indomitable courage on her face, and pursing her lips into a thin line.

When I put the spirits into her hand she sipped a little, and coughed
politely at the strength of it, and then turned herself towards me.

"A grain o' water," said she. "You will be liking it plain yourself,
but I would aye be liking a little water--after it. Many's the day
have I been waiting for the coming of Bryde, the dear one, the limber
lad, and I will be tholing yet a wee, for I will be seeing him before I
will be going to my own place."

And with that Margaret came to be speaking to the old one, and for
myself I made my way outside to where I could be laughing in comfort,
for the sight of Betty's face when she had made up her mind to be
tholing a little longer was too much for me.

It was after this visit to Betty that Margaret would be asking me to be
taking the dogs and catching her a pair or two, maybe, of young
rabbits, for they were well grown, and she took butter in the blade of
a kail, and such-like truck, and went to see Mhari nic Cloidh.

She was come of a great race this Mhari nic Cloidh, a race that has
given the old names to glens and to burns, a race that led the
Brandanes of the Kings; but she was old and lived alone, except maybe
when the young lassies would be doing the scouring of her blankets,
tramping like all that, and among the lassies was the saying that Mhari
nic Cloidh had the gift.

Well, for that I will not be saying, but she would aye have a dram for
kent folk, and Dan McBride took me with him there many a time. Well,
well, the young boys would be tormenting the old lady--they would be
lighting green branches in the fire in her sleeping-place, to smeek her
out, not meaning any ill, but just for a ploy, and to see her lindging
at them with the stick from her bed, and craking and raging at them
time about, to be taking the divot off the top of the lum. And that
was the great diversion for them; but when Margaret went to her this
time she was thrang at the building of her stack of peat, and there was
with her a younger woman, and Mhari nic Cloidh was not in good wind,
for the first of her words came to us: "A traill," says she to her
helper. "Traill," it seems to me, would be meaning in the English,
"lazy, useless, bedraggled"; but there is no word in English that would
be giving the contempt of that word, which I am thinking would have
some connection with the Norse word "troll," but I am not sure of it.