face and
hands cold, dead white, and his features were frozen.

No trace of any feeling showed on his face. His voice and his laughter
rumbled from his throat, leaving his face unchanged, only his pupils
waxed and waned like a cat's in the dark. He was covered with a
patchwork of skins and tatters of cloth, and as he set meat before us,
venison, it came to me that he must hunt his food in the dark, always
in the dark. That cold whiteness was not of the good God's sunlight.
As we ate, Dan told him some of our story, and the Nameless Man sat, a
handful of his beard in his hand, his elbow on the table, and his eyes
growing and fading.

"I'm sair feart I left him deid," said Dan. "If they come for us, dog,
when we're lying at the still and the good water turnin' to fine
whisky--and the good nice water, trickling and dripping through the
rocks for a hundred years--if they creep upon us, dog, what will we be
doing, you and me, Marr? Ho--ho--ho! killing them, eh? Leaving their
bones wi' the white bones away in there--the old, old bones," and dog
and man made a howling of laughter. I knew then that this was the
watcher of a smugglers' still; for let the gang o' Preventives do their
worst, whisky would still be made in the hills.

It came to me then why the folk would be leaving peats for the wee
folks, as they said, when they would be taking down the creels from the
hills; for the Nameless Man threw more on the fire from some hidden
store, likely nearer his worm, when we had finished eating. The great
dog lay at the rock by which we entered, and I saw that the stone was
swung on a balance; but if there was a way to open from the outside I
never knew till long after. McKinnon and Dan lay talking, but I was
silent for the most part, thinking of the sword and the armour, and of
the people who fashioned the well, and wondering about the old, old
bones away through the dark passage into the heart of the hill. The
far, far-away stories were in my mind of Finn and his warriors, of his
great dogs and his queens. Did Ossian the bard tune his harp to great
deeds, and to lovely women of the land of the Ever Young, in the cave
of the past? Into my musings--for sleep had nearly come over me--broke
the voice of the Nameless Man.

"I gave her to drink of the foamy milk--warm, and the bubbles of froth
in it. 'Drink, my lost lass,' said I, 'for ye loved me well once,' and
all the time I would be telling her that death was comin