The heart of the birdeen lightened as she walked swiftly through the dewy fern. She began to call back to the cushats and other birds as they uttered their matin cries. Then she laughed, and broke into snatches of song.
The light was streaming down the Strath as she emerged into the open glade above the Linn. Here, among the trees on the slope and in the many cavernous rocks and bosky hollows, deep shadows still lingered. It would be nigh upon an hour before the morning twilight waned hence.
A glance showed her that there was no one at the Linn. She ran down close to it, and peered eagerly here and there, on either side. There was no one visible. With a sigh of relief she was about to step forward to take a sunrise peep into the Pool below the Linn, for the great salmon she had never yet been able to descry, when she stopped, because of the croaking of a raven.
It was not lucky to go athwart the croaking of a fee-ach' at sunrise. The great black bird swung on an outspread bough of a hazel, close to the Kelpie's Pool, and croaked with harsh, monotonous reiteration. Oona stooped, lifted a stone, and threw it at the raven, who watched her closely.
"Fitheach! fitheach! The way of the sun to you! Be off, be off!"
"Black fēē-ach, black fēē-ach, go where the dead are, and do not cross my way, or I will put a _rosad_ upon thee!"
Half angry, half glad, the child threw another stone; then turned, leaped from stone to stone till she gained the grass again, and then went singing low toward the cave called the Uav-an-teine.
The arch of it was still in shadow, and the bracken on the brow of the arch: though the rowan that leaned forward into the air bathed its upper branches in sunlight. On the smooth thyme-set sward beyond, the yellow shine lay; so warm, that the butterflies hovered in and out of the golden area.
With cautious steps Oona advanced. If Nial were there she wished to surprise him while he slept.
She crawled to one side of the sunswept cave, within which was still a warm dusk. Surely that was the sound of breathing? Yes; she could hear the steady rise and fall, faint though it was. With a smile she moved forward.
Suddenly she stood as one changed into stone. What was this: what did it mean? No sign of Nial was there. But, among dried bracken and dead leaves, blown or drifted there in autumnal days, and forming a place of rest fit for the weariest deer that ever leaped before the baying hounds, lay two figures, clasped in one another's arms.