ut I would be holding my steel in my hand,
and we sat and watched, the dogs and me."

"Was it the skein-dubh you would be holding?"

"It would not be the black knife, Dan McBride; it would just be this."

At that Sandy Nicol showed us a small object, which seemed to me to be
a twisted horse-shoe nail wrapped round about with wool; but he would
not be letting it go from his palm, and when I would have examined it
closer he put it past.

"It's not Sandy that would be droving without his steel," he cried.

"Would you aye be carrying that?" said I; for he looked so wild and
lawless that it was not in me to be believing that he trusted to aught
save his dirk.

"There was a time no, mo bhallach," said Sandy Nicol, "a time when I
would be selling back-calvers and stots to the Red Laird for the
mainland markets; and it would just be the wee Broon Lass o' Ardbennan
that saved the beasts--for, ye see, I did not always stay ma lane, and
when my mother would be failin' and her joints stiffening like a' aged
beasts, the milking would aye be done and the byre mucked when she got
up in the morning. Oh, but she was the wise one, for she would be
leaving the best o' the cream in a basin, and maybe a bannock, for the
wee Broon Lass, for my mother would be seeing her flitting among the
battens. And before she went away she would be telling me: 'Never be
offering her boots or claes when the snaw comes, Sandy, for the Broonie
o' Lag 'a bheithe[1] left in sore anger for that they pitied her in the
snaw.'

"Direach sin, it was a fine day I started to drive the back-calvers and
stots, and the sun red wi' a fine-weather haze, and the roads hard and
dry, and it was maybe two hours I was on the road and the beasts
settled, when there came a woman on the road and a shawl about her
head, and I kent her for a devil's black bairn that could be telling
her ain folk when the rain would come in the harvest, and when the
butter would come on at the kirning.

"A bad unchancy woman; ye'll ken the breed o' them, for they will be
sore feart o' clean burn-water, but they'll be coorieing ower a fire a'
day, and talking to the black cat, and I had it in my mind to be
turning when I saw her, for did she not come into the byre at Dyke-end
when the beasts were at their fother, and she stood and she eyed them.

"'So bonny,' says she, 'so bonny and fat and glossy, and the wee bit
speckled quey calves they'll be leaving,' and with that she walked up
the