“Well, Sheumais, my brother, it is wondering if I am dead, you will be. Maybe ay and maybe no. But I send you this writing to let you see that I know all you do and think of. So you are going to leave Eilanmore without an Achanna upon it? And you will be going to Sleat in Skye? Well, let me be telling you this thing. _Do not go._ I see blood there. And there is this, too: neither you nor any man shall take Katreen away from me. _You_ know that; and Ian Macarthur knows it; and Katreen knows it: and that holds whether I am alive or dead. I say to you: do not go. It will be better for you and for all. Ian Macarthur is away in the north-sea with the whaler-captain who came to us at Eilanmore, and will not be back for three months yet. It will be better for him not to come back. But if he comes back he will have to reckon with the man who says that Katreen Macarthur is his. I would rather not have two men to speak to, and one my brother. It does not matter to you where I am. I want no money just now. But put aside my portion for me. Have it ready for me against the day I call for it. I will not be patient that day: so have it ready for me. In the place that I am I am content. You will be saying: why is my brother away in a remote place (I will say this to you: that it is not farther north than St Kilda nor farther south than the Mull of Cantyre!), and for what reason? That is between me and silence. But perhaps you think of Anne sometimes. Do you know that she lies under the green grass? And of Mànus MacCodrum? They say that he swam out into the sea and was drowned; and they whisper of the seal-blood, though the minister is wroth with them for that. He calls it a madness. Well, I was there at that madness, and I played to it on my _feadan_. And now, Sheumais, can you be thinking of what the tune was that I played? “Your brother, who waits his own day, “GLOOM.” “Do not be forgetting this thing: _I would rather not be playing the ‘Damhsà-na-mairbh.’_ It was an ill hour for Mànus when he heard the Dàn-nan-Ròn; it was the song of his soul, that; and yours is the Davsa-na-Mairv.”