Later came Luath, the collie of Ellar, slinking through the snow wet and weary, and without wind enough for barking. 'Twas as good as the man's ghost.
The shepherds came in from the fanks, and over from the curling at Carlonan, to go on a search.
Long Duncan of Drimfem, the slim swarthy champion, was there before them. He was a pretty man—the like never tied a shoe in Glenaora—and he was the real one who had Mairi's eye, which the dead fellow thought had the laugh only for him. But, lord! a young man with a good name with the shinty and the clachneart has other things to think of than the whims of women, and Donacha never noticed.
“We'll go up and see about it—about him at once, Main,” he said, sick-sorry for the girl. All the rest stood round pitying, because her kists were said to be full of her own spinning for the day that was not to be.
Mairi took him to the other side of the peat-stack, and spoke with a red face.
“Is it any use your going till the snow's off the hill, Drimfem?” she said, biting at the corner of her brattie, and not looking the man in the face.
“Dhia gleiih sinn! it's who knows when the white'll be off the snouts of these hills, and we can't wait till—— I thought it would ease your mind.” And Donacha looked at the maid stupid enough. For a woman with her heart on the hill, cold, she was mighty queer on it.
“Yes, yes; but it's dangerous for you to go up, and the showers so heavy yet. It's not twenty finger-lengths you can see in front of you, and you might go into the bog.”
“Is't the bog I would be thinking of, Main? It's little fear there is of that, for here is the man that has been on Salachary when the mist was like smoke, as well as when the spittle froze in my mouth. Oh, I'm not the one to talk; but where's the other like me?”
Mairi choked. “But, Dona—— but, Drimfem, it's dead Ellar must be; and—and—you have a widow mother to mind.” Donacha looked blank at the maid. She had the sweet face, yon curve of the lip, and the soft turn of the neck of all Arthur's children, ripe of the cheek, with tossed hair like a fairy of the lake, and the quirk of the eye that never left a plain man at ease if he was under the threescore. There were knives out in the glen for many a worse one.