He seemed satisfied, and asked nothing further. But as for Oona, she brooded over this more and more, and wondered more and more because of the ban upon Alan, and because of the feud between Torcall Cameron in his loneliness on Iolair and Anabal Gilchrist in her loneliness on Tornideon. * * * * * The first day of August came with settled weather, and almost tropic heat. All that day Torcall Cameron had been strangely restless. If Oona left him for more than a few moments, he grew impatient, and then angry. Again and again she begged him to come into the green shadowy woods, or even to climb to the Ridge of the Stags on Iolair; but he would not. At last, weary with the heat and the long blank hours, weary too with Oona's importunities, and not wholly unwilling to humour her for his own sake, he let her take his hand and lead him forth at her will. Sorcha alone knew that, for some reason which she never fathomed, her father's "black day" was this first day of August. Year after year, his "dubhachas," his gloom, came upon him with that dawn, so that he would have word with none. She knew, too, that when the dark day was gone, her father was better for weeks thereafter, and sometimes smiled and laughed like other men. The night before had been an ill passing of July. Murdo, the shepherd, had come in, his face white. As he had come down the mountain he had heard a wild and beautiful singing, and had descried a herd of deer being driven with the wind, keeping close together. He had not seen the demon-woman, for he had turned his head away, and muttered a _sian_ to keep the evil of her from coming about him like a snake. But he thought the wind brought some of the words of her song to him, and they were of death and the grave. Then, muttering "_Glacar iad's na innleachdan a dhealbh iad_"--"Let them be taken in the devices they have imagined"--he had fled. Later, Oona came with a strange story from Nial. He had been crossing the highland behind Màm-Gorm, and had seen two men and two women walking silently with bowed heads. One man was tall and dripping wet, as though he had come out of water, and his lank hair hung adown his face. The other man was Màm-Gorm himself. The faces of the others he could not see, but one woman was tall and gaunt, with wild, straggling grey hair--a woman like Anabal Gilchrist on Tornideon. He heard only one word spoken, and that was when Màm-Gorm stopped, looked at the house, and said, "_C'aite am bheil an eilidriom?_"[13] [13] "Where is the hearse?" _Eilidriom_ (pronounced like _ā-ee-drēm_, is used in Skye and the isles, rarely if ever on the mainland. _Snaoimh_ (bier) is the common word, though when a hearse is actually meant, it is alluded to as the _carbad-mhàrbh_, "the death-chariot." "What is an _eilidriom_, Sorcha?" Oona had added. To which her sister had replied that she did not know, and that she was to say nothing of this in the house.