After a minute’s silence the old woman answered him in the native tongue, but only to put a question in return. “I am thinking it is a long time since you have been in Iona?” The man stirred uneasily. “And why is that, mother?” he asked, in a weak voice hoarse with damp and fatigue; “how is it you will be knowing that I have been in Iona at all?” “Because I knew your kith and kin there, Neil Ross.” “I have not been hearing that name, mother, for many a long year. And as for the old face o’ you, it is unbeknown to me.” “I was at the naming of you, for all that. Well do I remember the day that Silis Macallum gave you birth; and I was at the house on the croft of Ballyrona when Murtagh Ross--that was your father--laughed. It was an ill laughing that.” “I am knowing it. The curse of God on him!” “’Tis not the first, nor the last, though the grass is on his head three years agone now.” “You that know who I am will be knowing that I have no kith or kin now on Iona?” “Ay; they are all under grey stone or running wave. Donald your brother, and Murtagh your next brother, and little Silis, and your mother Silis herself, and your two brothers of your father, Angus and Ian Macallum, and your father Murtagh Ross, and his lawful childless wife, Dionaid, and his sister Anna--one and all, they lie beneath the green wave or in the brown mould. It is said there is a curse upon all who live at Ballyrona. The owl builds now in the rafters, and it is the big sea-rat that runs across the fireless hearth.” “It is there I am going.” “The foolishness is on you, Neil Ross.” “Now it is that I am knowing who you are. It is old Sheen Macarthur I am speaking to.” “_Tha mise_ … it is I.” “And you will be alone now, too, I am thinking, Sheen?” “I am alone. God took my three boys at the one fishing ten years ago; and before there was moonrise in the blackness of my heart my man went. It was after the drowning of Anndra that my croft was taken from me. Then I crossed the Sound, and shared with my widow sister Elsie McVurie: till _she_ went: and then the two cows had to go: and I had no rent: and was old.” In the silence that followed, the rain dribbled from the sodden bracken and dripping loneroid. Big tears rolled slowly down the deep lines on the face of Sheen. Once there was a sob in her throat, but she put her shaking hand to it, and it was still. Neil Ross shifted from foot to foot. The ooze in that marshy place squelched with each restless movement he made. Beyond them a plover wheeled, a blurred splatch in the mist, crying its mournful cry over and over and over. It was a pitiful thing to hear: ah, bitter loneliness, bitter patience of poor old women. That he knew well. But he was too weary, and his heart was nigh full of its own burthen. The words could not come to his lips. But at last he spoke. “Tha mo chridhe goirt,” he said, with tears in his voice, as he put his hand on her bent shoulder; “my heart is sore.”