“Well?” he said.
“May I come in?”
“Come in, and welcome. And what will you be wanting, Sheumas Maclean?”
“Sure, it’s too late to sleep, an’ I’m thinking I would like to hear now that story you were to tell me.”
The man gave no answer to that. Each looked at the other with luminous unwinking eyes.
“It will not be a fair thing,” said Isla slowly, at last. “It will not be a fair thing: for I am bigger and stronger.”
“There is another way, Isla Macleod.”
“Ay?”
“That you or I go to her, and tell her all, and then at the last say: ‘Come with me, or stay with him.’”
“So be it.”