“If I hear the _comh-thonn_ it is not in the way you will be meaning, Gloom-mhic-Achanna. ’Tis not the ‘Up Sail and Good-bye’ they will be saying, but ‘Home wi’ the Bride.’” Here Marcus intervened. “Let us be having no more words, Mànus MacCodrum. The girl Anne is not for you. Gloom is to be her man. So get you hence. If you will be going quiet, it is quiet we will be. If you have your feet on this thing, then you will be having that too which I saw in the boat.” “And what was it you saw in the boat, Achanna?” “The death of a man.” “So—. And now” (this after a prolonged silence, wherein the four men stood facing each other, “is it a blood-matter if not of peace?” “Ay. Go, if you are wise. If not, ’tis your own death you will be making.” There was a flash as of summer lightning. A bluish flame seemed to leap through the moonshine. Marcus reeled, with a gasping cry; then, leaning back, till his face blenched in the moonlight, his knees gave way. As he fell, he turned half round. The long knife which Mànus had hurled at him had not penetrated his breast more than an inch at most, but as he fell on the deck it was driven into him up to the hilt. In the blank silence that followed, the three men could hear a sound like the ebb-tide in sea-weed. It was the gurgling of the bloody froth in the lungs of the dead man. The first to speak was his brother, and then only when thin reddish-white foam-bubbles began to burst from the blue lips of Marcus. “It is murder.” He spoke low, but it was like the surf of breakers in the ears of those who heard. “You have said one part of a true word, Gloom Achanna. It is murder—that you and he came here for!” “The death of Marcus Achanna is on you, Mànus MacCodrum.” “So be it, as between yourself and me, or between all of your blood and me; though Aulay MacNeil, as well as you, can witness that though in self-defence I threw the knife at Achanna, it was his own doing that drove it into him.” “You can whisper that to the rope when it is round your neck.” “And what will _you_ be doing now, Gloom-mhic-Achanna?” For the first time Gloom shifted uneasily. A swift glance revealed to him the awkward fact that the boat trailed behind the _Luath_, so that he could not leap into it, while if he turned to haul it close by the rope he was at the mercy of the two men. “I will go in peace,” he said quietly. “Ay,” was the answer, in an equally quiet tone, “in the white peace.” Upon this menace of death the two men stood facing each other. Achanna broke the silence at last. “You’ll hear the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’ the night before you die, Mànus MacCodrum, and lest you doubt it you’ll hear it again in your death-hour.”