A man's name took up the last breath of Silis; she gave a little shiver, and choked with a sound that the old crone had heard too often not to know.
She looked, helpless, for a little at the bed, then felt the mother's feet. They were as cold as stone.
A cry caught Murdo's ear against the wattles, and he drove in the door with his shoulder, heeding no sneck nor bar.
"Am not I the blind fool?" said the crone.
"There's your wife gone, cheap enough at the price of a yard of steel."
They stood and looked at the bed together, the bairn crying without notice.
"I knew it," said the man, heaving; "_taibhsear_ half or whole, I could see the shroud on her neck!"
The grey light was drifting in from Cladich. The fir-trees put stretched fingers up against the day, and Murdo was placing a platter of salt on a bosom as cold and as white as the snow.
"You're feeding him on the wrong cloth," said he, seeing the crone give suck to the child from a rag of Diarmaid tartan dipped in goat's milk.
The boy grew like a tree in a dream, that is seed, sapling, and giant in one turn on the side. Stronbuie's wattled bothy, old and ugly, quivered with his laughing, and the young heather crept closer round the door. The Spotted Death filled Inishail with the well-fed and the warm-happed; but the little one, wild on the brae, forgotten, sucking the whey from rags and robbing the bush of its berries, gathered sap and sinew like the child of kings. It is the shrewd way of God! There was bloody enough work forby, for never a sheiling passed but the brosey folks came pouring down Glenstrae, scythe, sword, and spear, and went back with the cattle before them, and redness and smoke behind. But no raider put hand on Black Murdo, for now he was _taibhsear_ indeed, and the _taibhsear_ has magic against dub or steel. How he became _taibhsear_ who can be telling? When he buried Silis out on the isle, his heart grew heavy, gloom seized him, the cut of the Diarmaid's sword gave a quirk to his brain that spoiled him for the world's use. He took to the hills no more in sport, he carried Gow-an-aora's sword no more in battle, for all that it cost him so dear. A poor man's rig was his at the harvest because of his Gift, and the cailzie cock or the salmon never refused his lure.