is head.

"'What mak's your e'en bones sae white an' deep?'

"'The Grave!' says he. He hadna muckle to say, but he spak' aye mair
dour and wearisome than ever.

"'What mak's ye lauch sae wide at puir Gibbie?'

"'The Grave!' says he. He hadna muckle to say, but syne he steppit
nearer nearer to the bedside.

"'What made that great muckle hole in your side?'

"'You made it!' cried the ghaist, loupin' at Gibbie's throat; an' puir
Gib kenned nae mair."

And even as the monster shouted out the last words--the words of the
spectre of his cannibal vision--Gash Gibbie seemed to us to dilate and
lean forward to spring upon us. The wild-fire reeled about as though the
very elements were drunken, and Wat and I fairly turned and fled,
shouting insanely with terror as we ran--leaving the silent stricken
witch with the face of blood, and the misshapen elf, her hell's brood
progeny, raving and shouting on the hillside--these two alone at
midnight in the "Nick of the Deid Wife."

"Aye, rin, rin," we heard him call after us. "Rin fast, and Yon will
maybe no' catch ye--till it is your hour!"

And truly Wat and I did run in earnest, stumbling and crying out in our
terror--now falling and now getting up, then falling to the running
again without a single reasonable word. But as we came hot-foot over the
Rig of Lochricaur, we seemed to run into the sheeted rain. For where we
had been hitherto, only the blue dry fire had ringed us, but here we ran
into a downpour as though the fountains of the deep of heaven had broken
up and were falling in a white spate upon the world.

We were wet, weary, and terrified, more than we had ever been in our
lives, before we reached the hermitage of the cave of Macaterick. There
we found the women waiting for us, listening fearfully to the roar of
the storm without, and hearkening in the lown blinks to Auld Anton
Lennox praying--while the lightning seemed to run into the cave, and
shine on the blade of the sword he held gripped in his right hand. So we
stripped our wet clothes, and lay in the outer place all the night,
where there was a fire of red peats, while the women withdrew themselves
into their inner sanctuary. I could see the anxiety in their eyes when
we came in, for they could not but discern the ghastly terror in our
faces. But without any agreement between ourselves, Wat and I silently
resolved that we should not acquaint any of the party with the hideous
judgments of that night, to whic