“Ay, lass; and what about the birdeen?”
“Well, when she mates with a hawk, so will I be mating with Ian Macarthur, but not till then.”
With that she turned, and left the house, and went back to Cnoc-an-Fhraoch. On the way she met Achanna.
It was that night that, for the first time, he swam across Lochan Fraoch to meet Katreen.
The quickest way to reach the shealing was to row across the lochlet, and then ascend by a sheep-path that wound through the hazel copses at the base of the hill. Fully half-an-hour was thus saved, because of the steepness of the precipitous corries to right and left. A boat was kept for this purpose, but it was fastened to a shore-boulder by a padlocked iron chain, the key of which was kept by Donald Macarthur. Latterly he had refused to let this key out of his possession. For one thing, no doubt, he believed he could thus restrain Achanna from visiting his daughter. The young man could not approach the shealing from either side without being seen.
But that night, soon after the moon was whitening slow in the dark, Katreen stole down to the hazel copse and awaited the coming of her lover. The lochan was visible from almost any point on Cnoc-an-Fhraoch, as well as from the south side. To cross it in a boat unseen, if any watcher were near, would be impossible, nor could even a swimmer hope to escape notice unless in the gloom of night, or, mayhap, in the dusk. When, however, she saw, half way across the water, a spray of green branches slowly moving athwart the surface, she knew that Sheumais was keeping his tryst. If, perchance, any one else saw, he or she would never guess that those derelict rowan-branches shrouded Sheumais Achanna.
It was not till the estray had drifted close to the ledge, where, hid among the bracken and the hazel undergrowth, she awaited him, that Katreen descried the face of her lover, as with one hand he parted the green sprays and stared longingly and lovingly at the figure he could just discern in the dim fragrant obscurity.
And as it was this night, so was it on many of the nights that followed. Katreen spent the days as in a dream. Not even the news of her cousin Ian’s return disturbed her much.
One day the inevitable meeting came. She was at Ranza-Mòr, and when a shadow came into the dairy where she was standing she looked up, and saw Ian before her. She thought he appeared taller and stronger than ever, though still not so tall as Sheumais, who would appear slim beside the Herculean Skye man. But as she looked at his close curling black hair, and thick bull neck, and the sullen eyes in his dark wind-red face, she wondered that she had ever tolerated him at all.
He broke the ice at once.