Now she could hear more distinctly: certainly some one was by or near the Linn. The noise of the churned waters rose and fell in a long, wavering, unequal sigh; and in one of the downward hushes her keen ears caught tones and even words she fancied she recognised. She hesitated for a moment as to whether to run back for the handful of clothes she had left upstream, but then bethought her that it was only Nial and no stranger who might throw stones at her as a kelpie--as some boys from the Strath, who at Beltane had been burning small fires and cooking wild-birds' eggs, had done many weeks agone at Nial.[14] [14] In many parts of the Highlands it is still the wont of children at Beltane (May Day) to light fires in woods or on rocky spurs, and there cook eggs, or play other pranks, sometimes very fantastic ones. These meaningless observances are a survival of the days of Druidic worship. Beltane means the _sacred fire_. _Baal_, _beal_, or _bel_ is not the actual Gaelic word for the Sun, or the Sun-god: though the Druids may have had _Baal_ from the Phœnician mariners who came to Ireland. The ancient Celtic word is _bea'uil_, "the life of everything," "the source of everything." _Beal_ (pron. _bel_) and _teine_, "fire," give "Beltane"--the Festival of the Sun. How often, in her wanderings with Nial, she had bathed, to his wonder and awe at her white beauty, her daring, her skill! As for him, though he loved the running water almost with a passion, nothing would induce him to enter it, except when alone and in the dim light. As a boy he had been as much at home in it as any creature of the river. But once, after he had come to know Oona, and to find in her the one person in the world whose soul did not loom too infinitely remote above his drear loneliness of spirit, he had leaped one dead-calm noon into the water; and there and then, for the first time, realised, in the phantom which swam with him or beneath him, the misshapen ugliness of his body, the savagery of his distorted head and features. From that day he had never entered the stream, save at late dusk or on moonless nights. So with swift steps, which left small pads of damp upon the rock-ledges, Oona ran toward the great boulder which overhung the cataract. As she passed the place where, a few hours ago, she had left her foster-father and the woman Anabal, she glanced here and there for any trace of either she might not have seen before. The next moment she caught sight of Nial. She watched him curiously. What did it mean? she wondered. He was crouching, with his back to her, on the extreme of the ledge overlooking the Kelpie's Pool--that deep caldron which received all that was at last disgorged from the maelstrom of the Linn. His head was bent forward, and sometimes he leaned on his hands, and sometimes swayed backward or sideways.