The girl was sobbing sore. "Man!" she said at last, "give me the peace of a night till we know what is." The _amadan_ laughed at her, and went shauchling down to the cotter's, and Mairi went in out of the darkness.
The hours passed and passed, and the same leash of strong dogs were scouring like fury down Glenaora, and the moon looked a little through a hole, and was sickly at the sight, and went by in a hurry. A collie's bark in the night came to the house where the people waited round the peats, and "Oh, my heart!" said poor Mairi.
The father took the tin lantern with the holes in it, and they all went out to the house-end. The lantern-light stuck long needles in the night as it swung on the goodman's finger, and the byre and the shed and the peat-stack danced into the world and out of it, and the clouds were only an arm's-length overhead.
The men were coming down the brae in the smother of snow, carrying something in a plaid. The dog was done with its barking, and there was no more sound from the coming ones than if they were ghosts. Like enough to ghosts they looked. No one said a word till the goodman spoke.
"Ay, _beatmachi leis!_ all that there is of him," said the Paymaster's man; and they took it but an' ben, where Mairi's mother had the white dambrod cloth she had meant for herself, when her own time came, on the table.
"It's poor Ellar, indeed," said the goodman, noticing the fair beard.
"Where's Donacha? where's Drimfern?" cried Mairi, who had pulled herself together and come in from the byre-end, where she had waited to see if there was none of the watchers behind.
The Paymaster's man was leaning against the press-door, with a face like the clay; Dol' Splendid was putting a story in the _sgalag's_ ear; the Tullich men were very busy on it taking the snow off their boots. Outside the wind had the sorry song of the curlew.
"Me-the-day! it's the story of this there is to tell," at last said Francie Ro, with a shake of the head. "Poor Drimfern----"
"Drimfem--ay, where's Drimfem in all the world?" said the goodman, with a start. He was standing before his girl to keep her from seeing the thing on the table till the wife had the boots covered. It was the face of a _cailleach_ of threescore Mairi had.