"_Fifth_: And the man she loves is a poor misguidit wastrel who lives on a hill opposite to her, and I'm thinkin' his name will be Alan too, Alan this or Alan that. "_Sixth_: 'Tis Himself only, praise be to Him, who knows who this Morna-Fiona-Alona may be: but in a dream I had, I'm thinkin' her name is Sorcha. "_And Seventh_" (_this in a relapse from Gaellic into the Lowland tongue_): "I may be a silly auld wife, Alan my man, but I'm na sae blind as ta fail ta see through a split poke, for a' yer havers and blethers!" With a shamefaced laugh Alan told her she was an old witch, and was sheer doited at that! Then, suddenly stooping and kissing her grey hair, he bade her good-bye, and went on his way. But it was an ill-faring. Mr. Morrison, the tall, dark-faced minister, gray and lank as an old fox, though a godly man, would have nothing to say to the granting of his request. "No, no, Alan Gilchrist," he added in parting, and in a not unkindly tone, "'tis no ill-will I am bearing you, my lad. But neither I nor any true minister of God will wed you and Sorcha Cameron, because of the feud between Torcall her father and Anabal your mother, and of the ban laid by him on her, and by her on you." "So be it, Mr. Morrison; but as for me, I will be putting up with no banning from man or woman--no, not I, nor Sorcha either!" "That is a wicked thing for you to say. But Sorcha is a good lass if you're not a good lad, and ... and ... the long and short of it is, I can't and won't wed you and her ... no, not though your mother and Sorcha's father were to die, and that I avow here solemnly, to the stones be it said." And so it was that the young man went away wrathful and indignant. Yet, with every mile of his homeward journey he cared less and less. After all, what did it matter to him or Sorcha? Living remote upon the solitary hills, and rarely seeing the people of the strath, what did it avail whether or no he and she were "blessed" by Mr. Morrison? Well, he had done what he could. He knew, of course, of the heavy weight of a parental ban; how, with some, it was a command as sacred and inviolable as those of God. But he did not know all that Mr. Morrison knew or surmised: wherein, indeed, was the deeper reason of the refusal. "The child Oona, the child Oona," muttered the minister as he returned to his house; "why was she sent by Anabal, as soon as might be after birth, to Torcall Cameron? And why was he stricken blind, he there alone on Màm-Gorm, with Marsail, his wife, long dead, and only his daughter, Sorcha, sweet lass, beside him: stricken of God, blind and desolate for all his days thereafter? Alas, too, what of the doom of Fergus, her husband!" But, lying by the running water of Mairg, Alan, at last oblivious of what had angered him and left in his mind a vague distress, pondered other and dearer things than these.