They wandered, the pair of them, day after day and dusk after dusk, in the way of good-fellowship, coming on many jovial adventures, gathering curious songs, meeting free-handed folk and bits of good fortune. They went many a time on the carouse of true comradery, and Alan, who should be loving a girl, sat with this merry Cowal man in wayside ale-houses, drinking starlight and the drug of the easy heart from earthen jars. “Could you come to meet me to-morrow?” once asked Ealasaid, finding her lover alone on his way to a new folly. She put a hand on his arm and leaned up against his side. “Where would we go?” he asked, tucking a loose lock of her hair behind her ear, less for his love of trimness than to get some occupation for his eyes. “It used to be enough that it was with me when I asked before,” said Ealasaid, staying his fingers; “but my cousin-german in Coillebhraid asks us up to curds and cream.” “John and I are promised at a wrestling in the town,” he said; “would the next day—” The girl drew her screen about her like one smitten by a cold wind. “Alan, Alan! your worst friend!” said she. “The decentest lad in the world; he quarrels with none.” “For cowardice.” “He understands me in every key.” “So much the readier can he make you the fool.” “He has taught me the finest songs.” “To sing in the ale-house—a poor schooling, my dear!” “I never before saw the jollity of living.” “It’s no flattery to one Ealasaid; has he said aught of the seriousness of death?” Alan hummed the end of a verse and then laughed slyly. “Lass,” said he, “does it make much differ that he thinks you the handsomest girl in the parish?” “I would sooner you yourself thought me the plainest, and yet had some pleasure in my company.” “Yesterday (on a glass), he said your eyes were the fullest, your hair the yellowest, your step the lightest, your face the sweetest in all real Argyll.” “Then he’s the man who should be doing your courting,” said the girl, with a bitterness; and she went home sore-hearted. The days passed on birds’ feathers; the brackens coarsened in the gloomy places of the forest; the young of bird and beast lost themselves in the tangled richness of the field and wood. No rains came for many days, and the sun, a gallant horseman, rode from hill to hill, feasting his eye on the glens he saw too seldom. In those hours the winds dozed upon the slimmest stem of heather; the burns, that for ordinary tear down our braes, bragging loud to the lip, hung back in friendly hollows under saugh-branch, rowan, and darach leaf; “but a little sleep,” said they—“a little sleep, that we may finish a dream we woke in the middle of,” and the grasshopper’s chirrup drowned their prayer.