Alan had no word from her, to his sorrow. Steadfastly she stared; but breathed no whisper even. Then, with a faint sigh, she turned, moved like a ray of light across the room, and, before he knew what had happened, she was gone. Bewildered at the child going thus quietly away, he went slowly to the door; but she had already vanished. So small a lass could soon be lost in that sunlit sea of green-gold bracken. For some days thereafter he caught at times a faint echo of her singing in the woods. Once, in a gleaming silver-dusk, he saw the imprint of her small feet, darkly distinct in the wet dew, underneath the little window behind which Sorcha lay. But she did not come again. It was on the eve of the morning that Oona came that Nial also, for the first and last time, beheld the little Ivor--so called after Ivor, the brother of Marsail that was Sorcha's mother, the noblest man Alan had ever known; "Ivor the good," as he was called by some, "Ivor the poet" by others. Alan was out, talking to Anna MacAnndra, when Nial stole into the room. One hope was in his heart: that Sorcha slept. With gleaming eyes, seeing that this was so, he drew near. The sight of the little white child, close lain against his mother's bosom, made a pain in his heart greater than ever the stillest moonlit night had done--a suffocating pain, that made him tremble. He drew a long breath. He, too, he knew, had once been small, perhaps white and sweet, like _that_. Was it possible that so small, so frail a thing could have a soul? Sure, it could not be. If not, should he not take it, and keep it by him in the forest, till the day when it could be mate to him, Nial the soulless? But if.... His hand touched the skin of the little rosy arm. The child opened its eyes of wonder full upon him. They gazed unwaveringly, seeing nothing, it may be: if seeing, heeding not. Had it cried, even, or turned away its head; but, no, its blue, unfearing eyes were fixed upon this creature of another world. It was enough. With a low, sobbing moan he turned and stole unseen from the room, and so out on the hillside, and past that praying-place of Cnoc-na-shee, where so vainly he and Oona had urged that which might not be; and so to the forest, that was the home of the wild fawns, and of the red fox, and of Nial. None, save the child Oona, ever saw again the elf-man that was called Nial the Soulless: none, though Murdo the shepherd averred that, once, as he passed through the forest in the darkness of a black dawn, he heard a wailing cry come from a great hollow oak that grew solitary among the endless avenues of the pines. * * * * * It was far within that first month of motherhood, presaged by the secret rune heard of Sorcha, the _Rune of the Passion of Mary_, that only women dying of birth may hear: it was within this time that an unspeakable weakness came upon Sorcha.