"You still believe that you saw Alastair ... Alastair in the body?"
"Yes."
"Then had you not better take the child with you? I will carry the little one. If he should see it—perhaps he would...."
"You are right, dear friend. God has put that thought into your mind."
A few minutes later, the two women passed out into the cold, fresh morning; Mary going first with the child, and keeping, wherever practicable, to the sheep-paths or to the barren ledges that ran out every here and there from the heather and bracken, and this because of the dews which lay heavily, giving a moon-white sheen to the grass, and sheathing every frond and leaf and twig as with crystal, glistening rainbow-hued.
They took a path that trailed above the hollow of the moonflowers, and led deviously shoreward by the side of Craig-Geal.
When they reached the summit of the grassy brae, where the path diverged, they looked long in every direction. Nowhere could they discern sign of any human being. Not a soul moved upon the upland moors; not a soul moved upon the boulder-strewn, rowan-studded slopes; not a soul moved by the margin of that dead-calm sea, so still that even the whisper of its lip was inaudible, though the faint aerial echo of the crooning of its primeval slumber-song slipped hushfully into the ear.
They were half-way down toward the shore when Mrs. Maclean, holding up a warning hand, stopped.
"What is it, Mary?" Lora whispered. "Do you see anything? Do you see him?"
"Look!" and, as she spoke, Mary pointed to a dip in the little glen.