if it became necessary to purchase some more
fishing-hooks at the grocer's shop, it was their own small store of
wealth they had to look to; and so it came about that a penny was
something to be seriously considered. When Rob MacNicol had to impose
a fine of one penny, he knew it was a dire punishment; and if there was
any alternative, the fine was rarely paid. The fund, therefore, which
he had started for the purchase of an old and disused set of bagpipes,
and which was to be made up of those fines, did not grow apace. Of
course, being a chieftain, he must needs have a piper. The revels in
the halls of Eilean-na-Rona lacked half their impressiveness through
the want of the pipes. No doubt, Rob had a sort of suspicion that, if
ever they should grow rich enough to buy the old set of bagpipes, he
would have to play them himself; but even the most ignorant person can
perceive that to be one's own piper must at least be better than to
have no piper at all.

And now the captive Nicol MacNicol was led to the edge of this black
pit in the floor of the lower hall of the castle. On several occasions
one or other of the boys had been lowered, for slighter offences, into
this dungeon; but no one had ever been condemned to go to the
bottom--if bottom there were. But Nicol did not flinch. He was
satisfied of the justice of his sentence. He was aware he deserved the
punishment. Above all he was determined to save that penny.

At the same time, when the other three had poised themselves so as to
lower the rope gradually, and when he found himself descending into
that black mole, he looked rather nervously below him. Of course he
could see nothing. But there was a vague tradition that this dungeon
was haunted by ghosts, vampires, warlocks, and other unholy things; and
there was a chill, strange, earthy odour arising from it; and the walls
that he scraped against were slimy and damp. He uttered no word,
however; and those above kept slowly paying out the coil of rope.

Rob became somewhat concerned.

'It'll be no easy job to pull him back,' he said in a whisper.

'It's as deep as the dungeon they put Donald Gorm Mor into,' said his
cousin Neil.

'Maybe there's no bottom at all,' said Duncan, rather awe-stricken.

Suddenly a fearful thing happened. There was a cry from below--a quick
cry of alarm; and at the same moment they were startled by a wild
whizzing and whirring around them, as if a legend of fiends had rushe