At the bend of the loch nearest the clachan he came upon an old woman carrying peat. To his reiterated question as to where he was, and if the tarn were Feur-Lochan above Fionnaphort that is on the strait of Iona on the west side of the Ross of Mull, she did not at first make any answer. The rain trickled down her withered brown face, over which the thin grey locks hung limply. It was only in the deep-set eyes that the flame of life still glimmered, though that dimly.
The man had used the English when first he spoke, but as though mechanically. Supposing that he had not been understood, he repeated his question in the Gaelic.
After a minute’s silence the old woman answered him in the native tongue, but only to put a question in return.
“I am thinking it is a long time since you have been in Iona?”
The man stirred uneasily.
“And why is that, mother?” he asked, in a weak voice hoarse with damp and fatigue; “how is it you will be knowing that I have been in Iona at all?”
“Because I knew your kith and kin there, Neil Ross.”
“I have not been hearing that name, mother, for many a long year. And as for the old face o’ you, it is unbeknown to me.”
“I was at the naming of you, for all that. Well do I remember the day that Silis Macallum gave you birth; and I was at the house on the croft of Ballyrona when Murtagh Ross—that was your father—laughed. It was an ill laughing that.”