He gloomed at her silently. Then in a constrained voice, and with averted eyes:
"How should I know? I know nothing. I am Nial."
"They call her the wood-maid--the tree-maid."
"But when I came near, the curlew flew away. Then it was that I looked into the pool. And then, and then it was, Oona-mo-rùn, that I saw my soul lying here--big as a man's soul should be, and with a face as white as yours; ay, a fair, good body like Alan's, an' with clothes on, too--dark, beautiful clothes; an' the hands of him that moved about were white; an' ... oh, Oona-birdeen, look _you_ now, and see if it is not as I say!"
The awed child stared into the brown depths, where the surface was still ruffled silvery here and there, with a glinting, glancing shimmer that made all things below shiftily uncertain.
"Do you see it, Oona?" cried an eager whisper at her ear.
"Oona, Oona, is it dead? Oona, birdeen, Oona-mo-gràidh, it may--it _may be living_! O Oona, the white soul o' me--white as you, my fawn!"
The blue eyes glanced up from the pool, and at the speaker. She looked at him, then downward again.
"The wood-maid has been playing with you."
"No, no, no--that is not a true word on your lips!"
"Sure, a true thing it is. Look, Nial; see how big it is. The white face of it is yonder by the salmon-hole, and one foot is moving against the rock below us!"
"And what of that! Sure, it is a beautiful soul, dead or alive; and big as a man's should be, and fair and white and strong!"
"Nial ... Nial ... it may be alive, for I see its hands moving ... but ... but"--and here tears came into the child's eyes, and her voice shook with sorrow for her hapless friend--"but ... oh, Nial ... so big a soul will never be able to creep into _your_ body ... for you are small, dear, small, and--and ... an' then _it_ is so big and strong!"
Alas, the pity of it! Never once had Nial thought of this; never had he dreamed that so large a soul could not get into his dwarfish, misshapen frame.
He stared in wild amaze, first at Oona, then at the drowned thing in the water--his soul, or a phantom, or a body, or mayhap the kelpie, he knew not which, now--then at Oona again. A fierce pain was in his eyes. He bit his lip, in the way he did whenever Màm-Gorm struck him--a thing that had not been for months past. A little rivulet of blood trickled into his thin matted beard, tangled and twisted this way and that like a goat's.
