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if he had done something wrong. “Good night, Uncle,” William said.
    Argyle grunted and started out. Then he stopped, turned back and leaned down over William, and with great tenderness the grizzled old uncle kissed his nephew on his hair.
    Alone in the kitchen, Argyle sat down by the hearth and stared at the embers. He had ridden all day, ever since he’d gotten the news of the death of his brother and his nephew John. All day his mind had buzzed with practical issues: how he must save his brother’s land from confiscation, see to their proper burial, and see to the raising of this son Malcolm and left behind. He had accomplished it all; Argyle Wallace was a man who accomplished everything he set out to do or died trying. The boy would come home with him, that was settled. Argyle had never had a boy around, or even a wife for that matter, but Argyle was an ecclesiastic, and the teacher in him like the challenge of this wild colt of a nephew.
    Malcolm was dead. That was that. When things couldn’t be changed, they had to be faced, dealt with. Argyle had done that. But now he sat by the fire and he wanted no sleep, and all he could think about was the time many years ago when he and Malcolm were boys and had just gone to their bed in the loft of their father’s house. Argyle had insisted that his brother pray properly on his knees by the bedside, as Argyle always did. And Argyle remembered how so many years, ago Malcolm had told him that he had decided to pray from within the bed, so he would fall asleep with his dreams open to God.
    Malcolm’s huge broadsword now lay beside the hearth, next to Argyle’s hand. Argyle lifted it and turned the tip to the floor, so that the handle stood before his eyes like the cross.
    He began the benediction: “The Lord bless thee and keep thee….” Then tears of grief spilled down the old man’s cheeks, and he wept beside the fire.
     
     
    5
     
    DURING HIS SLEEP THAT NIGHT, WILLIAM HAD MORE nightmares. Once again the boy stood in the doorway of the barn and looked at the garish, hung faces in his nightmare. Then a mangled hand came from behind him and grasped his shoulder. William gasped, but the hand held him gently. He turned and saw his father and his brother! They were wounded, bloody, but they smiled at him; they were alive! William wept with joy and reached to hug them, but his father stretched forth a forbidding hand. William kept reaching out helplessly. His father and brother moved past him to the hanged knights. Two empty nooses were there. Before the boy’s weeping eyes they put their heads into the nooses and hoisted themselves up. William’s grief exploded; his tears erupted and he awakened in his bedroom with tears flooding down his face.
    A dream! Still upset, still grieving, he got up and went looking for his uncle.
    William moved down to the room where his uncle would be sleeping. He opened the door. The bed had not been slept in. He moved downstairs to the kitchen, but his uncle was not there either. For a moment William thought that his uncle might have abandoned him. Then the boy heard a strange, haunting sound—distant, carried by the wind. He moved to the window and saw only moonlight. He opened the window and heard it more clearly: bagpipes.
    William lit a candle and threw open the door. Wind rushed in and blew out his candle. But he heard the pipes, louder in the wind.
    William was barefoot and cold, covered only by the nightshirt, but he stepped outside. The sound of the pipes was growing louder. He moved through the moonlight, drawn toward—the graveyard! He stopped as he realized this, then forced himself on.
    He moved to the top of the hill where his ancestors were buried and discovered a haunting scene: two dozen men, the farmer/warriors of his neighborhood, were gathered in kilts—and, among them, a core of bagpipers. The pipes wailed an ancient Scottish dirge, a tune of grief and redemption, a melody that, with some modification, has come down