The girl looked at him directly almost for the first time. Was he making
fun of her? She wondered. His face seemed earnest enough, and handsome.
It was not possible, she concluded.

"Ye'll be a stranger in these parts?" she answered interrogatively,
because she was a Scottish girl, and one question for another is good
national barter and exchange.

Gregory Jeffray was about to declare his names, titles, and
expectations; but he looked at the girl again, and saw something that
withheld him.

"Yes," he said, "I am staying for a week or two over at Barr."

The boat grounded on the pebbles, and the girl went to let down the
hinged end. It had seemed a very brief passage to Gregory Jeffray. He
stood still by his mare, as though he had much more to say.

The girl placed her cleek in the corner, and moved to leave the boat. It
piqued the young man to find her so unresponsive. "Tell me what you mean
by 'a cry across the Black Water,'" he said.

The girl pointed to the strip of sullen blackness that lay under the
willows upon the southern shore.

"That is the Black Water of Dee," she said simply, "and the green point
among the trees is the Rhonefoot. Whiles there's a cry from there. Then
I go over in the boat, and set them across."

"Not in this boat?" he said, looking at the upturned deal table swinging