Soon thereafter the mists began to disperse.
Alan Gilchrist was at the pool, below the Linn o' Mairg, long before Sorcha Cameron came down from Màm-Gorm, the hill-farm on Iolair, by the circuitous but secluded way through the pine-glades.
For an hour or more he had lain there, dreaming. The first green breath of May was sweet upon the land: already a warmth as of midsummer was in the air. Pleasant it was to lie and dream by the running water.
When he had first reached the Mairg Water, after his fruitless journey to Inverglas, the village of Strath Iolair, he had thrown himself down among the fern, in the shadow of a boulder overlooking the Kelpie's Pool. Angry thoughts were in his mind, because of the minister's refusal to marry Sorcha and himself. It was a bitter thing, he thought, and unjust.
For that noontide, after he had driven the sheep on to the upper pastures upon Tornideon, and had got little Davie Niven, of Clachan-nan-Creag, to herd the sheep for him till moonrise, he had gone down by his home at Ardoch-Beag, itself high on the mountain-side—though he was little there during the summer-pasturing on the hills—to the strath, and so by the road to Inverglas. As he went through the village, there were many who looked at him with glad eyes: for wherever he went Alan found a smile of welcome for him, partly because of the beauty of his tall person and curly yellow hair, which made the strath women call him Alan-aluinn, Alan-fair-to-see, but more perhaps of his own smile that was so sweet out of his blue eyes, and for the grave yet winning way of him. His rival, Duncan Robertson, spoke of him contemptuously as "the man for women and children"; but, as others besides Duncan Robertson knew well, the women's-man and the children's-man could also be the best man's-man in the strath when occasion required.
This early afternoon, however, he had no wish to speak with any, and so hurried on, with a visit only to old Morag Niven, Davie the herd-laddie's grandmother. The small, douce, wizened old woman blessed him for what he brought her, and insisted on telling his fortune again by the lines in his hands. Laughingly he assured her she had told it to him so often that he was beginning not to believe in her predictions at all.
"That may be," she exclaimed, half-pettishly: "but it's this I'm telling you, Alan Mac Fergus, and what's more, it's not only the 'vision' of the love that's coming to you, but I've had the 'sight' on the lover too!"
The young man flushed, but answered carelessly:
"Good for you, Mùimé: but sure 'tis a risky thing to be seeing too much."