“Look at yon, now! Am not I the poor father altogether?” said the old man with a soft lip to his friends. “Who would think, and her so healthy, and not married to Ellar, that she would be so much put about? You'll excuse it in her, lads, I know, for she's not twenty till the dipping-time, and the mother maybe spoiled her.”
“Och, well,” said the Splendid one, twisting his bonnet uneasy in his hands, “I've seen them daft enough over a living lad, and it's no great wonder when this one's dead.” They took the maid beyond to the big room by the kitchen, and a good mother's morning for Drimfern was set by the men. They had a glass before going home, and when they were gone the bochdans came in the deep hollow of the night and rattled the windows and shook the door-sneck; but what cared yon long white thing on the goodwife's dambrod tablecloth?
At the mouth of day there was one woman with a gnawing breast looking about the glen-foot among the snow for the Shudder-man soldier. She found him snedding the shaft of a shinny-stick at the Stronmagachan Gate, and whistling as if it was six weeks south of Whitsunday and the woods piping in the heat.
“I ken all about it, my white little lamb,” he said with a soft speech. “All about them finding Ellar, and losing a better man, redding put her to rights. A search in the maybe, but any way one that some will miss more.”
“God's heavy, heavy on a woman!” said the poor child. “I gave Donacha a sampler with something sewn on it yesterday, and the men, when they go up the hill to look for him to-day, will get it on him—and—it would——”
“Ay, ay, ay! I ken, my dear. We'll put that right, or I'm no soldier.” And the little man cocked his bonnet on his head like a piper. Then he was sorry for the pride of it, and he pulled it down on his face, and whistled to stop his nose from jagging.
“My heart! my bruised heart! they're saying sorry things of Ellar, and Donacha dead. The cotter's wife was talking this morning, and it'll send me daft!”
“Blind, blind,” quo' the soldier; “but you'll not be shamed, if the amadan can help it.”
“But what can you do, my poor Shudderman? And yet—and yet—there's no one between Carnus and Croit-bhile I can speak to of it.”
“Go home, white love, and I'll make it right,” said the daft one, and faith he looked like meaning it.