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Title:      Collected Supernatural Stories
Author:     John Buchan
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Title:      Collected Supernatural Stories
Author:     John Buchan



The Keeper of Cademuir (Glasgow University Magazine, 1894)
A Journey of Little Profit (The Yellow Book, 1898)
The Outgoing of the Tide (Atlantic Monthly, 1902)
No-man's-land (Blackwood's Magazine, 1899)
The Watcher by the Threshold (Atlantic Magazine, 1900)
The Grove of Ashtaroth (Blackwood's Magazine, 1910)
Space (Blackwood's Magazine, 1911)
Basilissa (Blackwood's Magazine, 1914)
Fullcircle (Atlantic Magazine, 1920)
The Magic Walking Stick (Sails of Gold, 1927)
The Strange Adventure of Mr. Andrew Hawthorn (The Silver Ship, 1932)




THE KEEPER OF CADEMUIR

The gamekeeper of Cademuir strode in leisurely fashion over the green
side of the hill. The bright chilly morning was past, and the heat had
all but begun; but he had lain long a-bed, deeming that life was too
short at the best, and there was little need to hurry it over. He was a
man of a bold carriage, with the indescribable air of one whose life is
connected with sport and rough moors. A steady grey eye and a clean chin
were his best features; otherwise, he was of the ordinary make of a man,
looking like one born for neither good nor evil in any high degree. The
sunlight danced around him, and flickered among the brackens; and though
it was an everyday sight with him, he was pleased, and felt cheerful,
just like any wild animal on a bright day. If he had had his dog with
him, he would have sworn at it to show his pleasure; as it was, he
contented himself with whistling 'The Linton Ploughman', and setting his
heels deep into the soft green moss.

The day was early and his way was long, for he purposed to go up Manor
Water to the shepherd's house about a matter of some foxes. It might be
ten miles, it might be more; and the keeper was in no great haste, for
there was abundant time to get his dinner and a smoke with the herd, and
then come back in the cool of the evening; for it was summer-time, when
men of his class have their holiday. Two miles more, and he would strike
the highway; he could see it even now coiling beneath the straight sides
of the glen. There it was easy walking, and he would get on quickly; but
now he might take his time. So he lit his pipe, and looked complacently
around him.

At the turn of the hill, where a strip of wood runs up the slope, he
stopped, and a dark shadow came over his face. This was the place where,
not two weeks ago, he had chased a poacher, and but for the fellow's
skill in doubling, would have caught him. He cursed the whole tribe in
his heart. They were the bane of his easy life. They came at night, and
took him out on the bleak hillside when he should have been in his bed.
They might have a trap there even now. He would go and see, for it was
not two hundred yards from his path.

So he climbed up the little howe in the hill beside the firwood, where
the long thickets of rushes, and the rabbit-warrens made a happy
hunting-ground for the enemies of the law. A snipe or two flew up as he
approached, and a legion of rabbits scurried into their holes. He had
all but given up the quest, when the gleam of something among the long
grass caught his attention, and in a trice he had pulled back the
herbage, and disclosed a neatly set and well-constructed trap.

It was a very admirable trap. He had never seenone like it; so in a sort
of angry exultation, as he thought of how he would spoil this fine game,
he knelt down to examine it. It was no mere running noose, but of strong
steel, and firmly fixed to the trunk of an old tree. No unhappy pheasant
would ever move it, were its feet once caught in its strong teeth. He
felt the iron with his hand, feeling down the sides for the spring; when
suddenly with a horrid snap the thing closed on him, pinning his hand
below the mid-finger, and he was powerless.

The pain was terrible, agonising. His hand burned like white fire, and
every nerve of his body tingled. With his left hand he attempted to
loosen it, but the spring was so well concealed, that he could not find
it. Perhaps, too, he may have lost his wits, for in any great suffering
the brain is seldom clear. After a few minutes of feeble searching and
tugging, every motion of which gave agony to his imprisoned hand, he
gave it up, and in something very like panic, sought for his knife to
try to cut the trap loose from the trunk. And now a fresh terror awaited
him, for he found that he had no knife; he had left it in another coat,
which was in his room at home. With a sigh of infinite pain, he stopped
the search, and stared drearily before him.

He confusedly considered his position. He was fixed with no possibility
of escape, some two miles from the track of any chance passer-by. They
would not look for him at home until the evening, and the shepherd at
Manor did not know of his coming. Someone might be on the hill, but then
this howe was on a remote side where few ever came, unless their duty
brought them. Below him in the valley was the road with some white
cottages beside it. There were women in those houses, living and moving
not far from him; they might see him if he were to wave something as a
signal. But then, he reflected with a groan, that though he could see
their dwellings, they could not see him, for he was hidden by the
shoulder of the hill.

Once more he made one frantic effort to escape, but it was unsuccessful.
Then he leant back upon the heather, gnawing his lips to help him to
endure the agony of the wound. He was a strong man, broad and sinewy,
and where a weaker might have swooned, he was left to endure the burden
of a painful consciousness. Again he thought of escape. The man who had
set the trap must come to see it, but it might not be that day, nor the
next. He pictured his friends hunting up and down Manor Water, every
pool and wood; passing and re-passing not two hundred yards from where
he was lying dead, or worse than dead. His mind grew sick at the
thought, and he had almost fainted in spite of his strength.

Then he fell into a panic, the terror of rough 'hard-handed men, which
never laboured in their mind.' His brain whirled, his eyes were stelled,
and a shiver shook him like a reed. He puzzled over his past life,
feeling, in a dim way, that it had not been as it should be. He had been
drunk often; he had not been over-careful of the name of the Almighty;
was not this some sort of retribution? He strove to pray, but he could
think of no words. He had been at church last Sunday, and he tried to
think of what he had heard; but try as he would, nothing came to his
mind, but the chorus of a drinking-song he had often heard sung in the
public-house at Peebles:

When the hoose is rinnin' round about,
It's time eneuch to flit;
For we've lippened aye to Providence,
And sae will we yet.

The irony of the words did not strike him; but fervently, feverishly, he
repeated them, as if for the price of his soul.

The fit passed, and a wild frenzy of rage took him. He cursed like a
fiend, and yelled horrible menaces upon the still air. If he had the man
who set this trap, he would strangle the life out of him here on this
spot. No, that was too merciful. He would force his arm into the trap,
and take him to some lonely place where never a human being came from
one year's end to the other. Then he would let him die, and come to
gloat over his suffering. With every turn of his body he wrenched his
hand, and with every wrench, he yelled more madly, till he lay back
exhausted, and the green hills were left again in peace.

Then he slept a sleep which was half a swoon, for maybe an hour, though
to him it seemed like ages. He seemed to be dead, and in torment; and
the place of his torment was this same hillside. On the brae face, a
thousand evil spirits were mocking his anguish, and not only his hand,
but his whole body was imprisoned in a remorseless trap. He felt the
keen steel crush through his bones, like a spade through a frosted
turnip. He woke screaming with nameless dread, looking on every side for
the infernal faces of his dreams, but seeing nothing but a little
chaffinch hopping across the turf.

Then came for him a long period of slow, despairing agony. The hot
air glowed, and the fierce sun beat upon his face. A thousand insects
hummed about him, bees and butterflies and little hillmoths. The
wholesome smell of thyme and bent was all about him, and every now and
then a little breeze broke the stillness, and sent a ripple over the
grass. The genial warmth seemed stifling; his head ached, and his breath
came in sudden gasps. An overpowering thirst came upon him, and his
tongue was like a burnt stick in his mouth. Not ten feet off, a little
burn danced over a minute cascade. He could see the dust of spray, which
wet the cool green rushes. The pleasant tinkle sang in his ears, and
mocked his fever. He tried to think of snow and ice and cold water, but
his brain refused to do its part, and he could get nothing but an
intolerable void.

Far across the valley, the great forehead of Dollar Law raised itself,
austere and lofty. To his unquiet sight, it seemed as if it rolled over
on Scrape, and the two played pranks among the lower hills beyond. The
idea came to him, how singularly unpleasant it would be for the people
there--among them a shepherd to whom he owed two pounds. He would be
crushed to powder, and there would be no more of the debt at any rate.
Then a text from the Scriptures came to haunt him, something, he could
scarce tell exactly, about the hills and mountains leaping like rams.
Here it was realised before his very eyes. Below him, in the peaceful
valley, Manor Water seemed to be wrinkled across it, like a scrawl from
the pen of a bad writer. When a bird flew past, or a hare started from
its form, he screamed with terror, and all the wholesome sights of a
summer day were wrought by his frenzied brain into terrible phantoms. So
true is it that Natura Benigna and Natura Maligna may walk hand in hand
upon the same hillside.

Then came the time when the strings of the reason are all but snapped,
and a man becomes maudlin. He thought of his young wife, not six weeks
married, and grieved over her approaching sorrow. He wept unnatural
tears, which, if any one had been there to see him, would have been far
more terrible than his frantic ravings. He pictured to himself in
gruesome detail, the finding of his body, how his wife would sob, and
his friends would shake their heads, and swear that he had been an
honest fellow, and that it was a pity that he was away. The place would
soon forget him; his wife would marry again; his dogs would get a new
master, and he--ay, that was the question, where would he be? and a new
dread took him, as he thought of the fate which might await him. The
unlettered man, in his times of dire necessity, has nothing to go back
upon but a mind full of vivid traditions, which are the most merciless
of things.

It might be about three or four o'clock, but by the clock in his brain it
was weeks later, that he suffered that last and awful pain, which any
one who has met it once, would walk to the end of the earth to avoid.
The world shrank away from him; his wits forsook him; and he cried out,
till the lonely rocks rang, and the whaups mingled their startled cries
with his. With a last effort, he crushed down his head with his
unwounded hand upon the tree-trunk, till blessed unconsciousness took
him into her merciful embrace.

* * * * *

At nine o'clock that evening, a ragged, unshorn man, with the look of
one not well at ease with the world, crept up the little plantation. He
had a sack on his back for his ill-gotten plunder, and a mighty stick in
case of a chance encounter. He visited his traps, hidden away in little
nooks, where no man might find them, and it would have seemed as if
trade were brisk, for his sack was heavy, and his air was cheerful. He
looked out from behind the dyke at his last snare carefully, as behoved
one in danger; and then with a start he crouched, for he saw the figure
of a man.

There was no doubt about it; it was his bitterest enemy, the keeper of
Cademuir. He made as if to crawl away, when by chance he looked again.
The man lay very still. A minute later he had rushed forward with a
white face, and was working as if for his life.

In half an hour two men might have been seen in that little glen. One,
with a grey, sickened face, was gazing vacantly around him, with the
look of some one awakened from a long sleep. By dint of much toil, and
half a bottle of brandy, he had been brought back from what was like to
have been the longest sleep he had ever taken. Beside him on the grass,
with wild eyes, sat the poacher, shedding hysterical tears. 'Dae
onything ye like wi' me,' he was saying, 'kick me or kill me, an' am
ready. I'll gang to jail wi' ye, to Peebles or the Calton, an' no say a
word. But oh--! ma God, I thocht ye were bye wi't.'




JOURNEY OF LITTLE PROFIT

The Devil he sang, the Devil he played
High and fast and free.
And this was ever the song he made,
As it was told to me.
Oh, I am the king of the air and the ground,
And lord of the seasons' roll,
And I will give you a hundred pound,
If you will give me your soul!

   The Ballad of Grey Weather

THE cattle market of Inverforth is, as all men know north of the Tweed,
the greatest market of the kind in the land. For days in the late Autumn
there is the lowing of oxen and the bleating of sheep among its high
wooden pens, and in the rickety sale-rings the loud clamour of
auctioneers and the talk of farmers. In the open yard where are the
drovers and the butchers, a race always ungodly and law-despising, there
is such a Babel of cries and curses as might wake the Seven Sleepers.
From twenty different adjacent eating-houses comes the clatter of
knives, where the country folk eat their dinner of beef and potatoes,
with beer for sauce, and the collies grovel on the ground for stray
morsels. Hither come a hundred types of men from the Highland cateran
with scarce a word of English, and the shentleman-farmer of Inverness
and Ross, to lowland graziers and city tradesmen, not to speak of
blackguards of many nationalities and more professions.

It was there I first met Duncan Stewart of Clachamharstan, in the Moor
of Rannoch, and there I heard this story. He was an old man when I knew
him, grizzled and wind-beaten; a prosperous man, too, with many herds
like Jacob and much pasture. He had come down from the North with
kyloes, and as he waited on the Englishmen with whom he had trysted, he
sat with me through the long day and beguiled the time with many
stories. He had been a drover in his youth, and had travelled on foot
the length and breadth of Scotland; and his memory went back hale and
vigorous to times which are now all but historical. This tale I heard
among many others as we sat on a pen amid the smell of beasts and the
jabber of Gaelic:


'When I was just turned of twenty-five I was a wild young lad as ever
was heard of. I had taken to the droving for the love of a wild life,
and a wild life I led. My father's heart would be broken long syne with
my doings, and well for my mother that she was in her grave since I was
six years old. I paid no heed to the ministrations of godly Mr.
Macdougall of the Isles, who bade me turn from the error of my ways, but
went on my own evil course, making siller, for I was a brawl lad at the
work and a trusted, and knowing the inside of every public from the pier
of Cromarty to the streets of York. I was a wild drinker, caring in my
cups for neither God nor man, a great hand with the cards, and fond of
the lasses past all telling. It makes me shameful to this day to think
on my evil life when I was twenty-five.

'Well, it chanced that in the back of the month of September I found
myself in the city of Edinburgh with a flock of fifty sheep which I had
bought as a venture from a drunken bonnet-laird and was thinking of
selling somewhere wast the country. They were braw beasts, Leicester
every one of them, well-fed and dirt-cheap at the price I gave. So it
was with a light heart that I drove them out of the town by the
Merchiston Road along by the face of the Pentlands. Two or three friends
came with me, all like myself for folly, but maybe a little bit poorer.
Indeed, I cared little for them, and they valued me only for the whisky
which I gave them to drink my health in at the parting. They left me on
the near side of Colinton, and I went on my way alone.

'Now, if you'll be remembering the road, you will mind that at the place
called Kirk Newton, just afore the road begins to twine over the Big
Muir and almost at the head of the Water o' Leith, there is a verra fine
public. Indeed, it would be no lee to call it the best public between
Embro' and Glesca. The good wife, Lucky Craik by name, was an old friend
of mine, for many a good gill of her prandy have I bought; so what would
I be doing but just turning aside for refreshment? She met me at the
door, verra pleased-like to see me, and soon I had my legs aneath her
table and a basin of toddy on the board before me. And whom did I find
in the same place but my old comrade Toshie Maclean from the backside of
Glen-Lyon. Toshie and I were acquaintances so old that it did not
behoove us to be parting quick. Forbye the day was chill without; and
within the fire was grand and the crack of the best.

'Then Toshie and I got on quarrelling about the price of Lachlan
Farawa's beasts that he sold at Falkirk; and, the drink having aye a
bad effect on my temper, I was for giving him the lie and coming off in
a great rage. It was about six o'clock in the evening and an hour to
nightfall, so Mistress Craik comes in to try and keep me. 'Losh,
Duncan,' says she, 'yell never try and win ower the muir the nicht. It's
mae than ten mile to Carnwath, and there's nocht atween it and this but
whaups and heathery braes.' But when I am roused I will be more
obstinate than ten mules, so I would be going, though I knew not under
Heaven where I was going till. I was too full of good liquor and good
meat to be much worth at thinking, so I got my sheep on the road an a
big bottle in my pouch and set off into the heather. I knew not what my
purpose was, whether I thought to reach the shieling of Carnwath, or
whether I expected some house of entertainment to spring up by the
wayside. But my fool's mind was set on my purpose of getting some miles
further in my journey ere the coming of darkness.

'For some time I jogged happily on, with my sheep running well before me
and my dogs trotting at my heels. We left the trees behind and struck
out on the proad grassy path which bands the moor like the waist-strap
of a sword. It was most dreary and lonesome with never a house in view,
only bogs and grey hillsides and ill-looking waters. It was stony, too,
and this more than aught else caused my Dutch courage to fail me, for I
soon fell wearied, since much whisky is bad travelling fare, and began
to curse my folly. Had my pride no kept me back, I would have returned
to Lucky Craik's; but I was like the devil, for stiff-neckedness and
thought of nothing but to push on.

'I own that I was verra well tired and quite spiritless when I first saw
the House. I had scarce been an hour on the way, and the light was not
quite gone; but still it was geyan dark, and the place sprang somewhat
suddenly on my sight. For, looking a little to the left, I saw over a
little strip of grass a big square dwelling with many outhouses, half
farm and half pleasure-house. This, I thought, is the verra place I have
been seeking and made sure of finding; so whistling a gay tune, I drove
my flock toward it.

'When I came to the gate of the court, I saw better of what sort was the
building I had arrived at. There was a square yard with monstrous high
walls, at the left of which was the main block of the house, and on the
right what I took to be the byres and stables. The place looked ancient,
and the stone in many places was crumbling away; but the style was of
yesterday and in no way differing from that of a hundred steadings in
the land. There were some kind of arms above the gateway, and a bit of
an iron stanchion; and when I had my sheep inside of it, I saw that the
court was all grown up with green grass. And what seemed queer in that
dusky half-light was the want of sound.

'There was no neichering of horses, nor routing of kye, nor clack of
hens, but all as still as the top of Ben Cruachan. It was warm and
pleasant too, though the night was chill without.

'I had no sooner entered the place than a row of sheep-pens caught my
eye, fixed against the wall in front. This I thought mighty convenient,
so I made all haste to put my beasts into them; and finding that there
was a good supply of hay within, I leff them easy in my mind, and turned
about to look for the door of the house.

'To my wonder, when I found it, it was open wide to the wall; so, being
confident with much whisky, I never took thought to knock, but walked
boldly in. There's some careless folk here, thinks Ito myself, and I
much misdoubt if the man knows aught about farming. He'll maybe just be
a town's body taking the air on the muirs.

'The place I entered upon was a hall, not like a muirland farmhouse, but
more fine than I had ever seen. It was laid with a verra fine carpet,
all red and blue and gay colours, and in the corner in a fireplace a
great fire crackled. There were chairs, too, and a walth of old rusty
arms on the walls, and all manner of whigmaleeries that folk think
ornamental. But nobody was there, so I made for the staircase which was
at the further side, and went up it stoutly. I made scarce any noise so
thickly was it carpeted, and I will own it kind of terrified me to be
walking in such a place. But when a man has drunk well he is troubled
not overmuckle with modesty or fear, so I e'en stepped out and soon came
to a landing where was a door.

'Now, thinks I, at last I have won to the habitable parts of the house;
so laying my finger on the sneck I lifted it and entered. And there
before me was the finest room in all the world; indeed I abate not a jot
of the phrase, for I cannot think of anything finer. It was hung with
braw pictures and lined with big bookcases of oak well-filled with books
in fine bindings. The furnishing seemed carved by a skilled hand, and
the cushions and curtains were soft velvet. But the best thing was the
table, which was covered with a clean white cloth and set with all kind
of good meat and drink. The dishes were of silver and as bright as Loch
Awe water in an April sun. Eh, but it was a braw braw sight for a
drover! And there at the far end, with a great pottle of wine before
him, sat the master.

'He rose as I entered, and I saw him to be dressed in the pink of town
fashion, a man of maybe fifty years, but hale and well-looking, with a
peaked beard and trimmed moustache and thick eyebrows. His eyes were
slanted a thought, which is a thing I hate in any man, but his whole
appearance was pleasing.

'"Mr. Stewart?" says he courteously, looking at me. "Is it Mr. Duncan
Stewart that I will be indebted to for the honour of this visit?"

'I stared at him blankly, for how did he ken my name?

'"That is my name," I said, "but who the tevil tell't you about it?"

'"Oh, my name is Stewart myself," says he, "and all Stewarts should be
well acquaint."

'"True," said I, "though I don't mind your face before. But now I am
here, I think you have a most gallant place, Mr. Stewart."

'"Well enough. But how have you come to't? We've few visitors."

'So I told him where I had come from, and where I was going, and why I
was forwandered at this time of night among the muirs. He listened
keenly, and when I had finished, he says verra friendly-like, "Then
you'll bide all night and take supper with me. It would never be doing
to let one of the clan go away without breaking bread. Sit ye down, Mr.
Duncan."

'I sat down gladly enough, though I own that at first I did not
half-like the whole business. There was something unchristian about the
place, and for certain it was not seemly that the man's name should be
the same as my own, and that he should be so well posted in my doings.
But he seemed so well-disposed that my misgivings soon vanished.

'So I seated myself at the table opposite my entertainer. There was a
place laid ready for me, and beside the knife and fork a long
horn-handled spoon. I had never seen a spoon so long and queer, and I
asked the man what it meant. "Oh," says he, "the broth in this house is
very often hot, so we need a long spoon to sup it. It is a common enough
thing, is it not?"

'I could answer nothing to this, though it did not seem to me sense, and
I had an inkling of something I had heard about long spoons which I
thought was not good; but my wits were not clear, as I have told you
already. A serving man brought me a great bowl of soup and set it before
me. I had hardly plunged spoon intil it, when Mr. Stewart cries out from
the other end: "Now, Mr. Duncan, I call you to witness that you sit down
to supper of your own accord. I've an ill name in these parts for
compelling folk to take meat with me when they dinna want it. But you'll
bear me witness that you're willing."

'"Yes, by God, I am that," I said, for the savoury smell of the broth was
rising to my nostrils. The other smiled at this as if well-pleased.

'I have tasted many soups, but I swear there never was one like that. It
was as if all the good things in the world were mixed thegether--whisky
and kale and shortbread and cocky-leeky and honey and salmon. The taste
of it was enough to make a body's heart loup with fair gratitude. The
smell of it was like the spicy winds of Arabia, that you read about in
the Bible, and when you had taken a spoonful you felt as happy as if you
had sellt a hundred yowes at twice their reasonable worth. Oh, it was
grand soup!

'"What Stewarts did you say you comed from," I asked my entertainer.

'"Oh," he says, "I'm connected with them all, Athole Stewarts, Appin
Stewarts, Rannoch Stewarts; and a' I've a heap o' land thereaways."

'"Whereabouts?" says I, wondering. "Is't at the Blair o' Athole, or along
by Tummel side, or wast the Loch o' Rannoch, or on the Muir, or in
Mamore?"

'"In all the places you name," says he.

'"Got damn," says I, "then what for do you not bide there instead of in
these stinking lawlands?"

'At this he laughed softly to himself. "Why, for maybe the same reason
as yoursel, Mr. Duncan. You know the proverb, 'A' Stewarts are sib to
the Deil."'

'I laughed loudly; "Oh, you've been a wild one, too, have you? Then
you're not worse than mysel. I ken the inside of every public in the
Cowgate and Cannongate, and there's no another drover on the road my
match at fechting and drinking and dicing." And I started on a long
shameless catalogue of my misdeeds. Mr. Stewart meantime listened with a
satisfied smirk on his face.

'"Yes, I've heard tell of you, Mr. Duncan," he says. "But here's
something more, and you'll doubtless be hungry."

'And now there was set on the table a round of beef garnished with
pot-herbs, all most delicately fine to the taste. From a great cupboard
were brought many bottles of wine, and in a massive silver bowl at the
table's head were put whisky and lemons and sugar. I do not know well
what I drank, but whatever it might be it was the best ever brewed. It
made you scarce feel the earth round about you, and you were so happy
you could scarce keep from singing. I wad give much siller to this day
for the receipt.

'Now, the wine made me talk, and I began to boast of my own great
qualities, the things I had done and the things I was going to do. I was
a drover just now, but it was not long that I would be being a drover. I
had bought a flock of my own, and would sell it for a hundred pounds, no
less; with that I would buy a bigger one till I had made money enough to
stock a farm; and then I would leave the road and spend my days in
peace, seeing to my land and living in good company. Was not my father,
I cried, own cousin, thrice removed, to the Macleans o' Duart, and my
mother's uncle's wife a Rory of Balnacroy? And I am a scholar too, said
I, for I was a matter of two years at Embro' College, and might have
been roaring in the pulpit, if I hadna liked the drink and the lassies
too well.

'"See," said I, "I will prove it to you;" and I rose from the table and
went to one of the bookcases. There were all manner of books, Latin and
Greek, poets and philosophers, but in the main, divinity. For there I
saw Richard Baxter's 'Call to the Unconverted,' and Thomas Boston of
Ettrick's 'Fourfold State,' not to speak of the Sermons of half a
hundred auld ministers, and the 'Hind let Loose,' and many books of the
covenanting folk.

'"Faith," I says, "you've a fine collection, Mr. What's-your-name," for
the wine had made me free in my talk. "There is many a minister and
professor in the Kirk, I'll warrant, who has a less godly library. I
begin to suspect you of piety, sir."

'"Does it not behoove us," he answered in an unctuous voice, "to mind the
words of Holy Writ that evil communications corrupt good manners, and
have an eye to our company? These are all the company I have, except
when some stranger such as you honours me--with a visit."

'I had meantime been opening a book of plays, I think by the famous
William Shakespeare, and I here proke into a loud laugh. "Ha, ha, Mr.
Stewart," I says, "here's a sentence I've lighted on which is hard on
you. Listen! 'The Devil can quote Scripture to advantage.'"

'The other laughed long. "He who wrote that was a shrewd man," he said,
"but I'll warrant if you'll open another volume, you'll find some quip
on yourself."

'I did as I was bidden, and picked up a white-backed book, and opening
it at random, read: "There be many who spend their days in evil and
wine-bibbing, in lusting and cheating, who think to mend while yet there
is time; but the opportunity is to them for ever awanting, and they go
down open-mouthed to the great fire."

'"Psa," I cried, "some wretched preaching book, I will have none of them.
Good wine will be better than bad theology." So I sat down once more at
the table.

'"You're a clever man, Mr. Duncan," he says, "and a well-read one. I
commend your spirit in breaking away from the bands of the kirk and the
college, though your father was so thrawn against you."

'"Enough of that," I said, "though 4 don't know who telled you;" I was
angry to hear my father spoken of, as though the grieving him was a
thing to be proud of.

'"Oh, as you please," he says; "I was just going to say that I commended
your spirit in sticking the knife into the man ih the Pleasaunce, the
time you had to hide for a month about the backs o' Leith."

'"How do you ken that," I asked hotly, "you've heard more about me than
ought to be repeated, let me tell you."

'"Don't be angry," he said sweetly; "I like you well for these things,
and you mind the lassie in Athole that was so fond of you. You treated
her well, did you not?"

'I made no answer, being too much surprised at his knowledge of things
which I thought none knew but myself.

'"Oh yes, Mr. Duncan. I could tell you what you were doing to-day, how
you cheated Jock Gallowa out of six pounds, and sold a horse to the
fanner of Haypath that was scarce fit to carry him home. And I know what
you are meaning to do the morn at Glesca, and I wish you well of it."

'"I think you must be the Devil," I said blankly.

'"The same, at your service," said he, still smiling.

'I looked at him in terror, and even as I looked I kenned by something
in his eyes and the twitch of his lips that he was speaking the truth.
"And what place is this, you..." I stammered.

'"Call me Mr. S.," he says gently, "and enjoy your stay while you are
here and don't concern yourself about the lawing."

'"The lawing!" I cried in astonishment, "and is this a house of public
entertainment?"

'"To be sure, else how is a poor man to live?"

'"Name it," said I, "and I will pay and be gone."

'"Well," said he, "I make it a habit to give a man his choice. In your
case it will be your wealth or your chances hereafter, in plain English
your flock or your--"

'"My immortal soul," I gasped.

'"Your soul," said Mr. S., bowing, "though I think you call it by too
flattering an adjective."

'"You damned thief," I roared, "you would entice a man into your accursed
house and then strip him bare."

'"Hold hard," said he, "don't let us spoil our good fellowship by
incivilities. And, mind you, I took you to witness to begin with that
you sat down of your own accord."

'"So you did," said I, and could say no more.

'"Come, come," he says, "don't take it so bad. You may keep all your gear
and yet part from here in safety. You've but to sign your name, which is
no hard task to a college-bred man, and go on living as you live just
now to the end. And let me tell you, Mr. Duncan Stewart, that you should
take it as a great obligement that I am willing to take your bit soul
instead of fifty sheep. There's no many would value it so high."

'"Maybe no, maybe no," I said sadly, "but it's all I have. D'ye no see
that if I gave it up, there would be no chance left of mending? And I'm
sure I do not want your company to all eternity."

'"Faith, that's uncivil," he says; "I was just about to say that we had
had a very pleasant evening."

'I sat back in my chair very down-hearted. I must leave this place as
poor as a kirk-mouse, and begin again with little but the clothes on my
back. I was strongly tempted to sign the bit paper thing and have done
with it all, but somehow I could not bring myself to do it. So at last I
says to him: "Well, I've made up my mind. I'll give you my sheep, sorry
though I be to lose them, and I hope I may never come near this place
again as long as I live."

'"On the contrary," he said, "I hope often to have the pleasure of your
company. And seeing that you've paid well for your lodging, I hope
you'll make the best of it. Don't be sparing on the drink."

'I looked hard at him for a second. "You've an ill name, and an ill
trade, but you're no a bad sort yoursel, and, do you ken, I like you."

'"I'm much obliged to you for the character," says he, "and I'll take
your hand on't."

'So I filled up my glass and we set to, and such an evening I never mind
of. We never got fou, but just in a fine good temper and very
entertaining. The stories we telled and the jokes we cracked are still a
kind of memory with me, though I could not come over one of them. And
then, when I got sleepy, I was shown to the brawest bedroom, all hung
with pictures and looking-glasses, and with bed-clothes of the finest
linen and a coverlet of silk. I bade Mr. S. good-night, and my head was
scarce on the pillow ere I was sound asleep.

'When I awoke the sun was just newly risen, and the frost of a September
morning was on my clothes. I was lying among green braes with nothing
near me but crying whaups and heathery hills, and my two dogs running
round about and howling as they were mad.'




THE OUTGOING OF THE TIDE [*]

[* From the unpublished Remains of the Reverend John Dennistoun. Sometime
Minister of the Gospel in the Parish of Caulds, and Author of Satan's
Artifices against the Elect.]

'Between the hours of twelve and one, even at the turning of the tide.'


Men come from distant parts to admire the tides of Solway, which race in
at flood and retreat at ebb with a greater speed than a horse can
follow. But nowhere are there queerer waters than in our own parish of
Caulds, at the place called the Sker Bay, where between two horns of
land a shallow estuary receives the stream of the Sker. I never daunder
by its shores and see the waters hurrying like messengers from the great
deep without solemn thoughts, and a memory of Scripture words on the
terror of the sea. The vast Atlantic may be fearful in its wrath, but
with us it is no clean open rage, but the deceit of the creature, the
unholy ways of quicksands when the waters are gone, and their stealthy
return like a thief in the night watches. But in times of which I write
there were more awful fears than any from the violence of nature. It was
before the day of my ministry in Caulds, for then I was a tot callant in
short clothes in my native parish of Lesmahagow; but the worthy Dr.
Chrystal, who had charge of spiritual things, has told me often of the
power of Satan and his emissaries in that lonely place. It was the day
of warlocks and apparitions, now happily driven out by the zeal of the
General Assembly. Witches pursued their wanchancy calling, bairns were
spirited away, young lassies selled their souls to the Evil One, and the
Accuser of the Brethren, in the shape of a black tyke, was seen about
cottage doors in the gloaming. Many and earnest were the prayers of good
Dr. Chrystal, but the evil thing, in spite of his wrestling, grew and
flourished in his midst. The parish stank of idolatry, abominable rites
were practiced in secret, and in all the bounds there was no one had a
more evil name for the black traffic than one Alison Sempill, who bode
at the Skerburnfoot.

The cottage stood nigh the burn, in a little garden, with lilyoaks and
grosart bushes lining the pathway. The Sker ran by in a line among
rowand trees, and the noise of its waters was ever about the place. The
highroad on the other side was frequented by few, for a nearer-hand way
to the west had been made through the lower Moss. Sometimes a herd from
the hills would pass by with sheep, sometimes a tinkler or a wandering
merchant, and once in a long while the laird of Heriotside on his grey
horse riding to Gledsmuir. And they who passed would see Alion trupling
in her garden, speaking to herself like the ill wife she was, or sitting
on a cutty-stool by the doorside, with her eyes on other than mortal
sights. Where she came from no man could tell. There were some said she
was no woman, but a ghost haunting some mortal tenement. Others would
threep she was gentrice, come of a persecuting family in the west, who
had been ruined in the Revolution wars. She never seemed to want for
siller; the house was as bright as a new preen, the yaird better delved
than the manse garden; and there was routh of fowls and doos about the
small steading, forbye a whee sheep and milk-kye in the fields. No man
ever saw Alison at any market in the countryside, and yet the
Skerburnfoot was plenished yearly in all proper order. One man only
worked on the place, a doited lad who had long been a charge to the
parish, and who had not the sense to fear danger or the wit to
understand it. Upon all others the sight of Alison, were it but for a
moment, cast a cold grue, not to be remembered without terror. It seems
she was not ordinarily ill-famed, as men use the word. She was maybe
sixty years in age, small and trig, with her grey hair folded neatly
under her mutch. But the sight of her eyes was not a thing to forget.
John Dodds said they were the een of a deer with the Devil ahint them;
and indeed, they would so appal an onlooker that a sudden unreasoning
terror came into his heart, while his feet would impel him to flight.
Once John, being overtaken in drink on the roadside by the cottage, and
dreaming that he was burning in hell, awoke and saw the old wife
hobbling toward him. Thereupon he fled soberly to the hills, and from
that day became a quiet-living, humble-minded Christian. She moved about
the country like a ghost, gathering herbs in dark loanings, lingering in
kirkyairds, and casting a blight on innocent bairns. Once Robert Smellie
found her in a ruinous kirk on the Lang Muir, where of old the
idolatrous rites of Rome were practiced. It was a hot day, and in the
quiet place the flies buzzed in clouds, and he noted that she sat
clothed in them as with a garment, yet suffering no discomfort. Then he,
having mind of Beelzebub, the god of flies, fled without a halt
homewards; but, falling in the coo's loan, broke two ribs and a collar
bone, the whilk misfortune was much blessed to his soul. And there were
darker tales in the countryside, of weans stolen, of lassies misguided,
of innocent beasts cruelly tortured, and in one and all there came
in the name of the wife of the Skerburnfoot. It was noted by them
that kenned best that her cantrips were at their worst when the
tides in the Sker Bay ebbed between the hours of twelve and one.
At this season of the night the tides of mortality run lowest,
and when the outgoing of these unco waters fell in with the
setting of the current of life, then indeed was the hour for
unholy revels. While honest men slept in their beds, the auld rudas
carlines took their pleasure. That there is a delight in sin no man
denies, but to most it is but a broken glint in the pauses of their
conscience. But what must be the hellish joy of those lost beings who
have forsworn God, and trysted with the Prince of Darkness, it is not
for a Christian to say. Certain it is that it must be great, though
their master waits at the end of the road to claim the wizened things
they call their souls. Serious men--notably Gidden Scott in the Bach of
the Hill, and Simon Wanch in the Sheilin of Chasehope--have seen Alison
wandering on the wet sands, dancing to no earthy musick, while the
heavens, they said, were full of lights and sounds which betokened--the
presence of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. It was a season of
heart-searching for God's saints in Caulds, and the dispensation was
blessed to not a few.

It will seem strange that in all this time the Presbytery was idle, and
no effort was made to rid the place of so fell an influence. But there
was a reason, and the reason, as in most like cases, was a lassie.
Forbye Alison there lived at the Skerburnfoot a young maid, Ailie
Sempill, who by all accounts was as good and bonnie as the other was
evil. She passed for a daughter of Alison's--whether born in wedlock or
not I cannot tell; but there were some said she was no kin to the auld
witch wife, but some bairn spirited away from honest parents. She was
young and blithe, with a face like an April morning, and a voice in her
that put the laverocks to shame. When she sang in the kirk, folk have
told me that they had a foretaste of the musick of the New Jerusalem,
and when she came in by the village of Caulds old men stottered to their
doors to look at her. Moreover, from her earliest days the bairn had
some glimmerings of grace. Though no minister would visit the
Skerburnfoot, or, if he went, departed quicker than he came, the girl
Ailie attended regular at the catechising at the mains of Sker. It may
be that Alison thought she would be a better offering for the Devil if
she were given the chance of forswearing God, or it may be that she was
so occupied in her own dark business that she had no care of the bairn.
Meanwhile, the lass grew up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I
have heard Dr. Chrystal say that he never had a communicant
more full of the things of the Spirit. From the day when she first
declared her wish to come forward to the hour when she broke bread at
the table, she walked like one in a dream. The lads of the parish might
cast admiring eyes on her bright cheeks and yellow hair, as she sat in
her white gown in the kirk, but well they knew she was not for them. To
be the bride of Christ was the thought that filled her heart; and when,
at the fencing of the table, Dr. Chrystal preached from Matthew nine and
fifteen, 'Can the children of the bridechamber mourn as long as the
bridegroom is with them?' it was remarked by sundry that Ailie's face
was liker the countenance of an angel than of a mortal lass.

It is with the day of her first communion that this narrative of mine
begins. As she walked home, after the morning table, she communed in
secret, and her heart sang within her. She had mind of God's mercies in
the past; how he had kept her feet from the snares of evil doers which
had been spread around her youth. She had been told unholy charms like
the Seven South Streams and the Nine Rowand Berries, and it was noted,
when she went first to the catechising, that she prayed, 'Our Father
which wert in heaven,' the prayer which the ill wife Alison had taught
her; meaning by it Lucifer, who had been in heaven, and had been cast
out therefrom. But when she had come to years of discretion, she had
freely chosen the better part, and evil had ever been repelled from her
soul like gled water from the stones of Gled brig. Now she was in a
rapture of holy content. The Druchen Bell--for the ungodly fashion
lingered in Caulds--was ringing in her ears as she left the village, but
to her it was but a kirk bell and a goodly sound. As she went through
the woods where the primroses and the whitethorn were blossoming, the
place seemed as the land of Elim, wherein there were twelve wells and
threescore and ten palm trees. And then, as it might be, another thought
came into her head, for it is ordained that frail mortality cannot long
continue in holy joy. In the kirk she had been only the bride of Christ,
but as she came through the wood, with the birds lilting and the winds
of the world blowing, she had mind of another lover; for this lass,
though so cold to men, had not escaped the common fate. It seems that
the young Heriotside, riding by one day, stopped to speir something or
other, and got a glisk of Ailie's face which caught his fancy. He passed
the road again many times, and then he would meet her in the gloaming,
or of a morning in the field as she went to fetch the kye. 'Blue are the
hills that are far away,' is an owercome in the countryside, and while
at first on his side it may have been but a young man's fancy, to her he
was like the god Apollo descending from the skies. He was good to look
on, brawly dressed, and with a tongue in his head that would have wiled
the bird from the tree. Moreover, he was of gentle kin, and she was a
poor lass biding in a cot house with an ill-reputed mother. It seems
that in time the young man, who had begun the affair with no good
intentions, fell honestly in love, while she went singing about the
doors as innocent as a bairn, thinking of him when her thoughts were not
on higher things. So it came about that long ere Ailie reached home it
was on young Heriotside that her mind dwelled, and it was the love of
him that made her eyes glow and her cheeks redden.

Now it chanced that at that very hour her master had been with Alison,
and the pair of them were preparing a deadly pit. Let no man say that
the Devil is not a cruel tyrant. He may give his folk some scrapings of
unhallowed pleasure, but he will exact tithes, yea, of anise and cummin,
in return, and there is aye the reckoning to pay at the hinder end. It
seems that now he was driving Alison hard. She had been remiss of
late--fewer souls sent to hell, less zeal in quenching the Spirit, and,
above all, the crowning offense that her bairn had communicated in
Christ's kirk. She had waited overlong, and now it was like that Ailie
would escape her toils. I have no skill of fancy to tell of that dark
collogue, but the upshot was that Alison swore by her lost soul and the
pride of sin to bring the lass into thrall to her master. The fiend had
bare departed when Ailie came over the threshold to find the auld
carline glunching over the fire.

It was plain she was in the worst of tempers. She flyted on the lass
till the poor thing's cheek paled. 'There you gang,' she cries, 'broking
wi' thae wearifu' Pharisees o' Caulds, whae daurna darken your mither's
door! A bonnie dutiful child, quotha! Wumman, hae ye nae pride, or even
the excuse o' a tinkler-lass?' And then she changed her voice and would
be as saft as honey: 'My puir wee Ailie, was I thrawn till ye? Never
mind, my bonnie. You and me are a' that's left, and we maunna be ill to
ither.' And then the two had their dinner, and all the while the auld
wife was crooning over the lass. 'We maun 'gree weel,' she says, 'for we
're like to be our lee-lane for the rest o' our days. They tell me
Heriotside is seeking Joan o' the Croft, and they're sune to be cried in
Gledsmuir's kirk.'

It was the first the lass had heard of it, and you may fancy she was
struck dumb. And so with one thing and other the auld witch raised the
fiends of jealousy in that innocent heart. She would cry out that
Heriotside was an ill-doing wastrel, and had no business to come and
flatter honest lassies. And then she would speak of his gentle birth and
his leddy mother, and say it was indeed presumption to hope that so
great a gentleman could mean all that he said. Before long Ailie was
silent and white, while her mother rimed on about men and their ways.
And then she could thole it no longer, but must go out and walk by the
burn to cool her hot brow and calm her thoughts, while the witch indoors
laughed to herself at her devices.

For days Ailie had an absent eye and a sad face, and it so fell out that
in all that time young Heriotside, who had scarce missed a day, was laid
up with a broken arm and never came near her. So in a week's time she
was beginning to hearken to her mother when she spoke of incantations
and charms for restoring love. She kenned it was sin, but though not
seven days syne she had sat at the Lord's table, so strong is love in a
young heart that she was on the very brink of it. But the grace of God
was stronger than her weak will. She would have none of her mother's
runes and philters, though her soul cried out for them. Always when she
was most disposed to listen some merciful power stayed her consent.
Alison grew thrawner as the hours passed. She kenned of Heriotside's
broken arm, and she feared that any day he might recover and put her
stratagems to shame. And then it seems that she collogued with her
master and heard word of a subtler device. For it was approaching that
uncanny time of year, the festival of Beltane, when the auld pagans were
wont to sacrifice to their god Baal. In this season warlocks and
carlines have a special dispensation to do evil, and Alison waited on
its coming with graceless joy. As it happened, the tides in the Sker Bay
ebbed at this time between the hours of twelve and one, and, as I have
said, this was the hour above all others when the Powers of Darkness
were most potent. Would the lass but consent to go abroad in the
unhallowed place at this awful season and hour of the night, she was as
firmly handfasted to the Devil as if she had signed a bond with her own
blood; for then, it seemed, the forces of good fled far away, the world
for one hour was given over to its ancient prince, and the man or woman
who willingly sought the spot was his bondservant forever. There are
deadly sins from which God's people may recover. A man may even
communicate unworthily, and yet, so be it he sin not against the Holy
Ghost, he may find forgiveness. But it seems that for the Beltane sin
there could be no pardon, and I can testify from my own knowledge that
they who once committed it became lost souls from that day. James
Denchar, once a promising professor, fell thus out of sinful bravery and
died blaspheming; and of Kate Mallison, who went the same road, no man
can tell. Here indeed was the witch wife's chance; and she was the more
keen, for her master had warned her that this was her last chance.
Either Ailie's soul would be his, or her auld wrunkled body and black
heart would be flung from this pleasant world to their apportioned
place.

Some days later it happened that young Heriotside was stepping home over
the Lang Muir about ten at night, it being his first jaunt from home
since his arm had mended. He had been to the supper of the Forest Club
at the Cross Keys in Gledsmuir, a clamjamphry of wild young blades who
passed the wine and played at cartes once a fortnight. It seems he had
drunk well, so that the world ran round about and he was in the best of
tempers. The moon came down and bowed to him, and he took off his hat to
it. For every step he traveled miles, so that in a little he was beyond
Scotland altogether and pacing the Arabian desert. He thought he was the
Pope of Rome, so he held out his foot to be kissed, and rolled twenty
yards to the bottom of a small brae. Syne he was the king of France, and
fought hard with a whin bush till he had banged it to pieces. After that
nothing would content him but he must be a bogle, for he found his head
dunting on the stars and his legs were knocking the hills together. He
thought of the mischief he was doing to the auld earth, and sat down and
cried at his wickedness. Then he went on, and maybe the steep road to
the Moss Rig helped him, for he began to get soberer and ken his
whereabouts.

On a sudden he was aware of a man linking along at his side. He cried a
fine night, and the man replied. Syne, being merry from his cups, he
tried to slap him on the back. The next he kenned he was rolling on the
grass, for his hand had gone clean through the body and found nothing
but air.

His head was so thick with wine that he found nothing droll in this.
'Faith, friend,' he says, 'that was a nasty fall for a fellow that has
supped weel. Where might your road be gaun to?'

'To the World's End,' said the man, 'but I stop at the Skerburnfoot.'
'Bide the night at Heriotside,' says he. 'It's a thought out of your
way, but it's a comfortable bit.'

'There's mair comfort at the Skerburnfoot,' said the dark man.

Now the mention of the Skerburnfoot brought back to him only the thought
of Ailie, and not of the witch wife, her mother. So he jaloused no ill,
for at the best he was slow in the uptake.

The two of them went on together for a while, Heriotside's fool head
filled with the thought of the lass. Then the dark man broke silence.
'Ye 're thinkin' o' the maid Ailie Sempill,' says he.

'How ken ye that?' asked Heriotside.

'It is my business to read the hearts o' men,' said the other. 'And who
may ye be?' said Heriotside, growing eerie.

'Just an auld packman,' says he, 'nae name ye wad ken, but kin to mony
gentle houses.'

'And what about Ailie, you that ken sae muckle?' asked the young man.

Naething,' was the answer,--'naething that concerns you, for ye'll
never get the lass.'

'By God and I will!' says Heriotside, for he was a profane swearer.
'That's the wrong name to seek her in, ony way,' said the man.

At this the young laird struck a great blow at him with his stick, but
found nothing to resist him but the hill wind.

When they had gone on a bit the dark man spoke again. 'The lassie is
thirled to holy things,' says he; 'she has nae care for flesh and
blood,--only for devout contemplation.'

'She loves me,' says Heriotside.

Not you,' says the other, 'but a shadow in your stead.'

At this the young man's heart began to tremble, for it seemed that there
was truth in what his companion said, and he was owerdrunk to think
gravely.

'I kenna whatna man ye are,' he says, 'but ye have the skill of lassies'
hearts. Tell me truly, is there no way to win her to common love?'

'One way there is,' said the man, 'and for our friendship's sake I will
tell you it. If ye can ever tryst wi' her on Beltane's E'en on the Sker
sands, at the green link o' the burn where the sands begin, on the ebb
o' the tide when the midnight is by, but afore cockcrow, she'll be
yours, body and soul, for this world and forever.'

And then it appeared to the young man that he was walking his love up
the grass walk of Heriotside, with the house close by him. He thought no
more of the stranger he had met, but the word stuck in his heart.

It seems that about this very time Alison was telling the same tale to
poor Ailie. She cast up to her every idle gossip she could think of.
'It's Joan o' the Croft,' was aye her owercome, and she would threep
that they were to be cried in kirk on the first Sabbath of May. And then
she would rime on about the black cruelty of it, and cry down curses on
the lover, so that her daughter's heart grew cauld with fear. It is
terrible to think of the power of the world even in a redeemed soul.
Here was a maid who had drunk of the well of grace and tasted of God's
mercies, and yet there were moments when she was ready to renounce her
hope. At those awful seasons God seemed far off and the world very nigh,
and to sell her soul for love looked a fair bargain; at other times she
would resist the Devil and comfort herself with prayer; but aye when she
awoke there was the sore heart, and when she went to sleep there were
the weary eyes. There was no comfort in the goodliness of spring or the
bright sunshine weather, and she who had been wont to go about the doors
lightfoot and blithe was now as dowie as a widow woman.

And then one afternoon in the hinder end of April came young Heriotside
riding to the Skerburnfoot. His arm was healed, he had got him a fine
new suit of green, and his horse was a mettle beast that well set off
his figure. Ailie was standing by the doorstep as he came down the road,
and her heart stood still with joy. But a second thought gave her
anguish. This man, so gallant and braw, would never be for her;
doubtless the fine suit and the capering horse were for Joan o' the
Croft's pleasure. And he, in turn, when he remarked her wan cheeks and
dowie eyes, had mind to what the dark man said on the muir, and saw in
her a maid sworn to no mortal love. Yet his passion for her had grown
fiercer than ever, and he swore to himself that he would win her back
from her phantasies. She, one may believe, was ready enough to listen.
As she walked with him by the Sker water his words were like musick to
her ears, and Alison within doors laughed to herself and saw her devices
prosper.

He spoke to her of love and his own heart, and the girl hearkened
gladly. Syne he rebuked her coldness and cast scorn upon her piety, and
so far was she beguiled that she had no answer. Then from one thing and
another he spoke of some true token of their love. He said he was
jealous, and craved something to ease his care. 'It's but a small thing
I ask,' says he, 'but it will make me a happy man, and nothing ever
shall come atween us. Tryst wi' me for Beltane's E'en on the Sker sands,
at the green link o' the burn where the sands begin, on the ebb o' the
tide when midnight is by, but afore cockcrow. For,' said he, 'that was
our forbears' tryst for true lovers, and wherefore no for you and me?'

The lassie had grace given her to refuse, but with a woeful heart, and
Heriotside rode off in black discontent, leaving poor Ailie to sigh her
love. He came back the next day and the next, but aye he got the same
answer. A season of great doubt fell upon her soul. She had no clearness
in her hope, nor any sense of God's promises. The Scriptures were an
idle tale to her, prayer brought her no refreshment, and she was
convicted in her conscience of the unpardonable sin. Had she been less
full of pride, she would have taken her troubles to good Dr. Chrystal
and got comfort; but her grief made her silent and timorous, and she
found no help anywhere. Her mother was ever at her side, seeking with
coaxings and evil advice to drive her to the irrevocable step. And all
the while there was her love for the man riving in her bosom, and giving
her no ease by night or day. She believed she had driven him away, and
repented her denial. Only her pride held her back from going to
Heriotside and seeking him herself. She watched the road hourly for a
sight of his face, and when the darkness came she would sit in a corner
brooding over her sorrows.

At last he came, speiring the old question. He sought the same tryst,
but now he had a further tale. It seemed he was eager to get her away
from the Skerburnside and auld Alison. His aunt, Lady Balerynie, would
receive her gladly at his request till the day of their marriage; let
her but tryst with him at the hour and place he named, and he would
carry her straight to Balerynie, where she would be safe and happy. He
named that hour, he said, to escape men's observation, for the sake of
her own good name. He named that place, for it was near her dwelling,
and on the road between Balerynie and Heriotside, which fords the Sker
Burn. The temptation was more than mortal heart could resist. She gave
him the promise he sought, stifling the voice of conscience; and as she
clung to his neck it seemed to her that heaven was a poor thing compared
with a man's love.

Three days remained till Beltane's E'en, and throughout this time it was
noted that Heriotside behaved like one possessed. It may be that his
conscience pricked him, or that he had a glimpse of his sin and its
coming punishment. Certain it is that if he had been daft before, he now
ran wild in his pranks, and an evil report of him was in every mouth. He
drank deep at the Cross Keys, and fought two battles with young lads
that had angered him. One he let off with a touch on the shoulder; the
other goes lame to this day from a wound he got in the groin. There was
word of the procurator fiscal taking note of his doings, and troth, if
they had continued long he must have fled the country. For a wager he
rode his horse down the Dow Craig, wherefore the name of the place has
been the Horseman's Craig ever since. He laid a hundred guineas with the
laird of Slofferfield that he would drive four horses through the
Slofferfield loch, and in the prank he had his bit chariot dung to
pieces and a good mare killed. And all men observed that his eyes were
wild and the face grey and thin, and that his hand would twitch, as he
held the glass, like one with the palsy.

The Eve of Beltane was lower and hot in the low country, with fire
hanging in the clouds and thunder grumbling about the heavens. It seems
that up in the hills it had been an awesome deluge of rain, but on the
coast it was still dry and lowering. It is a long road from Heriotside
to the Skerburnfoot. First you go down the Heriot water, and syne over
the Lang Muir to the edge of Mucklewhan. When you pass the steadings of
Mirehope and Cockmalane, you turn to the right and ford the Mire Burn.
That brings you on to the turnpike road, which you will ride till it
bends inland, while you keep on straight over the Whinny Knowes to the
Sker Bay. There, if you are in luck, you will find the tide out and the
place fordable dryshod for a man on a horse. But if the tide runs, you
will do well to sit down on the sands and content yourself till it turn,
or it will be the solans and scarts of the Solway that will be seeing
the next of you. On this Beltane's E'en, the young man, after supping
with some wild young blades, bade his horse be saddled about ten
o'clock. The company were eager to ken his errand, but he waved them
back. 'Bide here,' he says, 'and boil the wine till I return. This is a
ploy of my own on which no man follows me.' And there was that in his
face, as he spoke, which chilled the wildest, and left them well content
to keep to the good claret and the saft seat, and let the daft laird go
his own ways.

Well and on he rode down the bridle path in the wood, along the top of
the Heriot glen, and as he rode he was aware of a great noise beneath
him. It was not wind, for there was none, and it was not the sound of
thunder; and aye as he speired at himself what it was it grew the
louder, till he came to a break in the trees. And then he saw the cause,
for Heriot was coming down in a furious flood, sixty yards wide, tearing
at the roots of the aiks and flinging red waves against the drystone
dykes. It was a sight and sound to solemnise a man's mind, deep calling
unto deep, the great waters of the hills running to meet with the great
waters of the sea. But Heriotside recked nothing of it, for his heart
had but one thought and the eye of his fancy one figure. Never had he
been so filled with love of the lass; and yet it was not happiness, but
a deadly, secret fear.

As he came to the Lang Muir it was gey and dark, though there was a moon
somewhere behind the clouds. It was little he could see of the road, and
ere long he had tried many moss pools and sloughs, as his braw new coat
bare witness. Aye in front of him was the great hill of Mucklewhan,
where the road turned down by the Mire. The noise of the Heriot had not
long fallen behind him ere another began, the same eerie sound of burns
crying to ither in the darkness. It seemed that the whole earth was
overrun with waters. Every little runnel in the bay was astir, and yet
the land around him was as dry as flax, and no drop of rain had fallen.
As he rode on the din grew louder, and as he came over the top of
Mirehope he kenned by the mighty rushing noise that something uncommon
was happening with the Mire Burn. The light from Mirehope Sheilin
twinkled on his left, and had the man not been dozened with his fancies
he might have observed that the steading was deserted and men were
crying below in the fields. But he rode on, thinking of but one thing,
till he came to the cot house of Cockmalane, which is nigh the fords of
the Mire.

John Dodds, the herd who bode in the place, was standing at the door,
and he looked to see who was on the road so late.

'Stop!' says he,--'stop, Laird Heriotside! I kenna what your errand is,
but it is to no holy purpose that ye're out on Beltane E'en. D' ye no
hear the warring o' the waters?'

And then in the still night came the sound of Mire like the clash of
armies.

'I must win over the ford,' says the laird quickly, thinking of another
thing.

'Ford!' cried John, in scorn. 'There'll be nae ford for you the nicht
unless it was the ford o' the river Jordan. The burns are up and bigger
than man ever saw them. It'll be a Beltane's E'en that a' folk will
remember. They tell me that Gled valley is like a loch, and that there's
an awesome heap o' folk drouned in the hills. Gin ye were ower the Mire,
what about crossin' the Caulds and the Sker?' says he, for he jaloused
he was going to Gledsmuir.

And then it seemed that that word brought the laird to his senses. He
looked the airt the rain was coming from, and he saw it was the airt the
Sker flowed. In a second, he has told me, the works of the Devil were
revealed to him. He saw himself a tool in Satan's hands; he saw his
tryst a device for the destruction of the body as it was assuredly meant
for the destruction of the soul; and there came black on his mind the
picture of an innocent lass borne down by the waters, with no place for
repentance. His heart grew cold in his breast. He had but one
thought,--a sinful and reckless one: to get to her side, that the two
might go together to their account. He heard the roar of the Mire as in
a dream, and when John Dodds laid hands on his bridle he felled him to
the earth. And the next seen of it was the laird riding the floods like
a man possessed.

The horse was the grey stallion he aye rode, the very beast he had
ridden for many a wager with the wild lads of the Cross Keys. No man but
himself durst back it, and it had lamed many a hostler lad and broke two
necks in its day. But it seems it had the mettle for any flood, and took
the Mire with little spurring. The herds on the hillside looked to see
man and steed swept into eternity; but though the red waves were
breaking about his shoulders, and he was swept far down, he aye held on
for the shore. The next thing the watchers saw was the laird struggling
up the far bank and casting his coat from him, so that he rode in his
sark. And then he set off like a wildfire across the muir toward the
turnpike road. Two men saw him on the road, and have recorded their
experience. One was a gangrel, by name McNab, who was travelling from
Gledsmuir to Allerkirk with a heavy pack on his back and a bowed head. He
heard a sound like wind afore him, and, looking up, saw coming down the
road a grey horse stretched out to a wild gallop, and a man on its back
with a face like a soul in torment. He kenned not whether it was devil
or mortal, but flung himself on the roadside and lay like a corp for an
hour or more, till the rain aroused him. The other was one Sim
Doolittle, the fish hawker from Allerfoot, jogging home in his fish cart
from Gledsmuir fair. He had drunk more than was fit for him, and he was
singing some light song, when he saw approaching, as he said, the pale
horse mentioned in the Revelation, with Death seated as the rider.
Thought of his sins came on him like a thunderclap; fear loosened his
knees. He leaped from the cart to the road, and from the road to the
back of a dyke; thence he flew to the hills, and was found the next
morning far up among the Mire Craigs, while his horse and cart were
gotten on the Aller sands, the horse lamed and the cart without the
wheels.

At the tollhouse the road turns inland to Gledsmuir, and he who goes to
the Sker Bay must leave it and cross the wild land called the Whinny
Knowes, a place rough with bracken and foxes' holes and old stone
cairns. The toll-man, John Gilzean, was opening the window to get a
breath of air in the lower night, when he heard or saw the approaching
horse. He kenned the beast for Heriotside's, and, being a friend of the
laird's, he ran down in all haste to open the yen, wondering to himself
about the laird's errand on this night. A voice came down the road to
him bidding him hurry; but John's old fingers were slow with the keys,
and so it happened that the horse had to stop, and John had time to look
up at the gast and woeful face.

'Where away the nicht sae late, laird?' says John.

'I go to save a soul from hell,' was the answer.

And then it seems that through the open door there came the chapping of
a clock.

Whatna hour is that?' asks Heriotside.

'Midnicht,' says John, trembling, for he did not like the look of
things.

There was no answer but a groan, and horse and man went racing down the
dark hollows of the Whinny Knowes.

How he escaped a broken neck in that dreadful place no human being will
ever ken. The sweat, he has told me, stood in cold drops upon his
forehead; he scarcely was aware of the saddle in which he sat, and his
eyes were stelled in his head so that he saw nothing but the sky ayont
him. The night was growing colder, and there was a small sharp wind
stirring from the east. But hot or cold, it was all one to him, who was
already cold as death. He heard not the sound of the sea nor the
peeseweeps startled by his horse, for the sound that ran in his ears was
the roaring Sker water and a girl's cry. The thought kept goading him,
and he spurred the grey horse till the creature was madder than himself.
It leaped the hole which they call the Devil's Mull as I would step over
a thristle, and the next he kenned he was on the edge of the Sker Bay.

It lay before him white and ghaistly, with mist blowing in wafts across
it and a slow swaying of the tides. It was the better part of a mile
wide, but save for some fathoms in the middle, where the Sker current
ran, it was no deeper even at flood than a horse's fetlocks. It looks
eerie at bright midday, when the sun is shining and whaups are crying
among the seaweeds; but think what it was on that awesome night, with
the Powers of Darkness brooding over it like a cloud! The rider's heart
quailed for a moment in natural fear. He stepped his beast a few feet
in, still staring afore him like a daft man. And then something in the
sound or the feel of the waters made him look down, and he perceived
that the ebb had begun and the tide was flowing out to sea.

He kenned that all was lost, and the knowledge drove him to stark
despair. His sins came in his face like birds of night, and his heart
shrunk like a pea. He knew himself for a lost soul, and all that he
loved in the world was out in the tides. There, at any rate, he could
go, too, and give back that gift of life he had so blackly misused. He
cried small and saft like a bairn, and drove the grey out into the
water. And aye as he spurred it the foam should have been flying as high
as his head, but in that uncanny hour there was no foam; only the waves
running sleek like oil. It was not long ere he had come to the Sker
channel, where the red moss waters were roaring to the sea,--an ill
place to ford in midsummer heat, and certain death, as folk reputed it,
at the smallest spate. The grey was swimming; but it seemed the Lord had
other purposes for him than death, for neither man nor horse could
droun. He tried to leave the saddle, but he could not; he flung the
bridle from him, but the grey held on as if some strong hand were
guiding. He cried out upon the Devil to help his own; he renounced his
Maker and his God: but whatever his punishment, he was not to be
drouned. And then he was silent, for something was coming down the tide.

It came down as quiet as a sleeping bairn, straight for him as he sat
with his horse breasting the waters; and as it came the moon crept out
of a cloud, and he saw a glint of yellow hair. And then his madness died
away, and he was himself again, a weary and stricken man. He hung down
over the tide and caught the body in his arms, and then let the grey
make for the shallows. He cared no more for the Devil and all his
myrmidons, for he kenned brawly he was damned. It seemed to him that his
soul had gone from him, and he was as toom as a hazel shell. His breath
rattled in his throat, the tears were dried up in his head, his body had
lost its strength, and yet he clung to the drouned maid as to a hope of
salvation. And then he noted something at which he marvelled dumbly. Her
hair was drookit back from her clay-cold brow, her eyes were shut, but
in her face there was the peace of a child; it seemed even that her lips
were smiling. Here, certes, was no lost soul, but one who had gone
joyfully to meet her Lord. It may be in that dark hour at the burn-foot,
before the spate caught her, she had been given grace to resist her
adversary and fling herself upon God's mercy. And it would seem that it
had been granted; for when he came to the Skerburnfoot, there in the
corner sat the weird wife Alison, dead as a stone.

For days Heriotside wandered the country, or sat in his own house with
vacant eye and trembling hands. Conviction of sin held him like a vice:
he saw the lassie's death laid at his door; her face haunted him by day
and night, and the word of the Lord dirled in his ears, telling of wrath
and punishment. The greatness of his anguish wore him to a shadow, and
at last he was stretched on his bed and like to perish. In his extremity
worthy Dr. Chrystal went to him unasked, and strove to comfort him.
Long, long the good man wrestled, but it seemed as if his ministrations
were to be of no avail. The fever left his body, and he rose to stotter
about the doors; but he was still in his torments, and the mercy-seat
was far from him. At last in the back end of the year came Mungo
Muirhead to Caulds to the autumn communion, and nothing would serve him
but he must try his hand at the storm-tossed soul. He spoke with power
and unction, and a blessing came with his words: the black cloud lifted
and showed a glimpse of grace, and in a little the man had some
assurance of salvation. He became a pillar of Christ's kirk, prompt to
check abominations, notably the sin of witchcraft; foremost in good
works, but with it all a humble man who walked contritely till his
death. When I came first to Caulds I sought to prevail upon him to
accept the eldership, but he aye put me by, and when I heard his tale I
saw that he had done wisely. I mind him well as he sat in his chair or
daundered through Caulds, a kind word for every one and sage counsel in
time of distress, but withal a severe man to himself and a crucifier of
the body. It seems that this severity weakened his frame, for three
years syne come Martinmas he was taken ill with a fever of the bowels,
and after a week's sickness he went to his account, where I trust he is
accepted.



NO-MAN'S-LAND


I The Shieling of Farawa

It was with a light heart and a pleasing consciousness of holiday that I
set out from the inn at Allermuir to tramp my fifteen miles into the
unknown. I walked slowly, for I carried my equipment on my back--my
basket, fly-books and rods, my plaid of Grant tartan (for I boast myself
a distant kinsman of that house), and my great staff, which had tried
ere then the front of the steeper Alps. A small valise with books and
some changes of linen clothing had been sent on ahead in the shepherd's
own hands. It was yet early April, and before me lay four weeks of
freedom--twenty-eight blessed days in which to take fish and smoke the
pipe of idleness. The Lent term had pulled me down, a week of modest
enjoyment thereafter in town had finished the work; and I drank in the
sharp moorish air like a thirsty man who has been forwandered among
deserts.

I am a man of varied tastes and a score of interests. As an
undergraduate I had been filled with the old mania for the complete
life. I distinguished myself in the Schools, rowed in my college eight,
and reached the distinction of practising for three weeks in the Trials.
I had dabbled in a score of learned activities, and when the time came
that I won the inevitable St. Chad's fellowship on my chaotic
acquirements, and I found myself compelled to select if I would pursue a
scholar's life, I had some toil in finding my vocation. In the end I
resolved that the ancient life of the North, of the Celts and the
Northmen and the unknown Pictish tribes, held for me the chief
fascination. I had acquired a smattering of Gaelic, having been brought
up as a boy in Lochaber, and now I set myself to increase my store of
languages. I mastered Erse and Icelandic, and my first book--a monograph
on the probable Celtic elements in the Eddie songs--brought me the
praise of scholars and the deputy-professor's chair of Northern
Antiquities. So much for Oxford. My vacations had been spent mainly in
the North--in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isles, in Scandinavia and
Iceland, once even in the far limits of Finland. I was a keen sportsman
of a sort, an old-experienced fisher, a fair shot with gun and rifle,
and in my hillcraft I might well stand comparison with most men. April
has ever seemed to me the finest season of the year even in our cold
northern altitudes, and the memory of many bright Aprils had brought me
up from the South on the night before to Allerfoot, whence a dogcart had
taken me up Glen Aller to the inn at Allermuir; and now the same desire
had set me on the heather with my face to the cold brown hills.

You are to picture a sort of plateau, benty and rock-strewn, running
ridge-wise above a chain of little peaty lochs and a vast tract of
inexorable bog. In a mile the ridge ceased in a shoulder of hill, and
over this lay the head of another glen, with the same doleful
accompaniment of sunless lochs, mosses, and a shining and resolute
water. East and west and north, in every direction save the south, rose
walls of gashed and serrated hills. It was a grey day with blinks of
sun, and when a ray chanced to fall on one of the great dark faces,
lines of light and colour sprang into being which told of mica and
granite. I was in high spirits, as on the eve of holiday; I had
breakfasted excellently on eggs and salmon-steaks; I had no cares to
speak of, and my prospects were not uninviting. But in spite of myself
the landscape began to take me in thrall and crush me. The silent
vanished peoples of the hills seemed to be stirring; dark primeval faces
seemed to stare at me from behind boulders and jags of rock. The place
was so still, so free from the cheerful clamour of nesting birds, that
it seemed a temenos sacred to some old-world god. At my feet the lochs
lapped ceaselessly; but the waters were so dark that one could not see
bottom a foot from the edge. On my right the links of green told of
snakelike mires waiting to crush the unwary wanderer. It seemed to me
for the moment a land of death, where the tongues of the dead cried
aloud for recognition.

My whole morning's walk was full of such fancies. I lit a pipe to cheer
me, but the things would not be got rid of. I thought of the Gaels who
had held those fastnesses; I thought of the Britons before them, who
yielded to their advent. They were all strong peoples in their day, and
now they had gone the way of the earth. They had left their mark on the
levels of the glens and on the more habitable uplands, both in names and
in actual forts, and graves where men might still dig curios. But the
hills--that black stony amphitheatre before me--it seemed strange that
the hills bore no traces of them. And then with some uneasiness I
reflected on that older and stranger race who were said to have held the
hill-tops. The Picts, the Picti--what in the name of goodness were they?
They had troubled me in all my studies, a sort of blank wall to put an
end to speculation. We knew nothing of them save certain strange
names which men called Pictish, the names of those hills in front of
me--the Muneraw, the Yirnie, the Calmarton. They were the corpus vile
for learned experiment; but Heaven alone knew what dark abyss of
savagery once yawned in the midst of the desert.

And then I remembered the crazy theories of a pupil of mine at St.
Chad's, the son of a small landowner on the Aller, a young gentleman who
had spent his substance too freely at Oxford, and was now dreeing his
weird in the Backwoods. He had been no scholar; but a certain
imagination marked all his doings, and of a Sunday night he would come
and talk to me of the North. The Picts were his special subject, and his
ideas were mad. 'Listen to me,' he would say, when I had mixed him toddy
and given him one of my cigars; 'I believe there are traces--ay, and
more than traces--of an old culture lurking in those hills and waiting
to be discovered. We never hear of the Picts being driven from the
hills. The Britons drove them from the lowlands, the Gaels from Ireland
did the same for the Britons; but the hills were left unmolested. We
hear of no one going near them except outlaws and tinklers. And in that
very place you have the strangest mythology. Take the story of the
Brownie. What is that but the story of a little swart man of uncommon
strength and cleverness, who does good and ill indiscriminately, and
then disappears. There are many scholars, as you yourself confess, who
think that the origin of the Brownie was in some mad belief in the old
race of the Picts, which still survived somewhere in the hills. And do
we not hear of the Brownie in authentic records right down to the year
1756? After that, when people grew more incredulous, it is natural that
the belief should have begun to die out; but I do not see why stray
traces should not have survived till late.'

'Do you not see what that means?' I had said in mock gravity. 'Those
same hills are, if anything, less known now than they were a hundred
years ago. Why should not your Picts or Brownies be living to this day?'

'Why not, indeed?' he had rejoined, in all seriousness.

I laughed, and he went to his rooms and returned with a large
leather-bound book. It was lettered, in the rococo style of a young
man's taste, 'Glimpses of the Unknown,' and some of the said glimpses he
proceeded to impart to me. It was not pleasant reading; indeed, I had
rarely heard anything so well fitted to shatter sensitive nerves. The
early part consisted of folk-tales and folk-sayings, some of them wholly
obscure, some of them with a glint of meaning, but all of them with some
hint of a mystery in the hills. I heard the Brownie story in countless
versions. Now the thing was a friendly little man, who wore grey
breeches and lived on brose; now he was a twisted being, the sight of
which made the ewes miscarry in the lambing-time. But the second part was
the stranger, for it was made up of actual tales, most of them with date
and place appended. It was a most Bedlamite catalogue of horrors, which,
if true, made the wholesome moors a place instinct with tragedy. Some
told of children carried away from villages, even from towns, on the
verge of the uplands. In almost every case they were girls, and the
strange fact was their utter disappearance. Two little girls would be
coming home from school, would be seen last by a neighbour just where
the road crossed a patch of heath or entered a wood, and then--no human
eye ever saw them again. Children's cries had startled outlying
shepherds in the night, and when they had rushed to the door they could
hear nothing but the night wind. The instances of such disappearances
were not very common--perhaps once in twenty years--but they were
confined to this one tract of country, and came in a sort of fixed
progression from the middle of last century, when the record began. But
this was only one side of the history. The latter part was all devoted
to a chronicle of crimes which had gone unpunished, seeing that no hand
had ever been traced. The list was fuller in last century; in the
earlier years of the present it had dwindled; then came a revival about
the 'fifties; and now again in our own time it had sunk low. At the
little cottage of Auchterbrean, on the roadside in Glen Aller, a
labourer's wife had been found pierced to the heart. It was thought to
be a case of a woman's jealousy, and her neighbour was accused,
convicted, and hanged. The woman, to be sure, denied the charge with her
last breath; but circumstantial evidence seemed sufficiently strong
against her. Yet some people in the glen believed her guiltless. In
particular, the carrier who had found the dead woman declared that the
way in which her neighbour received the news was a sufficient proof of
innocence; and the doctor who was first summoned professed himself
unable to tell with what instrument the wound had been given. But this
was all before the days of expert evidence, so the woman had been hanged
without scruple. Then there had been another story of peculiar horror,
telling of the death of an old man at some little lonely shieling called
Carrickfey. But at this point I had risen in protest, and made to drive
the young idiot from my room.

'It was my grandfather who collected most of them,' he said. 'He had
theories,[*] but people called him mad, so he was wise enough to hold his
tongue. My father declares the whole thing mania; but I rescued the book
had it bound, and added to the collection. It is a queer hobby; but,
as I say, I have theories, and there are more things in heaven and
earth--' But at this he heard a friend's voice in the Quad., and dived out,
leaving the banal quotation unfinished.

[* In the light of subsequent events I have jotted down the materials to
which I refer. The last authentic record of the Brownie is in the
narrative of the shepherd of Clachlands, taken down towards the close of
last century by the Reverend Mr. Gillespie, minister of Allerkirk, and
included by him in his 'Songs and Legends of Glen Aller'.

The authorities on the strange carrying-away of children are to be found
in a series of articles in a local paper, the Allerfoot Advertiser',
September and October 1878, and a curious book published anonymously at
Edinburgh in 1848, entitled 'The Weathergaw'. The records of the
unexplained murders in the same neighbourhood are all contained in Mr.
Fordoun's 'Theory of Expert Evidence', and an attack on the book in the
'Law Review' for June 1881. The Carrickfey case has a pamphlet to
itself--now extremely rare--a copy of which was recently obtained in a
bookseller's shop in Dumfries by a well-known antiquary, and presented
to the library of the Supreme Court in Edinburgh.]

Strange though it may seem, this madness kept coming back to me as I
crossed the last few miles of moor. I was now on a rough tableland, the
watershed between two lochs, and beyond and above me rose the stony
backs of the hills. The burns fell down in a chaos of granite boulders,
and huge slabs of grey stone lay flat and tumbled in the heather. The
full waters looked prosperously for my fishing, and I began to forget
all fancies in anticipation of sport.

Then suddenly in a hollow of land I came on a ruined cottage. It had
been a very small place, but the walls were still half-erect, and the
little moorland garden was outlined on the turf. A lonely apple-tree,
twisted and gnarled with winds, stood in the midst.

From higher up on the hill I heard a loud roar, and I knew my excellent
friend the shepherd of Farawa, who had come thus far to meet me. He
greeted me with the boisterous embarrassment which was his way of
prefacing hospitality. A grave reserved man at other times, on such
occasions he thought it proper to relapse into hilarity. I fell into
step with him, and we set off for his dwelling. But first I had the
curiosity to look back to the tumble-down cottage and ask him its name.

A queer look came into his eyes. 'They ca' the place Carrickfey,' he
said. Naebody has daured to bide there this twenty year sin'--but I see
ye ken the story.' And, as if glad to leave the subject, he hastened to
discourse on fishing.



II Tells of an Evening's Talk

The shepherd was a masterful man; tall, save for the stoop which belongs
to all moorland folk, and active as a wild goat. He was not a new
importation, nor did he belong to the place; for his people had
lived in the remote Borders, and he had come as a boy to this shieling
of Farawa. He was unmarried, but an elderly sister lived with him and
cooked his meals. He was reputed to be extraordinarily skilful in his
trade; I know for a fact that he was in his way a keen sportsman; and
his few neighbours gave him credit for a sincere piety. Doubtless this
last report was due in part to his silence, for after his first greeting
he was wont to relapse into a singular taciturnity. As we strode across
the heather he gave me a short outline of his year's lambing. 'Five pair
o' twins yestreen, twae this morn; that makes thirty-five yowes that hae
lambed since the Sabbath. I'll dae weel if God's willin'.' Then, as I
looked towards the hill-tops whence the thin mist of morn was trailing,
he followed my gaze. 'See,' he said with uplifted crook--'see that
sicht. Is that no what is written of in the Bible when it says, "The
mountains do smoke".' And with this piece of apologeties he finished his
talk, and in a little we were at the cottage.

It was a small enough dwelling in truth, and yet large for a moorland
house, for it had a garret below the thatch, which was given up to my
sole enjoyment. Below was the wide kitchen with box-beds, and next to it
the inevitable second room, also with its cupboard sleeping-places. The
interior was very clean, and yet I remember to have been struck with the
faint musty smell which is inseparable from moorland dwellings. The
kitchen pleased me best, for there the great rafters were black with
peat-reek, and the uncovered stone floor, on which the fire gleamed
dully, gave an air of primeval simplicity. But the walls spoiled all,
for tawdry things of to-day had penetrated even there. Some grocers'
almanacs--years old--hung in places of honour, and an extraordinary
lithograph of the Royal Family in its youth. And this, mind you, between
crooks and fishing-rods and old guns, and horns of sheep and deer.

The life for the first day or two was regular and placid. I was up
early, breakfasted on porridge (a dish which I detest), and then off to
the lochs and streams. At first my sport prospered mightily. With a
drake-wing I killed a salmon of seventeen pounds, and the next day had a
fine basket of trout from a hill-burn. Then for no earthly reason the
weather changed. A bitter wind came out of the north-east, bringing
showers of snow and stinging hail, and lashing the waters into storm. It
was now farewell to fly-fishing. For a day or two I tried trolling with
the minnow on the lochs, but it was poor sport, for I had no boat, and
the edges were soft and mossy. Then in disgust I gave up the attempt,
went back to the cottage, lit my biggest pipe, and sat down with a book
to await the turn of the weather.

The shepherd was out from morning till night at his work, and when
he came in at last, dog-tired, his face would be set and hard, and his
eyes heavy with sleep. The strangeness of the man grew upon me. He had a
shrewd brain beneath his thatch of hair, for I had tried him once or
twice, and found him abundantly intelligent. He had some smattering of
an education, like all Scottish peasants, and, as I have said, he was
deeply religious. I set him down as a fine type of his class, sober,
serious, keenly critical, free from the bondage of superstition. But I
rarely saw him, and our talk was chiefly in monosyllables--short
interjected accounts of the number of lambs dead or alive on the hill.
Then he would produce a pencil and notebook, and be immersed in some
calculation; and finally he would be revealed sleeping heavily in his
chair, till his sister wakened him, and he stumbled off to bed.

So much for the ordinary course of life; but one day--the second I think
of the bad weather--the extraordinary happened. The storm had passed in
the afternoon into a resolute and blinding snow, and the shepherd,
finding it hopeless on the hill, came home about three o'clock. I could
make out from his way of entering that he was in a great temper. He
kicked his feet savagely against the door-post. Then he swore at his
dogs, a thing I had never heard him do before. 'Hell!' he cried, 'can ye
no keep out o' my road, ye britts?' Then he came sullenly into the
kitchen, thawed his numbed hands at the fire, and sat down to his meal.

I made some aimless remark about the weather.

'Death to man and beast,' he grunted. 'I hae got the sheep doun frae the
hill, but the lambs will never thole this. We maun pray that it will no
last.'

His sister came in with some dish. 'Margit,' he cried, 'three lambs away
this morning, and three deid wi' the hole in the throat.'

The woman's face visibly paled. 'Guid help us, Adam; that hasna happened
this three year.'

'It has happened noo,' he said, surlily. 'But, by God! if it happens
again I'll gang mysel' to the Scarts o' the Muneraw.'

'0 Adam!' the woman cried shrilly, 'haud your tongue. Ye kenna wha hears
ye.' And with a frightened glance at me she left the room.

I asked no questions, but waited till the shepherd's anger should cool.
But the cloud did not pass so lightly. When he had finished his dinner
he pulled his chair to the fire and sat staring moodily. He made some
sort of apology to me for his conduct. 'I'm sore troubled, sir; but I'm
vexed ye should see me like this. Maybe things will be better the morn.'
And then, lighting his short black pipe, he resigned himself to his
meditations.

But he could not keep quiet. Some nervous unrest seemed to have
possessed the man. He got up with a start and went to the window, where
the snow was drifting, unsteadily past. As he stared out into the storm
I heard him mutter to himself, 'Three away, God help me, and three wi'
the hole in the throat.'

Then he turned round to me abruptly. I was jotting down notes for an
article I contemplated in the 'Revue Celtique,' so my thoughts were far
away from the present. The man recalled me by demanding fiercely. 'Do ye
believe in God?'

I gave him some sort of answer in the affirmative.

'Then do ye believe in the Devil?' he asked.

The reply must have been less satisfactory, for he came forward, and
flung himself violently into the chair before me.

'What do ye ken about it?' he cried. 'You that bides in a southern toun,
what can ye ken o' the God that works in thae hills and the Devil--ay,
the manifold devils--that He suffers to bide here? I tell ye, man, that
if ye had seen what I have seen ye wad be on your knees at this moment
praying to God to pardon your unbelief. There are devils at the back o'
every stane and hidin' in every cleuch, and it's by the grace o' God
alone that a man is alive upon the earth.' His voice had risen high and
shrill, and then suddenly he cast a frightened glance towards the window
and was silent.

I began to think that the man's wits were unhinged, and the thought did
not give me satisfaction. I had no relish for the prospect of being left
alone in this moorland dwelling with the cheerful company of a maniac.
But his next movements reassured me. He was clearly only dead-tired, for
he fell sound asleep in his chair, and by the time his sister brought
tea and wakened him, he seemed to have got the better of his excitement.

When the window was shuttered and the lamp lit, I set myself again to
the completion of my notes. The shepherd had got out his Bible, and was
solemnly reading with one great finger travelling down the lines. He was
smoking, and whenever some text came home to him with power he would
make pretence to underline it with the end of the stem. Soon I had
finished the work I desired, and, my mind being full of my pet hobby, I
fell into an inquisitive frame of mind, and began to question the solemn
man opposite on the antiquities of the place.

He stared stupidly at me when I asked him concerning monuments or
ancient weapons.

'I kenna,' said he. 'There's a heap o' queer things in the hills.'

'This place should be a centre for such relics. You know that the name
of the hill behind the house, as far as I can make it out, means the
"Place of the Little Men." It is a good Gaelic word, though there is
some doubt about its exact interpretation. But clearly the Gaelic
peoples did not speak of themselves when they gave the name; they must
have referred to some older and stranger population.'

The shepherd looked at me dully, as not understanding.

'It is partly this fact--besides the fishing, of course--which interests
me in this countryside,' said I, gaily.

Again he cast the same queer frightened glance towards the window. 'If
tak the advice of an aulder man,' he said, slowly, 'yell let well alane
and no meddle wi' uncanny things.'

I laughed pleasantly, for at last I had found out my hard-headed host in
a piece of childishness. 'Why, I thought that you of all men would be
free from superstition.'

'What do ye call supersteetion?' he asked.

'A belief in old wives' tales,' said I, 'a trust in the crude
supernatural and the patently impossible.'

He looked at me beneath his shaggy brows. 'How do ye ken what is
impossible? Mind ye, sir, ye're no in the toun just now, but in the
thick of the wild hills.'

'But, hang it all, man,' I cried, 'you don't mean to say that you
believe in that sort of thing? I am prepared for many things up here,
but not for the Brownie,--though, to be sure, if one could meet him in
the flesh, it would be rather pleasant than otherwise, for he was a
companionable sort of fellow.'

'When a thing pits the fear o' death on a man he aye speaks well of it.'

It was true--the Eumenides and the Good Folk over again; and I awoke
with interest to the fact that the conversation was getting into strange
channels.

The shepherd moved uneasily in his chair. 'I am a man that fears God,
and has nae time for daft stories; but I havena traivelled the hills for
twenty years wi' my een shut. If I say that I could tell ye stories o'
faces seen in the mist, and queer things that have knocked against me in
the snaw, wad ye believe me? I wager ye wadna. Ye wad say I had been
drunk, and yet I am a God-fearing temperate man.'

He rose and went to a cupboard, unlocked it, and brought out something
in his hand, which he held out to me. I took it with some curiosity, and
found that it was a flint arrow-head.

Clearly a flint arrow-head, and yet like none that I had ever seen in
any collection. For one thing it was larger, and the barb less clumsily
thick. More, the chipping was new, or comparatively so; this thing had
not stood the wear of fifteen hundred years among the stones of the
hillside. Now there are, I regret to say, institutions which
manufacture primitive relics; but it is not hard for a practised eye to
see the difference. The chipping has either a regularity and a balance
which is unknown in the real thing, or the rudeness has been overdone,
and the result is an implement incapable of harming a mortal creature.
But this was the real thing if it ever existed; and yet--I was prepared
to swear on my reputation that it was not half a century old.

'Where did you get this?' I asked with some nervousness.

'I hae a story about that,' said the shepherd. 'Outside the door there
ye can see a muckle flat stane aside the buchts. One simmer nicht I was
sitting there smoking till the dark, and I wager there was naething on
the stane then. But that same nicht I awoke wi' a queer thocht, as if
there were folk moving around the hoose--folk that didna mak' muckle
noise. I mind o' lookin' out o' the windy, and I could hae sworn I saw
something black movin' amang the heather and intil the buchts. Now I had
maybe threescore o' lambs there that nicht, for I had to tak' them many
miles off in the early morning. Weel, when I gets up about four o'clock
and gangs out, as I am passing the muckle stane I finds this bit errow.
"That's come here in the nicht," says I, and I wunnered a wee and put it
in my pouch. But when I came to my faulds what did I see? Five o' my
best hoggs were away, and three mair were lying deid wi' a hole in their
throat.'

'Who in the world--?' I began.

Dinna ask,' said he. 'If I aince sterted to speir about thae maitters, I
wadna keep my reason.'

'Then that was what happened on the hill this morning?'

'Even sae, and it has happened mair than aince sin' that time. It's the
most uncanny slaughter, for sheep-stealing I can understand, but no this
pricking o' the puir beasts' wizands. I kenna how they dae't either, for
it's no wi' a knife or ony common tool.'

'Have you never tried to follow the thieves?'

'Have I no?' he asked, grimly. 'Hit had been common sheep-stealers I wad
hae had them by the heels, though I had followed them a hundred miles.
But this is no common. I've tracked them, and it's ill they are to
track; but I never got beyond ae place, and that was the Scarts o' the
Muneraw that ye've heard me speak o'.'

'But who in Heaven's name are the people? Tinklers or poachers or what?'

'Ay,' said he, drily. 'Even so. Tinklers and poachers whae wark wi'
stane errows and kill sheep by a hole in their throat. Lord, I kenna
what they are, unless the Muckle Deil himsel'.'

The conversation had passed beyond my comprehension. In this prosaic
hard-headed man I had come on the dead-rock of superstition and
blind fear.

'That is only the story of the Brownie over again, and he is an exploded
myth,' I said, laughing.

'Are ye the man that exploded it?' said the shepherd, rudely. 'I trow
no, neither you nor ony ither. My bonny man, if ye lived a twalmonth in
thae hills, ye wad sing safter about exploded myths, as ye call them.'

'I tell you what I would do,' said I. 'If I lost sheep as you lose them,
I would go up the Scarts of the Muneraw and never rest till I had
settled the question once and for all.' I spoke hotly, for I was vexed
by the man's childish fear.

'I daresay ye wad,' he said, slowly. 'But then I am no you, and maybe I
ken mair o' what is in the Scarts o' the Muneraw. Maybe I ken that
whilk, if ye kenned it, wad send ye back to the South Country wi' your
hert in your mouth. But, as I say, I am no sae brave as you, for I saw
something in the first year o' my herding here which put the terror o'
God on me, and makes me a fearfu' man to this day. Ye ken the story o'
the gudeman o' Carrickfey?'

I nodded.

Weel, I was the man that fand him. I had seen the deid afore and I've
seen them since. But never have I seen aucht like the look in that man's
een. What he saw at his death I may see the morn, so I walk before the
Lord in fear.'

Then he rose and stretched himself. 'It's bedding-time, for I maun be up
at three,' and with a short good night he left the room.



III The Scarts of the Muneraw

The next morning was fine, for the snow had been intermittent, and had
soon melted except in the high corries. True, it was deceptive weather,
for the wind had gone to the rainy south-west, and the masses of cloud
on that horizon boded ill for the afternoon. But some days' inaction had
made me keen for a chance of sport, so I rose with the shepherd and set
out for the day.

He asked me where I proposed to begin.

I told him the tarn called the Loch o' the Threshes, which lies over the
back of the Muneraw on another watershed. It is on the ground of the
Rhynns Forest, and I had fished it of old from the Forest House. I knew
the merits of the trout, and I knew its virtues in a south-west wind, so
I had resolved to go thus far afield.

The shepherd heard the name in silence. 'Your best road will be ower
that rig, and syne on to the water o' Caulds. Keep abune the moss till
ye come to the place they ca' the Nick o' the Threshes. That will take
ye to the very lochside, but it's a lang road and a sair.'

The morning was breaking over the bleak hills. Little clouds drifted
athwart the corries, and wisps of haze fluttered from the peaks. A great
rosy flush lay over one side of the glen, which caught the edge of the
sluggish bog-pools and turned them to fire. Never before had I seen the
mountain-land so clear, for far back into the east and west I saw
mountain-tops set as close as flowers in a border, black crags seamed
with silver lines which I knew for mighty waterfalls, and below at my
feet the lower slopes fresh with the dewy green of spring. A name stuck
in my memory from the last night's talk.

'Where are the Scarts of the Muneraw?' I asked.

The shepherd pointed to the great hill which bears the name, and which
lies, a huge mass, above the watershed.

'D'ye see yon corrie at the east that runs straucht up the side? It
looks a bit scart, but it's sae deep that it's aye derk at the bottom
o't. Weel, at the tap o' the rig it meets anither corrie that runs doun
the ither side, and that one they ca' the Scarts. There is a sort o'
burn in it that flows intil the Dule and sae intil the Aller, and,
indeed, if ye were gaun there it wad be from Aller Glen that your best
road wad lie. But it's an ill bit, and ye'll be sair guidit if ye
try't.'

There he left me and went across the glen, while I struck upwards over
the ridge. At the top I halted and looked down on the wide glen of the
Caulds, which there is little better than a bog, but lower down grows
into a green pastoral valley. The great Muneraw still dominated the
landscape, and the black scaur on its side seemed blacker than before.
The place fascinated me, for in that fresh morning air the shepherd's
fears seemed monstrous. 'Some day,' said I to myself, 'I will go and
explore the whole of that mighty hill.' Then I descended and struggled
over the moss, found the Nick, and in two hours' time was on the loch's
edge.

I have little in the way of good to report of the fishing. For perhaps
one hour the trout took well; after that they sulked steadily for the
day. The promise, too, of fine weather had been deceptive. By midday the
rain was falling in that soft soaking fashion which gives no hope of
clearing. The mist was down to the edge of the water, and I cast my
flies into a blind sea of white. It was hopeless work, and yet from a
sort of ill-temper I stuck to it long after my better judgment had
warned me of its folly. At last, about three in the afternoon, I struck
my camp, and prepared myself for a long and toilsome retreat.

And long and toilsome it was beyond anything I had ever encountered. Had
I had a vestige of sense I would have followed the burn from the loch
down to the Forest House. The place was shut up, but the keeper would
gladly have given me shelter for the night. But foolish pride was too
strong in me. I had found my road in mist before, and could do it again.

Before I got to the top of the hill I had repented my decision; when I
got there I repented it more. For below me was a dizzy chaos of grey;
there was no landmark visible; and before me I knew was the bog through
which the Caulds Water twined. I had crossed it with some trouble in the
morning, but then I had light to pick my steps. Now I could only stumble
on, and in five minutes I might be in a bog-hole, and in five more in a
better world.

But there was no help to be got from hesitation, so with a rueful
courage I set off. The place was if possible worse than I had feared.
Wading up to the knees with nothing before you but a blank wall of mist
and the cheerful consciousness that your next step may be your
last--such was my state for one weary mile. The stream itself was high,
and rose to my armpits, and once and again I only saved myself by a
violent leap backwards from a pitiless green slough. But at last it was
past, and I was once more on the solid ground of the hillside.

Now, in the thick weather I had crossed the glen much lower down than in
the morning, and the result was that the hill on which I stood was one
of the giants which, with the Muneraw for centre, guard the watershed.
Had I taken the proper way, the Nick o' the Threshes would have led me
to the Caulds, and then once over the bog a little ridge was all that
stood between me and the glen of Farawa. But instead I had come a wild
cross-country road, and was now, though I did not know it, nearly as far
from my destination as at the start.

Well for me that I did not know, for I was wet and dispirited, and had I
not fancied myself all but home, I should scarcely have had the energy
to make this last ascent. But soon I found it was not the little ridge I
had expected. I looked at my watch and saw that it was five o'clock.
When, after the weariest climb, I lay on a piece of level ground which
seemed the top, I was not surprised to find that it was now seven. The
darkening must be at hand, and sure enough the mist seemed to be
deepening into a greyish black. I began to grow desperate. Here was I on
the summit of some infernal mountain, without any certainty where my
road lay. I was lost with a vengeance, and at the thought I began to be
acutely afraid.

I took what seemed to me the way I had come, and began to descend
steeply. Then something made me halt, and the next instant I was lying on
my face trying painfully to retrace my steps. For I had found myself
slipping, and before I could stop, my feet were dangling over a
precipice with Heaven alone knows how many yards of sheer mist between
me and the bottom. Then I tried keeping the ridge, and took that to the
right, which I thought would bring me nearer home. It was no good trying
to think out a direction, for in the fog my brain was running round, and
I seemed to stand on a pin-point of space where the laws of the compass
had ceased to hold.

It was the roughest sort of walking, now stepping warily over acres of
loose stones, now crawling down the face of some battered rock, and now
wading in the long dripping heather. The soft rain had begun to fall
again, which completed my discomfort. I was now seriously tired, and,
like all men who in their day have bent too much over books, I began to
feel it in my back. My spine ached, and my breath came in short broken
pants. It was a pitiable state of affairs for an honest man who had
never encountered much grave discomfort. To ease myself I was compelled
to leave my basket behind me, trusting to return and find it, if I
should ever reach safety and discover on what pathless hill I had been
strayed. My rod I used as a staff, but it was of little use, for my
fingers were getting too numb to hold it.

Suddenly from the blankness I heard a sound as of human speech. At first
I thought it mere craziness--the cry of a weasel or a hill-bird distorted
by my ears. But again it came, thick and faint, as through acres of
mist, and yet clearly the sound of 'articulate-speaking men.' In a
moment I lost my despair and cried out in answer. This was some
forwandered traveller like myself, and between us we could surely find
some road to safety. So I yelled back at the pitch of my voice and
waited intently.

But the sound ceased, and there was utter silence again. Still I waited,
and then from some place much nearer came the same soft mumbling speech.
I could make nothing of it. Heard in that drear place it made the nerves
tense and the heart timorous. It was the strangest jumble of vowels and
consonants I had ever met.

A dozen solutions flashed through my brain. It was some maniac talking
Jabberwock to himself. It was some belated traveller whose wits had
given out in fear. Perhaps it was only some shepherd who was amusing
himself thus, and whiling the way with nonsense. Once again I cried out
and waited.

Then suddenly in the hollow trough of mist before me, where things could
still be half discerned, there appeared a figure. It was little and
squat and dark; naked, apparently, but so rough with hair that it wore
the appearance of a skin-covered being. It crossed my line of vision,
not staying for a moment, but in its face and eyes there seemed to lurk
an elder world of mystery and barbarism, a troll-like life which was too
horrible for words.

The shepherd's fear came back on me like a thunderclap. For one awful
instant my legs failed me, and I had almost fallen. The next I had
turned and ran shrieking up the hill.

If he who may read this narrative has never felt the force of an
overmastering terror, then let him thank his Maker and pray that he
never may. I am no weak child, but a strong grown man, accredited in
general with sound sense and little suspected of hysterics. And yet I
went up that brae-face with my heart fluttering like a bird and my
throat aching with fear. I screamed in short dry gasps; involuntarily,
for my mind was beyond any purpose. I felt that beast-like clutch at my
throat; those red eyes seemed to be staring at me from the mist; I heard
ever behind and before and on all sides the patter of those inhuman
feet.

Before I knew I was down, slipping over a rock and falling some dozen
feet into a soft marshy hollow. I was conscious of lying still for a
second and whimpering like a child. But as I lay there I awoke to the
silence of the place. There was no sound of pursuit; perhaps they had
lost my track and given up. My courage began to return, and from this it
was an easy step to hope. Perhaps after all it had been merely an
illusion, for folk do not see clearly in the mist, and I was already
done with weariness.

But even as I lay in the green moss and began to hope, the faces of my
pursuers grew up through the mist. I stumbled madly to my feet; but I
was hemmed in, the rock behind and my enemies before. With a cry I
rushed forward, and struck wildly with my rod at the first dark body. It
was as if I had struck an animal, and the next second the thing was
wrenched from my grasp. But still they came no nearer. I stood trembling
there in the centre of those malignant devils, my brain a mere
weathercock, and my heart crushed shapeless with horror. At last the end
came, for with the vigour of madness I flung myself on the nearest, and
we rolled on the ground. Then the monstrous things seemed to close over
me, and with a choking cry I passed into unconsciousness.



IV The Darkness that is Under the Earth

There is an unconsciousness that is not wholly dead, where a man feels
numbly and the body lives without the brain. I was beyond speech or
thought, and yet I felt the upward or downward motion as 'the way lay in
hill or glen, and I most assuredly knew when the open air was changed
for the close underground. I could feel dimly that lights were
flared in my face, and that I was laid in some bed on the earth. Then
with the stopping of movement the real sleep of weakness seized me, and
for long I knew nothing of this mad world.


Morning came over the moors with bird-song and the glory of fine
weather. The streams were still rolling in spate, but the hill-pastures
were alight with dawn, and the little seams of snow glistened like white
fire. A ray from the sunrise cleft its path somehow into the abyss, and
danced on the wall above my couch. It caught my eye as I wakened, and
for long I lay crazily wondering what it meant. My head was splitting
with pain, and in my heart was the same fluttering nameless fear. I did
not wake to full consciousness; not till the twinkle of sun from the
clean bright out-of-doors caught my senses did I realise that I lay in a
great dark place with a glow of dull firelight in the middle.

In time things rose and moved around me, a few ragged shapes of men,
without clothing, shambling with their huge feet and looking towards me
with curved beast-like glances. I tried to marshal my thoughts, and
slowly, bit by bit, I built up the present. There was no question to my
mind of dreaming; the past hours had scored reality upon my brain. Yet I
cannot say that fear was my chief feeling. The first crazy terror had
subsided, and now I felt mainly a sickened disgust with just a tinge of
curiosity. I found that my knife, watch, flask, and money had gone, but
they had left me a map of the countryside. It seemed strange to look at
the calico, with the name of a London printer stamped on the back, and
lines of railway and highroad running through every shire. Decent and
comfortable civilisation! And here was I a prisoner in this den of
nameless folk, and in the midst of a life which history knew not.

Courage is a virtue which grows with reflection and the absence of the
immediate peril. I thought myself into some sort of resolution, and lo!
when the Folk approached me and bound my feet I was back at once in the
most miserable terror. They tied me all but my hands with some strong
cord, and carried me to the centre,' where the fire was glowing. Their
soft touch was the acutest torture to my nerves, but I stifled my cries
lest some one should lay his hand on my mouth. Had that happened, I am
convinced my reason would have failed me.

So there I lay in the shine of the fire, with the circle of unknown
things around me. There seemed but three or four, but I took no note of
number. They talked huskily among themselves in a tongue which sounded
all gutturals. Slowly my fear became less an emotion than a habit, and I
had room for the smallest shade of curiosity. I strained my ear to catch
a word, but it was a mere chaos of sound. The thing ran and thundered in
my brain as I stared dumbly into the vacant air. Then I thought that
unless I spoke I should certainly go crazy, for my head was beginning
to swim at the strange cooing noise.

I spoke a word or two in my best Gaelic, and they closed round me
inquiringly. Then I was sorry I had spoken, for my words had brought
them nearer, and I shrank at the thought. But as the faint echoes of my
speech hummed in the rock-chamber, I was struck by a curious kinship of
sound. Mine was sharper, more distinct, and staccato; theirs was
blurred, formless, but still with a certain root-resemblance.

Then from the back there came an older being, who seemed to have heard
my words. He was like some foul grey badger, his red eyes sightless, and
his hands trembling on a stump of bog-oak. The others made way for him
with such deference as they were capable of, and the thing squatted down
by me and spoke.

To my amazement his words were familiar. It was some manner of speech
akin to the Gaelic, but broadened, lengthened, coarsened. I remembered
an old book-tongue, commonly supposed to be an impure dialect once used
in Brittany, which I had met in the course of my researches. The words
recalled it, and as far as I could remember the thing, I asked him who
he was and where the place might be.

He answered me in the same speech--still more broadened, lengthened,
coarsened. I lay back with sheer amazement. I had found the key to this
unearthly life.--

For a little an insatiable curiosity, the ardour of the scholar,
prevailed. I forgot the horror of the place, and thought only of the
fact that here before me was the greatest find that scholarship had ever
made. I was precipitated into the heart of the past. Here must be the
fountainhead of all legends, the chrysalis of all beliefs. I actually
grew light-hearted. This strange folk around me were now no more
shapeless things of terror, but objects of research and experiment. I
almost came to think them not unfriendly.

For an hour I enjoyed the highest of earthly pleasures. In that strange
conversation I heard--in fragments and suggestions--the history of the
craziest survival the world has ever seen. I heard of the struggles with
invaders, preserved as it were in a sort of shapeless poetry. There were
bitter words against the Gaelic oppressor, bitterer words against the
Saxon stranger, and for a moment ancient hatreds flared into life. Then
there came the tale of the hill-refuge, the morbid hideous existence
preserved for centuries amid a changing world. I heard fragments of old
religions, primeval names of god and goddess, half-understood by the
Folk, but to me the key to a hundred puzzles. Tales which survive to us
in broken disjointed riddles were intact here in living form. I lay on my
elbow and questioned feverishly. At any moment they might become morose
and refuse to speak. Clearly it was my duty to make the most of a brief
good fortune.

And then the tale they told me grew more hideous. I heard of the
circumstances of the life itself and their daily shifts for existence.
It was a murderous chronicle--a history of lust and rapine and
unmentionable deeds in the darkness. One thing they had early
recognised--that the race could not be maintained within itself; so that
ghoulish carrying away of little girls from the lowlands began, which I
had heard of but never credited. Shut up in those dismal holes, the
girls soon died, and when the new race had grown up the plunder had been
repeated. Then there were bestial murders in lonely cottages, done for
God knows what purpose. Sometimes the occupant had seen more than was
safe, sometimes the deed was the mere exuberance of a lust of slaying.
As they abbled their tales my heart's blood froze, and I lay back in the
agonie of fear. If they had used the others thus, what way of escape was
op n for myself? I had been brought to this place, and not murdered on
the spot. Clearly there was torture before death in store for me, and I
confess I quailed at the thought.

But none molested me. The elders continued to jabber out their stories,
while I lay tense and deaf. Then to my amazement food was brought and
placed beside me--almost with respect. Clearly my murder was not a thing
of the immediate future. The meal was some form of mutton--perhaps the
shepherd's lost ewes--and a little smoking was all the cooking it had
got. I strove to eat, but the tasteless morsels choked me. Then they set
drink before me in a curious cup, which I seized on eagerly, for my
mouth was dry with thirst. The vessel was of gold, rudely formed, but of
the pure metal, and a coarse design in circles ran round the middle.
This surprised me enough, but a greater wonder awaited me. The liquor
was not water, as I had guessed, but a sort of sweet ale, a miracle of
flavour. The taste was curious, but somehow familiar; it was like no
wine I had ever drunk, and yet I had known that flavour all my life. I
sniffed at the brim, and there rose a faint fragrance of thyme and
heather honey and the sweet things of the moorland. I almost dropped the
thing in my surprise; for here in this rude place I had stumbled upon
that lost delicacy of the North, the heather ale.

For a second I was entranced with my discovery, and then the wonder of
the cup claimed my attention. Was it a mere relic of pillage, or had
this folk some hidden mine of the precious metal? Gold had once been
common in these hills. There were the traces of mines on Cairnsmore;
shepherds had found it in the gravel of the Gled Water; and the name
of a house at the head of the Clachlands meant the 'Home of Gold.'

Once more I began my questions, and they answered them willingly. There
and then I heard that secret for which many had died in old time, the
secret of the heather ale. They told of the gold in the hills, of
corries where the sand gleamed and abysses where the rocks were veined.
All this they told me, freely, without a scruple. And then, like a clap,
came the awful thought that this, too, spelled death. These were secrets
which this race aforetime had guarded with their lives; they told them
generously to me because there was no fear of betrayal. I should go no
more out from this place.

The thought put me into a new sweat of terror--not at death, mind you,
but at the unknown horrors which might precede the final suffering. I
lay silent, and after binding my hands they began to leave me and go off
to other parts of the cave. I dozed in the horrible half-swoon of fear,
conscious only of my shaking limbs, and the great dull glow of the fire
in the centre. Then I became calmer. After all, they had treated me with
tolerable kindness: I had spoken their language, which few of their
victims could have done for many a century; it might be that I found
favour in their eyes. For a little I comforted myself with this
delusion, till I caught sight of a wooden box in a corner. It was of
modern make, one such as grocers use to pack provisions in. It had some
address nailed on it, and an aimless curiosity compelled me to creep
thither and read it. A torn and weather-stained scrap of paper, with the
nails at the corner rusty with age; but something of the address might
still be made out. Amid the stains my feverish eyes read, 'To Mr.
M--Carrickfey, by Allerfoot Station.'

The ruined cottage in the hollow of the waste with the single gnarled
apple-tree was before me in a twinkling. I remembered the shepherd's
shrinking from the place and the name, and his wild eyes when he told me
of the thing that had happened there. I seemed to see the old man in his
moorland cottage, thinking no evil; the sudden entry of the nameless
things; and then the eyes glazed in unspeakable terror. I felt my lips
dry and burning. Above me was the vault of rock; in the distance I saw
the fire-glow and the shadows of shapes moving around it. My fright was
too great for inaction, so I crept from the couch, and silently,
stealthily, with tottering steps and bursting heart, I began to
reconnoitre.

But I was still bound, my arms tightly, my legs more loosely, but yet
firm enough to hinder flight. I could not get my hands at my leg-straps,
still less could I undo the manacles. I rolled on the floor, seeking
some sharp edge of rock, but all had been worn smooth by the use
of centuries. Then suddenly an idea came upon me like an inspiration. The
sou