An old woman stepped out of the low hut to empty a pail of water, and there was no mistaking the light and dark reds crossed with green on her plaidie. It was MacNab. Her husband, no doubt, would be out in the hills with the sheep or cattle. Fine, that. Women living alone in the hills were rather more likely to be sympathetic and motherly toward a forlorn wee lass than men. (On the other hand, women of the Kirk towns were like to be dourly suspicious and hating.)
The old woman started to go back inside and then caught a glimpse of Kelpie, who stumbled a bit because she was hungry and tired—and because it was her general policy.
“Whoever is it, then?” The Highland lilt of the Gaelic was less marked here, near the Lowlands, and the voice cracked slightly with age—and yet there was in it a note like a bell.
“Och, forgive me, just.” Kelpie’s voice was faint, and she swayed slightly. “I am weary and hungry, and could you be sparing just a crust?”
“Seadh, the little love!” Mrs. MacNab was all sympathy. “Come away in, then, and I’ve a fine pot of oatmeal on the fire. Whatever will you be doing all alone and in the hills?” She looked at Kelpie with wise old eyes as they entered the dark shieling, and frowned in puzzlement. “From your dress you would be a lass from a Covenant home, but your face is giving it the lie.”
Kelpie instantly revised her story in the brief time it took to step through the low doorway under its bristling roof of rye thatch. She stood meekly on the earthen floor under the smoke-blackened rafters and noted at a glance that these folk were better off than some, for there was a real bedstead in the corner instead of a pile of heather and bracken, and four three-legged creepie-stools.
“Eat now,” invited her hostess, handing her a big bowl of oatmeal from the iron pot over the fire. “And there are bannocks here, and milk. And then perhaps you will tell me about yourself, little one, for I confess I’ve a fine curiosity, and strangers are none so common here.”
Kelpie made use of the respite to ask some questions and get her bearings, in between ravenous mouthfuls of food. “Be ye Covenant here?” she ventured around half a bannock.
“Och, and can you no see my tartan?” demanded Mrs. MacNab. “We MacNabs are loyal to our own Stewart King, foolish darling. Why, then, are you of the Kirk?”