neither of these
delights were within reach--if perhaps two were sleeping and the third
could find no means to follow their example--I would see him sit and
listen and look about him in a progression of uneasiness, starting, his
face blenching, his hands clutched, a man strung like a bow. The nature
of these fears I had never an occasion to find out, but the sight of
them was catching, and the nature of the place that we were in
favourable to alarms. I can find no word for it in the English, but
Andie had an expression for it in the Scots from which he never varied.

"Ay," he would say, "_it's an unco place, the Bass_."

It is so I always think of it. It was an unco place by night, unco by
day; and these were unco sounds, of the calling of the solans, and the
plash of the sea and the rock echoes, that hung continually in our ears.
It was chiefly so in moderate weather. When the waves were any way great
they roared about the rock like thunder and the drums of armies,
dreadful but merry to hear; and it was in the calm days that a man could
daunt himself with listening--not a Highlandman only, as I several times
experimented on myself, so many still, hollow noises haunted and
reverberated in the porches of the rock.

This brings me to a story I heard, and a scene I took part in, which
quite changed our terms of living, and had a great effect on my
departure. It chanced one night I fell in a muse beside the fire and
(that little air of Alan's coming back to my memory) began to whistle. A
hand was laid upon my arm, and the voice of Neil bade me to stop, for it
was not "canny musics."

"Not canny?" I asked. "How can that be?"

"Na," said he; "it will be made by a bogle and her wanting ta heid upon
his body."[13]

"Well," said I, "there can be no bogles here, Neil; for it's not likely
they would fash themselves to frighten solan geese."

"Ay?" says Andie, "is that what ye think of it? But I'll can tell ye
there's been waur nor bogles here."

"What's waur than bogles, Andie?" said I.

"Warlocks," said he. "Or a warlock at the least of it. And that's a
queer tale, too," he added. "And if ye would like, I'll tell it ye."

To be sure we were all of the one mind, and even the Highlander that
had the least English of the three set himself to listen with all his
might.

THE TALE OF TOD LAPRAIK

My faither, Tam Dale, peace to his banes, was a wild sploring lad in his
young days, wi' little wisdom and less grace. He