psy stood some way from us, on the cold dark shore head,
and I think we had all a lowness of spirits, for that place is more sad
and mournful than any place I have ever seen.

"You'll set McCurdy's hut to rights for my dark wife," said Dan to me,
"and let it be her own place, and the money that is lying with my
uncle, you'll be giving her when she needs it," and there he went on,
keeping up her heart with his talk, and his eyes were straining
longingly to the loom of hills in the dimness, like a man saying
farewell, and I think the gangers and Dol Beag were clean forgot.

There came to our ears the low swish-sch of a boat gliding and
slithering over wrack, and the beating of wings in the air as the
sea-birds left the beach, and Alastair's boat grated on the gravel of
the shore.

"Will ye no' come wi' me, my dear," cried Dan to the lass as she clung
to him, and I had a twinge of jealousy that I was all forgot.

"Oh, fain, fain wid I be to travel wi' ye, my man, the cool long roads
and the waving green meadows; but oh! ye hivna the nature o' my
folk--there will be the great battles calling ye, and I would be trying
to keep ye beside me, till ye grew weary o' me. But you will remember
always and always in your wanderings you will never be thinking of me,
but just that I will be loving you somewhere," and with a great cry,
"Have I no' loved ye--can I ever be forgetting ye?"

When Dan would have taken her to his heart, she sprang away, her eyes
blazing.

"Do not be petting me," she cries. "I am not a bairn to be quieted.
Tell me ye love me--I want my ain fierce lover that wid make me kneel
to him because he loved me--the love in his eyes and the strength o'
his hands,--oh, I have loved a man." And then the man answered, and
she saw the sorrow of parting in his face.

"My ain brave lass" . . . and at his words she came to him--"I will be
waiting for you all the long days, for I will be with you again; but
oh! it were better for all that ye never set your boot on these shores,
for then the storm-clouds will gather, and the lightning will leap in
the scarred mountains--my love, my love; but my heart cannot be brave
enough to forbid you to come back to me." And for an instant the wild
fierce woman clung to her lover, then fled from the shore. Dan stepped
into the waiting boat in silence, his head on his breast, and a word
from McKinnon or me, I think, would have kept him; but we said our
farewells, and Alastair set