There is one tender memory of this distressing scene. Neither by look, word, nor tone did Donald attach blame or responsibility to me. He recovered himself in a few minutes, and then stood up, and gave a brief command in Gaelic. Four awe-struck men spread a plaid on the ground, placed the dead body on it, and carried it into the hut. Donald, gravely silent, took the pipes from the man who had been playing, and followed them. I bared my head and went after him miserably. Maclachlan's body lay on the floor of the hut. The eyes were wide open, but on his fine composed face there was no trace of the agony and passion in which he had gone before his God. It was as if, in that last terrible second, some vision of beauty had swept his soul clean. I knelt down and reverently closed the staring eyes. "Donald," said I, when I arose, "I would to God that you had killed me instead." "It's weird," said he solemnly, "and weird mun hae way." I looked at him closely. That he was struck to the heart was plain to see, but, the first uprush of grief over, he had become sober, steadfast, almost business-like, as if he had something great in hand to do, and would be doing it. He took the candle, now only the length of my ring-finger, and stuck it on the narrow window-ledge. Again he spoke to the men in Gaelic, and they moved out of the hut. Turning to me, he said, "Com in when ta licht gaes oot!" He had the right to be alone with his dead. I wrung his hand and left him. When I looked back from the doorway, he was filling his bag with wind, but stopped to say, "Weird mun hae way." And as he said it he smiled. I crossed the road to the edge of the dip. More wood had been piled on the fire, which now blazed cheerfully. Most of the men lay asleep in their plaids, but a few stood guard over the horses, and the men who had carried the body into the hut were squatting on the grass by the roadside. I took my stand near them, and looked and listened. The terrible similarity of Donald's case to mine appalled me. Each of us, in saving another, had struck down in the darkness a man near and dear to him. Two good men and true had gone when the lust of life is sweetest and the will to live strongest. I, who three weeks ago had never seen human life taken, had taken it, and seen it taken, as if men were of no more account than cattle. Between the house-place of the Hanyards and the top of Shap, Death had become my familiar. For Maclachlan I had nothing but pity. He had thought that I stood between him and Margaret. Clearly he had learned of her coming back to me, and the thought had maddened him. He had disguised himself as an Englishman and come after me, and this was the end of it.