There she lay on the grass-covered rock, white and still. Nial bent over her, moaning, trembling, moaning.
An hour later, Murdo the shepherd, coming down from the mountain, and going by the Linn o' Mairg, so as to reach Inverglas by the west side of the Strath, heard a wild barking of his dogs. Through the heat-haze he stared indifferently, then curiously, at two stooping figures.
He approached the pool slowly. The dogs were silent. One had stopped, and was sniffing and staring, the other whined at his feet.
Yes, he was right, he muttered; it was Nial ...and Oona! But what did it mean?
Both sat silently by the Kelpie's Pool. The wild, fantastic, shrunken figure of Nial was black against the light. He seemed as though rapt, spellbound. The child was naked, her shoulder reddening under the flame of the sun. He could see her strained, streaming eyes.
His heart beat quick with a vague fear as he moved toward them. He stopped, when Oona's low, irregular sobbing was audible.
Beside him the collies crouched, whining.
Nial looked round, rose, and touched Oona. She, too, rose; her sobbing breath ceasing.
"Màm-Gorm is dead," said Nial simply; "he is dead—there."