“Good-bye, Neil, son of the woman that was my friend. A south wind to you! Go up by the farm. In the front of the house you will see what you will be seeing. Maisie Macdonald will be there. She will tell you what’s for the telling. There is no harm in it, sure: sure, the dead are dead. It is praying for you I will be, Neil Ross. Peace to you!”
“And to you, Sheen.”
And with that the man went.
When Neil Ross reached the byres of the farm in the wide hollow, he saw two figures standing as though awaiting him, but separate, and unseen of the other. In front of the house was a man he knew to be Andrew Blair; behind the milk-shed was a woman he guessed to be Maisie Macdonald.
It was the woman he came upon first.
“Are you the friend of Sheen Macarthur?” she asked in a whisper, as she beckoned him to the doorway.
“I am.”
“I am knowing no names or anything. And no one here will know you, I am thinking. So do the thing and begone.”