feeling on all sides around him. He picked up three. Not another,
after searching for several minutes, could he find.

"I'm thinking that must be all of them, but I find only three!" he
said. "Come, let us go home! You must not make your cough worse for
one or two peats, perhaps none!"

"Three, Macruadh, three!" insisted the old woman in wavering voice,
broken by coughing; for, having once guessed six, she was not
inclined to lower her idea of her having.

"Well, well! we'll count them when we get home!" said Alister, and
gave his hand to her to help her up.

She yielded grumbling, and, bowed still though relieved from her burden,
tottered by his side along the dark, muddy, wind-and-rain-haunted road.

"Did you see my niece to-night at the shop?" she asked; for she was
proud of being so nearly related to those who kept the shop of the
hamlet.

"That I did," answered the chief; and a little talk followed about
Lachlan in Canada.

No one could have perceived from the way in which the old woman
accepted his service, and the tone in which she spoke to him while
he bent under her burden, that she no less than loved her chief; but
everybody only smiled at mistress Conal's rough speech. That night,
ere she went to bed, she prayed for the Macruadh as she never prayed
for one of her immediate family. And if there was a good deal of