“They will find his body in the shallows, down by Drumdoon. The spate will carry it there.”
After that we lay in silence. The rain had begun to fall again, and slid with a soft stealthy sound athwart the window. A dull light grew indiscernibly into the room. Then we heard someone move downstairs. In the yard, Angus, the stableman, began to pump water. A cow lowed, and the cluttering of hens was audible.
I moved gently from Morag’s side. As I rose, Maisie passed beneath the window on her way to the byre. As her wont was, poor wild wildered lass, she was singing fitfully. It was the same ballad again. But we heard a single verse only.
“For I have killed a man,” she said,
“A better man than you to wed:
I slew him when he clasped my head,
And now he sleepeth with the dead.”
Then the voice was lost in the byre, and in the sweet familiar lowing of the kine. The new day was come.