"Aunt Charlotte, I am quite sure you are wrong about Patsy," said the Princess.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE LOST FOLK'S ACRE
It was a high day and a holiday at the Bothy of the Wild of Blairmore—a high day though a short one—one of the shortest of all the year, though by this time it was well into January. But that made little difference on our misty moors. There the frozen sea-fog bound us and the wind, when there was one, stung extraordinarily bitter.
Sea-fog breezes yellowish (let this be marked), but the mist of the fresh water moors is white with iridescent circles where the low winter sun is trying to peep through. Little sounds carry far. You can hear wild fowl calling far up in the brumous smother which hides the lift. They are voyaging from lands of summer, and are already sorry they came. For here the winter still holds grim, black and yet somehow raw, which was the fault of the yellow sea-fog.
Stair had been up that morning long before the tardy January dawn, Whitefoot had been sent from the farm the night before with the news that Jean would meet him in the bed of the Mays Water opposite Peden's Stone. There was now more freedom of moving about, for the freezing of the snow enabled both man and beast to pass over it without leaving a footmark.
He found Jean standing there in the dim orange-coloured dawn. She was shivering dislike of the morning, which was at once clammy and freezing hard, so that every stone and even the banks were covered with the frozen fog. Jean had a great red shawl that had come from Holland about her head and neck, and so kept herself as comfortable as might be while she waited for her brother.
Stair had had to watch the signs of the countryside before he dared risk letting himself down into the dark of the Glen. For the sea was always open, and a landing party from the Britomart might have lain unseen in any of the fir copses or hidden behind the knolls.
Black and narrow ran the Mays, that at other times flowed so wide and brown and free. The frost had bound it tightly, all save a trickle in the centre, black as ink, and everywhere about clung the icicles, some thick as a man's arm.