He returned to Nial, downcast.
"There is a spell upon this place, Nial-of-the-woods. I wish we had not come."
"Why did you come?"
"This, man, this—this—is why!" he muttered savagely, and as he spoke he drew from his pocket a gold ring.
"That is one reason, Nial-of-the-woods! Look you, I found that ring in a crevice in the rocks on the further left side of the Linn o' Mairg. Look you again, I know the ring. Do you see these letters? Ah, well, you can't read, poor elfin-creature that you are; but I'll tell them to you. They are F. G. and A. G. And now will you be knowing what F. G. and A. G. are for? They are for Fergus Gilchrist and Anabal Gilchrist—and this ring here, that I found by the Linn o' Mairg, is the wedding-ring of Anabal Gilchrist!"
The outcast stared, vaguely impressed, but without understanding what Murdo was driving at. The man saw he was puzzled, so with a rough gesture he pulled him over to the near flank of the mare. "And here, you poor fool—to Himself be the praise, for this and that!—is the other reason. Look at that!"
What he pointed to was a long tress of grey hair, grey-streaked brown hair, firmly clutched in the right hand of the dead man.
A glimmering of Murdo's meaning came into Nial's mind. He glanced at the shepherd, appalled.
"Ay," whispered the latter, divining his thought: "sure, that there is nothing else but a tress of the hair of the woman Anabal. And you be telling me, Nial, if you can, what Anabal Gilchrist was doing last night or to-day afore dawn, that she should leave her golden wedding-ring lying by the Linn-side, and that a tress of her hair—and there is none like it, no, none o' that witchy grey-brown, in all the Strath—should be held even now in the death-grip o' Torcall Cameron o' Màm-Gorm?"
"And that is why you have come here, with ... with ... him?"