"_Tha, Ailean-a-ghaolach!_" came back, with a ripple of laughter, the laughter of joy.[3] [3] "Sorcha, my bonnie lassie," "Yes, Alan, my darling." "Ah mo cailin geal, mo nighean donn, duit ciat mhor!" "Duit cíat, no runach!"[4] [4] "Ah, my fair one, my dark-haired lass, joy be on you!"--"And joy on you, my loved-in-secret." _Infra_: Domnuill-dubh instead of Donncha-dubh: _i.e._ "should be called Black Donald instead of Black Duncan." It is a play upon words: for "Black Donald" is the Highland colloquialism for Satan. "The sheep and the kye don't know love, Sorcha, or they would stay here till the mists go, and then we would see each other." "Let us cry _deasiul_, and turn thrice sunways!" "Ay; and meanwhile the beasts won't stand still! That evil beast of a bull, Donncha-dhu, who ought to be called Domnuill-dhu, is leading the way over the shoulder of Maol-Gorm. I must go, Sorcha-mo-ghraidh, or never a sheep will I find again; and as for the kye, they'll go smelling the four winds. _Sorcha! Sorcha!_ Can you hear?" _Hear_ came back in a sweet falling echo, the more remote and aerial because of the mist. "Come down to-night after the milking, and meet me at the Linn.... Sorcha! I'm going to see Mr. Morrison again!" "'Tis no use, Alan. But I'll meet you at the Linn in the late gloaming." "_Sorcha!_" "_Alan!_" Then, fainter and fainter, _Sorcha!_... _Alan!_ And at last no response came when Alan Gilchrist cried, with a prolonged echoing call, the name of his _ghaolaiche_, his heart's joy. Soon thereafter the mists began to disperse. * * * * * Alan Gilchrist was at the pool, below the Linn o' Mairg, long before Sorcha Cameron came down from Màm-Gorm, the hill-farm on Iolair, by the circuitous but secluded way through the pine-glades. For an hour or more he had lain there, dreaming. The first green breath of May was sweet upon the land: already a warmth as of midsummer was in the air. Pleasant it was to lie and dream by the running water. When he had first reached the Mairg Water, after his fruitless journey to Inverglas, the village of Strath Iolair, he had thrown himself down among the fern, in the shadow of a boulder overlooking the Kelpie's Pool. Angry thoughts were in his mind, because of the minister's refusal to marry Sorcha and himself. It was a bitter thing, he thought, and unjust.