan-barracaldine the red fellows were passing, or playing with the clachneart or the cabar, or watching their women toiling in the little fields.
“Thorns in their sides!” he said to himself, furious at last, when another keen-eyed Diarmaid caught sight of his tartan and his black beard among some whins. It was a stripling with only a dirk, but he could gather fifty men on the crook of his finger.
“Stand!” cried the Diarmaid, flashing the dirk out. “What want ye so far over this way?”
Murdo, even in the rage, saw Silis, a limp creature, sweating in her pains, her black eyes (like the sloe) keen on the door. So close, so sure, so sorrowful! He could have touched her on the shoulder and whispered in her ear.