But Ishbel did not marry her cousin, as everyone expected, including MacLeod. She answered him "No," listlessly, but quite doggedly, and nothing that he could say, or that Catriona could threaten, served to change her. Once the old woman muttered vengefully that she would never see the fairies, for she had lost her luck, and Ishbel turned on her almost fiercely.
"It is all false," she cried in Gaelic, "for there are no green folk at all, and I do not care!"
The mystery and the charm had fled; she no longer dreamed on the green grass circle, no longer wondered at the night-song of the burn, no longer watched for the kelpies under the boulders in the burns or in the Rowan Pool. Belief in the fairies had faded on the night in which Rory left her. Except in the little bald, white kirk on the hill-side, Ishbel never sang. Song dies on the lips when care and sorrow lie heavy on the heart.
It was five years now since that fatal visit to the Gave of Gold—Ishbel never mentioned it—and she was returning, in the soft, golden haze of a September evening, from the castle. Catriona was growing feeble, and Ishbel did everything; the old woman only spinning a little, and wandering out to gather sticks and twigs for the fire. The girl had been taking up carded wool to the castle, and giving the great London ladies there a spinning lesson.
Before the cottage came in view, with its surrounding field of poor and thinly growing oats and yellow daisies (there being, indeed, a far more plentiful crop of the latter), she paused to look up the fairy knoll. There, on the top was the fairy ring. Something made Ishbel suddenly turn and mount the little hill.
The sea-loch lay beneath her, tinged with red; the sky was a wonder and a glory, but Ishbel was not looking at the sky, or at the loch. She was thinking how strange it was that she should go on living, and living much as usual, when all that was best and fairest in life was gone.
She sighed, looking down at the burn, plashing and leaping over the grey boulders. There was that story about the kelpies; her grandmother rarely spoke of them now. Were there really no kelpies—no brownies? And yet——
A step behind her made her start violently, and she gave a sharp cry. A man's tall figure was there, not ten yards off, and there flashed across Ishbel suddenly the thought that perhaps, after all, it was all true, for this was a ghost! And if there were ghosts, why not wee folk and kelpies?
"I believe it is Ishbel, herself. Do you not know me, Ishbel?"
He spoke in a new voice. The fluent Gaelic was gone, and the stiff, translated English; he spoke easily, with a strange accent. And yet, ah! she knew him at once! It was Rory! Rory, well-dressed, handsome, upright, with a different and more independent carriage, but Rory all the same!