'I should beg your pardon,' said he, with his eyes cast down, 'for making use of your short name——'
'But, Ronald,' she said very bravely (though after a moment's hesitation, as if she had to nerve herself), 'whenever you think of any of us here, I hope you will think of me by that name always—and now, good-bye!'
He lifted his eyes to hers for but a second—for but a second only, and yet, perhaps, with some sudden and unforeseen and farewell message on his part, and on hers some swift and not overglad guessing.
'Good-bye!'
They shook hands in silence, and then she turned and went away; and he rejoined his companion and then they went on together. But Meenie did not re-enter the cottage. She stole away down to the river, and lingered by the bridge, listening. For there were faint sounds audible in the still morning air.
The mail-cart from the north came rattling along, and crossed the bridge, and went on towards the inn, and again there was silence, but for these faint sounds. And now she could make out the thin echoes of the pipes—no doubt one of the young lads was playing—Lochiel's away to France, perhaps, or A Thousand Blessings, for surely no one, on such an occasion, would think of Macrimmon's Lament—
'Macrimmon shall no more return
Oh! never, never more return!'
It would be something joyous they were playing there to speed him on his way; and the 'drink at the door'—the Deoch an Dhoruis—would be going the round; and many would be the hand-shaking and farewell. And then, by and by, as she sate there all alone and listening, she heard a faint sound of cheering—and that was repeated, in a straggling sort of fashion; and thereafter there was silence. The mail-cart had driven away for the south.
Nor even now did she go back to the cottage. She wandered away through the wild moorland wastes—hour after hour, and aimlessly; and when, by chance, a shepherd or crofter came along the road, she left the highway and went aside among the heather, pretending to seek for wild-flowers or the like: for sometimes, if not always, there was that in the beautiful, tender Highland eyes which she would have no stranger see.