For thy child that bows his head is weary.
I the shadow am that seeks the Darkness.
Age, that hath the face of Night unstarr'd and moonless,
Age that doth extinguish star and planet,
Moon and sun and all the fiery worlds,
Give me now thy darkness and thy silence!
It was there, lying with his face in the wet heather, that Sorcha found her father. She had seen Nial flying as for his life, and, from behind the boulder where she was sheltering a lamb, had sprung forward to stop him. But all the elf-man saw was a woman's figure—perhaps the Cailliach who had already stolen his soul and now wanted his body in this night of storm! With a scream he turned aside and dashed onward in his wild, ungainly flight.
Sorcha's great eyes filled with amazement, then with dread. What did it mean? Her bosom heaved, the swell of the sudden tide at her heart. More beautiful than any Fairy-Woman that ever herded the deer or sang a fatal song, she stood with one hand at her breast, the colour ebbing from her face, her slim firm body poised as an intent stag.
Slowly her gaze travelled back the way Nial had come. In the gloom of storm she could descry nothing, no one. If the Cailliach were there, she was now invisible.
Again an almost intolerably vivid flash of blue-green light, out of a dazzling flame that seemed to burst from the hills. The hollow roar and crash that followed dazed her, but in that moment's illumination she had seen the cairn and the stannin' stane, and, beside them, the figure of her father, apparently stricken and fallen prone.