After I had watched him silently for a little while I leaned forward and
pointed to a part of the moor where there was an unbroken blaze of gorse
in full bloom like a big patch of gold.
"That is where I was sitting when Wee Brown Elspeth was first brought to
me," I said.
He sat upright and looked. "Is it?" he answered. "Will you take me there
to-morrow? I have always wanted to see the place."
"Would you like to go early in the morning? The mist is more likely to
be there then, as it was that day. It is so mysterious and beautiful.
Would you like to do that?" I asked him.
"Better than anything else!" he said. "Yes, let us go in the morning."
"Wee Brown Elspeth seems very near me this evening," I said. "I feel as
if--" I broke off and began again. "I have a puzzled feeling about her.
This afternoon I found some manuscript pushed behind a book on a high
shelf in the library. Angus said he had hidden it there because it was a
savage story he did not wish me to read. It was the history of the feud
between Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm of the Glen. Dark Malcolm's child
was called Wee Brown Elspeth hundreds of years ago--five hundred, I
think. It makes me feel so bewildered when I remember the one I played
with."
"It was a bloody story," he said. "I heard it only a few days before we
met at Sir Ian's house in London.
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