loon was dour for a' the want o' his sword, and we micht
no' hae mastered him but that he tried to trip us and so got tripped
himself. He fell so that the head o' him took the wa' and fair dang him
stupid. So we e'en gied him a bit hoise an' ower he gaed intil the
water----"

"Mercy on us," I cried, "ye didna droon the man?"

"Droon him," said Kate, "deil a fear! Yon chiel is made for the tow.
He'll droon nane. The last we saw o' him, he was sitting on his hurdies
in the shallows, up to his neck in the water, trying what banes war hale
after his stramash.

"So," continued Kate, "we gaed our roads in peace, and the chiel sat
still in the water, thrawin' his heid aboot and aboot like a turnspit,
as lang as we could see him."

Even thus Kate McGhie told her tale, making my lass dearer to me with
every word. Of Mardrochat the informer, who had made bold to meddle with
them, I had heard many times. He had been a Covenanter of zeal and
forwardness till, at a meeting of the Societies, his double-faced guile
had been laid bare. Ever since which day in the wilds of Friarminion, he
had been a cunning, spying fox, upon the track of the hill-folk. But I
knew how dangerous the man could be, and liked it ill enough that the
maids should have crossed him so early on their pilgrimage. I doubted
not that it was from him that the original information had come, which,
being carried to the enemy by Birsay and overheard by me in the house of
Balmaghie, had sent us all hiving to the mountains.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE HOUSE OF THE BLACK CATS.

Having bidden such good-e'en to the maids as was severally due to them,
I crossed the Nick of the Gadlach and went whistling over the moor. I
took a new road over the heather, and was just at the turning of the
Eglin Lane, when, deep in the howe of the glen, I came on the strangest
kind of cot-house. It was piled together of the rough bowder stones of
the country, their edges undressed and gaping, the spaces between them
filled in with faggots of heather and plastered with stiff bluish clay
from the burn-sides. The roof was of branches of the fir trees long
buried in the moss, and was thatched with heather. There was an opening
in the middle, from which a smoke arose. And I heard a sound like
singing from within--a sound that made my flesh creep.

I went to the door and with my knuckle knocked gently, as is our fashion
in that part of the country, crying, "Are ye within, good wife?"

Where