He turned, and went swiftly home. The gloaming had fallen, and Sorcha was sitting before the flaming peats, with clasped hands and dreaming eyes. She was crooning, half breathing, half crooning, a song, low and sweet against his ear as the noise of a running brook heard in sleep as one fares by green pastures under a moon strange and new in a strange land. And the song was one he had not known, not since he was a child, and heard Morag, the wife of Kenneth, foster-brother of Fergus Gilchrist, sing it before, in a day of mourning, she brought forth her firstborn: "An' O, an' O, St. Bride's sweet song 'tis I am hearing, dearie, Dearie, dearie, dearie, my wee white babe that's weary, Weary, weary, weary, with this my womb sae weary, And Bride's sweet song ye hear it too, and stir and sigh, my dearie! "Oh, oh, leánaban-mo, Wee hands that give me pain and woe: Pain and woe, but be it so, 'Tis his dear self that now doth grow, Leánaban-mo, leánaban-mo, 'Tis his dear self one day you'll know, Leánaban-mo, leánaban-mo! "St. Bridget dear, the cradle show, My baby comes, and I must go, Leánaban-mo, leánaban-mo! Arone!... Arò! Arone!... Arò!" He had stood in the shadow, silent, listening with awe and a strange joy. His heart yearned to go to her, but he knew that a mother's first tears were in the dreaming eyes, and that it was not for him, nor any save God, to be seeing them. So Alan turned, and went up through the dusk to the low green summit of Cnoc-na-shee, a brief way from the sheiling. And when he was there he looked and saw nothing in all the light-gloom sky but one star low in the south--_Reul-na-dhuil_, the star of hope. Peace was in his heart. He kneeled down and made a prayer for Sorcha, and the child she bore, and for him too. And when he rose, and went home, and looked back at green Cnoc-na-shee, he saw there for a moment a figure as of an angel, shining bright. Night and day they were alone there. Murdo the shepherd was up at the high sheiling on Ben Iolair, and rarely came to Màm-Gorm save to help with the kye, or do what was needed about the steading. Oona, too, was seldom seen of them; and of late, even she had not always come at sunrise for the food Sorcha placed for her on the bench by the door each morning. As for Nial, he was for long seen of none, save Oona, and where and when that was no one knew.