hook it. But I did, and after some pretty
play I had the satisfaction of landing a lovely three-pounder. I now
reeled up, put my rod in its canvas case, and prepared to make the best of
my way to the castle.

It was nearly an hour since the sun had gone down like a huge crimson
ball in the west, and now slowly over the hills a veritable facsimile of
it was rising, and soon the stars came out as gloaming gave place to
night, and moonlight flooded all the woods and glen.

The scene around me was lovely, but lonesome in the extreme, for there was
not a house anywhere near, nor a sound to break the stillness except now
and then the eerisome cry of the brown owl that flitted silently past
overhead. Had I been very timid I could have imagined that figures were
creeping here and there in the flickering shadows of the trees, or that
ghosts and bogles had come out to keep me company. My nearest way home
would be to cross a bit of heathery moor and pass by the neglected
graveyard and ruined Catholic chapel; and, worse than all, the ancient
manse where lived old Mawsie.

I never believed that Mawsie was a witch, though others did. She was said
to creep about on moonlight nights like a dry aisk,[1] so people said,
'mooling' among heaps of rubbish and the mounds over the graves as she
gathered herbs to concoct strange mixtures withal. Certainly Mawsie was no
beauty; she walked 'two-fold,' leaning on a crutch; she was gray-bearded,
wrinkled beyond conception; her head was swathed winter and summer in
wraps of flannel, and altogether she looked uncanny. Nevertheless, the
peasant people never hesitated to visit her to beg for herb-tea and oil to
rub their joints. But they always chose the daylight in which to make
their calls.

'Perhaps,' I thought, 'I'd better go round.' Then something whispered to
me, 'What! you a M'Crimman, and confessing to fear!'

That decided me, and I went boldly on. For the life of me, however, I
could not keep from mentally repeating those weird and awful lines in
Burns' 'Tam o' Shanter,' descriptive of the hero's journey homewards on
that unhallowed and awful night when he forgathered with the witches:

'By this time he was 'cross the ford
Whare in the snaw the chapman smo'red;[2]
And past the birks[3] and meikle stane
Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane;
And through the furze and by the cairn
Where hunters found the