Part 27 (1/2)

The wail, and the sudden break in the second line, had always uponhas been in s that are passed and are passing

I know not whatcouplet only, or why she lapsed at once into silence again

Indeed, my remembrance of the incident at all is due to the circumstance that shortly after Silis had turned her face to the peats again, a knock came to the door, and then Seu that lament, Silis, sister of my father?” he asked, after he had seated hilow, so that the flame seemed to enter within the flesh

Silis turned to her nephew, and looked at hily But she did not speak He, too, said nothing etful of his question, or content hat he had learned or failed to learn through her silence

The wind had coo He said he was not returning to Alltnalee, but was going upon the hill, for a big herd of deer had coh skilled in all hill and forest craft, was not a sure shot, as was his kinsman and my host, Alasdair McIan

”You will need help,” I re, ”_Co dhiubh is fhearr let mise thoir sealladh na faileadh dhiubh?_”--that is to say, Whether would you rather ht or s the old sportsmen in my country, where it is believed that a few favoured individuals have the power to deprive deer of either sight or sests

”_Dhuit ciar nan carn!_--The gloom of the rocks be upon you!” replied Seu will sniff athe went None of us saw hi? I have often wondered Or had he sight of the shadow?

It was three days after this, and shortly after sunrise, that, on crossing the south slope of Mel Mr with Alasdair Ardoch, we caed in a purple billow of heather It did not, at the moment, occur to ed absence had been noted, or that he had been searched for As a matter of fact, he must have died immediately before our approach, for his limbs were still loose, and he lay as a sleeper lies

Alasdair kneeled and raised his kinsman's head When it lay upon the purple tussock, the waritive deceptive light to the pale face I know not whether the sun can have any chemic action upon the dead But it seemed to me that a dream rose to the face of Seumas, like one of those submarine flowers that are said to rise at times and be visible for a ht, waned; and there was a great stillness and white peace where the trouble had been ”It is the S of the Hand,”

said Alasdair McIan, in a hushed voice

Often I had heard this lovely phrase in the Western Isles, but always as applied to sleep When a fretful child suddenly falls into quietude and deep slumber, an isleswo of the Hand It is always a profound sleep, and there are so, and never to be disturbed

So, thinking only of this, I whispered to my friend to co upon the hills; that he would awake in due ti I saw hireat boulder in the heather, a s its feather-like shadows across the white wool of a ewe resting underneath He moved thitherward, slowly, plucked a branch heavy with scarlet berries, and then, having returned, laid it across the breast of his kins of the trouble in the face of Seu of the sea, that ineffable quietude It was the S of the Hand

FOOTNOTE:

[10] pronounce ht--_lit_ ht, before the peats, I was told this thing by old Cairstine Macdonald, in the isle of Benbecula It is in her words that I give it:

In the spring of the year that my boy Tormaid died, the moon-daisies were as thick as a woven shroud over the place where Giorsal, the daughter of Ian, the son of Ian MacLeod of Baille 'n Bad-a-sgailich, slept night and day[11]