"That is one reason, Nial-of-the-woods! Look you, I found that ring in a crevice in the rocks on the further left side of the Linn o' Mairg. Look you again, I know the ring. Do you see these letters? Ah, well, you can't read, poor elfin-creature that you are; but I'll tell them to you. They are _F. G._ and _A. G._ And now will you be knowing what _F. G._ and _A. G._ are for? They are for Fergus Gilchrist and Anabal Gilchrist--_and this ring here, that I found by the Linn o' Mairg, is the wedding-ring of Anabal Gilchrist_!" The outcast stared, vaguely impressed, but without understanding what Murdo was driving at. The man saw he was puzzled, so with a rough gesture he pulled him over to the near flank of the mare. "And here, you poor fool--_to Himself be the praise, for this and that!_--is the other reason. Look at _that_!" What he pointed to was a long tress of grey hair, grey-streaked brown hair, firmly clutched in the right hand of the dead man. A glimmering of Murdo's meaning came into Nial's mind. He glanced at the shepherd, appalled. "Ay," whispered the latter, divining his thought: "sure, that there is nothing else but a tress of the hair of the woman Anabal. And you be telling me, Nial, if you can, what Anabal Gilchrist was doing last night or to-day afore dawn, that she should leave her golden wedding-ring lying by the Linn-side, and that a tress of her hair--and there is none like it, no, none o' that witchy grey-brown, in all the Strath--should be held even now in the death-grip o' Torcall Cameron o' Màm-Gorm?" "And that is why you have come here, with ... with ... _him_?" "That is why." The two looked at each other. A fierce anger and lust of revenge burned in the heart of the shepherd. To Nial everything was simply a horrible, incomprehensible mystery. But Murdo knew something, perhaps more than anyone else, of what had lain between Torcall Cameron and Anabal Gilchrist; whatever the outcast knew, or vaguely surmised, was too deep down in his mind now to swim up into remembrance. It was Nial who broke the silence. "What of Alan?" "The curse is upon him too--to the Stones be it said!" "He will be far up on the north side of Tornideon ... or with Sorcha on Iolair." "The woman must have fled. Or ... ah, for sure, that thought was never coming to me. Nial, my man, you never thought o' that, did you? You never thought that perhaps there were _two_ bodies down there in the pool! Ay, for sure, for sure: Màm-Gorm was not the man to die alone!" "Perhaps ... Murdo, perhaps it was ... perhaps it was ... _he_ who...." The words failed. The gaunt shepherd looked down at the speaker, frowning darkly. "May be, may be," he muttered at last. "If I thought _that_, I would be letting him lie in his own house. Nial, see that no word o' this gets upon your lips if you meet anyone. No one must think _that_. No one in the Strath must think an evil thing o' Màm-Gorm."