Of course I know how strange this will seem to people who read it, but that cannot be helped and does not really matter. It was in that way the thing happened, and it did not even seem strange to me. Anything might happen on the moor--anything. And there was the fair little girl with the eyes like a doe’s. I knew she had come to play with me, and we went together to my house among the bushes of broom and gorse and played happily. But before we began I saw her stand and look wonderingly at the dark-red stain on the embroideries on her childish breast. It was as if she were asking herself how it came there and could not understand. Then she picked a fern and a bunch of the thick-growing bluebells and put them in her girdle in such a way that they hid its ugliness. I did not really know how long she stayed. I only knew that we were happy, and that, though her way of playing was in some ways different from mine, I loved it and her. Presently the mist lifted and the sun shone, and we were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden in a room in a castle because something strange was going to happen which we were not told about. She ran behind a big gorse bush and did not come back. When I ran to look for her she was nowhere. I could not find her, and I went back to Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled. “Where did she go?” I asked them, turning my head from side to side. They were looking at me strangely, and both of them were pale. Jean was trembling a little. “Who was she, Ysobel?” she said. “The little girl the men brought to play with me,” I answered, still looking about me. “The big one on the black horse put her down--the big one with the star here.” I touched my forehead where the queer scar had been. For a minute Angus forgot himself. Years later he told me. “Dark Malcolm of the Glen,” he broke out. “Wee Brown Elspeth.” “But she is white--quite white!” I said. “Where did she go?” Jean swept me in her warm, shaking arms and hugged me close to her breast. “She’s one of the fair ones,” she said, kissing and patting me. “She will come again. She’ll come often, I dare say. But she’s gone now and we must go, too. Get up, Angus, man. We’re for the castle.” If we three had been different--if we had ever had the habit of talking and asking questions--we might surely have asked one another questions as I rode on Sheltie’s back, with Angus leading us. But they asked me nothing, and I said very little except that I once spoke of the wild-looking horsemen and their pale, joyous faces. “They were glad,” was all I said. There was also one brief query from Angus. “Did she talk to you, bairnie?” he said. I hesitated and stared at him quite a long time. Then I shook my head and answered, slowly, “N-no.” Because I realized then, for the first time, that we had said no words at all. But I had known what she wanted me to understand, and she had known what I might have said to her if I had spoken--and no words were needed. And it was better.