After a minute's silence the old woman answered him in the native tongue, but only to put a question in return.
"I am thinking it is a long time since you have been in Iona?"
The man stirred uneasily.
"And why is that, mother?" he asked, in a weak voice hoarse with damp and fatigue; "how is it you will be knowing that I have been in Iona at all?"
"Because I knew your kith and kin there, Neil Ross."
"I have not been hearing that name, mother, for many a long year. And as for the old face o' you, it is unbeknown to me."
"I was at the naming of you, for all that. Well do I remember the day that Silis Macallum gave you birth; and I was at the house on the croft of Ballyrona when Murtagh Ross—that was your father—laughed. It was an ill laughing that."
"I am knowing it. The curse of God on him!"
"'Tis not the first, nor the last, though the grass is on his head three years agone now."
"You that know who I am will be knowing that I have no kith or kin now on Iona?"