What was the meaning of it? he asked; but Murdo would not hear. As they stopped at the ring-stone, between the byre and the cottage, he went up to the shepherd.
"Why will you be doing this thing, Murdo MacMurdo?" he demanded.
At first the man gloomed upon him, then he smiled grimly.
Having said this, Murdo strode to the doorway of the cot. He knocked; there was no answer. He knocked again; again no answer. Then he opened the door. He did not expect to see Alan, but he was sure the woman Anabal would be in. There was no trace of her. The bed had not been slept in. The peats were black in the fireplace. Yet, strange to say, an open Bible lay on the low deal table, and on the near page was a pair of horn spectacles.
It was very strange. Well, he would search everywhere, both but and ben, out-houses and byre and stable.
There was not even a dog about the place.
"There is a spell upon this place, Nial-of-the-woods. I wish we had not come."
"This, man, this--_this_--is why!" he muttered savagely, and as he spoke he drew from his pocket a gold ring.
"That is one reason, Nial-of-the-woods! Look you, I found that ring in a crevice in the rocks on the further left side of the Linn o' Mairg. Look you again, I know the ring. Do you see these letters? Ah, well, you can't read, poor elfin-creature that you are; but I'll tell them to you. They are _F. G._ and _A. G._ And now will you be knowing what _F. G._ and _A. G._ are for? They are for Fergus Gilchrist and Anabal Gilchrist--_and this ring here, that I found by the Linn o' Mairg, is the wedding-ring of Anabal Gilchrist_!"
The outcast stared, vaguely impressed, but without understanding what Murdo was driving at. The man saw he was puzzled, so with a rough gesture he pulled him over to the near flank of the mare. "And here, you poor fool--_to Himself be the praise, for this and that!_--is the other reason. Look at _that_!"
What he pointed to was a long tress of grey hair, grey-streaked brown hair, firmly clutched in the right hand of the dead man.
A glimmering of Murdo's meaning came into Nial's mind. He glanced at the shepherd, appalled.
"Ay," whispered the latter, divining his thought: "sure, that there is nothing else but a tress of the hair of the woman Anabal. And you be telling me, Nial, if you can, what Anabal Gilchrist was doing last night or to-day afore dawn, that she should leave her golden wedding-ring lying by the Linn-side, and that a tress of her hair--and there is none like it, no, none o' that witchy grey-brown, in all the Strath--should be held even now in the death-grip o' Torcall Cameron o' Màm-Gorm?"