Then Drumtochty became self-conscious and went home in confusion of face and unbroken silence, except Jamie Soutar, who faced his neighbours at the parting of the ways without shame. “A’ wud dae it a’ ower again if a’ hed the chance; he got naethin’ but his due.” It was two miles before Jess composed her mind, and the doctor and she could discuss it quietly together. “A’ can hardly believe me ears, Jess, an’ the Sabbath tae; their verra jidgment hes gane frae the fouk o’ Drumtochty. “They’ve heard about Saunders, a’m thinkin’, wumman, and they’re pleased we brocht him roond; he’s fairly on the mend, ye ken, noo. “A’ never expeckit the like o’ this, though, and it wes juist a wee thingie mair than a’ cud hae stude. “Ye hev yir share in’t tae, lass; we’ve hed mony a hard nicht and day thegither, an’ yon wes oor reward. No mony men in this warld ’ill ever get a better, for it cam’ from the hert o’ honest fouk.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE DÀN-NAN-RÒN[11] By FIONA MACLEOD Footnote 11: From _The Dominion of Dreams, Under the Dark Star_. By permission of Mrs. William Sharp. Copyright, 1910, by Duffield & Company. WHEN Anne Gillespie, that was my friend in Eilanmore, left the island after the death of her uncle, the old man Robert Achanna, it was to go far west. Among the men of the Outer Isles who for three summers past had been at the fishing off Eilanmore there was one named Mànus MacCodrum. He was a fine lad to see, but though most of the fisher-folk of the Lews and North Uist are fair, either with reddish hair and grey eyes, or blue-eyed and yellow-haired, he was of a brown skin with dark hair and dusky brown eyes. He was, however, as unlike to the dark Celts of Arran and the Inner Hebrides as to the northmen. He came of his people, sure enough. All the MacCodrums of North Uist had been brown-skinned and brown-haired and brown-eyed: and herein may have lain the reason why, in by-gone days, this small clan of Uist was known throughout the Western Isles as the _Sliochd non Ròn_, the offspring of the Seals. Not so tall as most of the men of North Uist and the Lews, Mànus MacCodrum was of a fair height, and supple and strong. No man was a better fisherman than he, and he was well liked of his fellows, for all the morose gloom that was upon him at times. He had a voice as sweet as a woman’s when he sang, and he sang often, and knew all the old runes of the islands, from the Obb of Harris to the Head of Mingulay. Often, too, he chanted the beautiful _orain spioradail_ of the Catholic priests and Christian Brothers of South Uist and Barra, though where he lived in North Uist he was the sole man who adhered to the ancient faith.