Kelpie hooded her eyes thoughtfully. She had already learned a good bit—but why tell Mina now? Better to wait and see where her own advantage lay and learn what Mina was up to.
“And where will ye be going?” she ventured to ask.
“Never you mind!” snapped Mina. “We will be returning for you when we are ready, and then it may be that you can learn some of the witchcraft you are wanting so badly.” Beneath their wrinkled lids her faded old eyes gleamed at Kelpie watchfully.
Kelpie kept her own eyes veiled. She knew how much Mina’s promise was worth, but here was hope that Mina might really be going to teach her at last, for her own profit. Kelpie must be very docile, then, and never let Mina suspect what was in her mind.
“Very well so,” she agreed indifferently, it being best to show neither reluctance nor enthusiasm.
“Once more with the crystal, then,” ordered Mina, producing it; and Kelpie obediently sat down in the dew-heavy clumps of long grass. Her face was lowered meekly, to conceal the knowledge that Mina depended on her to see the picture. The gray light was now growing rosy over the bare top of Meall Dubh. The rosiness was reflected in the shining ball and then moved and scattered.
“A battle!” whispered Kelpie, her eyes large and fixed on the scene. But it wasn’t like the other battles she had seen in the crystal—no cavalry charge of armored men on green slopes, but a charge of Highlanders on the steeper, wilder hills of Scotland. She could clearly make out the bright tartans, and the double-handed claymores flashing, and she could almost hear the wailing skirl of the pipes. There was a red-bearded giant in the thick of it, and a slight brown-haired man on a horse, wearing a blue bonnet, and it was he who seemed to be the power behind the charge—though Kelpie couldn’t say how she knew. And now the others were fleeing in the fury of the attack, and it seemed to Kelpie that she saw the blue and green Campbell tartan among the defeated.
Her voice muted and hurried, Kelpie described the scene to Mina, leaving out the name of the tartan and any other details that she guessed Mina might not be able to make out for herself.
And now there was a different scene, and there was the brown-haired man, dressed quite unfittingly as a groom, clasping the hand of the red-bearded one, who was looking altogether astonished and overjoyed, and behind them, on the hillside, was a cheering crowd of Highlanders.
“Well?” demanded Mina.