"Pig?" said the Diarmaid, putting back his shoulders and looking under his heavy brows. "You are the Lochow lad who has been seeking for me?"
"Ho, ho! red fellow; ye kent of it, then?"
"Red fellow! It's red enough you are yourself, I'm thinking. I have no great heed to draw steel on a lad of your colour, so I'll just go my way." And the man looked with queer wistful eyes over his shoulder at the lad, who, with blade-point on the sand, would have let him pass.
But up-by at the house the _taibhsear_ watched the meeting. The quiet turn it took was beyond his reading, for he had thought it would be but the rush, and the fast fall-to, and no waste of time, for the tide was coming in.
"White love, give him it!" he cried out, making for the shore. "He looks lame, but the pig's worth a man's first fencing."
Up went the boy's steel against the grey cloud, and he was at the throat of the Diarmaid like a beast. "Malison on your black heart, murderer!" he roared, still gripping his broadsword. The Diarmaid flung him off like a child, and put up his guard against the whisking of his blade.
"Oh, foolish boy!" he panted wofully as the lad pressed, and the grey light spread over sea and over shore. The quiet tide crawled in about their feet; birds wheeled on white feathers with mocking screams; the old man leaned on his staff and cheered the boy. The Diarmaid had all the coolness and more of art, and he could have ended the play as he wanted. But he only fended, and at last the slash worth fifty head found his neck. He fell on his side, with a queer twisted laugh on his face, saying, "Little hero, ye fence--ye fence----"
"Haste ye, son! finish the thing!" said the _taibhsear,_ all shaking, and the lad did as he was told, hocking at the spurt the blood made. He was pushing his dirk in the sand to clean it, when his eye fell on the Skilly Woman hirpling nimbly down to the shore. She was making a loud cry.
"God I God! it's the great pity about this," said she, looking at Murdo cutting the silver buttons off the corpse's jacket. "Ken ye the man that's there dripping?"
"The man's no more," said Rory, cool enough. "He has gone travelling, and we forgot to ask his name."
"Then if happy you would be, go home to Lochow, and ask it not, nor aught about him, if you wouldn't rue long. You sucked your first from a Diarmaid rag, and it was not for nothing."