The words came from her lips in smileless earnestness. To her, evidently, so fantastical a quest had nothing in it of surprise or strangeness.
The startled roe had already fled. The merest rustle of the bracken hinted the whither-away of its flight. Instinctively, Oona noticed the sound, and her eyes looked beyond a distant clump of pines in time to see a gleam of something brown leap out of and into the tall fern, as a seabird among green running billows.
Almost simultaneously she caught a glimpse of an uncouth dwarfish figure moving slowly through the pine-glades.
Swift as a bird to its covert she slipped into the dusk of the neighbouring savannah of bracken.
"Oona!"
The voice was nearer, but from its greater lift in the air the child knew that Nial had stopped, and was doubtless looking about him. She made no response. If the searcher were but ten yards away he would not have discovered her. No fox among the root crannies, no hare crouching low in her form, could have more easily evaded detection.
"Oona!"
The voice was now further away. Clearly Nial had turned westward, and was moving through the glade beyond the pool. Once more she heard the harsh, thin voice; but now it was crooning a song wherewith she was familiar, the words of which simulated the plaining of the wild-dove:
"Oona, Oona, mo ghraidh:
Oona, Oona, mo ghraidh: