The father took the tin lantern with the holes in it, and they all went out to the house-end. The lantern-light stuck long needles in the night as it swung on the goodman's finger, and the byre and the shed and the peat-stack danced into the world and out of it, and the clouds were only an arm's-length overhead.
The men were coming down the brae in the smother of snow, carrying something in a plaid. The dog was done with its barking, and there was no more sound from the coming ones than if they were ghosts. Like enough to ghosts they looked. No one said a word till the goodman spoke.
“You have him there?” he said.
“Ay, beatmachi leis! all that there is of him,” said the Paymaster's man; and they took it but an' ben, where Mairi's mother had the white dambrod cloth she had meant for herself, when her own time came, on the table.
“It's poor Ellar, indeed,” said the goodman, noticing the fair beard.
“Where's Donacha? where's Drimfern?” cried Mairi, who had pulled herself together and come in from the byre-end, where she had waited to see if there was none of the watchers behind.
The Paymaster's man was leaning against the press-door, with a face like the clay; Dol' Splendid was putting a story in the sgalag's ear; the Tullich men were very busy on it taking the snow off their boots. Outside the wind had the sorry song of the curlew.
“Me-the-day! it's the story of this there is to tell,” at last said Francie Ro, with a shake of the head. “Poor Drimfern——”
“Drimfem—ay, where's Drimfem in all the world?” said the goodman, with a start. He was standing before his girl to keep her from seeing the thing on the table till the wife had the boots covered. It was the face of a cailleach of threescore Mairi had.
“It's God knows! We were taking Ellar there down, turn about resting. It was a cruel business, for the drifts. There's blood on his side where he fell somewhere, and Drimfern had to put a clout on it to keep the blood off his plaid. That's Drimfern's plaid. When Donacha's second turn was over up at the bog, we couldn't get a bit of him. He's as lost as the deer the Duke shot, and we looked and whistled for hours.” The maid gave a wee turn to the door, shivered, and fell like a clod at her mother's feet.