“Where did she go?” I asked them, turning my head from side to side.

They were looking at me strangely, and both of them were pale.  Jean was trembling a little.

“Who was she, Ysobel?” she said.

“The little girl the men brought to play with me,” I answered, still looking about me.

“The big one on the black horse put her down—­the big one with the star here.”  I touched my forehead where the queer scar had been.

For a minute Angus forgot himself.  Years later he told me.

“Dark Malcolm of the Glen,” he broke out.  “Wee Brown Elspeth.”

“But she is white—­quite white!” I said.

“Where did she go?”

Jean swept me in her warm, shaking arms and hugged me close to her breast.

“She’s one of the fair ones,” she said, kissing and patting me.  “She will come again.  She’ll come often, I dare say.  But she’s gone now and we must go, too.  Get up, Angus, man.  We’re for the castle.”

If we three had been different—­if we had ever had the habit of talking and asking questions—­we might surely have asked one another questions as I rode on Sheltie’s back, with Angus leading us.  But they asked me nothing, and I said very little except that I once spoke of the wild-looking horsemen and their pale, joyous faces.

“They were glad,” was all I said.

There was also one brief query from Angus.

“Did she talk to you, bairnie?” he said.

I hesitated and stared at him quite a long time.  Then I shook my head and answered, slowly, “N-no.”

Because I realized then, for the first time, that we had said no words at all.  But I had known what she wanted me to understand, and she had known what I might have said to her if I had spoken—­and no words were needed.  And it was better.

They took me home to the castle, and I was given my supper and put to bed.  Jean sat by me until I fell asleep; she was obliged to sit rather a long time, because I was so happy with my memories of Wee Brown Elspeth and the certainty that she would come again.  It was not Jean’s words which had made me sure.  I knew.

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