"I, too, Alan MacAilean, have heard a strange thing to-day. You know old Marsail Macrae? She is ill now with a slow fever, and she thinks that the shadow which she saw lying upon her hearth last Sabbath, when nothing was there to cause any shadow, was her own death, come for her, and now waiting there. I spoke to the old woman, but she would not have peace, and her eyes looked at me.
"'What will it be now, Marsail?' I asked.
"'Ay, ay, for sure,' she said, 'it was I who saw you first.'
"'Saw me first, Marsail?'
"'Ay, you and Alan MacAilean.'
"'When and where was this sight upon you?'
"'It was one month before you and he came to Rona.'
"I asked the poor old woman to be telling me her meaning. At first I could make little of what was said, for she muttered low, and moved her head this way and that, and moaned like a stricken ewe. But on my taking her hand, she looked at me again, and then told me this thing—
"'On the seventh day of the month before you came—and by the same token it was on the seventh day of the month following that you and Alan McAilean came to Caisteal-Rhona—I was upon the shore at Aonaig, listening to the crying of the wind against the great cliff of Biola-creag. With me were Ruaridh Macrae and Neil MacNeill, Morag MacNeill, and her sister Elsa; and we were singing the hymn for those who were out on the wild sea that was roaring white against the cliffs of Berneray, for some of our people were there, and we feared for them. Sometimes one sang, and sometimes another. And sure, it is remembering I am, how, when I had called out with my old wailing voice—
"'Bi 'eadh an Tri-aon leinn, a la's a dh-oidche;
'S air chul nan tonn, A Mhoire ghradhach!