Deeside!" at him. A contingent
from Thrums was there, and it was long afterwards told of Sam'l Todd,
by himself, that he hit Jeffrey on the back of the head with a clod of
earth.

Johnny McQuhatty, a brother of the T'nowhead farmer, was the one
taciturn member of the club, and you had only to look at him to know
that he had a secret. He was a great genius at the hand-loom, and
invented a loom for the weaving of linen such as has not been seen
before or since. In the day-time he kept guard over his "shop," into
which no one was allowed to enter, and the fame of his loom was so
great that he had to watch over it with a gun. At night he weaved, and
when the result at last pleased him he made the linen into shirts, all
of which he stitched together with his own hands, even to the
buttonholes. He sent one shirt to the Queen, and another to the
Duchess of Athole, mentioning a very large price for them, which he
got. Then he destroyed his wonderful loom, and how it was made no one
will ever know. Johnny only took to literature after he had made his
name, and he seldom spoke at the club except when ghosts and the like
were the subject of debate, as they tended to be when the farmer of
Muckle Haws could get in a word. Muckle Haws was fascinated by
Johnny's sneers at superstition, and sometimes on dark nights the
inventor had to make his courage good by seeing the farmer past the
doulie yates (ghost gates), which Muckle Haws had to go perilously near
on his way home. Johnny was a small man, but it was the burly farmer
who shook at sight of the gates standing out white in the night. White
gates have an evil name still, and Muckle Haws was full of horrors as
he drew near them, clinging to Johnny's arm. It was on such a night,
he would remember, that he saw the White Lady go through the gates
greeting sorely, with a dead bairn in her arms, while water kelpies
laughed and splashed in the pools, and the witches danced in a ring
round Broken Buss. That very night twelve months ago the packman was
murdered at Broken Buss, and Easie Pettie hanged herself on the stump
of a tree. Last night there were ugly sounds from the quarry of Croup,
where the bairn lies buried, and it's not mous (canny) to be out at
such a time. The farmer had seen spectre maidens walking round the
ruined castle of Darg, and the castle all lit up with flaring torches,
and dead knights and ladies sitting in the halls at the wine-cup, and
the devil himse