The clear voice of the clerk answered with sonorous "amens", and the responses rose in chorus.
Dunvegan looked at the Factor. The latter seemed unconscious that an earnest service was progressing. Sunk in stony oblivion, he appeared absolutely motionless, his chest neither rising nor falling as he breathed.
The long, familiar service was finally concluded, and those who had taken no part other than as mere listeners sat up with an expectant shuffle. Flora Macleod moved to the front with her child and stood before the altar. Father Brochet looked down upon her. There was no reproach in his mièn. Experience had taught him that in such a case as this, women followed their own hearts even to fleeing from their parents.
A hush brooded over the chapel's interior, a sort of awkward silence, a dread of things running awry! The child's whimper broke it, and Flora swayed the boy in her arms to quiet him.
Brochet spoke when she finished, his clear voice carrying to the door and even outside where some latecomers unable to find seats were grouped on the slab of rough stone which served for a step.
"Who is the male parent, the father of the child?" he asked in the natural course of the ceremony.
Deep silence reigned. Flora Macleod's lips closed tightly, indicating that out of stubbornness she would not speak the name. People looked at the Factor, and he turned from his immobility with the attitude of a sleeping bear suddenly prodded into angry activity.
"Black Ferguson," he snarled, sidling over a foot or so upon the bench.
"The name this child is to bear with honor through life?" Father Brochet continued.
"Honor?" grunted Macleod. "I don't know about that. No doubt he will inherit the spirit of disobedience from his mother. Call him Charles Ian Macleod! There will be no Ferguson in it."