“A man usually won’t build a house unless he has a good idea the girl has her eye on him,” said the mother. “But what has any of this to do with our Onishtu?”

“I think she liked to wander among the empty roofless houses, that’s all,” said Rigg. “I think she dreamed of marrying.”

“As all girls do,” said the mother. “Will it be a good man and a happy house? Or a sad one, or an angry one.”

“We had a ewe once who always went within walls to lamb,” said the father. “At lambing time, you follow where the ewes have gone to bear. I think if she wandered among the houses, it was looking for that ewe.”

“I’d forgotten that crazy old sheep,” said the mother. “She was Onishtu’s favorite. And she being the oldest, she was fully able to help with lambing by herself. We thought that’s where she had gone that day, but we found the ewe, still full, and we never found Onishtu however much we searched.” She had tears down her cheeks now.

“I’m sorry to have made you cry,” said Rigg. “I wish now that I hadn’t troubled you.”

“Pay no heed to the crying,” said the father. “Tears come easy, no matter how many years go by. When you have a child of your own someday, if some girl is willing to see past your face, you’ll know what I’m saying. You lose a child, and the tears are always just inside your eyes waiting to spill. But it’s a joy to remember her, too, and we’re not ashamed to cry, nor any sadder for it.”

“I’m crying to think of how she loved that sheep and how she cared for the lambs. She had a loving touch with the sheep, but she hated the goats!”

And the two parents burst into laughter, perhaps remembering a particular event in Onishtu’s childhood.

“It’s late all the same,” said Ram Odin. “Glad we are that we’ve not brought you grief, but it’s time for us to leave you to your sleep, and go take ours. Rigg has a lot of work to do tomorrow, and I have another day of faith-talk ahead of me.”

“Your boy works as hard as any man,” said the father, “and no one begrudges what he eats. Many a stick that keeps the ­family warm will have his handprints on it, as they say.”

With such polite talk they made their goodbyes and Rigg and Ram Odin spoke not at all as they walked back through the sharp cold of the night breeze. Only when they were inside the haybarn, and Rigg had assured Ram Odin that no one was inside with them, or even near enough to overhear, did Ram Odin ask, “Well? What happened to her?”