taught her the
beautiful things learnt by those who grow near to the earth and humble
living things.

She ran down the hillside to him that day, her eyes--the blue-grey eyes
of her people--wide with horror, her long, straight, fair hair, that she
wore in two Marguerite plaits, loosened and swinging in the wind.
Hunchback Wullie was in the first hut, threading the herrings through
their gills on the long strings that went from side to side high up
under the roof. His ruddy brown beard glistered with the shining scales
of the fish, for he had a habit of standing by the hut door looking out
to sea and stroking his beard, when another man would have smoked and
rested.

"Things never come tae an ending, lassie," he said, his little red-brown
eyes looking out over the grey water. "Either for good or for ill
they're always gaun on. They may be quiet like Lashnagar for years, an'
then something crops out--like yon crumbling last night that killed
young Colin. But it's not always evil that crops out, mind ye."

Marcella did not go on Lashnagar again for months. The next time Wullie
was with her, and half-way up the incline they found apple blossom
growing about one foot from the ground on a little sapling with a
crabbed, thick trunk.

"Why, look at that little apple tree, Wullie--how brave of it! I'm going
to root it up and take it to my garden. It can never live here in the
sand and the wind."

Wullie sat down and watched her, smiling a little and stroking his beard
as she dug with her hands in the friable soil. For a long time she dug,
but the sapling went deeper and deeper, and at last she sat down hot and
tired.

"D'ye ken what ye're daein', lassie?" he said, looking at the pink and
white bloom reflectively. "Ye're diggin' doon intae death! Yon flooer's
the reaping of a seedtime many a hundred years gone by. If ye was tae
dig doon an' doon all the day ye'd find yon apple tree buried deep i'
th' sand. The last time it fruited was afore Flodden, when Lashcairns
were kings--"

"What, Wullie, a poor old tree buried all those years, pushing up to
light like this? How could it?" said Marcella, staring at it fascinated.

"I've tauld ye afore, Marcella. There's no ending tae things! Sometimes
the evil comes cropping oot, like when men get caught an' buried on
Lashnagar. Sometimes it's something bonny, like yon flooer. Yon apple
was meant to live an' bear fruit; the bonny apple's juist the
makeweight. It's the seed that ma