She came many times. Through all my childish years I knew that she
would come and play with me every few days--though I never saw the wild
troopers again or the big, lean man with the scar. Children who play
together are not very curious about one another, and I simply accepted
her with delight. Somehow I knew that she lived happily in a place not
far away. She could come and go, it seemed, without trouble. Sometimes
I found her--or she found me upon the moor; and often she appeared in
my nursery in the castle. When we were together Jean Braidfute seemed to
prefer that we should be alone, and was inclined to keep the under-nurse
occupied in other parts of the wing I lived in. I never asked her to do
this, but I was glad that it was done. Wee Elspeth was glad, too. After
our first meeting she was dressed in soft blue or white, and the red
stain was gone; but she was always Wee Brown Elspeth with the doelike
eyes and the fair, transparent face, the very fair little face. As I had
noticed the strange, clear pallor of the rough troopers, so I noticed
that she was curiously fair. And as I occasionally saw other persons
with the same sort of fairness, I thought it was a purity of complexion
special to some, but not to all. I was not fair like that, and neither
was any one else I knew.



CHAPTER III

It was when I was ten years old that Wee Elspeth ceased coming to me,
and though I missed her at first, it was not with a sense of grief or
final loss. She had only gone somewhere.

It was then that Angus Macayre began to be my tutor. He had been a
profound student and had lived among books all his life. He had helped