Then drawing herself into a sitting posture, with her hands about Maud’s neck, she took a kerchief from under the pillow and dried her friend’s tears, murmuring the while, “Ah, do not cry, Maud, my vision will yet come true, and you shall indeed see Ben Gairn and Thrieve—­and everything.  I was dreaming about it last night.  Shall I tell you about it, sweet Maud?”

Maud Lindesay did not reply, not having recovered power over her voice.  So the little Maid of Galloway went on unbidden.

“Yes, I dreamed a glad dream yester-even.  Shall I tell it you all and all?  I will—­though you can tell stories far better than I.

“Methought that I and you—­I mean, dear Maud, you and I, were sitting together in the gloaming at the door of a little house up on the edges of the moorland, where the heather is prettiest, and reddest, and longest.  And we were happy.  We were waiting for some one.  I shall not tell you who, Maudie, but if you are good, and stop crying, you can guess.  And there was a ring on your finger, Maud.  No, not like the old ones—­not a pretty ring like those in your box, yet you loved it more than them all, and never stopped turning it about between your finger and thumb.

“They had let me come up to stay with you, and the men who had accompanied me were drinking in the clachan.  As we sat I seemed to hear their loud chorus, sounding up from the change-house.

“And you listened and said:  ’I wish he would come.  He is very long.  It is always long when he is away.’  But you never said who it was that was long away.  And I shall not tell you, though I know.  Perhaps it was old Jock Lacklands, who used to be captain of the guard, and perhaps grouting Peter, from the gate-house by the ford.  But somehow I do not think so.  Ah, that is better!  Now do not cry again.  But listen, else I will not tell you any more, but go off to sleep instead.

“Perhaps you do not want to hear the rest.  Yet—­it was such a pretty dream, and of good omen.

“You do want to hear?  Well, then, be good!

“As we sat there we could hear the bumblebees scurrying home, and every now and then one of the big boom-beetles would sail whirring past us.  We could hear the sheep crying below in the little green meadows so lonesomely, and the snipe bleating an answer away up in the sky above their heads, and you said, ’It is all so empty, wanting him!’

“Then the maids brought in the cows, and milked them standing at the gable end, and we could smell the smell of their breath, sweet like the scent of the flowers they had been eating all day long.  Then, after a while, they were driven out of the yard again, and went in a string, one after the other, back to their pastures, doucely and sedately, just like folk going to holy kirk on Sabbath days when it is summer time in Galloway.

“Then you said, ‘I am weary of waiting for him!’ And I answered, ’Why,—­he has not been gone more than a day.  Sometimes I do not see him for weeks, and I never fret like that!’