I thought in my heart that that was a strange way to speak of the martyrs, but it was not for a boy like me to make any objection.
The woman undid the boat which swung by a chain at the northern side of the castle secure within a little breakwater of hewn stone. We rowed across to the loch’s edge, and there, in the first ruddy glow of the rising sun, with colour on her lips and her lashes lying long and dark upon her cheek, was the little Mistress Mary, safe under her bush of bog-myrtle, looking lovely as a fairy, aye, or the queen of the fairies herself.
Then I know not what cantrip took me, for at most times, both then and after, I was an awkward Scots boy, as rough and landward as Ashie or Gray, my questing collies. But certain it is that I stooped and kissed her on the cheek as she lay, and when I lifted her would have given her to her aunt.
But she stirred a little as I took her in my arms, and with a little petulant whimper she nestled her head deeper into my neck. My heart stirred strangely within me at the touch of the light curls on her forehead.
She opened her eyes of sleepy blue. “Has Matt had his breakfast?” she said. And instantly fell to the sleeping again.
We laid her all comfortably in the stern of the boat. Her aunt stepped in and took the oars. She did not invite me to follow.
“Good morrow, lad,” she said, not unkindly, “get you home speedily. I will see to the child. You have done well by Sandy’s bairn. Come and see her and me in happier times. I promise you neither she nor I will ever forget it.”
And I watched these two as the boat went from me, leaving three long wakes upon the water, one oily and broad where the keel stirred the peaty water, and two smaller on either side winking with bubbles where the oars had dipped.
And there in the stern I could just see the edge of the blue hood of frieze, wherein lay the golden head of Mary Gordon.
She was but a bairn. What did a grown laddie care for bairns? Yet was my heart heavy within me.