Gently, with her heart beating the while, the child led the blind man to the place where the woman Anabal, after long weeping, had fallen into deep slumber. He lay down like a child. The noise of the rushing waters lulled him, the ancientest, sweetest cradle-song in all the wide green world. If he heard at all the breathing of the sleeping woman, no other thought could have come to him than that it was Oona.
She stared down at them with awestruck eyes. What was this unthinkable terror that shook her like a leaf? For a moment she conquered her fear, a fear so vague, and of the soul only, that she did not know she was afraid, though the nerves in her body leaped to the breath of it.
The tears came into her eyes. Yellow was the light that fell upon the tangled iron-grey hair of the weary sleeper at her feet; yellow as yellow flowers was the gleam upon the brown-grey tresses of the weary sleeper by his side.
The hand of the woman moved. Out of the sunglow the arm crept like a snake, then it lay still in the shadow betwixt the two who slumbered unheeding.
Oona knew not why she did it, nor even what she did; but with a touch, light almost as the warm sunbeam itself, she guided the hand of Anabal toward that of Torcall. As two ships draw together on a calm sea though far apart, so the hands of these two, who had not spoken one with the other for weary years, slipped at last side by side. The man stirred a moment, smiled, and gently clasped the hand in his.
Then, when all was well, Oona shivered with actual dread. What if they should die so? What if they were already dead? Once more she fought back this terrifying emotion. How quiet they seemed! Sweet is the grey sleep of the old.
"_Tha iad rèidha nis_," she sighed rather than whispered; "they are at peace now."
But now no longer could she stay. Like a fawn, after she had crept back upon the grassy ledges, she leaped from boulder to boulder. Soon she was at the verge of the forest. Inexplicable fear drove her like a whip. Minute after minute passed, and still she fled as though pursued. Nearly a mile had she gone before she stopped, only to fling herself into the bracken in a sheltered place, a kind of cave formed by the gigantic roots of a fallen pine-tree, long years ago wrenched away like a reed and stricken to the ground. There, sobbing at she knew not what, she cried herself to sleep at last. When the dark came, her slumber was unbroken. A solitary moonbeam that made its way through the dense covert to where she slept lay upon her feet, upon her slow-moving breast, upon the white flower of her face, upon the outspread tangle of her hair, which it clothed with fugitive pale gold. No vision of ill disturbed her. Once only she stirred, as, in dreamland, she thought she heard the song of the White Merle.