le for mastery, and aye the horse was cowed. Even on the
mornings when I heard Dan's step, soft and wary on the cobbles, before
the sun was up, and knew by the look of him, and the gruffness in his
voice, that he had travelled many a weary mile from his light-o'-love,
and that sleep had not troubled him, I would hear the stable door
opening and Dan whistling like the cheery early bird as he opened the
corn-kist. After the morning feed the battle began, for Chieftain had
a devil, but I think Dan had seven of that ilk.

"It's him or me, Hamish," he would croon, "him or me, but I'm likin'
myself a' the time"; and he kept the lathering, plunging devil off
himself, whiles with his fists, and whiles with a short stick.

"I'll handle him were he twice as big and twice as bad. I'll hae nae
gentlemen among the horse when there's lea to plough!" and the fight
would go on. But Dan was the only man who could handle Chieftain, and
there seemed a kind of laughing comradeship between them.

I have digressed that you might see with my eyes the queer uncanny
thing that happened on the road there between the woman and the horse.
I have told you the spaewife--if spaewife you would call her, for I
think sorceress fitted her better--I have said she came close to
Chieftain's head, her black eyes fairly lowing; and as the brute, his
skin twitching, gathered himself to rear on her, she hit him full on
the mouth with her little brown hand, and hissed a word at him in her
own tongue. As the word struck my ears I felt myself tingle to my
finger-tips, and the world seemed to go quiet all round me. The
horse's ears went forward, and he stretched his great neck, and there
he was quiet as an old pony, nibbling with his lips at the woman's
shawl and hair.

And the woman looked at Dan.

A kind of half laugh, half sigh, left his lips.

"I wish," said he, "I had your gait o' handlin' horse. It's desperate
sudden, but it's sure, as our friend Hamish wid observe. Maybe, my
dear, you'll hiv a spell tae turn the horse tae himsel' again and
something extra, an' I'm no' sayin' but what I would be likin' him
better, for sittin' here on a quate beast that sould be like the
ravening devil o' holy writ is no' canny."

"Spell," said the girl, for indeed she was little more, and under her
brown skin I could see the darker red rising. "Spell, ye night-hawk!"
and her broad bosom heaved with the rage in her, and her body trembled
with living anger.