Surely Jean Braidfute had not words to tell me.

But I knew.

So I understood, in a way of my own, what happened to my mother one brilliant late October afternoon when my father was brought home dead--followed by the guests who had gone out shooting with him.

His foot had caught in a tuft of heather, and his gun in going off had killed him.

One moment he had been the handsomest young chieftain in Scotland, and when he was brought home they could not have let my mother see his face.
But she never asked to see it.