Under a rowan, heavy with clusters of fruit, as yet of a ruddy brown touched here and there with crimson, a white figure stooped, leaning over one of the pools wherein the falling burn slept and dreamed awhile ere it leaped again from ledge to ledge, or slipped laughing and whispering through time-worn channels.
He was like some beautiful creature of an antique tale. Even as a wild deer, he stooped and drank; looked questioningly through the rowans and birches, and then across the bracken where the sun-rays slid intricately in a golden tangle; then, stooping again, again drank.
The sunlight was warm about him. His shoulders and back gleamed ivory-white, dusked flickering here and there with leaf-shadows. A shadowy green-gloom lay upon his curved breast and against his thighs, from the sheen of the water passing upward through the dense fern that overhung the stream.
"It is the young god," thought Mary; "the young god who, Seumas the Seer says, was born of human hope, weaned with human tears, taught by dreams and memories, and therewith given for his body, Beauty ... and for his soul, Immortal Joy."
But aloud she murmured only, "It is he—the Beautiful One—of the Domhan Tòir!"
Lora did not look at her; but below her breath whispered, "It is Alastair."
Swiftly and silently, they moved forward.
So intent was Alastair, after he had quenched his thirst, upon what he saw or imagined in the pool beneath him, that he did not hear their steps till they were but a few yards away.
"Alastair!"