kyard." And away
the old dame tottered to her cottage, secured the door on the inside, and
soon the hearth-flame was seen to glimmer and gleam through the keyhole
and window.

"I'll tell ye what," said the old mariner, in a subdued tone, and with a
shrewd and suspicious glance of his eye after the old sibyl, "it's a word
that may not very well be uttered, but there are many mistakes made in
evening stories if old Moll Moray there, where she lives, knows not
mickle more than she is willing to tell of the Haunted Ships and their
unhallowed mariners. She lives cannily and quietly; no one knows how she
is fed or supported; but her dress is aye whole, her cottage ever smokes,
and her table lacks neither of wine, white and red, nor of fowl and fish,
and white bread and brown. It was a dear scoff to Jock Matheson, when he
called old Moll the uncanny carline of Blawhooly: his boat ran round and
round in the centre of the Solway--everybody said it was enchanted--and
down it went head foremost; and hadna Jock been a swimmer equal to a
sheldrake, he would have fed the fish. But I'll warrant it sobered the
lad's speech; and he never reckoned himself safe till he made old Moll
the present of a new kirtle and a stone of cheese."

"O father!" said his granddaughter Barbara, "ye surely wrong poor old
Mary Moray; what use could it be to an old woman like her, who has no
wrongs to redress, no malice to work out against mankind, and nothing to
seek of enjoyment save a canny hour and a quiet grave--what use could the
fellowship of fiends and the communion of evil spirits be to her? I know
Jenny Primrose puts rowan-tree above the door-head when she sees old Mary
coming; I know the good-wife of Kittlenaket wears rowan-berry leaves in
the headband of her blue kirtle, and all for the sake of averting the
unsonsie glance of Mary's right ee; and I know that the auld Laird of
Burntroutwater drives his seven cows to their pasture with a wand of
witch-tree, to keep Mary from milking them. But what has all that to do
with haunted shallops, visionary mariners, and bottomless boats? I have
heard myself as pleasant a tale about the Haunted Ships and their
unworldly crews as any one would wish to hear in a winter evening. It
was told me by young Benjie Macharg, one summer night, sitting on
Arbigland-bank: the lad intended a sort of love meeting; but all that he
could talk of was about smearing sheep and shearing sheep, and of the
wife which the