dent marks of trepidation that
the mirth was marred and no one cared to ask him questions.

"This was early in the week, and on Friday the Major persuaded his
friends to make a second expedition to the mountains, from which they
never returned.

"On a search being made their dead bodies were found in the bothy, some
considerably mangled, but some were not marked by any wound.

"It was visible that this had not been effected by human agency: the
bothy was torn from its foundations and scarcely a vestige left of it,
and one huge stone, which twelve men could not have raised, was tossed to
a considerable distance.

"On this event Scott's beautiful ballad of 'Glenfinlas' is said to have
been founded."

As will be seen presently, Hogg was wrong about 'Glenfinlas'; the boatman
was acquainted with a traditional version of that wild legend. I found
another at Rannoch.

The Highland fairies are very vampirish. The Loch Awe boatman lives at a
spot haunted by a shadowy maiden. Her last appearance was about thirty
years ago. Two young men were thrashing corn one morning, when the joint
of the flail broke. The owner went to Larichban and entered an outhouse
to look for a piece of sheepskin wherewith to mend the flail. He was
long absent, and his companion went after him. He found him struggling
in the arms of a ghostly maid, who had nearly murdered him, but departed
on the arrival of his friend. It is not easy to make out what these
ghoulish women are--not fairies exactly, nor witches, nor vampires. For
example, three shepherds at a lonely sheiling were discoursing of their
loves, and it was, "Oh, how happy I should be if Katie were here, or
Maggie, or Bessie!" as the case might be. So they would say and so they
would wish, and lo! one evening, the three girls came to the door of the
hut. So they made them welcome; but one of the shepherds was playing the
Jew's-harp, and he did not like the turn matters were taking.

The two others stole off into corners of the darkling hut with their
lovers, but this prudent lad never took his lips off the Jew's-harp.

"Harping is good if no ill follows it," said the semblance of his
sweetheart; but he never answered. He played and thrummed, and out of
one dark corner trickled red blood into the fire-light, and out of
another corner came a current of blood to meet it. Then he slowly rose,
still harping, and backed his way to the door, and fled into the hills
from these cruel a