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But her gaze upon that rolling and bleak moorland was far less confident than her words. Gilian made no reply. He only looked at her reproaching for her bitterness, and humbly took up step by her side as she walked quickly away from the scene of the cold reception. They had gone some distance when Elasaid opened her door again and came out to look after them.
She almost laughed when she found she had reduced all at last to one eligible Elasaid, her old Skye nurse, and the mother of Black Duncan, who was in what was called the last of the shealings, by the lochs of Karnes.
"No excuse at all!" said old Elasaid. "If it's your father's wish you're flying from, you need not come here." She stepped within the house, pulled out the wattle door and between it and the fir post stuck a disapproving face. "Go away! go away!" she cried harshly, "I have no room for a baggage of that kind." Then she shut the door in their faces; they could hear the bar run to in the staples.
Nan did not hear it at all; Gilian but dreamed it, as it were, and though he took it for the call of a moor-fowl, found it in his ready fancy alarmingly like the summons of an irate father. But now he dared betray no hesitancy; he did not even turn to look behind him. Elasaid cried again, but still in vain.
"Back!" said Nan, her eyes flashing. "Am I mad? Are you speaking for yourself? If it must be back for you let me not be keeping you. After all you bargained for no more than to take me to old Elasaid's, and now that I'm here and there's none of the Elasaid I expected to meet me, I'll make the rest of my way somewhere myself."
Must we be burdening ourselves unnecessarily going on a road you neither know the length or nature of?" And without a word more they proceeded towards the shealing that was to be the end of their adventure. Old Elasaid met them at the door.
It is all very well to be putting our backs to the angry Elasaid behind us there, but all the time I'm wondering what's to be the outcome." He confessed himself at a loss. She eyed him without satisfaction.
He flushed and waited, and so did she expectantly, thinking he would make the fervent protest most lads would do under the same circumstances. But in the moment's pause he could not find the words for his profound feeling. "Except old Elasaid, the nurse on the Kames moor," she continued. "Oh, her!" said he lamely. "There's no one else I could think of."
Many a time her mother had gone to the shealing a young matron for motherly counsel, but Nan herself had never been there, though Elasaid had come to Nan to nurse her when her mother died. In the shealing, she felt sure, there was not only counsel, but concealment if occasion demanded that.
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